A recipe for “Chaotic”.

This week’s Thematic Photographic is “Chaotic”, which ironically fits my evening so far.

Take a busy street.  Add rush hour traffic and a couple trees.  Stir in some warning level pre-cold front winds and voila, Chaotic.

Yeah, today was the first day after the school play ended, the first day I could head home before 9:30 and just relax.

Uh-huhn.  Relax it won’t be.  The winds blew down a few branches from one tree and the top half of another tree in the parking strip in front of my house.

The smaller pieces ended up almost blocking one side of the street.

The bigger piece was left completely blocking my driveway and the sidewalk in front of my house.

 

You’d think drivers would appreciate the guy trying to get the branches out of their way, but slowing down (even to the speed limit would have been nice) was beyond their comprehension.

It was totally chaotic.  Winds blowing, temperatures dropping rabidly (today’s high: 76F, tomorrow: 56F), me darting in and out of traffic trying to get the branches onto the sidewalk where I can take care of them.  And finally sweeping the smaller pieces out of the way.

The neighbor across the street came over to help, and with a chainsaw we filled up my trash can and yard waste can and both of his too.  It took about an hour (chainsaw was like butta) and almost completely cleaned up.  I have a pile of branches that couldn’t fit in the cans that will have to wait until after the trash is picked up.

Yup, fun, relaxing afternoon.

Happy Birthday Dad

Hungry? We’ve got lunch for you.

The Thematic Photographic theme for this week is “Hungry?”  It’s the week of our school play, so eating time is limited, and rushed.  But, I figured that since I‘m doing lunch duty every day it would make for good photo fodder.

So,  for those of you who have not had the opportunity to enjoy a scrumptious public school luncheon in a while, I bring you our typical menu, in photos.

The entrée for the day:  Some chicken-nugget like stuff, mashed potatoes, corn, cheese and gravy.   Mmmm.  All this and a pint of milk for $1.65.

Pizza is offered every day.  It actually is made fresh every day at the school.  You can have pepperoni, cheese or vegi.  Comes with tater-tots, chocolate or 2% milk, and as much ranch dressing as you can squirt on the plate.  $1.65 also.

Another daily special:  Chicken sandwich.  With tater tots and a pint of milk.  (You guessed it) $1.65.

Made to order “deli” sandwiches.  Your choice of ham, roast beef or turkey with white cheese food or yellow cheese food.  Garnished to your liking, with milk and tater-tots.  $1.65.

Nachos.  Yum.  $1.65.

Calzone, pepperoni or cheese only.  Comes with ranch, thousand island or Italian dressing to dip in.  Price?  Ha! You’re wrong.  This is at the ala-carte window, which means you can’t use your school lunch funds to buy it, cash only.  $2.00.

9th graders are officially High School students, and allowed more calories in a school lunch than the 7th or 8th graders.  This time the extra is these graham crackers.  For those of you who have always thought graham crackers were somewhat bland, you need to try these.  Next time you have the Keebler ones you’ll think they are downright spicy.  We call these the “sheetrock crackers.”  They bought a month’s supply, we’ve had them for almost 3 months now.

Who’da thought there would be a “school lunch” clique and…

…a “sack lunch” clique.  Most tables are not this segregated, but I caught these two tables and couldn’t resist posting them.

Of course there are some students that trade their more nutritious parts of their school lunch for a couple of all time favorites.

And some parents don’t find themselves locked into sending their kids to school with the traditional brown paper lunch sack.  Waste not, want not, I guess.

After lunch you can get a slushie for 50 cents.  One of today’s choices was this unnatural lime green.

Tater tots may be yummy, but they also make great projectiles.  Several kids a day get reprimanded for throwing them at their friends.  The pizza?  I think that just fell on the floor, and there actually exist junior high kids that won’t eat off the floor.

Last, but not least, what do you do with all the garbage and left over food?  Why make “lunch art” of course.  There are two main goals to lunch art: 1) make it as gross as possible or 2) (as in this case) make it stand as tall as possible.

Bon apatite!

A great birthday.

Took the Jeep out to Iosepa, found some muddy water and a really cool place with a bunch of roads going hither and yon. 

Great afternoon.  Here’s some picts.

New graphics on the Jeep.

My brother and his wife have a side-business doing vinyl graphics for vehicles.  I got them to do some for the Jeep and they installed them a couple days ago.

I designed them myself, with our property in Duchesne in mind (which is why the “Back of Beyond”) and they just printed them up and put them on for me.

Here are some before & after shots:

⁰IIIIIII⁰

Happy Birthday Sydney