Ah yeah, baby--Santa certainly came to town today. We woke up to a little snow, but now there are five inches on the ground and it's still coming down steadily. Tomorrow, we're heading out to Farnham Dome, on the other side of Wellington, to go tubing/sledding. We started out this evening going for a drive out there to see how the snow was, but halfway through Wellington, we decided that it wasn't such a good idea to be out on the highway going through Cat Canyon without four-wheel drive when the roads hadn't been plowed yet. And, of course, we passed a UDOT snow plow heading through Wellington on its way to Cat Canyon on our way back to Price. We ended up just driving around Price with the kids asleep in the back seat, stopping occasionally to take pictures.

Xmas was pretty damned nice this year. Michael has way too many damned toys now, and I think we're going to have to put away some of his old ones to make room for the new ones--his room is crowded enough as it is. We gave him a train set and a car track that take up so much of the floor that it's going to be impossible to walk in his room. Traci got me a clay pigeon thrower, so now I don't have to worry about getting hit in the ass when we go shooting together. Bradley got mostly clothes, and a few toys (there's not much that a 6-month old gets excited about), and Traci got a bunch of scrapbooking stuff.

I've been off work since Monday, which makes almost two straight weeks that I'll have off from work during the holidays. I've pretty much wasted the time I've already had off, with the exception of staying up late to read a book for the past two nights (and not counting xmas gatherings). All the rest of my time I've just spent lazing around the house. Hopefully that's not a sign of how I'll spend my vacation, 'cause it'll fly by if nothing is all I end up doing.

Something broke on the Mazda yesterday, and I'm not sure what it was. We had piled the whole family in it and drove up to Consumers to play in the snow since we didn't have any here in Price. I left it in 2-wheel drive for almost the entire drive up, even though there were a few inches of snow on the road. When we were almost at the end of the main road, I decided to push the 4-wheel drive button so that I'd be able to turn around, but shortly after that, something broke, though it felt and sounded like I'd ran over a large rock. Right then, the Mazda lost all forward motion--either one of the automatic hubs broke, or an axle gave out. I got out to look under the car, but couldn't see anything wrong, but since I couldn't drive forward anymore, my only choice was to back down the road. After backing for about 1/3 of a mile, we finally got to a place that was wide enough to turn around without getting stuck. My neck hurt like hell from looking backwards out my door, since the back window is too darkly tinted and dirty to see out--besides that, it was almost full dark by then. We made it home after that without any problems, but now the Mazda is only 2-wheel drive until I can figure out what broke.

There's always been a problem with the automatic hubs not fully disengaging when taking it out of 4-wheel drive, but usually that can be solved by repeatedly backing up and drive forward until the grinding noise stops. For that reason, I've been reluctant to use the 4-wheel drive at all, so essentially nothing much has changed. I had been planning on eventually buying Warn manual hubs and their spindle nut conversion kit (needed to convert from automatic to manual hubs), but it looks like I'll be doing that sooner rather than later. I found both parts from Desert Rat for about $180, and installation is supposed to be a breeze. At least the thing is drivable for now, but I don't know how long I can stand to go without off-roading in it.

Flee Utah, the greatest snow job on Earth.

The stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me. The city of Provo is thinking about implementing a city-wide fiber optic network, and some apparent whacko believes that the city is pushing porn by doing so. Gotta love this quote: "Purveyors of sleaze will be able to lease this network to pipe virtually anything they want into our homes." That's right, apparently pornography will show up on your computer monitor and television screen against your will if this high-speed network is made available to you.

I get pissed off when newspapers print public forum articles like this, with no apparent basis in reality. Seeing as how high-speed internet access is already available in Provo, and that users of said internet are able to choose what shows up on their screens, I can only wonder what the point of this opinion piece is. Certainly Provo's proposed network has nothing to do with pornography, since the demand and infrastructure are already there.

My new license plates got here today:

I'd have much rather had my last name, but since I had already paid for the plates, I figured that I might as well get something. This is for those of you who don't get it...

My new favorite band of the moment: The Darkness. Saw these guys on tv and fell in love instantly.

I was just coming from picking up some parts for the Mazda, and on my way down Main Street I noticed that they've been monkeying with the speed limits again. As it is now, there are four different speed limits on a one mile stretch of Main--it's getting pretty ridiculous. From Carbonville Road to 300 East, the limit is 25, then it's 30 from there to Arby's just past 700 East, and from there to Airport Road it's 35, and just past Wal-Mart it turns to 40. It seems like that's how they do it in rural Utah towns, probably just to confuse people going through town to increase ticket revenues.

Apparently, allowing concealed firearm permit holders to carry in Utah schools will lead gang members to "have a bloodbath in our school halls."

Jeez, finally back up. Today has sucked so far--in fact, the entire weekend sucked. Both kids have colds, and Michael's is really bad. It got so bad last night that every time he coughed, he started crying because his throat hurt so bad. That's when Traci and I decided to take them to the doctor today, so Traci called at 8:00 am this morning and we managed to get a 10:00 am appointment. If the weather had been decent, we'd have made it just in time, but it snowed for most of the drive up, and the Mazda was in four-wheel drive from Soldier Summit to Cedar Haven. We ended up being 25 minutes late, and on top of that we were there for almost two hours. I missed six hours of work, which I've got to make up today and tomorrow so that I'm not forced to use the vacation time that I've already got planned out for the end of the year.

Jetable.org: Creates a disposable email address that forwards to your real address, and expires after whichever time period you specify. Really nifty.

Ugh...my site's been down since Monday morning. Actually, something's wrong with the DNS entry or whatever, but I can still access it from here. The domain expired on Nov. 30, and though Solo renewed it, the status is still listed as "Client Hold" when doing a WHOIS lookup (but the expiration date is Nov. 30 2004). I'm not sure what the problem is, and Solo hasn't gotten back to me yet today, but hopefully he'll get it straightened out soon.