Robert and family came by this weekend. Robert bought a used shotgun; much like my single shot, but his sometimes doesn't fire. I think he's got a firing pin problem. He's not happy. Then Rick talked Jessie into firing Rob's Makarov. Somehow, when she pushed the safety up it went too far and the gun wouldn't work any more. Now he was really angry and he took it out on Jessie, too much. I managed to get the safety lever out and was able to take the gun apart. The safety popped right back in and the gun works fine. Later Rob was looking in my Guns magazine and found a Makarov article where it talks about the flimsy safety! What a coincidence!

Anyway, we were shooting clay pigeons mostly. Shannon, Jessie, Rick, Rob, Charlie, and I were sharing three guns, Rob's and my 20 gauges and my 12. All of us hit enough targets that we're all happy. Jessie sure grinned when she hit her first pigeon. I was using the 12 gauge to hit the pigeon just before it hit the ground, after the others fired. That was kind of cool. I was hitting a bunch of them.

I started using a new browser yesterday. My professor in my Web page design class has been using Firefox and really recommends it. I found that it is at least as good as IE! I'd tried Opera before and didn't like it. Then I tried Thunderbird to replace Outlook Express. It took me hours to get it working. It turns out that, though Outlook allows me to list my user name as "richard," Thunderbird insists on "richard"at"richardbush.net." Apparently, it actually sees it as, "richard"at"richardbush.net"at"mvdsl.com." I think there is a bug in the way MVDSL handles private domain email addresses. I know with Outlook, when I respond to your emails, it shows my son's address as "william"at"richardbush.net"at"mvdsl.com" and I have to change it before it will send. Thunderbird shows his address correctly. So Outlook fixes one thing and breaks another. Thunderbird breaks one thing and fixes the other.

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I don't have a lot to say this week. Just the normal stuff. I did have a problem with a brother of one of my students. Former students. I'm happy to say the brat has been pulled out of school.

I went to the office and the younger brother saw me and called the older brother who started screaming at me. They literally dragged him away from me. You see his brat of a little sister kept getting into trouble in class and getting kicked out of school. The last time was when she heard some boys next to her talking about their math in Spanish and one of them said "Punto." She, being a paranoid witch with a b, thought they'd called her a b word and she started shrieking at them. Of course her brother was convinced she was correct, but since they're gone now, who cares what they think? The people in the office say they've had unpleasant experiences with the family before, so they're glad they're gone too.

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Cox and Forkum have done another great cartoon! 

Well my class sizes are finally down. I have less than 200 students now, finally. Our new teacher is a yeller. I feel sorry for all the students they took from me to give to her. I think she's a bit nuts. But she's what we could find, at least until she has a nervous breakdown or something.

My latest college class is actually fun. The problem with that is I spend a lot more time on the assignments than I should.

Jane and some of her brothers and sisters are getting together to build their parents a house. We figure we can do it for about $17,000. Of course some of us will be forced to contribute more than others because some will just decline to participate. We'll see.

We're making plans for William's arrival. Things like where the heck will we put him! People always expand into all available space—which we did. So I've come up with a perfect solution. He can carve out your space when he gets home! Actually it's not a big thing; we just have to move a few things so he'll have a room. We need to do the same thing for Charlie. He's in a room full of stuff that's not his. He never complains, though.

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A great cartoon from coxandforkum.com 

I start my new class tomorrow. It might actually be fun since it's a web page design class. All the other classes so far have had useful things but haven't been fun--at all. So my two weeks of free time are gone. Of course one of the first things I'm supposed to do is read some instructions and reply with the subject, "I have read." I replied, "I have not read," because it's a PowerPoint document and I don't have it. If we are required to have that program they should have put it in the list of things we need

I was printing out the newsletter, finally and the printer ran out of toner. When I put the new toner cartridge in it got lighter and lighter until it wouldn't print at all. I put the old one back in and it actually printed better. "What in the world is going on?" I thought. Then I noticed I'd failed to remove the tape covering the opening in the cartridge. Of course this was after I'd printed about 70 crummy pages and I had to do them all again.

I wrote this as a letter to the editor of my newspaper. It's way too long, but I'll send it in anyway.

Democrats lie. They lie a lot. They lie for money, they lie for power. And when they are caught in a lie, they wiggle and squirm then use the excuse used by children through the entire world and for all time: "But the Republicans do it too!" This also is a lie. Republicans, with a few exceptions, do not lie to get elected. Those exceptions are telling. When a Republican lies his or her lies are not only advertised by triumphant Democrats, but the Republican Party itself turns on that person. And the media, which is, for the most part, another branch of the Democrat party, announces that person's shame with extreme smugness.

When Democrats lie, they always excuse it. The end justifies the means they imply, if not say openly. The party comes to the defense of the liar. The media makes excuses or they even refuse to report the offending Democrat's lie all together.

Here are a few examples. Witness the fall of Richard Nixon. His own party turned on him and asked him to resign. He did. Bill Clinton was a very proficient liar. When he did everything President Nixon was accused of and more, the Democrat Party did not ask him to resign and he had to be impeached. He did not have the honor even of President Nixon. President Clinton did not resign, and he continued to lie.

John Kerry is not as good a liar as Bill Clinton. He still tries. When he brought up his military service, repeatedly, most of those that served with him pointed out his lies. The response of the Democrats was to attack President Bush's military record. Since they could find nothing real, they made it up. Forged documents showed up, a serious crime by the way, and when they were found out, the Democrats and the media made excuses. They refuse to point out the truth, that President Bush not only served and did more than was required of him, but also volunteered for a unit likely to be called up for Vietnam service.

Kerry lies about his record for the last 20 years in the Senate. Time after time he has voted against our military and against our intelligence services. Now he lies that he is the one that can best protect us from enemies. He lies about Bush's record and accuses him of lying to the American people. However nearly everything he accuses Bush of lying about, he said at one time himself!Most importantly Kerry and the Democrats lie to scare people into voting for them. They claim they are the party of the working man. They are not. They are the party of the rich elite like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. And the non-working poor who are dependent on government handouts and always vote Democrat to keep those handouts coming. The Republican Party is the real party of the working man.

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My website has brought me an old friend. He came across my website and emailed me to find out if I was the same friend he knew in 5th grade. I remember him as a very good friend, but they didn't live there that long, unfortunately. It's been a lot of fun catching up and learning about what the other has been doing. It's also fun to find out that we have many of the same or similar interests.

We took the old Taurus up to St. George to donate it to Deseret Industries. We drove the whole way, more than 80 miles, and were just coming into St. George when the transmission went out. I found that if I turned the car off and let it sit for a few seconds I could start it up and drive for a few seconds before it kicked out of gear. So I did manage to get off the freeway off ramp. My mom was with us so she called Triple A and we got it towed to DI for free. They still wanted it so we are now less one car. We still have four others, not counting the old Mitz and Charlie's old 280ZX.

They announced at school that they're adding 11 more sessions of math. Four of those are Algebra 1 so I hope to get relief soon from the large class sizes.

I just got a call from our Branch President. He needs to give some emergency aide to someone so, since I'm the financial clerk, I have to go down and write the check. Since I want to post this before I go I guess I'll make it short.

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Is this nut case for real? This guy is so far out on the left it is unbelievable! He calls bloggers and talk radio partisan news sources, yet praises Dan Rather for being a "real newsman!"
New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Richard Cohen: Blind lust for a scoop, nothing more

And then there's this. Could life extention be just around the corner?
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/scanlon1004.asp?trk=nl

Here are the links to the DVD'sFarenhype 9-11 and Sean Hannity's Hannitization of America Tour. They're both about $15. Farenhype has stunned me. I had no idea how many attacks against the United States have been thwarted by Bush's security teams.

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The missionaries asked us if we could let them give the discussions to Maria, our tenant at our house since the house they had been using was "noisy." We of course told them no way... Yeah right! We agreed, of course. Apparently her husband doesn't really want her to have the discussions. I wonder if he doesn't want to give up his Corona.

My wife had a crock pot with Sunday dinner in it and when I opened the drawer in the fridge it fell out, smashing the up crock pot and making a huge mess all over the floor. I took the meat and put it back in the pot and put it back, then spent a considerable amount of time cleaning up. When I was finally finished, I again tried to get into the drawer and of course knocked the pot out again making yet another mess! I guess I'd better go buy another crock pot this week.

My first period class is now at 52. Two other classes are at 45, one at 33 and another at only 29. This is insane to have to go through this every year because the stupid counselors just pick the first name on the alphabet and stick the kid in there.

I just looked at a map showing the Bush and Kerry states. It's a sea of red or pink (the Bush states) with a few states like California, Hawaii, and Massachusetts blue and a few more light blue like New York and Florida. There are a handful of states that are a tossup.

Yesterday we had Jay Whipple's funeral. He was my boss for more than ten years. I got to hear a couple of stories I hadn't heard before. Van and I were the only people from the Water District that even showed up.

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Well, I have a new supervisor at school. I'd rather not have this particular supervisor since she has done some things to me that I consider unfair. Not big things but the principle of the things bothers me.

My wife's car broke down in the exact same way that it did two years ago in Provo when we put my son William in the Missionary Training Center. I called Jeff Jones at about 9 PM and he went down and sold us a 2004 Dodge Intrepid. It's a really nice car! Jeff went up and towed her car back and Jeff Adams fixed it for about $200. We just spent $600 fixing the Taurus, but now I guess we'll put it up for sale since we have a Dodge, a Plymouth, a Saturn, a Mitsubishi, and a Ford Truck! Plus we have the old Mitsubishi, Colt, and my son Charlie's Datsun, none of them running, oh, and my son-in-law Mark's Datsun, too…

I spent fifteen hours on my final paper yesterday, and I'm still only two thirds done. The first draft is due this week. More work each night until it's done. Sigh! I had thought I had two weeks, so I'd spent my last two free days installing a swamp cooler in the garage, taping sheetrock and putting up shelves. Then I looked at my schedule Tuesday night and realized my mistake. Since school started Wednesday, my time is limited.

The people in the cottage apparently had visitors over the other day and while jumping on the trampoline, apparently the top ripped, so it's gone. Time to buy another, maybe. This top lasted many more years than the first one. I wish the man who made it was still around.
I downloaded the latest Ad Aware and SpyBot Search and Destroy. I'd been using Ad Aware, but didn't have a version that looked for updates. When I ran the latest Ad Aware it found 450 or so spy ware programs. Then I ran SpyBot and it found 68 more! I did tell it to leave my Download Accelerator alone since the banner ads pay for the program. I hope this solves the extreme slowness I've been experiencing lately.

My wife only had about 50 with Ad Aware and 9 with SpyBot. Again, I ran SpyBot after Ad Aware.

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We just got back from Idaho (and Utah, and Montana...). It was a very long trip. We left here Monday at about nine PM because we had to wait and see if they would let my son Charlie miss practice to go up. They wouldn't. We also took my daughter-in-law Shannon to Mapleton and since her father Stan had given me a swamp cooler, we took the truck up and left it in Mapleton, too. We started out again the next morning driving into Idaho, then Montana, then back to Idaho, finally reaching Bonners Ferry at about 10 PM.

After all that driving, I didn't really want to go anywhere! My granddaughter Raegan has changed a lot in a short time. Friday evening, we started home but stopped in Missoula Montana for the night then continued on the next day arriving here about midnight. Kind of a repeat of the trip up.

My daughter Valery had a bunch of packages of baking soda and baking powder that she wanted us to take with us. Later, I was searching through my suitcase in a Burger King parking lot and realized that if a cop saw me with all those packages I would have a lot of explaining to do!

my son Robert and Shannon are on their way back to Navajo Mountain from Mapleton. They got separated and Robert has been calling us regularly to see if she'd called us. This went on for hours. Robert even contacted the Highway Patrol. Finally Shannon called from Paige. Somehow she'd gotten ahead of him. I wish they'd bought some two-way radios. They only have one cell phone between them so that's no good.

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Well the sheet rock in the garage is done. This despite driving 300 miles to help my son Robert and his wife Shannon move, then returning the same 300 miles (ten of those on a dirt road that they have to contend with anytime they want to go anywhere, and right now it's really washboardy).

Wednesday, I took my truck up to St. George to get it fixed and brought my son Charlie's car along as well. Then I drove him to Mesquite, dropped him and my truck off, picked up my car, and drove to Kanab where I met Robert and went on to Navajo Mountain. They do have a real nice home there, but it's out in the middle of nowhere! We unloaded the truck and Shannon's dad Stan, and I returned to St. George the next day to drop off the truck and then I took Stan to the airport. By then Charlie's car was done so I went to Mesquite, dropped off my car, and my wifw and I drove her car to St. George and dropped it off to be fixed, drove Charlie's car back to Mesquite where we picked up my car and, finally, I got to go home!

Friday I worked in the garage and caught up with my class. Saturday we went to my neice's wedding and came home with enough time for me to finish the sheet rock. Tomorrow I have to do the work for this next week's class so we can drive to Idaho Tuesday. So much to do crammed into so little time!
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Found this--somewhere, but it's hilarious! 

Many changes are happening. My son Robert was promoted then demoted at his job. So, he went looking for a new one, and found it teaching Social Studies on the Indian reservation in Southern Utah. He just started his vacation at Delta, which is lucky because he starts teaching a week from Monday on the sixteenth, so this week he has to move, next week he begins school and Saturday the 21st he returns to Delta for one day. That doesn’t leave us any room for delays in our flight back from Idaho on that day. If we get delayed to the 22nd we have to pay for our ticket!

My oldest son, Rick is now unemployed. He decided to go back to school, which is a good thing. If all goes according to plan, he'll be teaching next year.

My daughter Valery and her husband Mark? Well Mark's working but they're still living with his parents.

The youngest, Charlie's been going Ebay crazy, but that's slowed down a little since he now has video games coming out of his ears. He's been spending all his time… reading the Harry Potter series again! Actually I've been playing one of his games more than he has—Lode Runner 3-D, what a great game!

I've got my garage insulated except for a little, itsy, teensy bit. I can't justify buying a whole roll of insulation for that, so I'm looking for spare pieces. It's all sheet-rocked except for the east wall.

I'm running out of time (and money) for my summer projects. School starts very, very soon.

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My neice reported her mission today. She told a great story about a class where the teacher threw a party. Before the party he asked an athlete how many pushups he could do. He thought he could do 200, but the teacher asked him to do 300.

At the party, in order to get a doughnut, Jeff had to do ten pushups for the person. The first few went well until another athlete insisted he could do his own pushups. He refused the doughnut unless he could do his own pushups. The teacher had Jeff do ten for him anyway, even if he wouldn't take the doughnut.

Soon four more people arrived making a total of 34 people and the teacher began to worry that Jeff couldn't do enough pushups for everyone. Some of the students took compassion on Jeff and refused to take a doughnut, but that didn't work because the teacher had him do them anyway.

When he was down to the last few people, everyone could see how tired he was and tears flowed freely, Jeff was sweating and his arms shook. Then the door opened and John started to come in. "No! Stay out!" People cried, because they knew that would mean ten more pushups for Jeff to do. But Jeff insisted that John could come in, so puzzled, he entered, and the teacher asked him if he wanted a doughnut. "Sure," he answered and the teacher had Jeff do the obligatory ten pushups. Finally there were only two girls left. When the first was asked if she wanted her doughnut she said no, but Jeff had to do the pushups anyway. The last girl, with tears running down her face, told the teacher she didn't want Jeff to do her pushups. Couldn't she do them for herself? The teacher explained that he and Jeff had an agreement and Jeff had to do her pushups, if she took the doughnut or not.

By now Jeff had done 340 pushups and he had to struggle to do each and every one of the last ten pushups, but finally, he finished and the teacher explained what was going on.

Jeff, you see, had the only perfect score in class. All the others had lost points for one thing or the other. Since on Jeff's wrestling team, the team did pushups when someone messed up, the teacher was requiring pushups for the students to have their doughnuts at the party. But because Jeff was the only one with a perfect score, he was the only one that could atone for the imperfect scores of the others. He pointed at all the uneaten doughnuts and told them that Jeff had atoned for even those who refused his atonement.

By now of course everyone understood what the teacher had been trying to teach them, and it was a lesson on the Atonement of the Savior they would never, ever forget.

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Well I decided to get a little dump trailer for the garden tractor. I made a little hitch so I could pull it with the truck too. Then I built a new screen to fit the trailer. Of course that took the whole day, so the next day, bright and early, I went out and screened a trailer load of gravel. It really wasn't much gravel, but even though I was very careful pulling it out of the wash something must have gone wrong and something bent. That caused a cascade reaction and pretty soon everything on the trailer was bent. I dumped what was left of the gravel and threw the trailer into the back of the truck. I had to take it apart so I could straighten every single piece of it. It's almost as good as new, but I guess it's just a garden tractor trailer. I can't risk putting it on the truck again.

Summer's half over and I still have lots of projects to do. The main problem is they almost all cost money. The ones that don't cost money are the hardest, so of course those are the ones I want to put off!

I wrote a letter to the editor for the Review Journal, but of course they didn't print it. It goes like this:

Several recent letter writers have prompted me to write. Each has used the tired old arguments that the left loves to drag out again and again. One recent letter writer once again blamed terrorist acts on Americans. We deserve it, you see, because we some how interfered in the lives of the terrorists. Terrorists hate us because we are an imperial nation or some such garbage. No, the truth is, terrorists hate us because we are a shining beacon of freedom and they don't want freedom for their people. So what are we supposed to do, eliminate our freedom so the terrorists won't hate us? (Why not, the liberals hate us for the exact same reasons. John Kerry would surely love to see our freedoms taken, with him in charge, of course.)

Another lie the left loves to tell is that President Bush lied about Iraq. Never mind that  the U. N., Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and other darlings of the left all warned us about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, now it's a convenient stick to beat the president with so that the people responsible for allowing terrorists to operate freely in the world for eight years can get back their power. Never mind that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq and that the rest are hidden in the desert in Iraq and in Syria. The left pretends those facts don't exist.

The third lie is the worst. The left lies that President Bush said there was an al-Qaida-Iraq link. No, he said there was a terrorist-Iraq link, and there is! This is important for every American to think about: The Russians have now told us, and the news media, because they are controlled by the left (who hate America despite their protestations to the contrary), have not told us, is that Saddam Hussein, was apparently planning to use a terrorist group, perhaps al-Qaida, to seize a Russian missile site and launch nuclear tipped missiles at American cities. It would not have been just thousands killed, but millions. Millions of American dead. And despite all the lies of the left, President George Bush, who has not lied to the American people, can be credited with stopping that threat from Saddam Hussein for good.

Oh well, maybe I'll try another sometime.
 
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Hottest night club in Mexico: The City of Can Cun 

The view from our hotel room on Isla Mujeres 

Space Ship 1 touching down after a historic flight 

We had a very busy week. Last Tuesday we went to Can Cun. We flew all night arriving early Wednesday morning. We dropped our luggage at a very nice hotel on Isla Mujeres, then hopped the ferry back to Can Cun for the bullfight, which was way more than we expected but it was worth it. We rode the ferry back to Isla Mujeres and crashed.

The next morning we toured all the hotels, the night club "The City of Can Cun," and the new master plan community being built by the same man that owns our hotel. The next day we went on a sales meeting in one of the hotels and did a little touring in the city afterwards.

Finally on Saturday we finally spent the time on the island instead of all our time in Can Cun.

The hotel was unusual in that only the rooms were air conditioned, the common areas were hot! Still it was a wonderful hotel, we had a lot of fun and never had a chance to get bored. We were busy all the time.

We got up at five to leave on Sunday. We flew into Miami and went through customs which puts you outside the security area, so you have to go through security again, which is stupid.

We were in the air only half an hour when they turned the plane around and landed in Miami again. It took four hours to fix before we finally got on our way. We got home late Sunday night.

Unfortunately for my sleep time, I had to be in Mojave California by 6:30 the next morning and I wanted to arrive by 3:00 to get the best parking. By then I was sick and had to stop at every town to use the bathroom. I was so tired, too, but luckily my youngest son Charlie was able to drive some and let me nap.

Monday morning Space Ship 1 became the first non-government funded craft to go into space and Charlie and I were there!

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