It's been an eventful week, but there's still not much to write about. My family normally exchanges xmas gifts on the 24th, and we normally do it at my grandpa's in Kenilworth. This year, we did it at my house, so there was a fair amount of getting ready that Traci and I had to do. We're also having a new year's eve party here, so we've still got to do some rearranging in order to make room for everybody who's coming.

I did some hiking yesterday near Joe's Valley, in a canyon called Cox Swale. Apparently, this area is pretty popular with ice climbers, and I can see why. I wasn't at all prepared for hiking along a frozen stream and up curtains of ice, but I managed (sort of). There is supposed to be a geocache in the area where I hiked to, but GPS reception was very poor in the canyon and I couldn't find it. It would be easier to locate in the summer, but crossing the creek in Strait Canyon would be nearly impossible--when I was there this summer, the water was raging. Crossing it yesterday was simple, since it was completely frozen over.

I'm thinking about doing some hiking in the Swell in two weeks. I've found some interesting places that are accessible from I-70, so I can get pretty close without needing a four-wheel drive vehicle. There are two caches there that were placed more than a year and a half ago, but neither has been found yet. Getting FTF on those should be quite an adventure.

Traci and I finally made it up to Provo, alone. We'd been wanting to go pretty much all year, since I got some movie passes from work last year, and they expired at the end of this month. We did some shopping (I got four pairs of badly needed pants and two pairs of shoes), then saw Ocean's Twelve.

It was a nice, relaxing day, despite all the morons who were out in droves--I'm glad I don't live up there anymore and don't have to drive in that traffic every day. I started getting a headache just before the movie, and I still had it up until a couple of hours ago, so that put a little damper on my otherwise good day.

December is flying by so quickly, and I'm actually loving it. I normally love winter, but I'm ready for spring already.

Before Traci's family's xmas party on Saturday, we decided to do a little geocaching since we were going to be in Emery County anyway (yeehaw!). We ended up taking a dirt road south from Castle Dale--several miles of nothing but mud, I should say--to a cache. The strange thing is that it was foggy as hell. 3:00 in the afternoon, not a cloud in the sky, and foggy. It was probably a scenic drive, but I wouldn't know, I couldn't see anything. My car is extremely muddy now, and I've been too lazy to wash it yet.

I did finally get the new mirror installed last week. Nobody sells the exact mirror that originally came on my Taurus (power, puddle lamp, non-heated), so I got a heated one instead. I figured the plugs would be different, but they were the same, only the new one had more pins. The cool thing is that the heated part actually works! So I've got one heated mirror, and the other isn't--not that it matters, I don't think I've ever had a problem with ice buildup on the outside mirrors.

Yesterday, I wanted to hike up to the Fifth Water Hot Springs near Diamond Fork Canyon, but the road was too nasty. It's a Forest Service road, so it's not plowed at all, and there was enough snow that the front air dam on the Taurus would have been ripped off if I'd kept going. I stopped at the place where the road used to be closed earlier this year for the pipeline construction, and did some hiking there. It was a nice day for hiking--the snow was melting and running down the cliffs, and there were several thick walls of ice in the places where the sun doesn't hit. It was warm enough that I had to shed my jacket halfway through the hike.

After the hike, I tried driving up Sheep Creek Road to try and hit Fifth Water from the other side, but it was just as bad as Diamond Fork. If only I had a Subaru that I could drive! :( God damn, I'm lazy.

I bought a pair of Dell Inspiron 5000e laptops today. My company was having a used computer auction, and I just barely managed to get them in the last couple of seconds. Here are the specs (not quite as nice as Ty's new machine):

Pentium III 700 MHz
192 MB RAM
20 GB Hard Drive
3Com PC Card 10/100 NIC
DVD-ROM
CD-RW
Docking Station
Keyboard
Mouse

I'm going into the office tomorrow to pick them up, despite the snow that's falling now and that will continue to fall throughout the night (should be a fun drive). Traci is going to use one of the machines to replace her current desktop machine, and I'll use the other one for geocaching (mostly with ExpertGPS and its maps/aerial photos). The kids can then have Traci's old machine for playing games and l33t h4x0ring and stuff.

I ordered a new mirror for my car from these guys today. There's a lot of road grime, and even more salt, covering most of the car, and I was going to take it to the car wash today, but I realized that the gaping hole where the mirror used to be would let a lot of water into the door. It's sad that this is what it took for me to finally get around to buying a new mirror. Although, I suppose that looking at a few of the biggest junkyards in the state counts for something.

I almost ordered from CarMirror.com, but they don't have a secure checkout. And I also almost ordered from Ford Parts Network just so I could get the exact OEM replacement, but I saved about $45 going with the other place.

So, by the time the mirror gets here and I install it, we should be getting enough snow that washing the car won't do me any good.

My Taurus turned over 100,000 miles today. Click on the image for a video of it (284K WMV):



I went after another new geocache this morning, this one near Horse Canyon. I saw it online last night, but wasn't in the mood for a hike in the dark again. =) I got up at 8:00 this morning in order to get out there early. I didn't realize until after I'd hiked back to the car that it would turn over 100,000 miles on the drive home.

Yesterday, I took my family on a drive up to Scofield, then over Eccles Canyon and back home through Huntington Canyon. I'd hoped for a few good picture opportunities up there, but the snow was too deep for me to do much more than take pictures from the road. Some day soon, I'd like to go up there again, alone, and do some hiking in order to get some really nice pictures. I'd have to either do it early in the morning as the sun rises or in the evening as the sun sets, but either way I'd be driving home in the dark on bad roads.

This is my 1500th entry (not counting the Quickies on the left). That averages out to 250 posts per year for the six years I've been keeping this site. Not too bad, I guess--I don't ever see it ending, though.

It has been way too cold for me to work on my car lately, so I've been keeping busy with other stuff. We got almost a foot of snow on Friday--it was beautiful. Since then, it's been bitter cold. Got down to 5° last night, and it's 9° outside now. Yesterday and today, I spent some time cutting, joining, and staining some wood to serve as a railing to keep Bradley from rolling off the bottom bunk. Tonight, we're moving him from his crib to the bunk beds, and at least Michael's excited to move to the top bunk. I'm pretty proud of my work--the pieces of wood that I added look like they're supposed to be part of the bed.