Game Time

Age of Empires

Dad and I played against Rob and Dave to start. While I don't think Rob had a chip on his shoulder, I don't think he had any desire to be beat by me 2 weeks in a row. He made good and sure to beat the tar out of me. We didn't put up too much of a fight.

For the 2nd game, I talked Rob into playing 3 vs 1 against him. This didn't work out too terribly well for Rob, although he did his best to be annoying...

For the 3rd game, Rob, Dad, and I played against 3 expert computers, on the Amazon map. We won, maybe we should have done 3 vs 5...

Book Report

Star Trek: The Lost Years
JM Dillard

I was wandering through the library 3 weeks ago looking for something to read. It was 10 minutes to closing time, the library staff started to flash the lights on and off. I was in the Science Fiction section, and decided that I had to act quickly. I saw this book and grabbed it. It's been a long time since I've read a star trek book.

The book is set in the time of the original series, and deals with those characters. It tries to tell the story of how everyone got to where they were at the beginning of the first Star Trek movie. It primarily deals with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Maybe I'll have to read more. Or go back to the comics.

Guard Rails

I have heard enough comments about the lack of guard rails on the bunk bed since I put the thing up that I went out in the heat of the day and got them created. (Actually, Ruth took a nap up in the top bunk, so it was time for them already.)

Everyone stop worrying, the preplanned but not immediately implemented guard rails are in place. (Not that the guard rails make a difference when you are sitting up there and pushes you off, not to say that has ever happened before...)

Bunkbed - finished

I finished the bunkbeds. At least until I get tired of having them not painted, at which time I will revisit the issue.

It's timely, too, because Missy and my Dad just got here, and Drew didn't know they were getting in today, there is no one at his house, so we put up the bunkbed in the middle bedroom (where it was headed anyway), freeing the back bedroom for Dad to stay in.

Creative navigating for the 4th of July

Back in the day, on the 4th of July, we would always have the bright idea to go get doughnuts from the store. We would all pile into Russ's car, and proceed to immediately get stuck in traffic.

On the 4th here, there is a 6:30am balloon festival. There is a 7am foot race. There is a 9am parade. (The parade is on a fairly large scale for this city. 2 off the main streets in town become unusable until about 1pm. This makes it very difficult to get from this side of the city to the doughnuts.)

Anyway, it takes some creative driving to get anywhere. I seem to nearly always get caught in it. Last year I avoided it by staying home. This year, I wanted to go to the new alumni building on campus for the balloons, but couldn't get onto campus. The end of our street was partially blocked off. I turned right, and saw that it was totally blocked off ahead for the race, which hadn't yet started. I drove up and around Kate's school, thinking I could get through onto campus that way. By the time I got there, the race was going, and the only choice the officer gave me was to turn right. (Going straight was the preferred method.) This is the way it goes on the morning of the 4th. I saw plenty of people walking over to the parade route. The mile or mile and a half walk is preferable to trying to get a car down there and parked.

Anyway, the urge to drive out on the 4th to get doughnuts is mostly, but not totally, watered down these days. It's just not worth the hassle. (Maybe I should call Drew.)

Balloon Festival

Every year for the 4th of July, they have a balloon festival. I think I've only actually gotten over to it once, although you can see it from just about anywhere. When I was framing houses, one year we were building a place 10 miles south of here. We had a perfect view of the balloon festival. Usually we don't get up in time to go over there, or forget, or something.

Kate and Mary were up this morning, we went looking for a spot to watch the balloons. This year we ended up driving up to President Palmers house and parking in his driveway. They were either not awake, or gone.

Anyway, right now the girls are out on their playset watching the balloons they can still see. The balloons are driving every neighborhood dog nuts.

It's back!

A year ago, I cut out a bush from our back yard. I blamed it on allergy problems, I'm not sure if it was justified or not.
There wasn't any sign of it this year, I thought I had gotten to it. I went out to mow this evening, and wouldn't you know it, but the bush was back. Not just a little bit, but three feet tall. I'm not sure when that happened, but I blamed Missy. We went for a little trip and she let the thing grow back.

I guess I will leave it until next Spring, so I can stick my face in it's blossoms and see if it makes me sneeze.

Dining Services money

This year, the fun walk had a thing where if you did all 6 of them, you got a case of water and $30 on your signature card to use at Dining Services places on campus.

At lunchtime, I went to the vending machine to get an ice cream sandwich. The machine told me I had an expected amount of money in my account. (I have a payroll account, they bring my balance up to a certain level every month.)

We went to the Cougar Eat for dinner, when I paid for 6 donuts, the register said my balance was $27.50, which was $20 too low. It turns out that I have the $30 from the Fun Walk applied to my account. I guess it just comes off when I use it at a Dining Services place. I went online to look again. but I can only look at the Payroll side of the account, not the "Dining Services" side. I'm not sure when they stuck it on, but it's there now.

Tara did all the fun walks, they added $30 to her card also. I know this, because I used her card at Taco Bell in the CougarEat to see if it worked. She now has only $20 left on her card.

Anyway, if you stop me soon at lunchtime on campus, and we are anywhere near a place to eat, there's an outside chance lunch is on me...

Meeting people

On Saturday, I took the girls to a Children's Parade. They do this in town every year before the big parade on the 4th, where they let the kids walk about 3/4 of a mile down the street, and a local dairy company donates thousands of Popsicles for everyone to eat after.

Lots of people get all decked out for the thing, we don't, we just go down there to try to get them to burn off some energy. (It's a mile and a half round trip...) The girls seem to like it, I hope it's not just because they get to walk down the middle of the street. (Emma enjoys waving at people, we should have gone and gotten some candy to throw at the spectators.)

This year, the girls were intent on finding Drew. He was working, I figured it gave them something to do while they walked. We got down to the end of the thing, and didn't see Drew, so I called him. Turns out he was stationed at the very beginning of the parade, we missed him somehow. He was gone by then.

On our way back to the car, I saw Jose Enriquez. He hasn't changed a bit in 10 years. He's got 2 girls, and lives 15 miles North of us. It sounds like he's doing well. (Although he seemed a little taken back by the fact that I had 5 girls...)

I don't see many people I knew my freshman year in college very often any more. I suppose they have scattered to the 4 winds...

No blowing my hand off for me

We live close enough to the mountain that lighting fireworks off in our area has been banned for a number of years now. (Several years ago there was a fire started on the mountain that spread like crazy and took a long time to put out. It gave us something to look at night, though.)

This year it's very dry. We've had a number of grass fires spring up from random stuff already. (Last week, a tractor started a grass fire in the canyon that went for a number of days.)

The city has banned all fireworks in the city boundaries except for a few parks over by the lake. (At least any place that is within 20 feet of weeds, grass, trees, or structures. I think that pretty much covers it.) I don't blame them. I have only watered my grass once in the last 2 1/2 weeks, I think one little spark on the front lawn would start a fire. I kind of expect some sort of fire to start over by the mountain this year. We've had a couple of years of good growth up there, but it's brown enough right now that I can tell, and I have heard a few fireworks going off somewhere nearby tonight. I can just see some uninformed (or uncaring) person thinking that going over near the mountain would be a good place to light off fireworks, and starting an inferno.

Back in the day, Rob's sister would have us over for Pioneer Day, we would light off a whole bunch of illegal fireworks from Missouri. 2 years ago, we went down to Drew's place to light off fireworks, but he's got a swimming pool he's building back there right now. Last year we went to Tara's parents house, but they don't run their swamp cooler, I gets awfully hot up there, and it's going to push over 100 degrees every day this week. I would much rather have Tara's parents come down here, and we can enjoy the holiday without lighting off any fireworks.

Classes

I've been thinking about taking a Spanish class. We have a Hispanic ward in our Stake, some of the people that need to set an appointment end up not being able to communicate with me. (And there doesn't seem to be any sign at this point of my being released until the Stake President is released, which I'm ok with.) Right now, I have 2 people I need to get in for an appointment, I haven't found out how their English is yet, so I haven't called to set them up.

A few months ago, I was trying to get someone to come in for an appointment. I spent a number of telephone calls trying to communicate, and thought I finally had, when the time for the appointment came, the guy didn't show up. It turned out that I had been speaking with his roommate all along, but the roommate didn't really understand.

I rely heavily on one of the High Councilmen in the Stake to help with these things, but it would be nice to just be able to speak for myself, especially since there are often times on Tuesdays that people walk in for appointments.

For Fall semester, there are a number of Spanish classes offered by the Evening program. There are a number of different levels of class offered by the Evening program at 7am. I think just about all the Spanish I learned in High School is gone now, so I wonder if I should try to start at the beginning. They have a foundational Spanish set of classes for the uninitiated. Those 2 classes are pass/fail, which is more to my style, but I wonder how far they would get me. It's not like I need to learn how to buy bread, I just need to have Church related conversations. Maybe I need to go over to the department and talk to them about the Foundational vs University level classes.

Then there is the other side of the coin. I never really had a strong driving motivation to attend class, I was always 3 weeks behind by the 2nd class of a semester. I've got a lot of other things to worry about besides the workload a class will give, and work itself will most definitely get in the way of class. (I wouldn't be able to attend the first 2 days of the semester, that's our biggest load, and spend those 2 days in the data center...)

Now that I've written this last paragraph, I wonder if it's a good idea at all. That class is 7-8am Monday-Friday. I have a 4 day trip scheduled in the end of September, and I still have to take 6 days of vacation this year or I lose them. (I could take up to 28 days of vacation for the year total at this point. I don't have to work on Mondays for the rest of the year if I don't want to.) By October, I could be to the point of not working Mondays or Fridays the rest of the year, not that I would do that, but if we get to October and I haven't used any vacation time yet, I might seriously pick Monday or Friday to take off for the rest of the year, and have 3 day weekends for the rest of the year. 7am is also kind of early for me. I'm not sure all the cylinders would be firing that early, even if I got up. Maybe that's exactly what you need to learn a new language.

There is a "Weight Management" class in the PE department that's Monday and Wednesdays, it's only a 1 block class, so it wouldn't last too terribly long.

Game Time

Catan the card game

Me - 1
Tara - 0

I also broke the "curse of the blue card set", winning with those cards.

At some point in the game (about 10pm), we had all our children out of their rooms watching us play. Several were trying to be a little too helpful. They are all back in bed now, I think I gave the 3 oldest sufficient motivation to stay in the room...