I bought 540 pounds of concrete mix today--my car had a definite tilt to it on the way home. I also got two big bags of peat moss, 60 feet of edging, and a bunch of other small things I'll need to get my front yard looking good. I've still got several bags of bark mulch in my garage that I bought last fall and never used. Hopefully they're not rotted out or anything like that.

I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to mix the concrete for the pathway I'm pouring. I needed eight 60-pound bags of mix, but I could only get 90-pound bags around here, so I bought six of them. Each mold for the stepping stones I'm pouring takes 60 pounds of concrete, so I'll either have to take 2/3 out of a bag and mix it for one stone, or mix two bags for three stones. Either way, I risk messing something up--I'll either use too much or too little mix, or the concrete may set up before I can pour all the stones.

If I get it all looking good this weekend, I'll put some pictures up. If not, well then, I'll just pretend I never mentioned anything about it. =)

Update: It turned out looking good.

Woo! Demolition derby in two weeks! And it's on my wife's birthday--luckily she actually wants to go. Yeah, we're hicks.

This city is going all to hell today. A water main broke on my mom's street, so her water is off, and the water is off at my wife's work, which is several blocks away. The power has gone out once, and it's been flickering every once in a while since then. The cable is out. And now, I'm having problems with my sewer line like I had about a month or so ago. I wonder what else can go wrong today.

Somebody has a serious problem with capitalization and punctuation.

Regarding that stop light I posted about several posts ago--I finally got tired of waiting at the light at Carbon Avenue and Main Street, so I ran it. It was Sunday, and I was looking for some concrete mix, so I had gone out to Kilfoyle Krafts to see if they were open, though I was 99.9% sure they weren't. And they weren't. I was coming back from there, going north on Carbon Avenue, and I came to the light on Main Street. That light remains red for those crossing Main unless somebody pulls up in the left-turn lane or the left travel lane, but anybody waiting in the right travel lane must sit for eternity. Since I was going to turn right at the next intersection, I simply got into the right travel lane a block early, which was a big mistake. After waiting a couple minutes, I considered getting out of the car and pressing the pedestrian button that allows them to cross the street, but then I saw several vehicles approaching from behind, and they were all in the left lane. I waited, hoping at least one of them would either get into the left turn lane, or proceed in the left travel lane. But nope, they all got into the right lane, apparently they were going to turn the same direction I was. So after waiting another minute, I looked for any cops that might be near, then I ran the light. After I had travelled about 75 yards, the next guy in line behind me ran the light, then the next three cars ran the light.

I considered calling the police to let them know about the faulty stop light, only because calling Price City, who is responsible for the lights, would be a waste of my time--they could care less, or they would have thought about it before they began their street reconstruction. But I didn't call the police, because they would likely view this as an opportunity to ticket those people who ran the light. I didn't want to give them any ideas. There are a lot of good reasons to live in such a rural area, but there are also a lot of reasons to go on a shooting rampage and kill as many people employed by local government entities as you can.

Even though Saturday seems like a long time ago, this weekend seemed pretty short. I had fun up Diamond Fork Canyon--we were in the last campground before the road closure at the top. I thought we would be able to get to the lower trail to the hot springs before we hit the gate, but the closure was several miles up from the trail. Mike and I ended up driving on the Sheep Creek road to the upper trail, then we hiked down to the springs. There were a few more pools there than the last time I was there, but since it was the middle of the day, there were no nude people there--they usually show up at night. It took us 50 minutes to hike down, and 70 to hike back up. I also went on two bike rides that day, about six miles total, three miles of which I was towing Michael and his cousin in the bike trailer. My legs are still extremely sore.

Sunday, I was going to pour some concrete stepping stones in my front yard, but CJ's was completely out of concrete mix, and nobody else in town that sells it was open. I am seriously going to boycott that store from now on. For such a big hardware store, they carry way too few products, and the products they do carry are usually out of stock. How can you run out of concrete mix? They must have a fucking moron do all their ordering. I ended up doing nothing on Sunday, except a few little things around the yard.

Yesterday, I spent some time refinishing my bedroom door. Traci and I finished sanding the old finish off of it, then I filled in some areas with wood putty and sanded them down after they dried. I also shaved a little off the bottom of the door, because it was rubbing on the carpet in our bedroom when it was open all the way. I've got to do a little touch-up work on it today, then I can lay down some stain and polyurethane. We took our bikes out to the Helper parkway last night and went for a little ride, which didn't help my sore legs much. There was a dead deer right on the side of the parkway at one point, and you could smell the damn thing for about 1/8 mile in either direction along the trail. It was truly disgusting, and on our way back past it after we had reached the end of the trail, we just hauled ass and held our breath. I wouldn't expect Helper City to really take care of the trail all the much, but the least they could do is keep dead animals off of it.

We're going to head up to Diamond Fork tomorrow to hang with Mike, Allison, Jaysen, and Michelle, and a bunch of other people I don't know. The bottom of Diamond Fork Canyon is closed off due to the little water project they've got going on, so we have to head up Hobble Creek Canyon from Springville and get to Diamond Fork from the top. I'd like to bike down to the hot springs, which would be quite a long ride, but the womenfolk will probably preclude that from happening. No matter what else I do up there, I plan on at least getting a good bike ride in.

Monday, I plan on biking up a little canyon that runs about 1.5 miles north from Kenilworth. There's a mine entrance at the end of the road, but I'm pretty certain it's sealed off. It'll still be cool to check the area out.

Such a cute little one. And he's already learning to run with sharp objects in his hand. Those poor defenseless squirrels in the park better watch out.

Here's an article from the Salt Lake Tribune, explaining how "clean-fuel" vehicles (propane, natural gas, etc) don't pay any fuel taxes whatsoever, and how the legislature is considering ways to collect that tax money. That sounds fair to me, because if they're using the roads, they should help pay for them, though I don't think the tax amount should be quite as much as for gasoline. What really gets me, though, is the last paragraph in the article. It states that the law could be interpreted so that hybrid (gasoline-electric) vehicle owners could be required to pay extra, above what they already pay in gasoline taxes.

Now, a hybrid vehicle is simply a very fuel-efficient vehicle, nothing more. It doesn't use some alternative energy source--the electrical part is powered by the gasoline engine. How the state legislature thinks they can tax these vehicles more heavily than regular gas-powered vehicles is beyond me. It's as though they're encouraging fuel consumption--if your vehicle gets poor gas mileage, you pay less taxes than those with great fuel efficiency.

The new Civic Hybrid (w/ manual trans.) gets 51 MPG highway, while the VW Beetle TDI (diesel w/ manual trans.) gets 49 MPG highway without being a hybrid vehicle. Why punish one and not the other?

I found out what the deal is with my truck today. I had called the service manager ("Doughboy") earlier this morning to see if they had found the part they've been looking for, and he said he'd talk to the parts manager and call me back. He never did call back, so I called him back, but he had left for the day. Bastard. So I talked to the parts manager (Jared, who used to be the service manager) instead, and he gave me the scoop. The tranmission that was in my truck is a Borg-Warner T18, which they found a replacement for, but the replacement had the wrong extension housing, so it wouldn't bolt up to my transfer case. He said there's a guy that might be able to get him the right extension housing tomorrow, but if he can't get it, he's going to rip the T18 out of there and put a New Process 435 in instead. So if he gets the part tomorrow, my truck could be ready by Saturday. Otherwise, I expect it'll be another week or more before I have it back.

This whole University of Utah gun debate is getting ridiculous. The U is claiming that by allowing people with conceal/carry permits to carry weapons on campus, that academic debates will degenerate into gunfights. According to them, allowing legally-concealed weapons will stifle opinions, and cause professors to quit their jobs. I don't know about anybody else, but I know that I wouldn't hold back my opinion just because there might be somebody somewhere on campus with a legally-concealed weapon.

Then there's this quote from a proponent of the gun ban: "You are just one state away from Columbine. You would think a word to the wise would be sufficient." According to this guy's line of reasoning, your chances of being shot dead at school has a direct relationship to your proximity to Columbine High School. In fact, why bring up Columbine at all? Were concealed weapons allowed there before those two kids shot the place up with their illegally carried weapons? Sounds pretty ridiculous to me.

There's nothing quite like hot & spicy pork rhinds and iced tea for breakfast. I guess it still doesn't beat the time several years ago when I had a Hot Mama and eggnog when Ty and I went on a late-night run to Walker's.

After all that time and effort I put into replacing all the sprinkler heads in my front yard two weeks ago, I broke one of them last night. Just kicked it right off. Despite all the rain Utah County got while I was up there yesterday, it didn't rain a drop here in Price, so I turned the sprinklers on when I got home. One of the sprinkler heads out on the parkway didn't look like it had popped up all the way, so I walked over there to make sure it was fully extended, which it was. As I was walking back, I cut the corner a little bit turning onto my sidewalk, and accidentally kicked a sprinkler head, breaking it off and sending it flying a few feet. Water gushed up about eight feet into the air, so I hurried and turned off the valve for that side of the lawn. What really pisses me off about it is that the broken sprinkler head is the same one that gave me so much trouble when I replaced it in the first place. It's the first one I encountered that wouldn't twist loose, so I had to cut it off. I still have scabs on my knuckles from where I skinned them on the sidewalk trying to loosen that bastard.

This last weekend, I spent a lot of time getting the swamp cooler installed and hooked up, seeing as how it was getting up into the mid-80s almost every day. And now last night, it got down into the mid-30s. There's even a possibility that it may freeze tonight, so I might drain the water out of the cooler and water line, just in case.

Hmm...I thought I'd make it a week without posting, but I guess not. =) Things have just been so slow and boring around here lately that I don't have much to say.

Michael had his 15-month checkup today. Everything was normal except his weight, which was pretty below average. He's never really liked baby food, so ever since he was weaned from breastfeeding, he's been drinking whole milk, juice, and water, and eating regular grown-up food. His doctor said to quit giving him juice and water and replace them with milk, which would probably be the best way for him to gain weight. Or, we could give him PediaSure, but that shit is damned expensive--more than ten bucks for 48 ounces--so that's out of the question.

We bought a bike trailer today, so now I can drag Michael around with me on bike rides. I took him for a spin this evening after we got home from Provo, and it was surprisingly easy to pull. The only drawback is that you have to take corners really wide (at least on the sidewalk), or else he gets bounced all over the place. It'll be really fun to go out on rides when this damn cold windy weather goes away.

I got some promising news from my attorney today about our lawsuit with Price Shitty. It'll be weeks before we know much of anything, but things are looking good. I'm reluctant to even talk about it on here until it's all resolved, mostly because I could go on and on with all the stupid little details of what's happened so far, but all that matters is how it ends. And it looks like that might be relatively soon.

Hahaha--you can get past Sony's computer copy protection by scribbling on the CD with a felt-tip marker.

Yesterday was the best anniversary I've ever had. We didn't do anything too special, but it was nice being alone together, doing what we wanted to. After we hit the junkyard, we ate lunch at Sconecutter, then headed up to Home Depot.

I checked the price on chainlink fence stuff, because I'm building a fence along my driveway, and putting a gate across it, to keep my son corraled in the back yard when he's old enough to play back there (relatively) unsupervised. It's going to cost me around $170 for all the materials, and it'll probably take me about two days to put it up. I'm also going to install a gate in the fence at the rear of my property going between my yard and my mom's. A 10' gate is only about $55, plus all the mounting hardware, and we're just going to split the cost. I wouldn't even care about having a gate back there, but maybe it'll keep people from cutting through our yards.

I got a concrete mold (pictured at the top of this page) while I was there too, so we can pour a pathway that meanders through our back yard. The mold requires an entire 60 lb. bag of concrete for each stepping stone, so I'm probably going to have to buy an entire palette of concrete in order to make the pathway as long as I need it. I haven't checked the price of concrete down here in Price, but at Home Depot it was $1.59 per bag, so if it's much more expensive here, it might be worth it to haul it down here from Orem.

Anyhow, after we got done browsing around at Home Depot, we went to Provo Towne Centre and saw Ice Age, which was a pretty good movie. Surprisingly, it was the only movie playing that I really wanted to see. After it was over, we did some shopping, then went to Jaysen's to change our clothes, and then over to Red Lobster for dinner.

After dinner we just headed towards home, back down the canyon. We only saw one UHP car on our way up in the morning, and none on our way home. Even though it was nice being alone all day, we still missed Michael really bad, so I was happy when we picked him up from his grandma's.

I'm wishing I'd taken the rest of this week off from work as well now, because it sucks coming home from such a nice and relaxing day, only to have to work the next day.

The mounting bracket for the third brake light on my Subaru broke yesterday, so while we're up north tomorrow, I'm going to drag my wife to a junkyard to get a new one. What a romantic way to spend our anniversary, eh? =)

Ok, if the city is going to tear up and re-pave Main Street between 300 East and Carbon Avenue, the least they could do is change the timing of the stop lights at those intersections. That way, people waiting to cross the once-heavily-travelled street don't have to sit at a red light for literally minutes, while almost no traffic comes the other direction. That is all. For now.

I got the flu Friday, so I didn't work. I hadn't been feeling well early Thursday morning, but when I got up for work I was feeling alright. Then Thursday night I started feeling crappy again, and tossed and turned all night long. I didn't really get over it until yesterday morning, but my body is still recovering. There was a 36-hour period in there where I didn't eat anything but two Ritz crackers, and I maybe only drank 12 ounces of water.

So as a result of feeling tired all weekend, I did absolutely nothing. I would have liked to go hiking or biking, but I think I would have collapsed dead. It looks like next weekend I'm going camping, regardless of whether or not I have my truck back. Diamond Fork will probably be the best place, since Mike and Jaysen and their significant others will probably all be going too, and it'll be a short drive for them. Or maybe Sheep Creek, but I haven't been up there often enough to remember if there are any good camping spots.

Wednesday is our fourth wedding anniversary, so I'm taking off work and Traci and I are going up to Provo/Orem to spend the day. I think we're just going to do some shopping, play around a little, then find a nice place to eat dinner, and head back home. It'll be nice to spend some time alone, just the two of us.

On my way up to work this morning, just before entering Spanish Fork Canyon, I saw about 15 UHP patrol cars, 7 or 8 UHP motorcycles, 2 UHP helicopters, and a Fox 13 satellite truck, all parked on a wide, paved spot along the side of the road. I about shit my pants because I was doing almost 10 over the speed limit when I saw them, but it's hard to miss that many cops from any distance, so I had plenty of time to get slowed down.

My mom ICQed me telling me that she saw on the news this morning that they were beefing up their patrols between Spanish Fork and Price, supposedly because there have been four deaths in the past month on that stretch. But there's a long stretch of road where they're tearing down some hills and widening the road to four lanes, so the extra revenue from ticketing speeders in a construction zone is probably a big factor as well (the biggest, I'm sure).

I also noticed the new CCTV cameras they've installed along the way. There's one in Helper just before entering Price Canyon, another just a few miles away near the turnoff to Indian Canyon, and a third about halfway between Soldier Summit and Tucker. I hope they put more than just those up--one near the Red Narrows and another at Billie's Mountain would be helpful. I think they're supposed to be operational be June sometime, so I'll be able to check Utah Commuter Link this winter to see what road conditions are like before I decide whether or not I want to drive up to work.

Update: Here's a news article about the UHP's "saturation" patrol, which will continue through the weekend. (That link may not work in the future--I don't know how long KSL archives their stories.)

Check out this article about Ashcroft's "new interpretation" of the Second Amendment. Here's a quote:

"The current position of the United States ... is that the Second Amendment more broadly protects the rights of individuals, including persons who are not members of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to possess and bear their own firearms," Solicitor General Theodore Olson wrote in two court filings this week.

That right, however, is "subject to reasonable restrictions designed to prevent possession by unfit persons or to restrict the possession of types of firearms that are particularly suited to criminal misuse."

Then, there's this quote from Michael Barnes, who is the president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence:

"This action is proof positive that the worst fears about Attorney General Ashcroft have come true: his extreme ideology on guns has now become government policy"

"Extreme ideology?" That ideology not only sounds pretty rational to me, but I think most people would actually agree with it. The number of individuals who legally own firearms would seem to support that idea, too. For anti-gun people to call this line of thinking "extreme" just makes me tune them out even more than usual.

Jeez, it was windy last night. I woke up around 2:30, and I didn't get back to sleep for quite a while. When it's that windy, I always worry about either my roof blowing off the house, or one of the trees in the front yard blowing over onto the house. Maybe I'm just paranoid. It got down to 33° F last night--the coldest it's been in the past couple weeks. And to think, two days ago it got above 80°. I can't wait 'til summer is here, and this damned wind goes away.

I got all but four sprinkler heads replaced yesterday. I didn't think it would be so difficult, but with this house, and with my luck, I shouldn't be surprised. There were about five different brands of sprinkler heads on the whole system--some plastic, some brass, some stainless steel--and the brass ones were bitches to get off. When I would twist them to try and remove them, the pipe they were attached to would turn instead of the sprinkler head. I had to cut each one in half down the center with a hacksaw, but only down to the steel pipe that it was screwed onto. Then I split the halves apart with a hammer and chisel until the entire head broke off, leaving a brass sleeve threaded onto the steel pipe. I had to make a vertical cut with the hacksaw along one side of the part still attached to the pipe, but I couldn't cut too deep or else I'd cut into the threads on the pipe. Then I had to chisel the brass part until it broke at the cut and came off. If I had screwed up and cut into the pipe, I would have had to replace the whole pipe, which would have meant digging about a foot deeper and ruining my lawn even more.

I was listening to the police frequencies on my ham radio just a few minutes ago, and dispatch put out an alert for that pipe bombing suspect. He supposedly made a cell phone call from Moab around 4:00 pm yesterday, so if he's on his way to or somewhere near Salt Lake, he'll likely pass through here. But then again, if he left Moab yesterday, he'd be nowhere near here right now.

No news articles I've read mention anything about this guy making a phone call from Utah, but this article says, "All mail carriers in Utah have been taken off routes south of Provo, police said. They declined to say what information prompted the action." My mail was still delivered today, so they must mean rural routes or something.

Update: Hmm...they caught the guy, so foxnews.com and msnbc.com have changed the two stories I linked to earlier today (rather than creating a new page for the new articles). Bastards.

I was lazy last fall, and I didn't drain my sprinkler system before it got below freezing. I had several sprinkler heads break, and one of the valves broke too. When I turned on the main valve inside the house to the entire system a few weeks ago, some of the sprinklers had water coming out of them even though all three outside shut-off valves were turned completely off. Yesterday I tore the leaky valve apart, hoping I could simply replace the seat in it. Luckily, the old seat hadn't worn or broken, it had just come separated from the screw and fallen down the water pipe. I fished it out with some needle-nose pliers, used a new washer and screwed it all back onto the valve, then put it all back together. I'm lucky it worked too, because the valve is such an odd shape and in such an odd position relative to the inlet and outlet pipes, I would have had to call a plumber to replace it.

I went to a local hardware store to look for a new seat for the valve before I put it all back together, but they didn't have one that fit. I also checked prices on sprinkler heads, but I forgot to check exactly which type I needed before I went there, otherwise I probably would have just bought them then. After I had gone home and fixed the valve, I dug up some sprinkler heads to see what kind I needed, then went to Wal-Mart to compare prices. Theirs were much cheaper, so I started loading up my cart. I got eight ¼ circle coverage heads, one full circle head, and when I started looking for ½ coverage heads, I realized they didn't even carry them. Who the fuck carries all types of sprinkler heads except ½ circle coverage heads!? And this is a brand-new Wal-Mart Supercenter--you'd think they'd be well-stocked with everything. It's not that they were out of them, they never had any to begin with. There wasn't even a place on the shelf for them.

So I drove on over to K-Mart, and big surprise, they don't even carry sprinkler heads at all. So I headed back over to CJ's, but they were already closed for the day. It seems like whenever I need something in this town, I go through this big cycle of travelling to all the different stores, and circumstances end up just like this. Somebody is out of what I need, somebody else doesn't even carry what I need, and everybody else closes before I get to them.

This weekend as a whole was pretty fun, but yesterday was sure boring as hell. On Saturday, we hauled our mountain bikes up to Kenilworth in my Subaru and Mike's Nissan, then we rode the bikes back down to Price on the back roads. I usually take this trek at least once each year, but I always ride from Price to Kenilworth and back, all on the dirt roads. Kenilworth is about 2000 feet higher than Price in elevation, so the ride back was almost all downhill, and it's only about a 5 mile ride. When we got back to Price, Jaysen drove me and Mike back up to get our vehicles.

I've been looking around on TerraServer a lot lately, and there's this canyon (called Cordingly Canyon) just east of Kenilworth that I've always been interested in, but I didn't know where it went. It turns out that it leads to Indian Canyon, just northeast of Helper. I've been part-way up the canyon near Kenilworth, but the road is too rough even for most 4X4s, so I've never been able to go very far. For some reason, I'm now obsessed with mountain biking up this canyon, over the mountains, and down through Mathis Canyon into Indian Canyon.

I spent a lot of time yesterday creating a map of the area [1.9MB JPEG] from the satellite photos on TerraServer, and I think I've got everything planned out. I'll have somebody follow me up Indian Canyon, where I'll park my truck, then I'll have them drop me and my bike off near the canyon in Kenilworth. I figure it's about 9 miles through some extremely rough and steep terrain, so it will probably take all day. Jaysen said he'd go with me, and maybe Mike would want to go to (and maybe Ty? :). I would seriously need to bring a handgun with me, because there are mountain lions and bears up there, and I doubt any humans have been through there for a long time. Parts of the road don't even exist on the 1972 topo map of the area, but they're there on the '98 satellite images, so either it simply wasn't mapped (which is very unlikely), or the road was built since 1972.

On my way home from work last Thursday, I took a detour through Indian Canyon to check out the other side of this trail, but it was gated off. The last time I was near the Kenilworth side of the trail, it was gated off too, but I didn't see any "No Trespassing" signs at either place, so I assume it's not private property. If I'm gonna do this thing, I either need to do it pretty soon before the weather gets too hot, or I'll have to wait 'til Fall when it starts to cool off some. I'd rather do it sooner, but it's just going to take a lot of planning, and I don't think I have time to do it all before summer really sets in.

Mike and Allison are staying here this weekend, so it should at least be fun. I was going to do some yard work, mostly hauling old tree branches and weeds off to the landfill, but that was before I learned that my truck probably still won't be fixed. They got the transmission bolted up to the engine, but the extension housing won't bolt up to the transfer case. Damn idiots. So now they're looking for a new extension housing, and if the amount of time it took them to find a transmission is any indication, it'll be another month before they get one.

My wife's uncle wants me to install a new hard drive in his computer today, but between working and having friends come in from out of town, I doubt I'll get around to it. Near the end of last year, the FAT on his old hard drive got corrupted somehow, and I had to reformat the drive and reinstall Windows. Not long after that, the hard drive began misreporting the size of certain files, which would cause Windows to freeze up when booting. I fixed it once using Scandisk, but a few days later he called me because it was doing it again. I just created a bootup disk for him that would boot to DOS and automatically run Scandisk and fix the problem, so I didn't have to come out there every damn time his hard drive fucked up. I told him that he absolutely has to get a new hard drive, because eventually his old one would crash and he's be screwed. Finally, just yesterday, he bought a new Western Digital 100GB drive. So if I get the time this weekend, I'm going to attempt to clone his old drive. Chances are it won't work and I'll end up doing a brand-new Windows install again. Oh joy.

One of the project managers at work has quit his job, and when I went into the office yesterday, I had several people telling me to apply for the new opening. One of the women on his team was actually begging me to apply for it. For those of you who haven't been reading my site for more than three years, I actually used to be a project manager at work, but I quit my job to move back to Price. About three months after that, they offered me a peon job working from home, and I've been doing that ever since. One of the people I talked to yesterday, a "pseudo-project-manager" (I'm not sure exactly what her job is), said she'd talk to the big boss about offering me the job while still letting me work from home. I told her that I'd seriously consider something like that. I'd have to go into the office once a week, maybe more, rather than once every two or three weeks like I'm doing now. I'm just not sure that I want the added responsibility--my current job is quite comfortable, thank you very much. But the project manager position pays considerably better, and I sure could use the money.

The stupidest thing I've ever heard of.

According to the local newspaper, the Discovery Channel is going to air a documentary about the dangers of driving US-6 on June 17. I checked their website and it doesn't show this documentary on their schedule, but I'll keep checking TV Guide to see if/when it will be on.