Wednesday, December 19, 2001

Alienation is an engine that moves while at the same time debilitates the 'advancement' that's achieved with technology in our ultra-mobile society. As people move around, growing further apart, having a hard time staying in one place for very long, they often snatch at anything that lends the feeling of connectivity and sharing between beings. Tools of artificial closeness, such as discussion groups, email, web-logs, wireless phone mail, etc. are invented and marketed more vigorously with each passing day. Unfortunately, unless one's friends and family are ravenous readers, blessed with mountains of time and money, or simply questing thinkers and artists and we fountains of creativity and glib wisdom, it seems the distance we seek to negate gets less negligible as the novelty of electronic closeness wears thin.

Go for the real thing this holiday season. Really touch someone, pour out the soul of your heart to someone you miss. They may be yearning for just that sort of interaction. They might not be so far away, after all.

The follow-ups might become easier as you keep this sort of interaction growing.

Who knows? You might have to take a pay cut and move physically closer, but the spiritual and emotional rewards might surprise you. Perhaps the substitute will still work best for you in your current situation. Just don't let alienation tear at your relationships, aye?

Saturday, December 15, 2001

Brynni's birthday! And along with all the familial bliss came sixteen inches of powder to make the whole world look pure and clean. I love snow! What's the big deal about driving in it? The biggest problem is when the damn scrapers come and make heavy, brown slush out of it all and everybody thinks they can go seventy miles an hour and fishtail and swerve all over the road. I say let it compact and drive slow as humanly possible on what little sand they can scrounge up out of the local pit. Salt is for food and making homemade icecream, for hell's sake. My poor Toyota has had about all the seasoning it can take before it turns to dust next spring when it finally gets a chance to dry. Oh well, the busybacksoons rule the world...

If you're looking for photos of the grand occasion, look no further than this link. Enjoy your Christmas and Hanukkah season and drive with care!

Monday, December 3, 2001

This may not be the promised tomorrow on the last entry, but it is still less time between entries than the previous few. Keep faith, dear reader.

Everyone is well at our home. The greatest thing to happen in recent days is the ascendency of Hyrum from the crawling caste to the uprightly mobile class. Not only is this good for his self image, it's his ticket off the damn cold floor in our drafty old poorly-heated house. He was sick for a week or so during the latter part of November, furrowing our brows with a sticky cough that threatened pneumonia. Now he is back to normal, learning to negotiate the floors with slippery socks or clompy shoes, the bugaboos of those who learn to walk in the winter. I wonder if this causes annoying scars that last into adulthood? I don't like wearing shoes to this day. Hm.

To update our many avid readers, (i fear i am the only one, but don't tell me, i like my visions of blogging grandeur) we enjoyed our trip to Yellowstone this year with the whole family and Moshe too. Dustin and Misty Crawford were able to join us this year as well, they brought their dogs Cache and Marley and we had a great time hopping from place to place.

Winter was long in coming this year, temperatures staying well into the fifties and sixties until the fourth week in November. Sheesh. Now we have been blessed with the largest amount of snow on the ground that we've had in years. Amazing what the seasons bring and how fast things can change.

Christmas is well on its way, the lights are up and "It's a Wonderful Life" has been watched. We'll now see how much eggnog i can consume afore my coronary arteries turn into swizzlesticks...

Tuesday, November 27, 2001

November. Yet more, the end of November. Watch for an update tomorrow, in the meantime check out our other site for photos...

Thursday, September 13, 2001

i wrote out a lengthy and heartfelt entry and it dissappeared before my eyes while editing. This page pretty much describes my feelings and attitude right now. please read and many thanks to Mr. James Lileks, for many things besides his eloquence, position and ability to make a damn fine site.

Friday, August 31, 2001

things are going fine right now; we are in the middle of a possibly life-saving refinance and restructure of our debts. that is taking up much of my energy outside of the school, although i am also out as much as i can pruning the old trees with Brad.

Ryan MacEgan is down for the long weekend, and when he is around things can be exciting. I'll post as much as i have time for over the weekend, do enjoy yours.

Friday, August 24, 2001

school has started anew. on Monday i should have at least eight kids to help make up several quarters of eighth grade work so they can enter high school as bona-fide ninth graders. as the year progresses, i receive the students that are not making the grade academically, socially, or emotionally in the high school's regular classes. this is my work and my story, to bring to pass all this silliness and survive. At least one of my students is a very limited english speaker and i am working with him on pre-algebra concepts. all from scratch. anyway...

drie and i had our tenth anniversary yesterday the twenty-third. it was a day of work, followed by my giving my love a bouquet of flowers, shortly followed by my leaving to go prune and remove rosebushes untill sundown to supplement my currently $200 monthly deficeit in spending on absolutely nothing but debt from school, minimal groceries and gasoline so that i can teach at-risk and "fragile" kids how to make it in our out-of-balance and uncaring society. make sense?

on top of it all, we live in a poor old house that if we were so strange and odd as to be "terrible" god-fearing polygamists, it would be no doubt be called "dilapidated" in the media accounts.

wah, wah, grumble, grumble.

i promise to be happy and more white-washed next time.

enjoy your day!

Tuesday, August 21, 2001

what a day was yesterday. after the whole wacky first day back to work at school and an evening of shaking off a headache, i was washing out an old pop bottle i had found at Drie's grandma's. as a fairly inquisitive and sometimes dangerous and silly person, i began inserting the nozzle in the neck and pressurizing the bottle until a "cloud" of sorts formed inside, at which time i would release the pressure with a small 'pop' of mist and spray. i reckon i went too far with the pressure build up when the damn bottle burst in my fool face, thus causing this lovely result. please don't try this stunt at home folks, ever.

second day of work: not much happened of consequence besides the sheer joy of making up new stories to explain my laceration and thereafter admitting to the truth when the fabrication doesn't satisfy curiousity. silly humans. why couldn't i be sabre-dueling to defend the honour of ladies of the realm??? eh???

Monday, August 20, 2001

first day of school. my computer is dead. i am on a student computer. hope this is not a portent of things to come...

more later.

Saturday, August 18, 2001

we had a grand time up in logan. Dustin and Misty's wedding was beautiful and the time in Logan was priceless. Bradley, Darren and London and we had a picnic at Willow Park followed by a romp through the little zoo there on Thursday night. (sorry, no digital photos, though we have some hi-8 i'm sure you'd love to see!)

we came home via Tremonton (Drie's Grandma's house), Brigham City (the best damn peaches in the west), down the west side of Utah Lake (oh, the tragedy of wanton sprawl and development), into the west desert and through such gems as the little mining community of Eureka. in all, very relaxing; though the kids tried their mightiest to drive all into frenzy and imbalance through such antics as crushing a bag of barbeque-flavored chips, throwing them everywhere and mashing them into each other's hair as a finale. ohmigosh. still, it was worth it.

we got home to the terrible mess we left plus a brigade of lovely little ants taking advantage of the domestic chaos disorganization and we left. eventually we crawled out of it and had a feast of crayfish our friend Paul brought over in an ice chest live and straight from the mountains above Spring City. not a bad way to end our summer.

oh yeah. i start work again on Monday. COURAGE! (what is the frequency, kenneth?)

Tuesday, August 14, 2001

got back from the House Range in the western desert of Utah last night. wow. that is the only word i can think of to even come close to quick description. absolutely stunning. i went up for one and a half days with a friend and did a crazy whirlwind tour in our toyota and on foot. amazing geology. aincient bristlecone pines. a 9,500 foot peak with a 4,000 foot vertical drop. amazing. i'll post some images when they get processed.

we are leaving for logan today, i will post when we get back. summer is a wasting!

Friday, August 10, 2001

it's friday and it's been a good week. lots has been done, some has been learned and much has been experienced. i've been out pruning trees and bucking limbs with a friend, thus making a few extra dollars. this is good inasmuch that the summer is pretty much over and i won't get much time for supplemental income very often.

another good thing to look forward to is going up to Logan next Tuesday the fifteenth for Dustin Crawford's wedding. the money i have earned should be good to have when taking care of a family on the road. We hope to get some hiking and canoeing in up there, we do love to get out on the water for some paddling action.

we found a little white praying mantis in the house the night before last, that is about all the graphic info i have to share today.

it has been raining quite a bit lately, especially up in the mountains. 'tis a treat to have them green and verdant this late in the summer, i hope to post some more images of mountain adventures before long.

Wednesday, August 8, 2001

hey y'all-

got some news for you 'uns today. drie and i had a brainstorming session this morning with our friend Brad (no seizures involved, brits) and came up with a new concept. we are working to bring about a new service, called "intuitive counselling and development." i will be the main "facilitator" and it will be an informal healing and councilling outreach. people will be able to take advantage of it in exchange for barter or a mutually agreed half-hourly rate. the main idea is to help people to realize thier own potential for growth and healing and enable them to bring it out of their own soul and heart. each has this ability to intuit, subconciously and conciously finding answers and solutions to both great and small problems. the best part of this ability is the part that God and the Divine play in showing these individual paths to the individual her or himself. but hey, i am starting to blather...

the kids have enjoyed a day of pool antics, and though it is right now sprinkling and cool outside, they got nice sunburns for their fun and out-of-doorsness around noon. they are having a summer o' bliss, splendid examples from them every day.

a dear friend of ours has put up a new site in the msn conglomerate. his name is Ryan David MacEgan and you can check out his creative efforts at Ataritron. Enjoy your meanderings!

Tuesday, August 7, 2001

took a secret journey to the top of North Tent Peak in the Manti-LaSal Nat'l Forest today. Boy, it's amazing what an 11,200 foot view will do for a warped and weary soul. check it out! (not quite the same experience, though. Sorry. Come down and we'll take you there.)
hey marcus,

read your post about super-itzaak (yay isaac!!!), and felt compelled to agree with you on the part about not having anything to do with us, i think it's definitely the mothers doing and not water pollution. Hyrum, seven months old today, doing his own super-human thang.

nutty kid.
got a new isp today, dumped sisna fast and furiously. not very customer-friendly, if you ever think to sign up avec that company. New family e-mail: burn@cut.net We'll see how that works.

not much else going on, apricot harvest is winding down, and any leads on good peaches will be welcomed most enthusiastically.

check out our photo albums, they are getting pretty dern large and beefy...

Saturday, August 4, 2001

Yesterday was a wonderful break, but today is sunny and hot. The word has gone out that the irrigation pond is empty, so the rain was sure a good and welcome blessing. Apricots are busting out all over, so we've apricot jam, syrup and a huge tray a-drying outside.
 The bounties of the country are many.

Friday, August 3, 2001

i can't get this to post links! we shall see...
ok. we have lift-off. i think i understand this process now, so on with the news. today is rainy and cool, a veritable vacation from the day-to-day severe drought we in spring city experience due to a lack of sufficient irrigation water and general community initiative. the kids are all inside and right now and are still in a mood of general cooperation with some desire to help make a clean house out of this chaos.

i posted a bunch of photos on our msn (ack!!!) community page and you can link to it with this address:



http://communities.msn.com/vehementintrospection/_whatsnew.msnw



i haven't figured out how to generate a link, so please cut and paste to investigate the whole shebang. check back often for updates. enjoy!!
i am still trying to get this to work properly, please let me know how it is working for you all. (patience is a vulture, you know)