Vacation
August 29, 2010
Melanie and I are finally going to go on a vacation all by ourselves. We have purchased tickets to fly to San Diego at the end of September for a four day trip. We are going to be staying at the Marriott Gaslamp Quarter, and are pretty excited.
Flora
August 29, 2010
One of the things that I remember from the time I spent as a missionary on the island of Barbados was the plant life. Some plants I’d never seen before, nor have I seen since, were things such as sugar cane, cotton, and breadfruit.
The sugar cane was generally found in large fields and was anywhere from 8 – 12 feet tall. The stalks had huge blade-shaped leaves on the top and some of the fields were harvested shortly before I left Barbados at the end of February 1994. My first experience with sugar cane was when I was walking down the street with my companion, Elder Hans Carlson, and he showed me what it was. There were some scraps of cane on the ground and we picked a few pieces up and took them home. He showed me how to use the knife to score it around the stalk to make it easily breakable, then how to cut the recently broken chunks into pieces small enough to fit into ones mouth.
Oh, my, talk about a dentist’s dream come true. Apparently, you don’t eat the cane. You just suck on it until all of the sugar is out of it. My guess is that the process of sticking it between the cheek and gums and leaving it there for hours was probably bad for the teeth. Now that I think about it, I don’t remember the Bajan people being very well known for having good teeth. Hmm, I wonder if there is a connection.
Pavers
August 22, 2010
I am about 95% complete with another project. This time the project involved a lot of paver stones, the moving of a lot o dirt, removal of grass, and the movement of a sprinkler head.
We have a large dirt and rock area behind our fence to the side of our garage. It has always been a place where things go to get forgotten about, or otherwise be put out of the way because there isn’t another place for them. It is also the place where the garbage and recycling cans reside.
This brings me to the reason for the project I just undertook. I was tired of having to figure out a way to get a heavy fully loaded garbage can through the mud and dirt, over the rocks, through the gate, then over some lawn and out to the street each week. The lawn just outside the gate was getting pretty matted from walking on it, too, and I got tired of the ugly.
I decided, on a whim, to see what it would take to smooth out the dirt a little bit, so I got a pick and hoe. After I found that process to be not too horrible, I went and bought about 30 bricks, some paver base, and some paver sand. After I got them in place, I realized that I had the time and strength to do a little more, so I got 60 more bricks.
After those were in, I found that my project still wasn’t done, so I went and got 100 more. Surely, that would be enough to get the majority of the rest completed!
Uh, no. Not so much.
All told, I purchased about 600 (maybe more) bricks, and the equivalent amount of base and sand, and really spent a ton of time getting this project done.
I still have a few stones to cut and set, and about 10 bricks that need to be set on the border. I also need to figure out how I want to cut some corner pieces for the area outside the gate.
Other than that, the project is done, just in time for me to start another semester of school.
6 Minutes
August 11, 2010
I bought an iPhone 4 last night and it works great. This meant that I had an iPhone 3G that was unused, though. I reverted the OS from version 4.0 to version 3.1.3, then listed the phone on KSL Classifieds tonight. In less than five minutes I had received my first text message about the phone. Less than a minute later, I had another. Before six minutes had passed, somebody had agreed to buy the phone for only $10 less than what I had paid for my new one.
Nice.
Within 30 minutes, I had cash in my pocket, and was more than happy.
Nicer.
Domestic
August 8, 2010
I had the pleasure of calling the cops tonight. Evidently, some people in the cul-de-sac south of me were embroiled in a really heated domestic disturbance. Here is my summary of the event:
1) Yelling between a man and a woman, about 70 percent her
2) Lots of breaking glass
3) More yelling, about 80 percent her
4) They took the argument out to the front yard and driveway
5) She accused him of giving her a bloody nose
6) He said she did it to herself to make him look bad
7) She said that she would tell the cops he did it, and the cops would believe her because he’s on parole
What I have learned:
1) The police response time to my neighborhood is 20 minutes
Fabulous.
