Kaboom!

Right before leaving for work, there was a national weather warning for Tooele county for high winds. It warned people to stay away from windows and stay inside. Well, I can't imagine what that storm did to Tooele, but when it hit Sugarhouse it was a doozie. The power flickered on and off about 5 times in one hour. One time it was bad enough to shut down the whole system which takes 15 minutes to reboot, the rest it just shut down the gas pumps for 5 minutes or so. The unusual thing was that the customers were all understanding about the situation, not one of them yelled, screamed or demanded we fix the problem immediatly. Almost revives my faith in the human race. Almost.

Bicycling

Just got back from a bike ride. Only 8 or 10 blocks and already I can feel 743 muscles I wasn't even aware I had. Might have something to do with my not getting on a bike since I got my driver's license. Back when Jimmy Carter was president. Back in the day, we used to ride our bicycles everywhere. When I was around 10, a whole bunch of the kids in the neighborhood, 10 or 12 of us, rode the path the British took from Lexington to Concord. 14 miles round trip and now I can hardly make it a mile. Oh well, at least I still liked it, may take a while but I'll be back up to 14 miles eventually......

Human / Vermin. There's a reason they sound so alike.

Don't get me wrong, I like people, individuals. It's just as a race we suck. There's a lot more lovable ones out there, like sharks and fire ants. At least they don't proclaim to be civilized, you know exactly what to expect from each and every one of them. We, on the other hand, claim to be the evolutionary apex of the planet, the only beings with a sense of self awareness and social conscious. Yet we scurry around this planet exhibiting behaviors that defy any sense of common good and instead display a healthy attitude of self entitlement. Yes, I ran some errands today.

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I was gone for a whole 30 minutes today, and ran into 5 instances that were memorable. I get in line at Shopko behind a lady that is just finishing up her transaction. I've got one thing to buy, the cashier reaches for it as this lady's friend butts past me and hands him a video to ring up. Just as I'm thinking "Like, totally rude man, but it is only one thing", the lady pulls out her checkbook. Not cash. Not credit/debit card. But, these days, the slowest method of payment on God's green earth. The cashier, realizing that I am about to slam that lady's head down on her checkbook, which would probably jam her pen in her eye, causing a huge mess he would have to clean up, politely suggests that they can ring me up at the Customer Service counter. Disaster averted. On the way home, I almost get run over in front of the Shopko trying to get to my car, some lady decides she needs the whole lane for her minivan and is driving down the center of the isle in the parking lot, some guy in a BBA edition Ford Mega-Crew cab decides that the extra 30 feet his girlfriend/wife would have to walk from a real parking spot to the Nordstroms Rack might just give her a heart attack so he parks right in the lane of traffic (after all, WE can go around HIM), and finally as I'm pulling out of the parking space at Carl's Jr (halfway into the lane of traffic) some guy in another BBA pickup turns into the parking lot and figures that he shouldn't have to stop and tries to squeeze past me. All that within 30 minutes and 5 blocks of my house. Oh, and Writer, sorry about that huge, run on sentence, I was on a roll.

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Well, thank you for letting me vent, I feel much better now. I think I'll go take a nap and get ready to face the hoardes again. Gotta be at Chevron by 3..........

Week One down, about 70 more to go.

Week one of the teacher-student-Chevron trilogy is over. It's been a pretty good week, despite being incredibly tiring. For about 70 more weeks, until June of 2009, on Mondays through Thursdays, I'll be getting up to go teach around 6 am and not getting home until 9 pm. Friday's I only teach and Sat & Sun are being kept relatively clear for studying.

Teaching : I had a really good week. We've got a bunch of 9th graders that I taught 2 years ago when I was at the middle school, and it's kind of nice seeing them again. Whenever you change schools, you have to get known again by the staff and student body, and last year I was an unknown. This year, not only do I know the kids that were here last year, but because they came from my old middle school, a bunch of the new kids already know me. My math classes are looking good - Algebra I I'm coteaching with the special ed teacher, who is almost as crazy as I am. The UBSCT class has about 15 kids in it and they are all motivated to pass the test. Psychology is a blast. Last class I had them in groups of 3, gave each group a topic to learn (the different theories were our topics), had them talk about it in their group and then had them go around the room, talking to other students, finding out about the rest of the topice from them. It was cool. They stayed on take almost the whole time, mostly chatting about what they were supposed to. My Web Page class is not as dynamic as it was last year, but they are all interested in learning about it, and were even kind of excited when I told them the big project for the class was going to be a web page for a group in the school that I would actually put on the school's site.

Studenting : One of the classes is Foundations of Instructional Design, the other is Foundations of Learning - both of which are more project based, and not your basic lecture-test type classes. I have both classes with Gibb and her student teacher from last year, Leilani. Both professors have let us make our own teams, so we're working together on the projects, and if the rest are going to be like the first one, they're going to be a blast. We had to develop a design for instruction on changing a tire (and he specifically ruled out "get on the cell phone and call Triple-A") I don't know if you can tell how much fun we were having from the pictures (see post below), but we sure did take a lot of them.

Chevroning : Same-old, same-old. Love the people I work with, love the manager who is so willing to adapt to my school(s) schedule. And the extra $$$ ain't bad either.

Tonza new Photo Galleries.

Well, finally got around to getting together a bunch of recent pictures and putting them in galleries. Here they are, check out the ones you think might be interesting, ignore the rest.

• Boom over Salt Lake City and some deer.


• Russia Mission fundraiser.


• Pictures of the house and more scenery.


• Scenery pictures from the tour of Park City with Sir Duke.


• Granite High Teacher Retreat 2007.


• Lynda & Todd's 10th anniversary.


• U of U Project 1 : Changing a tire.


• Chevron.