In Ft. Collins (A short travelog)

I thought I might get stopped at the Delta ticket counter, but it didn't happen. It turns out that the travel secretary did a conbination of my first name and middle initial. This name does not appear to be on the Terror No Fly list. They didn't even bat an eye. If I were a terrorist, (which I'm not, as far as I know.) I would try pulling something like that to get past barrier #1. (I hope by posting this, I don't end up with 'suits and sunglasses' at my doorstep...)

Jess and I tried to figure out how to get our machines to talk to each other to play a game. We figured it out after it was too late, the flight was ready to board, but the knowledge may help on Thursday when we come back.

Our flight was uneventful, at least for me, who slept through 80% of it.

We were on the shuttle to the rental place, and joking about cars. We said it would be about typical, and not very funny if the travel secretary booked us in a little tiny clown car. (There is at least 450 pounds of meat between the 2 of us...) The first stop let the Gold Member people of, they got to walk right up to their cars, no waiting in lines. we got the 2nd class service. On getting to the counter, we indeed had a compact booked, which I promptly upgraded. The lady a the counter said that I was now in the Gold Member program (Or whatever it's called at National), and next time I wouldn't have to sit at the counter. It's almost like the shuttle was bugged and they were ready for us...

Anyway, the Chevy Impala we are driving around it nice, I really like it.

Google Analytics

I went out and got myself a Google Analytics account on Friday afternoon. I don't know why I waited so long. This thing is nice. I know that their intent is to 'help' people with their businesses, but it didn't say that I couldn't use it for personal pages. Right now I have it on my site, Tara's, and Kate's. It is very interesting. It gives all kinds of facts about the people who are visiting. I know Adam visited today. Hello. I had one international visit. (Mexico) I hope to branch out. (Adam...) It's like those maps they put on RV's. I now want to fill my analytics map.

70% of you are using Internet Explorer. 30% are using Firefox. Let's get that Firefox number up, people. It appears to not detect Suse 10.1 as an OS properly. I am not all that fired up about that, to me, that's an ok security feature.

I can track visits vs. pageviews, returning vs. new visitors, that kind of thing.

My new nightly hobby will be to log in and see where people came from. Then I will shut myself in the house, eat nothing but cheetos, and sell comic books on eBay.

2006 Goal update - 30 July

1: Move up on ITRC forums. I actually haven't been on the site in over 2 months...

2: Mission Journal - Nothing new done this week.

3: Garden Retaining Wall - Nothing done this week. (What a boring post, huh?)

4: 6 Wooden Chairs - I plan to finish chair #1 at the end of the week, which will segue into a bunkbed investigation. Once I finish chair #1, I will likely take this off for the year, and bring it back next year. (Still looking for 6 chairs, to give a total of 7...)

5: Weight - 240 this week.

6: Vacation - One more left - in September. I am headed to Ft. Collins, CO tomorrow, but it's not vacation, it's work.

I had you going on the weight one, huh? It's actually 222, nothing really new to talk about.

traffic light shortcut

A month or so ago, I asked Drew about the little sensors on many of the traffic lights in town. It turns out that they are there so that the light can change green if an emergency vehicle is headed down the road with it's lights flashing.

Well, I tucked this little tidbit away until today, when I was in a hurry. Coming up to a light, I flashed my brights at it a couple of times, and the light changed. Nice. Not that I will abuse it. I am fairly sure I will get a stern talking to if I get caught doing it, but it was a cop that told me about it...

That got me to thinking. Do all the lights in town turn green a certain direction after a lightening strike? Have thunderstorms been the cause of numerous traffic jams in the past? Maybe I should have been a mild mannered reporter instead of a hot tempered Unix sysadmin that beats up lockers in his spare time...

Babysitter wanted

Tara and I want to go to Pheonix in September. This is just slightly less crazy than wanting to go to Phoenix in August... We are meeting up with some of my old croonies.

Anyway, we have no plans to take the girls with us. For one thing, Kate and Mary will be in school. For another, they spent the last several trips with us.

Anyone want to come out to watch them? I have a trip to Colorado next week that brings me to within 1000 Skymiles of a free trip, it would only cost me $30 to fly you out. Takers? Anyone?

Game Time

Settlers of Catan

Me - 2
Tara - 0

New kitchen set

Tara has been looking for a few weeks for a table and chairs for the girls. She was enamored with the one Mom had in Buffalo. After further review, selection is limited and expensive, at least around here. Toys R Us had a table with 2 chairs for $25. We ended up getting 2, so that we would have enough chairs, mostly, but the 2 tables together looks like it has enough room that the girls will not be all on top of each other. The only problem with the table is the slightly intense look on his face. Hopefully we can turn it into something like "Superman wants you to eat your dinner. So eat, or else..."
Having started the rearranging of the kitchen, I had to finish. I moved the other table out, and moved our old table back in. We can all eat in the same room again, (we could have all eaten in the back room before, but who wants the girls eating back there?) it's kind of nice. If you come over to eat - kids in the kitchen, adults in the back room, same as before.

Game Time

Age of Empires 3

Me - 3
Dudes online - 0

They didn't even know what hit them...

Game Time

Age of Empires III

Rob - 1
Rob's brother, Brian - 1
Me - 0

Ok, so I'm not sure about whether or not Brian really won the first game, I had left my laptop unplugged, and went to hibernate. And of course, that 2nd battery still has no charge...

In the second game, I was sure that I had Rob wiped off the map. I forgot to check the score to make sure he had the line across his name... In a brilliant fit of desperation, he got a town center wagon, loaded it on a boat, and went and hid for a few minutes. Then he came back, after I had moved along, rebuilt his city, and won the game. When I grow up, I want to be like him...

System Administrator Appreciation Day

Today is Sysadmin Appreciation day. I realized this around lunchtime, and tried to get someone to take me out to lunch to show me how much they appreciated me, and didn't get any takers. I wonder what this means. (Besides the fact that it's 3 days until payday still.) My boss didn't even answer until after lunch...

After lunch, the boss called back, I let him know the purpose of the call, and he just laughed. I wondered also what this meant, but about 20 minutes later, he showed up with ice cream for us. I can handle that.

Last year, someone in the department mentioned it was sysadmin day, and told us to thank our CSR's for there work. In a normal department (and even in a 'normal' part of our department) the CSR is there to install machines, patch them, take care of them, etc. Our particular group will not let the CSR's near our machines. They are a delivery service when we get a new machine or when there is a HW problem and we need parts. That about sums it up. We took offense when he implied that the department CSRs were sysadmin in any way, shape, or form, but it could have just been hot out and we were grouchy...

I'm my own sysadmin, and I appreciate the work I do for myself. (That sounds kind of funny.)

Anyway, for all those sysadmins out there, Happy Sysadmin Day. If you don't know what a sysadmin is, go here.

New blog template

I have changed the blog template. You should have already noticed this. I like it better, it seems easier to read.

Gone (At least for the moment) are the banner ads at the top, they will likely stay gone, I have a little tiny ad on the sidebar, very much unobtusive. I have also gotten rid of the conversion buttons at the bottom. As much as I think everyone out there should switch to firefox, the buttons bugged me. I was mostly using adsense for tracking the hits to the site, but I recently signed up for Google Analytics, which gives more than just hits to the page... (Big Brother is watching.)

I have removed the local 7 day weather report. You want to see the weather, look out the window. (Just kidding, but I was tired of the link.)

Anyway, I hope you like the design, things need to change from time to time.

As Dad would say: "My new car!"

Tara just came back from the church, it looks like someone backed into the car. Either that, or Tara blacked out and missed an important event while she was driving, but this wasn't like this 90 minutes ago... Anyway, no note, no nothing. There was a blood drive there today, maybe the person that did it was down a pint, and they blacked out...

I popped the bumper back into place, nothing broke loose, just dented the plastic pretty good. I figure that the only people who will ever notice are Tara, me, and the guy in 6 years giving us a figure on the trade in... For that, if I were a mechanic, I could have charged $75 and 2 chickens.

Evening Trifecta

Last night, Tara went to her book club, and the girls went to bed, and (I presume) went to sleep. I had stuff to keep me occupied: I needed to reinstall a server while preserving the data, I had Zoo Tycoon 2 open and was playing, and I was watching "MST3K: Overdrawn at the memory bank".

Zoo Tycoon - I was able to finish the scenario I was playing. The next one that came I ended up restarting 3 times because I was not paying attention to what I was doing...

MST3K - What a fine piece of cinema that movie was. Basically, it had a computer programmer that got in trouble for watching movies on the job. They implanted his consciousness into a baboon, something happened, and he ended up in the computer. Eventually he figured out how to control the computer, and things went from there. Sometimes I wonder if that's what happened to some of the programmers at work, at least up to the part about getting stuck in the head of a baboon...

Reinstall the server - Well, I was a little distracted, at one point, I accidently gave the installee the IP address of the installer, and brought them both to their knees. I guess they keep me around because I can fix any problem that I can create...

A basketball team

So, Tara had an ultrasound yesterday. All signs point to a girl. (Really, they just had to look around. It's like a random number generator - 9 - 9 - 9 - 9 - 9 - 9 - 9. (Prove it's not random.)

Anyway, it's not my turn to pick the name. (Mary and Ruth were mine.) Tara seems to be leaning toward Lily, and has let me know in no uncertain terms that I will not be auctioning off the baby's name to the highest bidder. That really too bad, because we need a new swamp cooler (or possibly central air, depending on how high the bids could have gone...). In a couple of years, we could have been sitting in the house during the summer, and she could have said something about hwo nice it was, and I would have said "We owe it all to you, little miss Think Different" (Steve, you out there somewhere?)

At least I can console myself with 2 things: 1) When they get older, they will all travel as a pack, and 2) I still have my campaign to run if Mary doesn't get married...

The girls are sad that it wasn't twins - They wanted to use the names Jack and Jill... (I think it was Emma's grand scheme to someday push them over a lot...)

More on the hand

I went to see my hand surgeon today, my hand still hurt. (I said "It hurts when I do this." He said "Don't do that.")

Anyway, I went in, the nurse said "It's been 3 1/2 years since you have been here." I said "Isn't that a good thing?" (Maybe they missed my money...) She asked me what the problem was, I told that 10 days ago, I got mad at work and tried to beat the tar out of a locker. She asked me if I know how stupid that was, I let her know that plenty of people had been reminding me.

The doctor poured over the xrays with me. (That's one of the things I like about those guys, they bring the xrays in and go over them with you.) His diagnosis - contusion of the bone. He figures swelling is pincing a nerve that makes the finger go numb from time to time.

They told me that if it still hurts on Labor Day, I should come back in to see them. (Oh goody.)

He prescribed some painkiller, I told him I really didn't need it, the pain wasn't that bad. (At least not on my scale...) I don't think I will go fill it. Maybe a little pain in my hand for a little while will make me think twice about trying to bash the crap out of a solid object again.

They gave me a brace to wear for a little while, but pretty much all in all, I was basically told to suck it up and stop whining...

"All university database services will be down..."

When I do upgrades and patching, everyone knows. Well, only a select few actually know it's me, but they tell everyone. Things go something like this:

I decide things need to be patched/upgraded/installed/whatever. (Today I got a security bulletin that said "The information in this Security Bulletin should be acted upon as soon as possible." HP only says that when they have to, so I took notice. It includes a reboot of every single machine I have, including the University Database servers. The DBA team was looking for an excuse for an outage for some tuning, (they didn't want to be the ones to suggest it) so they were happy about it.)

I then test the changes and schedule the outage.

The people involved with the scheduling of the outage invariably talk for 30 minutes about when to do it, then nearly always decide I picked the right time. (If they ask if the outage has to occur, which they rarely do when I post it, the answer this time, as always is 'yes'.)

Then they tell everyone. Sometimes I worry that they will start giving out too much information. I always get asked the scope, what they should say, how long it will be, and so on, and I always say: Why can't you just use the exact same wording as the last time I brought everything down?

Anyway, if you are ever on the home page, or on the university portal, and you see something to the effect of everything being down some night from 12am - 6am, you can take it to the bank that it's me who is doing it.

Sometimes it's just fun to throw around phrases like "mandatory patching" and stuff like that, it balances out the scales a little.

Looking for something

Today I was on call. Ok, I've been on-call since Sunday 12:01 am, but today I spent down in the data center answering questions that I would rather not have been asked, as opposed to sitting at my desk being asked questions that I would rather not have been asked...

I had forgotten the power cord for my laptop, and about IMed one of our students to get him to bring me one. (Ah, students, the slave labor of Universities everywhere.) Anyway, he told me he would be down there around 2. I had a 2nd battery on me, so that was ok. The first battery died at 11:56am. I reached down to get the 2nd battery, and upon pulling it out, discovered it had no charge. This is the same battery I have been grabbing for 2 months, and each time it has had no charge. (You would think that I would learn a lesson from this, but even now, 10 hours later, and the battery is still in my backpack, dutifully waiting the time when it can be used, uncharged. It's a sad, lonely life for that battery.)

Not having the power cord, and no juice, I figured it was a good time to go for a walk. I walked to the food court, but the slight hunger I had did not overpower the aversion to standing in the long line. I turned around and went to the bookstore. I have been waiting for some time for them to get me some IP addresses together so that I can enable a firewall. Their IT staff is being run for the next couple of weeks by students. The 2 guys I normally work with are on vacation. The urge to eat had still not overtaken me, so I went to the library. I didn't see any books that grabbed me, but then I wassn't looking all that hard, I have plenty waiting to be read right now. I went to see the Library IT guys to talk to them about some changes I plan to make in a couple of months, but they weren't there. (They weren't on vacation, just somewhere else. That's what I get for wandering around during lunchtime.)

After that, I figured I still had 30 minutes before I got power (it's only a 30 minute round trip walk to my office and back, for some reason I didn't think of that.) and I went back to the food court. This time the lines were much shorter, and I got a crunchwrap from Taco Bell. It used to be a Taco Bell express, and they didn't have crunchwraps, but times have changed, and they appear to be all grown up now.

I went back to the data center, my power cord arrived, and I went back to doing my real work while at the same time pretending to help down there.

Nearly a full day off

If it weren't for being oncall, and getting one call at the movies, I wouldn't have thought about work at all. Or nearly not at all.

This morning, bright and early, Emma and I fired up Zoo Tycoon 2. I finally got that elusive Panda Bear, and finished the scenario.

We went to the movies at 1pm "The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl: 3D" Lets just say you can leave this fine piece of cinematography right where it lies...

We went to a baseball game tonight. The home team won 3-2 in 10 innings. We planned to leave if they didn't win in the 10th... They had fireworks after the game.
The fireworks weren't up to my standards, but my standards for firework displays were set very, very high in 1989. I was at the National Scout Jamboree. They did a fireworks display at an arena they have there. It was pretty impressive. For about 10 minutes, they had the sky completely lit up end to end, and that wasn't the grand finale. Anyway, nothing will likely ever come close again, unless our city here comes under cannon bombardment from the city to the North.

It was just about right for the girls, not too long, not too loud...

The girls got free jerseys from the team, the first 500 kids got one. Some people waited in line for 1 1/2 hours (In the heat...) to get theirs. We waited for about 10 minutes. By the time we got to the front, they only had XL kids sizes. We gave Ruth's jersey to Tara's brother to take back to France to his girl. Someday we hope to Americanize her, but we're not holding our breath...

2006 goal update - 23 July 2006

I'm just thankful I'm not in the middle of pulling a handcart 1200 miles across the country. (Not that I wouldn't if I had too...)

1: Move up on ITRC forums. I actually haven't been on the site in over 2 months...

2: Mission Journal - Nothing new done this week.

3: Garden Retaining Wall - Nothing done this week.

4: 6 Wooden Chairs - Painted has commenced, as reported. This week I hope to finish the paint job, having no Presidency meeting on Wednesday, a holiday on Monday, and already 3 hours of work for the week in should help...

5: Weight - 220 this week. (up 2 from last month, with a vacation stuck in the middle...)

7: Vacation - I am all vacataioned out for a while. We need to look in earnest for tickets to Phoenix in September, or look for a babysitter and drive down.

Wasting time update - 443 badges at MSN games. 16 new ones in the past month. This was mostly this past week. I really haven't been playing much, and MSN games don't work on Linux...

Joe Cool, meet Emma Rose

Okay, so sometimes I am a little distracted

Tara tells me that 10 days ago, when we were shopping for air condictioners, the VanDuzer's saw us in Home Depot, and were calling out my name. I remember someone saying "John", but I looked behind me and didn't see anyone, so I moved along. I guess I was side tracked. (Really, my mind was already down in the Nursery department, the body wasn't there yet...) They were in Home Depot, there were plenty of things they could have picked up and hit me on the head with to get my attention... I guess I'll have to apologize at some point. (I'm likely to see him in the ER sooner or later...)

And for those asking right now, no, it's not Vermina. It's her brother.

Fireworks

We went up to Tara's parents house to see the neighbors light a bunch of fireworks off. It's nothing big, since anything that leaves the ground it illegal here, but the girls liked it. Tara kept amused by watching the guys light the things nearly light themselves up. They were lighting the things, then putting them down, or lighting them, then setting them upright after knocking them over, or lighting them, then standing next to them.

We didn't need to call for an ambulence, but I think it was close once or twice.

Tara says she is glad :

• We can't light them near our house - too close to the mountain
• We don't get a shipment of post- July 4th fireworks from Missouri every year, and have a good time lighting them off...
  
• I don't burn the house down with fireworks.

That's okay I guess. Drew and I did a little 'show' over at his place for Anson and the girls last year, it was mostly smoke, sparklers, and the like.

The year we bought this house, our neighbor (who works in the same department as me) had a 3 day work marathon trying to fix a Netware outage just before July 4. He actually got done on the 4th. To blow off steam, he got up on his roof with some fireworks and a wrist rocket, and started lighting them and shooting them into the air. Several landed in our yard, still going off. I had the hose out ready to water the roof down.

So I guess what I'm saying is Happy Pioneer Day. (Monday) The day a lot of us here have off, banks and the mailman do not...

Dora the Explorer's Map = Arnold Horshack ???

I dedicated the better part of the afternoon to playing Zoo Tycoon 2. (OK, and a couple of hours after the girls went to bed also...) One of the nice things about that game is that it doesn't need your full attention, much of the time is spent waiting until you have money to do something again...

Anyhow, after Mary woke up from her nap, she wanted to watch a show. She picked Dora the Explorer. While it was going, it occured to me that the Map on that show sounds just like Arnold Horshack from "Welcome Back Kotter". I would give you a couple of links to listen to them, but I have tried a few times, just to have my browser crash on me...

Now I want to see a Dora episode where the map comes out and says "OOH, OOOH, DOOORA!"

a search of imdb.com shows that the guy who voices the Map is Marc Weiner. Horshack is Ron Palillo. They have different birthdates/locations, but are approximately the same age. Either Ron Palillo has a alias he uses for cartoon voice overs, or they are different people. Next time you watch Dora the Explorer, (could be a while for some of you) listen to the map, and then try to figure out why Dora has a map with an accent from Queens...

I don't want to talk about Boots, he just annoys me.

Being lazy

I went to work today at about 10:00. At 11, a couple of people came in looking to find out 'what changed'. (There stuff breaks, they assume we changed something. We always tell them when a change is going to happen..) They figured things stopped working at 9:45 or so. I told them I woke up at 9:30, and was in the shower then, so if something changed, it wasn't me that did it.

We also had a machine in the build that was hacked and was scanning all it's neighbors. We first tracked it down to one of the other offices, then it came back 30 minutes later. One of our students was the culprit. People were not happy with him, but I think they are over it.

After that, I worked on my regular Friday report for the project that may eventually suck all the life out of me.

At noon, we were supposed to have curry soup at noon (made by Sorrel). The soup was delayed because the crock pot blew a curcuit, we had to find a key to the electrical closet. (I think the theory is that if there's some sort of fire, and it involves electrical, they really want the building to go up in flames, so they lock that closet so that we can't get in... Several years ago, when the preschool was in the building, they started a fire in the kitchen. (burned toter tots) Everyone was upset at the guy who put the fire out.) Anyway, Sorrel go the stuff done, it was good.

After lunch, I played an hour of Zoo Tycoon. I figured I hadn't spent enough time on it lately...

I can home at 1:30, and was going to mow the lawn, but Tara convinced me that it was too hot out for that, I made banana bread and read my Sports Illustrated and my book. Later, we had dinner, then I mowed the lawn.

Our house is finally quiet, the girls having finally gone to sleep. Maybe I will to.

(Did you expect excitement from a post that contained the word 'lazy' in it?)

Burning Coal

On Wednesday when I left the house to go to Stake Presidency meeting, there was a huge pule of black smoke coming from somewhere on the south side of town. (When we have large plumes of smoke, this is normally where it happens...)

Anyway, I heard all kinds of sirens. It sounded like every emergency vehicle in town was headed that direction. When I got to the Stake center, the Stake Emergency response guy had just called, 2 train cars full of coal had exploded. Fairly soon after I got to the Stake center, the black turned to white, I assumed they got the fire out. 2 hours later, it was pouring down rain.

I went by the place I estimated the fire to have been. No sign of a destroyed train car, no coal everywhere, nothing. They either got it cleaned up, or I was looking in the wrong spot. Maybe Drew can tell me where, but he doesn't seem to put these sort of things in his blog. (He's doesn't put anything in his blog...)

So what makes a large pile of coal explode? Was it just too hot? Does that do it? It doesn't seem to be on any local news site, it's almost like it didn't happen at all. (Maybe I was hallucinating from the heat...) Inquiring minds want to know.

Church Audit Report

So, this October, when the Church Auditor gets up, if he says "With the exception of BYU, all Church entities are in compliance", it could very well be me that was the cause of the wording.

2 church auditors showed up today to take a peek at our main DB servers. One guy was an Oracle guy, one guy was a systems guy. The DB guy seems to know what he's doing, I don't have to deal with him. The systems guy, however, appears to be a pencil head. He gave me a list of commands he wanted output from, I looked over them, and crossed 4 of them out. (I think they are AIX commands, and don't exist in HPUX.) I told him that the stuff he wanted to see wouldn't tell him much of anything, his response was "it's a start..."

Well, their timeframe is 3-4 weeks to "finish", whatever that means. (Not actually sure of his objectives.) The auditor guy will be gone next week, I will be gone the week after (Ft. Collins, CO), then we have a load test the week after. There's no way that their timeframe will get met.

On top of that, I don't like auditors that just stick their noses in a book, decide that they have good questions to ask, then ask them. (Hense the pencil head label.) If he came in, let me know what he wanted to see, and (possibly) understood what I showed him, we would be done in 2 or 3 hours. As it is, this will drag out into weeks of stuff.

If they really want a good systems auditor, they should hire a systems guy. The systems guy walks in, asks me "what are you doing for security?" I talk to him about it for 15-30 minutes, he goes away. A couple of days later, he comes back with well thought out, applicable, useful questions based on the previous conversation. Then the 3rd meeting involves looking over files on the systems related to security. Audit over.

I am sure #1 on the audit report is this: "John is difficult to work with." #2 - "The systems are fine."

Return to Sender.

This is the casket I want to be buried in some day, if necessary. I think everyone will agree what a perfect statement this would allow my to make. (getting the last laugh, of course.) I found this some time ago, back then Tara was not so sure. I don't know if she's all that sure now, but I am sure I can talk Emma into it.

Just think, people are all sad that I died, then they walk into the chapel, and there I am, with my "return to sender" casket. Instant laughs. That's the way to do it.

I was talking to Kirk E. today, his wife's mother died this past weekend, they were shopping for caskets. I mentioned this one to him, he looked it up online and figured that this one was also the one for him. I happen to agree. I don't think he was able to talk his wife into getting it for her mother, though. Kirk is thinking about buying one and storing it in the basement...

Injured hand update

People have been asking, here's the update.

On Monday night, I put the hand back in the split that the doctor gave. This was to keep it immobalized over night. That seems to have worked, but my pinkie was still mostly numb on Tuesday. Some of the pain had gone away, and I could like a little bit heavier stuff on Tuesday, but still couldn't close all the way to a fist or all the way open, and some turning hurt. I could also not type with that finger.

Today, I can once again make a fist, although I choose not too... I still can not put my full weight on the open hand, but I can use the pinkie to type again. I avoided most handshaking at the Stake meetings tonight. The numbness in the finger finally went away, and the bone in the hand just below the knucle really, really hurts to the touch. I wonder what I really did, but that's water under the bridge.

I have pulled out my stick, and should have just broken it on Monday, but it's out again in case I need it. I don't plan to really use it on anyone.

Hopefully in a day or 2, there will be no evidence that anything happened, and we can all pretend it didn't.

Superman or Batman?

Ok, time for a survey. Who would you choose, and why? The topic, Superman vs. Batman.

My answer:

Superman.

Batman does what he does from a sense of wanting revenge on the criminal element from the death of his parents. Superman does what he does because it's the right thing to do, with the powers he has. Batman's world is a world of darkness and shadows, Superman's is one of light and hope. People are afraid of Batman, even 'normal', non-criminal types. People look up in the skies to get a glimpse of Superman as he flies by, to see their hero.

Not my words: "Superman stands for what is powerful, clear, bright, noble and just: Batman is dark, obsessive and vengeful."

Anyway, I liked both of the recent movies. I still say go see "Superman Returns" while it's still in theatres, just don't take the little kids. They once talked about a Superman vs. Batman movie, maybe it will happen sometime...

And don't get me wrong, I watch Batman shows and movies. It's just if I had to choose, it would be Superman. And I don't think we will ever buy Batman the Animated series, the show is a little edgier, the villians are all crazy, and it's likely too scary for the girls. We already own all of Superman the Animated series.

Restaurant Review

PF Chang's China Bistro (Takeout)

I didn't know this place had a takeout. I went up there after Stake interviews tonight. Reason #1 was that I had only had a Michelina's Budget Gormet dinner (Swedish meatballs - The meal on the package looked like it tasted about a hundred times better that the one inside...), which didn't really fill me up. In fact, I don't think it did any good at all. Reason #2 was that somewhere along the way, Drew gave Tara a PF Chang's gift certificate. It had $10 on it, and was set to expire at the end of the month. Reason #3 was the the gift card had been through the laundry a couple of times, washer and dryer, so I wanted to see if there was going to be an incident with the slightly warped card. (No incident occured.)

Well, I got lettuce wraps and hot and sour soup for Tara, and picked out some sort of beef with carrots and celery entree. It was all pretty good, I kind of wish they had packaged more chili sauce and chinese mustard, that stuff will clear out anything that's ailing you. (In fact, I should have mentioned something like that to Ken D. Ken, go out and have either a bunch of spicy horseradish or some good wasabi. You'll feel better.)

Tara had already eaten dinner, but was ready for round 2. We have leftovers...

We need our DVD's

We left about 50 DVDs back in Buffalo. I didn't know it at the time, but somehow it got assigned to me to pick them up and put them in the car. I am sure the conversation went like this:

Tara: "John, don't forget the DVD case sitting by the DVD player."
Me: (In my head: I've got the hammer, the book I forgot, I've refilled the cooler, I have to remember to send that email out for the stake, I need to call Tom to have him mow the lawn for me, I wonder where my sunglasses are...) "OK."

Now I don't want to make this sound in anyway like this was Tara's fault at all. By the time we got to the middle of Illinois, I hadn't even remembered being asked. If I had not replied at all, Tara would have picked up the DVD case and put it in the car, or else picked it up and handed it to me.

Anyhow, Mary and Kate have been asking a lot for the DVD's. Tara is wondering about the DVD's. Since it's 1am Eastern time, I figure a blog entry that will get picked up sometime tomorrow is a more socially acceptable reminder than a phone call at this hour. (And I will forget all about it by morning, so calling then isn't really an option...)

Book Review

The Bourne Legacy
Eric Van Lustbader

What? 2 books in one day you say? Well, the other book was short, I read it to and from work today. (About an hour of reading) This one has taken considerably longer to get through.

One of the reasons for this is that I really didn't like the author's style all that much. I went into the book expecting the characters from the Bourne series, and the writing style. The author didn't spend as much time writing from Jason Bourne's perspective as I expected.

In the end, I had spent enough time getting into the book, I finished it to find out how it ended. No real big suprises. By the time I get to Part 3 (of 3), I was finally into it, pushed away the previous misgiving, and finished the book.

Having said that, the book is OK, but if Mr. Van Lustbader writes another one, I likely won't bother. There's just too much extra junk in it, and I don't really care for his style. (Just jaded from my previous reasons, nothing personal.)

Book Review

Jinxed: Baseball superstitions from around the major leagues
Edited by Ken Leiker

This was an interesting book. Short, but interesting. It talked about many well know players and the superstitions they had. Someone spent a very long time putting in all the graphic design work the book had in it.

My favorite was John Smoltz. It appears that whatever he was doing when the Atlanta Braves scored their first run, he would keep doing for that inning. Once it was jumping jacks, once it was eating chicken wings.

Needless to say, baseball players are weird. And very superstitous. A couple of times in the book, someone was quoted as they needed to have a routine to follow to get through the season. I think it goes back to my 'brain baking' theory from my mission: The longer people are out in the heat (like the High Desert), the crazier they get.

This is one of the reasons I have gotten Tara an air condictioner.

The first pear tomato

I ate the first pear tomato of the season tonight. It was great. If you do not know what a pear tomato is, or what it tastes like, you are missing out on a delicacy, and will need to come over this summer and try one. They are great!

So initial reports are that the hand isn't broken...

...but I'm not yet convinced. Maybe I should have titled the thing "What I get for talking bad about Elder's Quorum lessons."

This morning at work, I was really wishing I was not there. Way too many people pestering me for help, way too many of them could have taken care of their problem themselves. Finally, someone at work called the guy next to me to ask a question that was really directed at me, and it was a question that should not have been asked. I was helping someone else with a problem they could not fix themselves, and politely excused myself. I went out in the hall, where there are rows of metal lockers that haven't been used in 15 years, and never will be. I started beating on a couple of them, until I landed one that hurt.

After fixing the one problem, my hand really hurt. Within 30 minutes or so, I had left for home. Tara had gone to the movies with the girls, my doctor's office keeps their phones off from noon to 2pm. At 2:15, I had iced my hand down pretty good, but I couldn't make a fist, spread it out all the way or hold anything over 2 pounds without shooting pain. I called the doctor, and went in.

The guy that saw me thought the thing was broken. (My pinkie was numb by then.) unfortunately, their X-ray machine was busted, I had to go somewhere else for that. I found Tara, she took me down to radiology. They took an xray, eventually came back and said they talked to the nurse at my doctors office, the thing showed the fusion was ok, and no initication of a fracture. The nurse said I could be sent home. (That's what I like, tough love. In the interim, Tara had been making fun of me/suggesting anger management class so I no longer hurt myself, etc. My boss called to laugh at me. The lady who checked me into radiology at the hospital got her digs in too. I only imagine was else would have come along had I gotten a cast, but that's ok, I probilbly deserve it...)

Anyway, at this point, it still hurts like crazy. It's still sensitive to the touch, and while I can make a fist, I can't make a tight one. I can not put any pressure on the wrist, and I have long since stopped trying to hold objects with weight.

We'll see what tomorrow brings, I'll give it 8 days before I go for a 2nd opinion.

RSS reader

Tracking a number of blogs, but tired of opening all of them in your browser? Use a Site Feed Reader. They're great. I have been using one in Linux on my laptop for some time. (Except now that I have reinstalled the laptop, I have to set it all up again...)

I just installed "FeedReader" on this machine at home for Tara. Not that she's lazy and needs it, but I thought she'd like it. (I'm the lazy one, having gone out and gotten one for myself.)

This is as much a call for posts in other people's blogs as anything else. Drew, you gonna make an update any time soon? Tom has finally come back...

Google Adsense

Sometimes the things that Adsense picks up to do adverts is pretty funny. Right now I see ads for the "Free Anastasia Brow Kit" and "Tired of thin eyebrows?" I think that's funny.

Go right on ahead, click those links, maybe even order the products. Or I can grow some hair out and weave you new fake eyebrows...

And I thought Priesthood meeting in Buffalo was bad...

So, I went to a couple of weeks of church in Buffalo. Mainly this included Ruth not allowing me to sit in the EQ room. One Sunday, I tried to wait for something like 20 minutes for the lesson, it never really came. Tom indicated afterwards that he really didn't know what the lesson was about.

When I came back the 2nd time, I think Ruth was happy enough to see me that she didn't mind sitting there for a little while, at least until she started throwing everything she could get her hands on into the garbage... That Sunday, the Elder's Quorum president was teaching a lesson about the 1st Article of Faith. (I hadn't seen the July Ensign yet...) I thought it was strange, but President Hinkley's article was actually pretty interesting. (I can't say about the EQ lesson, he was just warming up...)

Anyhow, this Sunday, I was ready for a nice Elder's Quorum lesson. Tara taught the lesson in Relief Society. I read over her shoulder, it sounded pretty interesting, so I was ready for it. I got into the room, sat Ruth on the chair next to me, and she laid her head down on my lap and fell asleep. I thought "This is perfect, now I can sit here for the lesson." Once they got started, our Elder's Quorum president got up, and talked about the lesson the week before. (They had a lesson on Depression and other disorders.) He said "In leiu of the lesson, we are going to continue the disccusion from last week." The teacher got up and said "Some of you were bored last week, that's ok. Some of you may be bored again this week..." (Not the desired start I was hoping for.) Needless to say, they didn't really bring the Gospel into the discussion at all. We talked about the biology of depression, the signs of emminant suiside, that kind of thing.

What about "Remembering Our Spiritual Heritage"? It's now gone forever. Either that or we will not have the Teachings for our Times lesson next week. (It's provided by the Stake, maybe I should email the copy of the lesson over to him tonight. Nothing like a subtle hint...)

Out EQ president had an interview with a member of the Stake Presidency after the meeting. I thought about mentioning the lesson to President Hales, but when he came in, he went over to the copier room and got some stuff to go over, they included the recent letter we did on teaching/staying on topic/inviting the spirit/etc. I figure he had it under control.

Update: States I have visited

Or at least the ones I will fess up to, anyway. Now I know there's not anything wrong with Montana, North Dakota, or Minnesota, but at this point, I really don't see myself showing up any time soon. New England, the only thing that might bring me up there is the Ben and Jerry's museum, but we'll see...

Game Time

Settlers of Catan

Me - 1
Tara - 0


I owe the win to development cards. Tara nearly won...

Stake Picnic

We had a Stake Picnic this evening. There were about 300 people there, so the turnout was ok. We got there quite late, most of the side dishes were picked clean by the time we got to the serving table. (Emma thought it was great, and just had desserts.) I think they will call the event a success, at least until they get the final bill. They paid $600 for the meat, I think the Stake President thinks that's all the expense they incurred, but it looks like there was also rolls, plates, and the pavillion rental fee. My guess is that the rest of the stake activities this year, if they include food, will be pot luck...

Unibrow

I am starting to develop a unibrow. It's hard to see, being blond or semi blond hair, but it's there. Tara says it's not a unibrow, she says there is hair there, but it's not growing all the way across. Just you watch, it's going to grow in, be nice and bushy, and 5 years from now, while I am asleep, I will be violently awoken to Tara plucking the hair out with tweezers. She also wants to pluck my nosehair and earhair while she is at it. She says the only good thing about the mustache I used to have was that the nose hair blended in.

To top it off, my eyebrows are starting to grow also. I was at the barber 6 months ago, (they are trying to change the name to "barbershop and salon", but I am pretending the 'salon' part does not exist...) he asked if I wanted my eyebrows trimmed. This suprised me, I didn't know I needed it. I need it again. I have a couple of hairs that keep flopping down and poking me in the eye.

When I get older, I expect to look like one of the 2 pictures below.

Reinstalling the laptop

I am poised to reinstall my laptop. (I know what you are saying - "Again?")

Suse 10.1 has been released. I hear it's a pretty good OS. Since there really isn't a whole lot for me to save on the OS here, having just gotten it a couple of months ago, and primarily using my USB disk for data, I figured I would give it a shot.

I am not doing it right this minute, even though I would like to. I am downloading the release, it's taking a little while. Right now, I have just under 13 hours of download time left. (3.6 GB) That's ok, though. I had started the download from work, it was scheduled to complete in 33 hours...

Emailing Tara

Well, we are 99% of the way back to everyone's ability to email Tara once again. Hopefully not too many people have been put off by the fact that all her email has been bouncing back for 2 months. Her email address is still the same, I'm sending through an alias at work so that our email gateways will run spam assassin on it to strip out a lot of the junk she gets.

It should be ready first thing tomorrow morning. (Which is today - what I really mean is Friday 9:00am local) Anyway, I will have to have her call her friends to catch up and let them know what happened.

New Air Conditioner

We bought a new air conditioner tonight. There were 4 reasons, really. #1 - I have yet to set up the swamp cooler properly. #2 - Even with the swamp cooler, our back room gets a little warm near the end of the evening. #3 - We break 100 degrees this weekend. #4 - Tara really doesn't want to sit in the house and bake all day. (There is AC in my office, or at least a swamp cooler for the building that gets it to the point where it and the fan on my desk make the day bearible.)

Anyhow, the fan to the left is for the night, when it cools off at night, we like to get the house as cool as possible. This helps get through a good chunk of the day without needing to cool it off. Between it and the swamp cooler (which right now is just a giant fan), the house can get nice and cool by morning. The plan is to pull the fan out of the window in the morning and close it, then when it starts warming up, turn on the AC. We'll see how it works, and maybe this weekend I will get up there and hook up the water to the swamp cooler.

Changes to blog

I have moved/added some advert buttons on the page. I am not sure if it will format properly (especially for those IE users out there. Switch to Firefox! Switch to Firefox!)

Anyhow, I have added links for more google tools, that sort of thing. If you want to add the tools, and do it from my site, I get a (future potential) kickback.

Have fun, and let me know if the format gets fouled up, I will try to fix it.

We nearly bought a tree

We went out to lunch today. (I woke up at 10:00am. At about 11:00am, Tara asked the girls if they were ready for breakfast. We had brunch at Tucano's.) On the way back, I saw Drew sitting in his patrol car, talking on his cell phone. I turned around and pulled in behind him. He got out before I could.

Drew had found a guy who was lost his lease on a nursery he ran. The guy had a number of large trees for sale. Drew took us up there to look at them. The tree would have been $200 including installation. (The one we were looking at was close to 10 feet tall.)

Anyhow, after further review, we don't want to afford the thing this month. (We did just get done with a vacation.) Maybe a better deal will come along next month.

It's not a total loss. One of the guys at work was thinging about putting in some trees, he may go up there and look at them.

It's Swamp Cooler time!

It is kind of hot here. (You can look at the bottom of the page for the 7 day outlook.) I have yet to get the swamp cooler hooked up. The primary reason is that I was the only one here last month, and wasn't home during the day, so I really did see the need to climb up on the roof unsupervised to hook everything up.

Now is the time. It's supposed to break 100 degrees this weekend. (I hear you Arizona people saying "Only 100? we get that at Christmas!") Anyway, we don't have an air condictioner sitting here to cool things off, (at least not today, we don't. That could change tomorrow. We looked for one for the back room last year.) so I need to get the swamp cooler going. While Tara and the girls were gone, I was leaving the windows open at night, it would be nice and cool in the morning. That doesn't cut the mustard right now, when it only gets down to 70 at night, it's nice to leave the window open, but it doesn't do much for cooling down the house.

Anyway, I have to get busy on it, before Tara and the girls melt.

New book idea

I had a dream last night. This is signifigant in a couple of ways. For one thing, I slept well enough to dream. I don't think this was the case all that much last year. Second, I remembered it. Maybe that means I got woken up before I was ready, I don't know.

Anyhow, I was dreaming that I was a baseball player. The dugout was behind the plate, there was no catcher. (Making for an interesting situation if the batter missed the ball.) Come to think of it, there was also no umpire.

I had been heckling the pitcher, he was getting ticked off. The batter was on crutches, we really needed a hit. A pitch was a fastball right of my head. I continued to heckle, then leaned forward to the batter and whispered to him that the next pitch would be a fastball right at my head. He smiled, turned to the batter, and got a hit. Being on crutches, we started waddling to first, then dropped the crutches to go faster. The ball went all the way to the wall, the hitter made it to first, the guys on second and third scored, and we won the game.

That got me to thinking. I could write a book set 25 years in the future. There is no ump because it's all computerized, and they are not needed. Baseball is broken up into lots of local teams, no more minor leagues. People don't make as much as they used to, but lots more people could play. All batters sit in a batters box behind home plate, and snag an balls that get by the hitter. It goes on.

Not sure if it's a good idea for a book, but I have 2 other books to write first anyway: "John Payne, Mission Memiors" and "John Payne - The (single) college years". Once I get done with that, maybe I'll move on to "Baseball - the year in review: 2035". (I need a better name, huh?)

New telephone

We bought a cordless phone sometime last year. Eventually it stopped taking a charge. (We only paid something like $15 for it. Piece of junk.)

We had a corded phone, it was doing ok, but on my return from the first trip to Buffalo, the phone would not dial. You press the buttons, they didn't do anything. It just sits there with a dumb look on it's face. It was difficult to not slam it down on the cradle, beat on it, or inflict other harm to it. (I won't rule any of that out as the cause of the trouble in the first place.)

Anyhow, today we bought a nicer cordless phone set. It's a Uniden 2 phone system with answering machine. (That's right, my answering machine will no longer hang up on people just as they are leaving their phone number...) We bought a system that allowed both units to be used at the same time. We didn't want something that prevented phone #2 from being used while phone #1 is being used. This means you can now talk to 2 of us at once.

We nearly bought a panasonic model, there was only one left at the store, the box had been opened. We'll see how this model does.

When it rains, it pours

I had a grand scheme today that I could get to Stake Priesthood meeting tonight. Not only get there, but get there early with the agenda that the Presidency was bound to forget about until 10 minutes before the meeting.

We started the day in North Platte, Nebraska. I had gassed up the car the night before. I got everyone up and moving, they were ready for breakfast just after 7am (Central.) I took them down there, then went to pack the car. I got nearly everything packed in, and put the car keys in the ignition to see what time it was. (Warning Will Robinson! Warning!) After finishing with the packing, I shut the doors and turned to go get Tara and the girls. Then I remembered I had not locked the car. (I was looking at our hotel bill by then. Why do you pay a State Hotel Tax and an Occupancy Tax?) Anyway, I opened the door, pressed the 'lock' button, and shut the door. It took about 13 seconds for it to sink in.

Mazda has a Roadside Assistance plan that goes along with their warrenty. I used to have their number in my wallet. It's no longer there. We called a locksmith, 30 minutes and 40 dollars later, the car was open. (He got $40 for about a minute's worth of work. How do I get in on that racket?) I am just going to pretend we did not call a locksmith. I will just pretend that the hotel room was really expensive...

We got going, we were making really good time, I figured we would get home at 5 or 6, with plenty of time to spare. It rained all through Wyoming. Add that to the patches of construction, and it makes for a fun driving day. (I won't mention that I drank too many liquids at the same time, couldn't wait for the next rest stop, and pulled over. I told the girls I had to check the tires...)

At lunch, it was raining. And we couldn't decide immediately where to go. (Wendy's. I had 2 plain baked potatoes.) At the Wyoming-Utah border, there was more rain, and very bad construction related traffic.

I had to call ahead to give them the agenda, and made it for 1/2 the Priesthood meeting. It was good.

We are back, by the way.

Pedometer

I have been doing this "Walk America" thing at work since the beginning of May. So far to date, I have taken over 450,000 steps. So far also, I have lost 2 pedometers.

My first pedometer served me well. On my first Buffalo trip (Late May for those not keeping count.), I lost it somewhere. I really don't know where, if I did it wouldn't have been lost. One of the days, I just reached down to my belt, and it was gone. It didn't even leave a note.

I went several weeks at home without a pedometer. I knew roughly the distance from home to work, from home to church, etc., so I just ballparked it. I don't know how many steps I lost by rounding down, but I figure it's a lot.

I bought a second pedometer just before this recent trip. I made it through to the last day in Nauvoo, then in a bathroom, the thing popped off my belt, bounced off a sink, bounced off the tub, and into the toilet. (Nothing but net.) That's the end of the second pedometer.

Nauvoo Temple

Nauvoo (Day 3 or 'the end')

The girls really enjoyed the pioneer pastimes exhibit. They played until we forced them out.
We walked around the Women in Zion statue exhibit. (I know that's not the name, but it's what I am calling it.)

I have a new packing plan for the car, I won't bore you with past knowing it's there.

(Not at home with tools to rotate picture...)

Tonight we went to the Nauvoo Pagent. It's pretty good. We moved some chairs to get good seats. (Note: If you come to Nauvoo to see the pagent, be agressive in your seat selection. Go down at 1am the night before, or 5 or 6 am the day of to select your seats. Bring paper and tape to mark them off.) Mary and I tried to take some pictures, but they really didn't take very well, most of them are blurry. Mary describes one as "2 cows with 5 heads".
There you have it. Short post, I need to get to bed to be ready to drive tomorrow.

Hamilton

So there we were, minding our own business in the Family Living Center, (I call it the Smith Family Living Center in my head...) we were headed over to the last thing to see when Sara Hamilton walked in. They have been here for a couple of days, we just stumbled into each other. (Jon was back at the hotel, my guess was he was sleeping...)

Anyway, we all went to lunch together at Grandpa John's Cafe. This time we ordered sandwiches, and they were right about the service being slow yesterday... It was nice to visit with them.

We origonally talked about visiting them in Chicago (where they live) at some point during this long and winding trip, but now we don't have to feel bad about not making it over there. I figure, if we stay here in Nauvoo long enough, we would see everyone we know.

Baseball predictions - midseason review

Back on April 1, I made some predictions for the baseball season. We are now half way through the season, time to review. The following are my previous predictions and how that's working out for me:

NL Playoff teams:

NY Mets - Best record in the NL. They are 12.5 games aheada of the next team in their division, things look good for them at this point.

Chicago Cubs - They are 14.5 games back in their division, with a 36% winning percentage. The Cubs had a pretty good April, then tanked it. That's the way it goes, I guess. So much for my World Series prediction.

LA Dodgers - They are only 1/2 a game back in their division. Each of the teams in the division could take it, it will be interesting to watch.

Washingtons Nationals - I didn't really say this, did I?

AL Playoff teams:

Toronto Blue Jays - 5 games back of Boston, 3 games back of NY Yankees. Could be worse.

Cleveland Indians - At least the Royals, Cubs, and Pirates are making them look good...

Oakland A's - Right on top of their division. Not nuch to say, I really haven't been listening to a lot of AL games...

Chicago White Sox - Fighting with the Detroit Tigers for control of their division. It's really too bad that you can have 5 or 6 good team in one League, only send 4 to the playoffs, even though the other league has lots of bad teams...

World Series: Chicago Cubs over Toronto Blue Jays

I just have one other thing to say. It's about Interleague play. I really liked this idea when it came out. (Cubs vs. White Sox, Dodgers vs. Angels, that sort of thing.) I'm starting to not like it so much. I think they should keep it around, maybe have rival teams continue a 3 or 6 game series, but limit it to that. Save time for playing League teams to get your losses in, not pile them all up during Interleague play. Not sure who would agree with me, but when a team in the NL gets 12 losses against AL teams, they can drop in a hurry in the standings. (And the other way works to. You can feast during Interleague play.) Anyway, that's what I think, not that it's going anywhere.

Book Review

The Bourne Ultimatum
by Robert Ludlam

I liked this book better than the 2nd book, if I had to order them, I would go #1, #3, #2, with #3 coming in a close second.

The book returns to the story of the main character vs. Carlos the Jackal. Without giving too much away, it gives more in the story than just 'Spy vs. Spy' (I know neither were really spies, but I like the image Spy vs. Spy evokes.)

Anyhow, it was a good book. I liked that the author had several intertwining plot threads going along in the book. The book returned to the 'thinking' or whatever you want to call it that I thought was missing from the first book, but I liked about the first book.

I read a good chunk of the book on the trip out to Buffalo last Saturday, since then it's been sporatic bits at a time, but I really never got lost or thought I needed to re-read something, I just picked it up and got going. Not that it matters, I just thought I would mention it.

I have "The Bourne Legacy" to read, but I think I might want to shift gears and select a different type of book to read through before talking this one.

Nauvoo (Day 2)

Today we went to see the "Just plain Anna Amanda" show. The girls really liked it. (It was a kids show after all.) We didn't pick up tickets for the Horse drawn carriage ride, so we had a little time to kill before the ride that had available space.

It was hot, we decided to go eat lunch. (It was also noon. We got a little bit of a late start.) We went to Uncle John's Cafe. The place also did not accept plastic, I had to first find an ATM before lunch. On getting into the restaurant, I told the counter girl we had 40 minutes and asked if that was enough time to eat. She said "No, unless you want the special." This is what we wanted anyway, so we moved ahead. Turns out the special is a lunch 'buffet'. You can get an entree, salad, roll, and drink. We went over to the buffet counter, they asked us want we wanted, and placed it on a plate for us. The food looked suspisously like the food we had for dinner across the street last night. In fact, it looked and tasted exactly like the food we had last night. It was still good, but I thought it was kind of funny. (funny ha-ha and funny weird.)

Anyway, after lunch, we went on the carriage ride. They took us all through the restored section of Old Nauvoo. We at least got to see and hear about all the buildings, if we don't make it to them. We also went through the section owned by the Community of Christ church. It's kind of too bad. They have some fairly important buildings from the Nauvoo period, they don't let people into most of them. I hear that you can pay $2 per person, they take you on a tour, and let you into 2 of buildings. You would think they could work something out where they work with the Church, get the buildings restored to the point they are nice, and the Church gives them some sort of stipend and gets them to stop charging. Then more people come by their part of town, and they get to have those important buildings taken care of. We didn't end up going back down there today, and likely won't have time tomorrow.

After the carriage ride, we went down to the wainwright/blacksmith shop. From there, we worked our way up Main street ending up at the gunsmith shop. Tomorrow, we plan to park at the Cultural Hall, and make our way back to the middle.

After dinner (don't get excited, it was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches), we went to the "Sunset by the River" show. It was an old time hoedown/novelty act show. They had it indoors because of the Pagent, which was doing a dress rehersal tonight. It was pretty good, Ruth, Emma, and Mary all fell asleep, Kate really enjoyed it.

After getting the girls in bed (not asleeep, that may still require some time, they are in there wispering to each other), I slipped out to go get bread, milk, and something tasty. I didn't want to drive 1 hour round trip, we figured it would cost more in gas than the markup for the items in the local food mart. Unfortunately, at 9:37 pm, there isn't much open in Nauvoo. Food supplies will need to be readdressed early tomorrow morning. (Although the need for 'something tasty' may have waned by then.)

Nauvoo (Day 1)

We started our tour by taking a carriage ride. We rode around the countryside. I have provided a couple of pictures. After the carriage ride, we went inside the Visitors Center. We talked to the ladies at the "Tickets" desk, they indicated that all the tickets for the shows were reserved, they were releasing any ones that were not picked up in 30 minutes. We stuck around to see what we could do.


It turns out that we got into the "High Hopes and River Boats" show at 3pm. We got into the "Rondevous in Old Nauvoo" show at 7pm. The girls really liked the 'High Hopes' show, they singing, dancing, and period dresses. Mary, Emma, and Kate were mesmorized. After the show, I called around to cancel Stake Presidency meeting for the Stake President. He recommended the Hotel Nauvoo buffet for dinner. He's about the 12th person to have recommended this to us in the past 6 months, so we called to get reservations and went over there.


Dinner was nice, the food was very good. We had planned on having Mary and Kate pay their own way, (we bought them stuff at Walmart last night...) but when we got to the place, they didn't take plastic. (cash or check only. How 1840's of them...) We ate too much, then went to the other show.

The show was a song/dance/spoken word type also, but it was all senior missionaries in it. The girls liked it, Ruth had a meltdown with 20 minutes to go. After getting outside, she was fine, but she had a leaking diaper, and only wanted to stick her head in the fence slats outside. Kate says that the show was funny.

Anyhow, we are trying to get things done like the shows, rides, etc before Friday, when the pageant starts. We figure it may get a little crowded here on Friday...

Tomorrow we plan to catch the 3rd show that requires tickets, and take the ride around Old Nauvoo in the carriage tour, then see what happens...

Nauvoo (Day 0.5)

We got to Nauvoo today. When I made our reservations, the guy told me that our place was on the 3rd floor and asked if that would be a problem. I told him no. I didn't realize how much stuff I would need to haul up the stairs. We made it, however.

The place is nice. It has a separate bedroom, a front room with a futon, and a kitchen/dining room. Just what you expect a suite to have. It's really nice for the rate they gave us.

We went to Carthage in the evening. (No pictures, sorry. I forgot my camera back in the room.) After visiting Carthage, we drove into Keokuk to pick up some supplies.

Driving into Nauvoo, we almost hit a deer. We were going 60 miles an hour, the deer jumped right in front of us. The brakes on our car work well, we have verified that now. Driving back that night, I think Tara was worried about wildlife jumping in front of us. Or she thought I was driving like a madman. Her eyes were peeled to the road the entire time. (It was dark...)

Visiting Grandma Oaks

We called Grandma Oaks on Sunday, told her we were going to be passing through, and asked if she would be home for us to visit after we found got into our hotel Monday night. She was happy to have us over, and wanted us to stay at her place, not a hotel.

We took her out to eat dinner Monday night, she made us breakfast Tuesday morning. Monday night she was talking like she was a little lonely, we stayed for a little while on Tuesday morning to visit.

Her house is nice, it's tons smaller than the old place, but it's just her. She had a toy chicken that jumped, Ruth was not happy to see it do it's thing. It's too bad we didn't have enough time to visit longer.

July 1 travel log

Tara's brother-in-law picked me up to take me to the airport. (9:30am) I didn't know he was such a crazy driver. He made me a little nervous. He drives to fast and spends too much time looking at the cars around him, trying to figure out what they were doing. It was very nice of him to give me a ride...

The first leg of the flight was fairly uneventful. I wondered if we would be able to see the shuttle go up when it launched, but they didn't launch, so the question remains unanswered.

In Atlanta, I had about a 2 hour layover. In the centerpoint of Terminal A, they have a Chili's. I went there. I didn't have to wait for a seat, and pulled out this week's Sport's Illustrated. The waitress came fairly soon, asking for my drink order. I choose water, she didn't seem terribly disappointed. The water eventually showed up, she asked for my order. I ordered chips and salsa (of course), and the Turkey sandwich combo. (With tortilla soup.) About 15 minutes later, the chips and salsa showed up. I was reading my magazine, so I didn't get too ticked off. The waitress came back offering to get me a new water, she really didn't do it. Then, 25 minutes after the chips and salsa appeared, she asked me if there was anything else she could get me. Of course, my answer was "My sandwich, for starters." She looked suprised, rememebered what I ordered, and told me she would bew right back. The soup and sandwich came not too long later. (I figure she forgot to place the order for me.) She brought water with the soup. Then it took her 10 minutes to come back to offer the check, 5 more minutes to come back for it, and a few more minutes to process it. I am sad to say it's the first time in a very long time that I did not leave a tip. (Normally even the worst waiter gets some sort of tip. I was kind of ticked by then.) All in all, I spent 70 minutes in the restaurant. (It was kind of slow the last time I was there, but in the "this restaurant is kind of busy, that's why it's slow" type of thing.

I went to the gate, about 10 minutes later, they changed the time of the departure by 43 minutes. They said the plane was late, but had left the other airport, and they would wait for this plane. The plane was to take off at 8:53pm at that point instead of 8:10pm. At 8:45, they told us that a plane had landed, they moved the gate from C36 to D36. On my walk from C36 to D36, I saw numerous fast food places that likely would have been better than the one I was at, including another Chili's in the D concourse. We all got to D36, in 10 minutes the departure time went from 9:05 to 9:10 to 9:25. Eventually we were let on the plane, (which was a plane that came in from Rochester, not the one from St. Louis they kept talking about.) and everyone sat down. Or at least most people sat down. The Flight Attendant kept trying to get people to sit so that we could leave. I was in seat 4D. When they counted heads, they counted 1 extra person. It took them about 20 minutes to figure out that the extra person was a 11 month old baby (infant in arms). We got in really late, barely beating the the next ATL to BUF flight.

Tara came to get me, and got plenty of book reading time.

All in all, it was a long day. Just not what I was expecting.

The Tick

The first season of "The Tick" is finally coming to DVD! (Aug 29) If your only exposure to The Tick is from the 8 episode live action show they tried doing in 2001, you are most definitely missing out. "The Tick" is great. So great that - okay, I don't want to spoil it for you. But with villians like Dinosaur Neil, The Angry Red Herring, Proto Clown, and El Seed, how can you go wrong? (Have I mentioned other superheros like American Maid, Bi-Polar Bear ("This looks like a job for Bi-Polar Bear... but I just cant seem to get out of bed."), and Die Fledermaus?)

Okay, so he's a big, blue, stupid superhero. That's what endears him to us...

I leave you with one quote from the show:

Tick: [shouts] Spoon!

Ok, here's a second:

Tick: Destiny's powerful hand has made the bed of my future, and it's up to me to lie in it. I am destined to be a superhero. To right wrongs, and to pound two-fisted justice into the hearts of evildoers everywhere. And you don't fight destiny. No sir. And, you don't eat crackers in the bed of your future, or you get all... scratchy.