One of those days at the Chevron.

If home is ‘now’, the year 2011, then this picture qualifies for ‘far from home’.  Not because the picture is an old picture, but because there seemed to be a rip in the time-space continuum, and a kid from the 1980’s fell through.  In the picture he’s holding it down by his side as he waits his turn at the register, but when he walked into the store it was blaring loudly and balanced on his shoulder.  Yes, a boom box.  Next week I’m going to ask my classes if anyone knows what one is, my hypothesis is that is will be few since even Walkmans were out of style when they were born. Earlier in the evening my coworker was ringing up a gallon of milk and the I.D. check that pops up for tobacco and beer appeared.   Without even thinking he looked at the lady (in her 20’s) and asked her for her I.D.  She looked at him like he had monkeys flying out of his ears.  It was pretty funny, but not funny enough.  I sent a text to the manager to let her know;

I guess you now have to be 21 to buy the 1% milk.  Seems it was put into the computer as alcohol.  Now we don't want to fail the milk sting so we've been I.D.ing everyone who buys milk.  Got some surprised customers, especially the 17 year old we refused to sell it to.

I got back this;

LOL! Laura was supposed to fix that! Will you write down the UPC for me and put it on my door? Hahahahahaha!

Man, I can’t even fool someone I hardly ever work with.

Far out, man.

Janine and I went to high school together, and one evening we went out to dinner and brought my little brother along.  We were about 17, he was 11, and she enjoyed the little family scene so much that in my senior yearbook she wrote “When are we going to legalize it?  We can also adopt [little brother]? Kay, sweetie?”

She has lived most of her adult life in Texas, but seems to come back to Utah to live (for a year or so) about every 5 years.  When she’s here we get together, these photos are from a visit in 2003.  We went down to the local planetarium, which has these areas made up so that you can stand in them and look like you are standing on either the moon or Mars.  I picked them first for this week because I figured “what’s further away from home than either of those places?”

So, here we are, standing on the moon with a half-Earth in the sky and an astronaut looking for the keys to the spaceship. Here I am on Mars.  Holding my breath of course, because there’s no air on the planet anymore.  Just don’t ask why I could breathe on the moon, but not on Mars. This week’s theme on Carmi’s Thematic Photographic is “Far from home”.  Click on the banner below if you are in the mood to see some really interesting photos from a whole bunch of cool people all around this planet.  And if you have a good “Far from home” picture, be sure to join in the fun.

Mr. Peabody’s Way-Back Machine: I-80 across the Utah border.

To what era would you attribute these comments:

“We’re dropping [our] moral and ethical standards in favor of a more national [set], and I don’t like it,”… they contain “code words for socialism.”?

• A) 1950’s U.S. Senate Committee Hearings
  
• B) 2011 Utah Senator
  
• C) Both of the above, because there’s really no difference between the two.

If you chose C) then you are right, because they really sound like something Joe McCarthy would have said back in the 50’s and yet they were said just this week by Chris Buttars, a Utah State Legislator.

Reported in the Salt Lake Tribune article, Buttars was referring to a new set of academic standards that 39 other states also plan to adopt.  Developed by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers, not mandated by the Federal Government, the idea is that states need to become better aligned in their math and English curriculum because of an ever increasingly mobile population.

Personally, I agree with the goal.  I’m definitely not for the ultra micromanaging I’ve heard of in other cases, where every teacher should be teaching the exact same thing, with the exact same vehicles, on any given day.  Individualism aside, that doesn’t even allow for adapting to classes that learn faster/slower than others and would mean moving ahead even if the majority of students still don’t get it.  But, at least in math, to know that any student coming into my class has already gone over monomials, inequalities and other things that I have covered, would be quite helpful.  There may still be things that I have covered that their old teacher didn’t, or vica-versa, but at least common standards would help minimize these.

And, regardless of whether or not you agree with them, playing the communism/socialism card is just sooooo 1950’s.

For the want of wet.

With apologies to those of you dealing with flooding right now, I have to admit I’m praying for some wet here.  We’re having one of our mid-winter inversions right now, where the weather traps the cold, the pollution and the humidity in the valley.  It’s actually warmer up at Parley’s Summit than it is in the city, some 2,500 feet higher in elevation.

I took a drive up there this afternoon, just to get out of the muck and hopefully catch a glimpse of the sun.  It was good for the soul, even though it was still cloudy at least the air was clear, fresh and crisp.

I’m adding this to the Thematic Photographic theme of ‘wet’ because the inevitable end to any inversion is a good, precipitation producing storm.  Either the winds before the storm scrub out the valley, or the rain/snow itself cleans the air, but either way it’s going to be better the next day.  And fortunately we’re expecting a storm tonight, hopefully it will be big enough to do the job.

Looking down 8th South this afternoon you can see the smog/fog trapped in the valley.  Mind you, most of that is just fog, because the water that evaporates gets stuck in the valley, although we have had a week of red* days.

It get’s a little bit better as you get higher up on the foothills.

The smog does give the sun a real nice orange hue, even an hour before sunset.

Which, if you tweak the settings on the camera just right gives a deep orange, and blacks out the city even though it’s still daylight.

It’s nice and clear up at the summit.

*Red days are days where the Air Quality people issue a warning for unhealthy air.  People are advised to drive as little as possible and it is suggested that anyone with lung issues stay indoors.

NEWS UPDATE:  Snow is here, and so far it looks like it’s going to be big enough to clear out the valley.  Updates in the morning when I can see if it really did.

Yeah, right. (Chuckle, chuckle)

1999, the year a tornado swept through downtown Salt Lake City.  I, my brothers and their families, were out of town that week, enjoying a houseboat on Lake Powell (240 miles, 380km, south of Salt Lake).  Since the storm that caused the tornado came from the south we got to experience it several hours before the city did. 

I’ve spent a lot of time down at Lake Powell, and this was the first time we ever had to set tents up on the houseboat because of the rain.We saw the storm coming in over the red rock cliffs, but didn’t expect much from it, and were unpleasantly surprised when it hit.  It started pushing the houseboat sideways towards the shore, which would have beached the thing.  It took the entire group (young children excluded) pulling on and burying the anchors to keep the boat perpendicular to the shore.  We were drenched, but since it was close to 100°F (38°C), at least we weren’t freezing.  When the storm passed, you could see the hills shining from the rain, an unusual sight down there.  We took the little boat into town for supplies the next morning and the store was all a buzz about the tornado in Salt Lake City.  Of course we didn’t believe it, who ever heard of tornadoes in the Rocky Mountains.  But after hearing about it from enough people, I decided I needed to call my roommate just to make sure my house still had it’s roof.  He confirmed that there was, in fact, a tornado that cut through downtown Salt Lake City, and that it didn’t come anywhere near my house.  When we got back to the houseboat and told the rest of the group, their initial reaction was “Yeah, Riiiight.”  Not that we’re a family that plays a lot of jokes on each other or anything.  Anyway, the rest of the vacation went fine, a little more rain here and there so we kept the tents up, but other than that we had enough clear weather to build a sand castle on the shore, and get in a little relaxing rowing around the inlet we docked in.

P.S.  Please keep in mind that these pictures were taken in 1999 and scanned into the computer with 1999 scanning technology.

If you want to see many great “wet” pictures from the many other people who join in Carmi’s Thematic Photographic, click the banner below.

Blocking up the scenery, breakin’ my mind.

A while back I told you about these great new door signs that the district installed in (I think) all the schools.  They match the ones at the district offices, which is good, because the more everything is alike, the more individualistic we become*.  But I posted about their fix for the plaques that wouldn’t stay on, which was one screw right in the middle of it.  Which is all a-ok, until you get to the ones for the restrooms and see right where the screw was put (see picture below).  Well, over the last few months I discovered a couple more interesting plaques.

Let’s play “Whoever is in charge of quality control needs to be replaced” and try to figure out what’s wrong with this one:And then there’s this one, which makes one ponder “Why not just lock the door?” Seriously.  Lock it, key it so only the custodian (who ought to know it’s useless) can open it and call it a day.

* From the speeches at my high school graduation I got the impression that the theme was “The way to be an individual is to conform”.  I wish I could remember specifics or find copies of them, but I remember walking out of there thinking “WTF”?

And thus endeth the favourites.

Why did I choose this picture for my last one?  I didn’t.  If I had it to do all over again, I might have picked a different picture to end with, but since this was a process, I didn’t pick all my favorites at once and put them in a meaningful order, this one ended up last.  But I do love this picture, the blue, the chrome, the maroon car in the background.  And that it is of an old car.

Impromptu Lesson

The day the lights went out in my school I was lucky enough that it was during my prep period.  Since the school I work at has very few rooms with windows, the classrooms were lighted with nothing but flashlights, which for the photographer in me meant long exposure times.  I went to this classroom and took this picture, every student was moving so it came out blurry.  The class wanted a good picture, so I told them they would have to sit motionless for the 25 seconds the shutter would be open.  Most of them did, a few purposely moved their heads to see what would happen.  After a grueling 25 seconds I started showing the picture around the room and asked the class if anyone had any idea why in the pictures from the early 1900’s nobody ever smiled.  When I told them that back then people would have to sit perfectly still for several minutes, immediately there were comments about how hard it was to stand still for just 25 seconds.  By the end of the conversation, most of them had a lot more sympathy for their ancestors in those old pictures around the house.

Corner of 4th & Main

Don’t ask me what 4th & Main have to do with it, but this is the corner of my property, taken from a cherry picker I rented to remove some trees in my back yard.  Before we were done I had to take it up as high as I dared and take a few pictures.  I only had the guts to extend it about ¾ of what it is capable of, and that put me eye-to-eye with the top of the power pole in the corner there.  I like this picture because it gives you an idea of how high up I got. 

12 pack Coke + trunk of car + cold night = oops.

I was loading up some stuff to bring to school and found a nice surprise in the back of my car.  A 12 pack of diet Coke I left back there from before the break.  Well, last night it got down to 7°F (-14°C) and who knows how cold it was the couple nights before, which isn’t good for cans of soda in the back of your car.  Six of them survived and are now cooling off my fridge.  Fortunately it was cold enough that even though it ripped the top right off one of the cans, the other six cans that exploded were frozen enough that the soda stayed in the box, no mess in the car. 

Aye, matey.

I’ve posted this one before, but it still makes it into the favorites for 2010.  The eye patch isn’t original, I added that, but the pigeon sitting on my shoulder is real.  It was hanging out in front of the Chevron when I went out to clean something up, and ended up following me around for a while.  Click on the picture if you want the whole story.

Waldo and the TRAX Affair

One of the benefits of working a second job at the Chevron happens to be the yearly Jazz games.  These are a lot of fun, and not because I really am into watching the game.  Mostly because we are invited to the company’s private box at the Delta Center (I refuse to call it by it’s rightful name).  Food and drink are served and we spend most of the time just socializing, with a little attention paid to the game when something interesting happens.  Oh, I also like to watch the crowds.  One day I’m going to bring my big telephoto lens and get a bunch of people pictures.  Today I got to play a real life game of Where’s Waldo & Wife.  I first saw them as they were walking down the isle to find their seats.  Fortunately, for the game’s sake, they were in the wrong section and I lost track of them when they wandered out of the arena area to find their rightful seats.  I spent the next 15 minutes looking for them to reappear, and when I finally did find them I started encouraging other people there to find them also. I was a few minutes late to the game, thanks to the UTA (Utah Transit Authority).  Now, normally I wouldn’t blame the UTA because I didn’t think to check if the TRAX (light rail) was running on New Year’s Day, but I will blame them for selling me a ticket on a day they are not running.  Is there no way to turn off the ticket machines at the stations?  If I’d shown up and not been able to buy a ticket I probably would have thought to check if TRAX was running, rather than sitting out in 17°F weather for 20 minutes before thinking to check.  And I am going to ask them for my $4 back, even though they printed NON-REFUNDABLE on the back.  Because, although normally you can’t tell if a person used the ticket they want the refund for or not, there is no doubt that I did not use a ticket that was only good on Jan 1, 2011.

The good thing is that I made it to the game before it started (barely) and had a great time anyways.

University of Utah

A lot of the 2002 Winter Olympic events took place on the University of Utah campus.  Not the actual sporting events, only a fraction was there, but the ceremonies and living quarters for the athletes were on campus.  This made parking on campus for the students intolerable.  It was a good thing that the newly built light rail (TRAX) was up and running in time.  The only problem was that after the Olympics the UofU Parking Services complained that their sales of parking permits was down 20%, effectively cutting their budget.  TRAX ended up being so convenient for students that 20% of them decided to keep using public transportation.  Bad for Parking Services, good for the city.

You can see the TRAX station in the bottom left hand corner, the red brick buildings of Fort Douglas, where the athletes were housed, just down the street and Mt. Olympus in the background, to the south of where I was standing.

 

Happy New Ass

Several years ago right before the winter break from school, I wandered into the classroom right next door to mine and wished them a Happy New Year.  Since it was an ESL (English as a Second Language) class, and the majority of them spoke Spanish as their first language, I thought I’d be real cool and say it in their native language.  I walked in and in my best Spanish accent wished them a Happy New Year.  They burst out laughing.  The entire class.  Totally oblivious to my major faux pas, I innocently asked them what was so funny.  Nobody would tell me, and not just because they were too busy laughing.  Finally the teacher chose one student she knew wouldn’t get completely embarrassed or crass and he told me “You just wished us a Happy New Butt”.  (The teacher later told me that butt was the cleaned up version of what I actually said.)  Who knew the word for year and ass were one simple syllable away in Spanish.  Not me, but now I do.   So, to all out there: Feliz Año Nuevo.