White noise

The other day I was staying in a guest house that someone provided me in Moab.  It was a two-night stay.  The view is gorgeous in Moab no matter where you are.

When I got back to the house on the second night after a great hike, the battery in the smoke detector was dying.  You know what that means, right?  Really loud chirps every thirty seconds or so.  I was dead tired from getting in very late the night before, so I really needed some sleep.

I'm in an unfamiliar house, it's ten at night, and I know where nothing is.  Even if I could find a nine volt battery (or go buy one) I couldn't change it because the smoke detector was on the vaulted ceiling well out of reach.

I closed the door to the bedroom.  That helped some, but I knew that I'd be constantly thinking of when the next chirp would come and I'd never get to sleep.

So, if I couldn't eliminate the noise, I decided to try and drown it out.  I downloaded this free white noise app for my iPad.

I tried several of the calming sounds.  I knew I couldn't turn up the volume too loud, or I'd never get to sleep anyway.  The campfire app sounds like a crackling fire with crickets in the background.  I found the perfect volume so that every time the smoke detector chirped, it just sounded like one of the crickets by the fire.

I slept like a baby.

Larry Thomas is who, now?

I met Larry Thomas.  I even got a picture taken with him, though he was ignoring me at the time and maybe didn't actually know.

Larry Thomas played the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld and he came down to the Owlz game a few weeks ago as part of a promotion for Gandolfo's, which wanted to sell some soup. So, they brought in a guy famous for telling people they can't buy soup.

I'm sure it worked, because the line for Mr. Nazi for signing the ladles that the Owlz gave away was super long.

By the way, Larry Thomas has also played Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

This is Thomas as Osama walking with some schmoe who's playing President Bush.

When I googled Larry Thomas Saddam Hussein, no picture came up of what I was looking for, but I did find this one, which is of neither Hussein or Thomas, but I thought was funny enough to post anyway.

He also told a story about when he was on an airplane and a flight attendant said to him, "I guess no soup for you?"  The guy sitting next to him didn't get it.

Fireworks and dogs

On Pioneer Day morning I walked around Oquirrh Lake.



It's a nice walk when I don't have time to get to the canyons.

This time, there was a non-leashed dog wandering about.  Eventually, she started following me, which I encouraged by whistling for and praising her.  I didn't know where the owners were, but figured I could either find them after my whole circuit of the lake or check the dog's collar and make the connection that way.

She was a good dog.  Eager to please, and also eager to chase ducks.  Eventually, we made it all around the lake without finding anyone who knew the dog, but plenty of people who seemed please to see her.  At least one of those people wasn't so pleased, because that person called the Daybreak rent-a-cops who sent someone along to chastise me for having an off-leash dog.

Back at the beginning, I checked Emma's collar and found out her name was Emma and that she had a phone number.  I called.  "Do you know Emma?" I asked.  Yes, she knew Emma and had been looking for her overnight.  Fireworks set off in the neighborhood the night before had scared her to the point of taking off when she was out to tinkle.  She ended up about a mile away from home and across Bangerter Highway.

It was a nice reunion when Mom showed up to get Emma, who was thrilled to see her.

Oi--society!

I just got back from the hot tub.

I discovered while I was in Cancun that one thing I appreciate in life is modesty.  No thanks on the skimpy bikinis, thanks.  I think that makes even beautiful women look cheap.

And it's worse on twelve-year-olds.  They really shouldn't wear such things.  Their parents really shouldn't buy them.  There are men that aren't me, who would find such things titillating--is that what their parents are going for?

I unfortunately could also hear these girls talking, complaining about living in "Troy's house," and quoting Troy saying to their mother, "Smack that ass."  Oh, okay.  That explains something about the outfit.

And then the girls stand there with their arms folded over their bare torsos.  The boys (who wear perfectly reasonable bathing suits, thank you) asked why girls always stood like that.  "Because we think we're fat."

First, these girls were eighty pounds with their hair soaking wet from the pool, and second, why the string bikini, then?

More family magic

I went to Idaho for the fourth of July.  My sister lives in Idaho Falls.  After a day there, it is very clear to me why the Eternal plan we're part of is a family-centered one.

There's a connection that comes with family, even extended parts of it.  The love I feel for my nieces and nephews amazes me, and I'm sure it's dwarfed by the feelings of their parents for them.

My sisters in-laws, whom I've met but am not close to, were around for the holiday.  Big family get-together at the park.  The whole group probably had close to two dozen children.

There's no reason for that group of individuals to get together except for the fact that they're family.  And I don't know, but if they're like any other family, there's baggage they overcome in order to get together and be nice.

But I think that's the point.  Family is so close and has such potential for love and joy, but is still full of imperfect, sinful people who hurt themselves and each other.  I think that hurt can be exacerbated by the fact that the pain comes when there should be such love and devotion.

But that's the lesson, I think.  Forgiving family has the greatest potential to show us the fruits of real forgiveness, because no matter the pain, the disloyalty, or the betrayal, forgiving one's family means that all the same potential for love and joy is still there.  And choosing forgiveness lets you experience that, while holding grudges means you won't.

Just like the big plan.

Family magic

I saw Brave last weekend.  Opening Day, actually, at a matinee, in a theater full of children with their moms, and sometimes dads.  And that was appropriate, because the movie and the experience afterwards reinforced the importance of family.

I'm not going to give away a secret about the movie, or I'm going to try not.  If you've seen the preview (if not...)

 

then you know that the movie is about a Scottish princess who tries to change her fate because her parents want her to get married to one of three Scottish goofballs.

To get out of this, the princess, Merida, does something that turns out to be horrible for her family. It's an accident, of sorts, but a selfish and horrible one.

Yet the mother's reaction in the movie is just what I'd expect from a mother.  She doesn't hold a grudge, and even though she's justifiably angry, she spends the movie obviously loving her daughter, growing closer to her, and helping solve the problem Merida created.  The film isn't quite as good as some of the best Pixar movies, but the message is.

And then after the movie I went to the restroom.  You should know, at this point, that when guys use urinals we just pull down whatever covers our bottom half just far enough to take care of business.  At least, we learn to do that over time.  When I was in elementary school, I once dropped trou all the way down in the boys' room in sort of a "feast your eyes" moment, though the intention was just to pee.  I got laughed at by enough older boys (one would have been enough) that I never made that mistake again.

Well, there was a wee lad in the men's room at the theater who made the same error, and both halves of the moon were showing as I entered.  But this laddie's older brother, seeing his brother's predicament, went and stood guard behind him, so that his backside was protected from strangers' eyes.  Then after the older brother lifted him up to reach the soap and sink to wash his hands.


Family creates the kind of bond that makes otherwise young and immature people do simple and selfless things.


It's no wonder that life on Earth is a family-centered plan.

Hikes

Utah is just a fantastic place for being close to the city and also close to some of the best mountains in the world.  In a single weekend you can get pictures like this.

This first set is on the way to Red Pine Lake up Little Cottonwood Canyon. Running water may be the best sound Earth makes, and I love to walk along it on gorgeous days like last Saturday.  The snow was melting and running down, though as you'll see below, not quite enough of it had completed its journey.

The first part of this hike is steepish and rocky.  Good news is that there aren't bikers, but the bad news is that it's as hard on knees and ankles as it would be on tires.  After you hit the first creek run, you can go one of two ways.  I went toward Red Pine Lake.  On the way you see the mouth of the canyon opening to the Salt Lake Valley to the west.  

It was too early in June to complete this hike, especially if you didn't know that and wore open toed shoes, like I did.  So did Robin, who I met on the mountain.  Up high at about where I expected the lake to be, the trail and most of the mountain was still hidden by snow.  For a while she and I braved the cold and wet feet to find it, even climbing like monkeys on some rocks that protrude from the mountain and snow above a running stream beneath it.  But whatever that was I knew it wasn't a trail that leads to a lake.  Eventually, Robin and I both decided that the lake would be there in July when the snow wasn't, and we'd be back.

Then I drove to Moab, which conveniently has one charter school that scheduled its board meeting for early in June before it gets unbearably hot there.  My favorite hike there is Negro Bill Canyon, but this time I went for variety over familiarity.  I hiked the Moab Rim Trail.  It's listed as a three-mile one-way hike with 900 feet of altitude gain.  The websites don't mention that the whole gain comes in the first half-mile as you climb a mountain with no trail at all, just rocks.  And even though it's early June, there's still plenty of sweating to be done.  But as you climb, you're rewarded with views like this.

The Colorado River running by the Rim and parts of Canyonlands (I think) in the background.

Looking to the east, the city of Moab fills a valley between the red rock mountains.

If you forget your hat, you're bound to get sunburned, especially up top where the hair isn't as thick as it used to be.  So, you move your hair around to cover the barer spots at different times and end up with a do like this.

This bush was singing "She'll be coming around the mountain when she comes."

  By now it's pretty warm, so I went to hike the Powerhouse Trail along Mill Creek and found this:



You have to cross the creek three times in knee deep water to get here, so remove your phone from your pocket.  This swimming hole was a ton of fun, but it was also great getting here.

Love the contrasting colors.

For some reason you have to tilt your monitor counter clockwise to get the effect of this mini trail between the rocks and the foliage.

This waterfall was a bear to climb the first time.  There's another trail to get to the top of the cliffs that surround this pool, but I didn't take it.  So, I climbed up the moss-covered rocks against the water.  There are moss-free sections of the rocks on which your shoes (wear water shoes on this hike--not a good idea to have to take off your shoes and go barefoot here, though some people were that crazy) can get a grip.  But I was paralyzed with fear for about three minutes before I was able to take the last few steps and grips to get above the water.



As you can see, there's a few people there already, all clothed (I found out later that this is a popular place for the teenagers to skinny dip).  The cliffs are probably just under 20 feet on the left and about ten on the right. Braver souls than me made the big jump, doing flips and whatnot. One guy even found a spot to do a wall run for about four steps on the cliffs before jumping in the water.  It's only about six feet, so no diving.

Then on to board meeting, where the locals love to hear how much I love their town.

Then, just to round everything out, I went to Bell Canyon Reservoir a few days later.

Isn't Utah just grand?

Isn't life just grand?