Well, that’s what it looked like. A big mass of wet air crash landing right in a residential area.
I watched it for a while, photographing it as I did. It looked weird as it pushed into the cove, hit the mountains, filled up the whole area and spilled over the tops of the mountains.
There’s been nothing on the news, so since no news is good news I’m assuming nobody got hurt in the crash.
The Salt Lake Valley is notorious for it’s winter inversions that trap all kinds of human-caused particulates in the air.
But this evening we experienced another type of air pollution, which cannot be blamed on the human race whatsoever.
Imagine the smell of the ocean, only stronger (the Great Salt Lake is anywhere from 2 to 8 times as salty as the ocean). Add to that the smell of stagnancy and millions of drowned brine flies.
For some reason it’s not so bad when you’re out at the lake itself, but when the weather comes from the northwest, right over the lake, and blows that smell into the city, it comes across pretty strong. And not so sweet either.
But the front has passed, the winds calmed down and the smell is clearing. Lasted a whole half hour.
I do lunch duty almost every day. I got into the habit at a school with an incredibly fractured faculty because reminding kids to clean up after themselves was infinitely better than listening to teachers bitch and moan, and getting in the occasional argument with one that didn’t see eye-to-eye with me. The habit has stuck with me despite having very cohesive faculties at 4 out of the 5 last schools I’ve taught at, mainly because it’s a good way to interact with my students outside of the structure of the classroom.
At lunch today I noticed a student that had casts on both of his lower arms.
Me: “What happened?”
Him: “I broke both my arms.”
Me: “How?”
Him: “I fell down the stairs.”
Me: “Where?”
Him: “At home.”
Me: “How?”
Him: “I tripped.”
Me: “Over what?”
Him: “My own foot.”
Now in his defense, as I later learned, he had just gone through such an intense growth spurt that he had been put in a back brace because of the strain it was putting on his spine. Which makes it understandable why he had a hard time dealing with his own feet.
But it still took all my energy to keep from laughing when he first said “My own foot.”
We went up to our land for the long weekend. Both my brothers and their families were there, including two of my nieces and their families too. 19 people, and 9 of them were under the age of 14.
It was kind of chaotic with nine kids chasing each other around the woods, but we have the room, and it was a lot of fun. And the food was good. My niece’s husband made a Dutch oven lasagna and a fruit cobbler that were awesome.
One of the biggest laughs was when my niece had a bug on her arm. It took her a couple minutes to realize it was there and she was a little freaked out when she found out it was on her for a while.
My niece: “What was it doing there? Maybe it was sitting there sucking my soul!”
Her 12-year-old daughter: “No mom, that’s my job.”
