I just got back from dropping off my truck, along with the camper, up near the top of Huntington Canyon. We decided since it's Labor Day weekend, and it's also the middle of the deer and elk archery season, that we'd better take the camper up today in order to get a good camping spot. It was only about 80°F when we left Price, but it was downright cold when we got to the campsite. It was also full dark by the time we got there--I wish we could have left earlier than we did, but I was afraid that the warmer it was outside, the more likely my truck was to overheat. The water temperature actually stayed just barely below normal the entire time, and it even dropped lower than that at some points when the road going up the canyon wasn't so steep.

We didn't leave the truck at the spot I had planned on going to because Traci's parents went up about 15 minutes before we did and picked out a spot themselves, but it was actually better than where I wanted to go. We're going back up there Friday when Traci and I get off work, and I think Jaysen and Michelle will be getting up there around the same time. And Mike and Allison are probably coming up Saturday morning, because they have a lot further to drive than we do. It should be a decent weekend (hopefully better than last weekend, anyway), and it'll probably be the last time we go camping for the year.

I just got a call from the Price City police chief, who basically told me that there's nothing they can do about my dipshit neighbors. And I'm not surprised about it one bit, either. He seemed to believe that whoever drove through my front yard did so by accident, even though it had only been a week since they were warned not to do that exact thing by the police. But it's ok, they'll get theirs eventually.

There's something I found extremely hilarious about this whole situation, though. Last week, after we'd gotten back from camping, I was in my back yard watering the lawn when I heard somebody call my name from my neighbor's yard. I looked up, and there was Joe "Don't Drop the Soap" Sanchez. He and his little brother were hanging out with the little girls over there, and after talking to him for a few minutes, Joe mentioned how G.I. Jorge and Big Russ had been hanging out over there as well. I just laughed my ass off, learning that a couple of guys my age are still hanging out with college freshmen. Can anybody say "Shawn Bryant?" =)

Here's some damned good commentary, pointing out just how ridiculous slavery reparations are, from the Salt Lake Tribune.

I was watching Alias last night, and Will mentioned using LexisNexis to dig up some info on some other guy. I just thought it was cool, hearing my employer's name mentioned on a national tv show. I remember seeing Clint Eastwood's character using LexisNexis in the movie True Crime too. Yeah, that's nifty.

My wife got a part-time job at a daycare, and her first day was today. It's quite nice, because it's what she's always wanted to do (I dunno why, I can't stand other strangers' kids), and she gets to bring Michael to work with her. Hopefully it'll bring in enough cash to get some bills paid off, and maybe it'll even turn into a full-time gig. And if not, at least it will give her something good to put on her resume. She said Michael had fun today, beating up other kids and stealing their lunch money, so it'll be some good experience for him too.

Not only is my mother-in-law looney, she's also extremely lazy. Just a few minutes ago, she called my wife from her cell phone, telling her to come outside to talk to her. That's right, she called my house from my driveway. My wife went outside and talked to her mom for a few minutes, while her mom just sat in her car. After my wife came back in the house, I asked her what the hell that was all about. She said her mom told her that she was in a hurry and didn't have time to come to the door. Well what the fuck did she even come to my house for? She has a cell phone, so if she was in a hurry but still wanted to talk to my wife, she could have done so on the phone! I swear, logic doesn't exist in these people's worlds. My wife didn't seem to think it was strange, but if somebody called me from my own driveway and told me to come out and talk to them, I'd tell them to fuck off. Get off your lazy ass and come in if you want to talk--don't just whistle and say, "Here boy!" and expect me to come running like a dog.

I found this story through Fark, about a guy who tried to grab a woman's baby out of her arms and throw it over a railing to a plaza far below. One of the policemen said, "There were no indications that (the suspect) was deranged or under the influence or crazy." Well, except for the fact that he tried to throw a baby off a ledge to its death! Sure, that's not crazy at all.

The USDA did a poor job of choosing a word to describe what they call "organic" foods. When I see fruit or vegetables in the store that are certified as "organic," I have to wonder, are the others made of stainless steel? Or solid granite? They really should make up their own word for that, rather than twist the meaning of an existing word.

My neighbors are at it again. College is starting, so a bunch of damned girls have moved back in, and their friends are over at all hours of the night. Last week when I was watering my front lawn, I noticed tire marks on the parkway where somebody had driven about two feet too far to the right as they left my neighbor's driveway. I was a little pissed that there were tire marks on my lawn, especially after this episode, so I called the police. The cop came and took a look at it, then talked to the girl whose parents own the house nextdoor, and told her to keep her and her damned friends off my lawn.

Well, yesterday morning my wife noticed some more tire marks on the lawn, but this time it wasn't on the parkway. It was right near the front of my house--somebody had purposely driven through my flower bed and over the walkway I just poured a couple months ago. It tore up some of the edging, damaged some plants, and left tire marks on the grass. I called the cops yet again, and the guy that came this time was pretty much a douche bag. He went to talk to the girl nextdoor again, and she of course denied any wrongdoing--she said it must have been one of her friends. The cop came back and basically told me that since I didn't see who did it, he couldn't do anything about it. I got into a yelling match with him, telling him that he damned well better do something about it, since it was obviously a retaliatory act. He said the best he could do is to turn it over to the investigators, but nothing would probably come of it without being able to prove which bitch did it. I pointed at the tire marks on the cement walkway and told him I could prove it right now by comparing the tire marks to my neighbors' and their friends' vehicles. He apparently hadn't even thought of that, because he seemed surprised when I mentioned it, but he called for another cop to come over with a camera, and they took some pictures of the tire marks. I still don't think anything will come of this whole thing, at least not through legal channels. If the cops can't take care of it, I will.

A new version of HotDocs was announced today. My job should be much more interesting for the week or two it takes me to get the hang of version 6.0.

We never did see any search party for Elizabeth Smart up around Strawberry--they must not have had many volunteers. We did see a suspicious vehicle, though--it was just filling in a shallow grave, and it kept looking over its shoulder. Seriously, I'll never figure out what a "suspicious vehicle" is. We actually did see a white SUV or minivan or something parked at the end of a dirt road at the southeast end of Strawberry Reservoir, but if that constitutes a suspicious vehicle, then I saw several of them in the past two days. Let's take them down to the station for questioning.

Camping was ok. Sleeping in a tent really sucks though, especially when you're used to having a camper. I think next time I go camping, I'm bringing the camper no matter what, even if I have to stop every ten miles to let the engine cool off and refill the radiator.

I was pretty pissed off when we got there, because the first two camping spots that I wanted to stay at had trailers parked there, but nobody was around. Some assholes came up earlier in the week and parked their trailers, then went back home. Fucking pussies. I seriously wanted to hook up to their trailers and haul them back down to the side of the highway, but I didn't really want to be camped in their old spot when they came looking. So the camping spot we stayed at wasn't the best, but it was good enough. Next time, I'm slashing tires though. Bitches.

I surprisingly didn't take many pictures, so I probably won't put them on my site until I take a few more decent ones. Michael had a lot of fun dumping dirt on his head, and he was filthy the entire time we were up there--I got some great pictures of that. There was nothing but dirt around, so it's not surprising. The bathtub was pretty dirty when we got done bathing him. Me too, for that matter. I'm just glad to be home, and clean again. Camping was fun, but I've still got two days off work, and I plan to spend them doing absolutely nothing.

Oh great--we're going camping this weekend at Strawberry Reservoir, and the Smart family is asking for volunteers to help search for their missing daughter in that area on Saturday at 9:00 am. According to KUTV News, "The Smart family said they've had some e-mail tips of suspicious activity near Strawberry Reservoir, so they're asking horse-back riders, hikers and ATV-riders to help in a search this Saturday at 9 am..." And from the Deseret News: "The search is based on a suspicious white vehicle that appeared to be a Jeep or truck of some sort, seen parked at the end of a road about one week after Elizabeth's kidnapping, David Smart said. The vehicle was spotted during at least two different air searches, but when ground searchers reached the area it was gone, he said."

That is just the most ridiculous thing I've heard. I saw dozens of "Jeeps or trucks of some sort" while I was there two weeks ago. Big deal. Anyway, as long as the searchers don't bug me, I won't bug them.

The meteor shower last night was kind of a bust. I mean, it was ok, but it was nothing compared to November's shower. I got my camera figured out well enough to take decent pictures of the night sky--to the point where you can actually see stars that are bright enough--but no meteors happened to streak across the frame for the 157 pictures I shot. There were just way fewer meteors than I expected, and none as big and bright as the huge one we saw last year.

There were a lot of coyotes around us though, and it made me a little nervous standing in the middle of nowhere, on a moonless night, with them yipping and howling not 300 yards away. I kept shining my flashlight off into the brush, trying to reassure myself that they weren't getting closer.

After my camera battery died, we just headed back home. It was damned cold for the middle of August, and we had the heat on for the entire drive home. I was chilled to the bone from being out of the car for more than an hour in that cold. I was worried about hitting deer or elk on the drive home, but apparently it was rabbits I should have been worried about. I hit two of them within a couple of miles of each other, and now I have blood splattered in my wheel wells and on one of my tires.

My hike yesterday was pretty fun, though doing it in the evening would have been better for taking pictures. The sun was above and in front of me, so the colors looked washed-out a bit, and only a few pictures actually turned out good. I just did a little hiking, for about a half-hour or so, then I drove down to the old US-6 where the town of Thistle used to be. I drove up the slide area as far as I could, then I hiked the rest of the way. There was a fence at the top, and the Utah County Sheriff's shooting range was on the other side, so I couldn't go as far as I'd have liked to. After that, I got back on the highway and drove to the other side of the slide area and took some pictures of the houses that are still buried there.

Right when I got home, I got a call from my sister, wanting to borrow my truck to tow her Bronco back from near Wanship (near Park City), where her boyfriend, Mark, was broken down. I told her that my truck wouldn't have been able to make it that far (about 150 miles) without blowing the radiator up and seizing up the engine, but she was able to talk my mom into using her 4Runner. I really doubted that the Toyota would be able to tow a full-size Bronco at all, let alone 150 miles up and down such mountainous country. My mom wanted me to drive her 4Runner, which I was more than happy to do. On the way up Parley's Canyon on I-80, we were stuck in traffic for quite a while because of a car accident ahead. When we got to the scene, we just knew that whoever was involved was dead, and according to this news story, that's definitely the case. Apparently, some guy was just hauling ass up the canyon, then suddenly veered off to the right, flipping his car over the jersey barrier and down a 300 foot drop. When we got there, LifeFlight had just shown up, and they had a crane hanging over the edge trying to retrieve the car.

We finally got to Wanship, where Mark had been waiting almost all damned day--what an awful place to be broken down. We picked him up at a Sinclair station, then got back into I-80 to pick up the Bronco. It only took us about 10 minutes to get the tow-bar attached to the Bronco and hitched up to the 4Runner, then we were off. I was astonished at how well that Toyota pulled the Bronco. I always thought of Toyota's 3.0L V6 as gutless, but we did between 45 and 50 MPH all the way from Tucker to Soldier summit, which is probably better than my truck could have done if it didn't have overheating problems. There was only one time when we had any sort of problem, but it was all my fault--I was pulling off to the shoulder to let the traffic behind us pass, and I hit the brakes a little too hard, and the shoulder was pretty soft, so the Bronco pushed a little bit and the rear-end of the 4Runner started going right while the front-end veered a little left, almost pushing the front-left tire back onto the pavement. It was no big deal, but it scared me just a bit.

We left Price before 4:00 in the afternoon, and got back just before 11:00 at night, so it wasn't too terribly long of an ordeal, but I had fun, just for the experience of going somewhere new and doing something I've never done before.

I'm going to take a drive up to Billie's Mountain tomorrow morning to do some hiking, mostly in the area depicted in the lower-left corner of this topo map. I can't count the number of times I've driven past this area and not thought much of it, but lately, I've noticed how beautiful it is, with all its exposed rock mixed in with thick oak brush. The sandstone is really unusual-looking, with bands of red and cream-colored rock, and a lot of the layers are oriented vertically, so there's obviously been a lot of uplifting in that area (well duh, it is a mountain).

I'm also going to take a picture of this benchmark, that is if it still exists. The Thistle mudslide and subsequent flood may have wiped it all away, but I know part of the schoolhouse still exists--there's a picture of it on this page. At any rate, I plan on at least looking for it, and I'll probably drive over to the slide area and take a few pictures from the bottom.

I can't believe I've been driving (well, legally anyway) for 10 years already. My driver's license expires at the end of this month, so I'm going to get a new one next week. I can renew online and re-use my existing license, but it still has all the information I gave when I first got my license, and I'd like to have one with my current address and height/weight.

I learned to drive in a 1972 Ford 3/4-ton 2-wheel drive truck, which is probably the absolute worst vehicle to learn with--maybe that's why I'm such a good driver now. Even though I've had five tickets (four for speeding, one for blatantly running a stop sign), I still consider myself to be a good driver. There's a difference between someone who drives like that on purpose, and somebody who hasn't a clue as to what they're doing. The thing is, it seems like the people who are oblivious often get away with it, while people like me get caught all the time. Although, I did luck out last week--I blew through a stop sign in 3rd gear, and a cop was coming towards me half a block away. I know he saw me, 'cause he stared at me as I drove past him, and he slowed way down (almost stopped). I hurriedly turned another corner and gunned it, hoping that if he did decide to come after me, I'd be out of sight before he could get turned around. I guess it wasn't worth his time coming after me, because I reached another intersection and turned the corner without ever seeing him.

I finally ran some CAT5 through my house and set up my DSL router last night. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be--I was actually worried about crimping the ends on the cables more than anything, but I managed to make three cables of various lengths without screwing anything up. Now I just have to configure the router so HTTP and FTP services can be seen from outside the network--I'm actually considering reading the user's manual for that. =)

It'd be fun to try and run a cable along the fence to my mom's house, but it might be too far for it to work. Each of our property lines are 213 feet long front-to-back, and they meet along the back fence, but from the back of my house to the back of her house must be less than 250 feet. So it might work, but I don't know if I'd want to buy a whole box of cable just to find out. Besides, my ISP probably wouldn't be too happy if they were to find out about it.

There's gonna be another good meteor shower beginning early Monday next week. I think I'm going to find a babysitter for Michael, and take Traci out to Matt's Summit around 2:00 am to see it. I think I may actually take Monday off from work, that way I can stay out all night long and not have to worry about falling asleep at my desk.

Stewart's been kind of a pussy lately--he runs and hides from the media after nearly every race.

When we were just starting our drive up to Strawberry on Friday, we had quite a scare on the highway. I was going northbound, and had just passed the Port of Entry and was approaching the turnoff to Indian Canyon, where a guy in a newer gray GMC truck was stopped at the sign, waiting to turn southbound on US-6. I was the only car within sight of this guy, and as I got close to him, he started pulling out right in front of me! If I hadn't slammed on my brakes and swerved into the oncoming traffic lane, I would have t-boned him for sure. The guy eventually stopped, blocking the entire northbound lane as I continued past him, then he continued his turn and started going the opposite direction. The thing is, though, he was looking directly at me when he pulled out--we had eye contact the entire time. I wouldn't have been so pissed off if it had been an accident, but it was like this guy wanted to get into a wreck. I wanted so badly to turn around and chase this asshole down, but not only did I not want to add more time to my already long day, I also didn't want to confront such a dickwad without some form of protection if he got violent.

So I continued driving, but literally 45 seconds later, as I topped the next hill, there was a UHP trooper parked on the side of the road, being an asshole like they usually do, waiting passively for a crime to be committed. I shouldn't complain, I was glad he was there. I pulled over and tattled on the GMC driver, and the cop immediately pulled out of there and chased after him. I don't know what happened after that, but I'm relatively certain that he at least caught the guy and told him to watch the fuck out next time. I don't think he could have written the guy a ticket, because I didn't get a license plate number or anything like that.

The GMC driver is lucky I wasn't driving my truck, though, or else I would have t-boned him. I'm certain my rock-solid Ford would have crushed his tin-foil General Motors driver's side door, and likely him as well.

We took the back road up to Strawberry Reservoir today. It was a much easier drive than I imagined it would be--so much so, that we plan on going back often. We scouted around for some places to camp next time we're up there, and we found a few really nice places, hidden back in the quakies, yet still near the lake. And, of course, there are pictures. We had a little picnic up there, and spent some time at the shore just playing around. Most of the time was spent driving, though, and it was a very long day. We drove just over 200 miles, and I think we were gone more than nine hours. We got adventurous and took a different road home, but it eventually met up with the dirt road we had originally came on.

I'm exhausted now, not to mention just plain tired, and I've got to get up early in the morning to start pouring more concrete. But this time, I'm borrowing my grandpa's cement mixer, which should literally save me hours and hours. Maybe I'll actually finish before next weekend.

FINALLY, my cable company now carries Comedy Central. Thank you Jebus.