Abstract concept.

The pictures are not abstract, but whatever these kids are doing seems to be.

Tuesday evening I was waiting for some friends for dinner at Rubio’s in the shopping center by Hidden Hollow in Sugarhouse.  I noticed a couple of high school students standing by a big cardboard box in one of the parking stalls.  Before I realized something really interesting was going to happen, two other kids showed up and they all climbed into the box, which had the top and bottom removed so they could pick it up and walk around in it.

They backed out of traffic and, following the normal flow of vehicular traffic, headed out of the parking lot and up 2100 South Street.

I got my camera out of the trunk of the car just in time to see them leaving the parking lot, and then ran around the back of some buildings in their direction and caught up to them about a half block up, at the Chick-fil-A.

They headed across their parking lot and got into the drive-thru line.

They noticed me taking pictures of them as they were being kicked out of the drive thru line by one of the Chick-fil-A employees, so I decided to head back to Rubio’s to see if my friends had shown up.

How did this whole thing start? What were they doing?  Where did they go from there?  Guess I’ll never know for sure.

Double Fail.

Normally, having a car fail both the emissions and safety inspections would not make me happy.  But when you buy a 35 year old car, even if it seems to be in perfect condition, there are things that can stop it from passing either.  Expensive things like catalytic converters, brakes, electrical shorts. 

So when the mechanic told me that the only thing that did not pass safety was the bungee cord holding in the battery, I was a little relieved.  A quick, cheap fix.

And then he showed me the emissions printout.  Everything was perfect at running speed, but the fuel was a little rich when the car was idling.  Just adjust the mixture a little leaner, that’s what he said.  Not much, it just barely failed.  Another cheap, quick fix.

Bummer.  My worst week ever continues.

Chasin’ Brineflies

If you’ve seen my “Abstract” pictures, you probably figured that I went out to Antelope Island sometime recently.  Today as a matter of fact, my writer friend Lisa Shafer and I headed out there for relaxation and some photo shooting.

Antelope Island is on the Great Salt Lake, which means that the beaches are swarming with brine flies.  At one point Lisa walked down the beach, sending a wave of brine flies in front of her.  I did a continuous shoot of photos as she went and put it together in this time-lapse video.  It’s only 19 seconds long, I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the buffalo burger I had at the café on the beach there.

Abstract.

It’s Thematic Photographic’s 200^th theme, and Carmi picked Abstract for this week.  So, congratulations on your bi-centennial and here are my abstract photographs.  At the bottom you’ll be given a link for explanations of the pictures.

Click here for the explanations.

Ah’m Skeered.

“If you don’t repost this, your worst week starts now.”

That’s what I read in a Facebook post 7 days ago.

Despite not reposting any part of it other than the threat of a terrible week, since then:

• A major grinding sound in the rear end of Old Blue turned out to be just loose lug nuts.
• The charging problem on Big Green was the 5 minute job of replacing the $20 regulator (I did it in the parts store parking lot), not the hour it would take to put in a new $50 alternator.
• I picked up some extra work on an online concurrent-enrollment math class, at $50 an hour.

• While at the meeting at the University of Utah for the math class work, my parking meter ran out of time 2 hours before I got out there.  I said something about having to run out there about 15 minutes after my hour was up and we all joked “Ah, the ticket’s already there.”  But when I got out there, my windshield was ticket free.  Anyone who has dealt with the U of U parking knows that’s not luck, that’s a miracle.
• A good friend from my last school just dropped by out of the blue and we had a great afternoon catching up.
• No major injuries were incurred when I fixed my broken clothes washer, at no cost.
• The house didn’t burn down, the car didn’t leave me stranded out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, I didn’t get robbed or in a car crash or have to visit the emergency room for any reason.

As my grandma Ida would have said; “I should have more worst weeks like this.”