Since I spent a lot of time redesigning my site, I decided to post here just so I could rewrite the blog to my site. Check out the site at the link below.

Richard's main page

I'm a bit surprised I haven't kept this up for two months!

I've got a new job at Canyon Springs High School for next year, unless I can convince Ms. Davies to hire me at Moapa Valley High, which would be nice since she does have an opening. She has a Spanish position also. My son Rick would like that one.

Last week I was a chaperone on a trip for the newly graduated seniors to visit the church history sites for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We actually did the trip in reverse. We left Las Vegas and flew to Kansas City where we boarded a bus and followed the path of the Saints moving east on the route they used to move west during the early years of the church. We traveled through Missouri; Illinois (see the pictures of my wife, Jane, and youngest son, Charlie, in Nauvoo, ILL. That's the Mississippi behind them.), Ohio, and New York, visiting various historical sites of the early church, and ending at the farm of Joseph Smith where it all started with the first vision.

We did take a few side trips. We visited Hannibal MO where Mark Twain was raised and Niagara Falls. On our last day we took a canoe trip on the old Erie Canal, where we got tipped over and I dunked my digital camera. It's dead, Jim! Oh well, I got an excuse to buy a new one. An Olympus with a 12X optical zoom and 5 mega pixels, sweet!

The kids were great. There were times that some chaperones had to sit out in the hall at the hotels until their charges realized they weren't going to get away with anything. Our kids (including my son) knew that we wouldn’t put up with anything and they didn't give us any problems at all.

It was a great trip and we and the kids learned a lot. There are apparently other youth groups that make this trim, because I ran into my niece who was traveling with another group in two separate states!

It's nice to be back though, since I was averaging about six hours of sleep a night. I'm still catching up on back sleep.

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Another great cartoon from Cox and Forkum 

This thing is not fun anymore! It's become an obligation that I feel guilty about when I don't do it. Except when I do it then it becomes fun... Well actually, what is fun is not doing it, but having done it! Now that probably made no sense!

Okay, I had an interview today. I've got another planned Monday morning, another Monday afternoon, and the last (for now) Tuesday. The goal is to get a position as close to home as possible. I'm still tied up with all the many responsibilities I have, school (as teacher), school (as student), editing the newsletter, and keeping up with chores around the yard. If I can get a position near home next year, I'll have about three more hours of time each day. That would be wonderful!

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I've been extremely busy trying to get my apartment ready for tenants, so I haven't written anything in a while. I've been waiting for two weeks for the carpet morons to finish my carpet in the apartment. They left a section without tack board and did some really horrible seams. After a week I got the boss to come and look and he promised it would be done on Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday... Today they wouldn't even answer the phone! I guess I'll tell them I'm not paying the rest of the money and I'll hire someone else to finish the install.

Talk about another run of bad luck! Monday we were rear-ended in North Las Vegas as we were making a right turn. Tuesday, we were rear-ended again a block south of the first accident! Unbelievable!

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When my tenants moved out of the guest house, I went in to fix the flood damage. I ended up tearing out all the cupboards and basically stripping the place down to bare walls. I've been spending all my free time trying to get the place ready for renters again.

Of course every time it starts to dry up a little around here, it rains again and re-wets the mud.

My mother's house is in need of a lot of work too, and I just don’t have time to do it all!

So far we've had two cars damaged by the flood—three if you count Rick and Jessie's car.

Richard's main page

Cox and Forkum have another good cartoon. 

We got flooded again! This was the worst flood we've ever had. Despite sandbagging our guest house still got flooded, and my mother had water seeping into her yard through gopher holes! I don't know what more we could have done. We double sandbagged at her house yet it did no good at all. She had at least eight inches of water in the house. Everytime a firetruck went by, the waves went right over the top of the sandbags. My son parked his car inside her yard so it would hold the gate and sandbags against the force of the water, so his car got filled with water. It runs but he has no instruments, nor seat adjustment (which is electric).

The neighborhood and the LDS church came through again and within a few hours had everything out of her downstairs including the carpet. Below are a couple of pictures from my house and a couple of the cleanup at my mom's.

I'm planning on suing the county, again. They are responsible for flood control and it's been 24 years since the first flood. This is the fourth flood and the third caused by the refusal of the county to clean out the river channel! I guess the last time I sued I didn't get enough money out of them, since they did nothing to fix the problem. This time we go for more! Since they settled the last lawsuit, this one will be even easier.

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Mucking out my Mother's driveway 

My Mother's carpet. 

Looking South from our house 

Looking East from our house 

I've had my house full of kids and grandkids for the last week. It was a wonderful Christmas. My son William has returned from Argentina (with an accent) and it was nice to have him home for Christmas.

I've been trying to figure out a way to do this blog in Dreamweaver, but it's incredibly complicated. Other people I know manage to do it, but I think they do everything by hand, the hard way. I don't have time for that so I'll keep doing it on here.

I procrastinated signing up for my next class and now it's full. I had to pick another class. It doesn't really matter, I had to take it anyway. I'll take it next semester. Just one year away from the Master's degree. A whole year! I'm sick of school!

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We had a good time for Thanksgiving. I fried three turkeys. One we had on Thursday evening and the other two we had in Alamo while we helped Mike and Retta lay the block for the two rooms we're building over my in law's cellar.

I also got to try my new Mantis tiller. That thing works better than I expected. It only weighs 20 pounds but it does a better job than the old one we had that costs three times more.

I'm almost finished with my greenhouse. I was looking for a fan to blow air between the two sheets of plastic and I found the cheapest fans could be purchased by buying one of the blow-up Santas or snowmen that Ace had on sale for $20. I bought one of each. The Santa is set up in the yard; the snowman is taken apart so I can use the fan. I have to replace the plug because anything designed for Christmas use has a fuse built into the plug to protect the companies from lawsuits. The idea is that most people replace lights and such regularly, so when the fuses blow people just replace the lights and don't worry about it too much. For a blower I'll be using more often, I have to get rid of the fuse. It will be on a GFCI circuit anyway, an extra fuse is not necessary.

I discovered the magic of Zantac. I feel so much better now that I'm using that regularly. I had been using Nexium with no results. Now I take the Nexium in the morning and the Zantac at night. The pain is now bearable, and in fact most of the time, I don't notice it at all.

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We know that when President Bush was reelected Afghani's and Iraqi's celebrated. We know that in almost every other country they preferred John effing Kerry. Why? Do the liberal Bush haters ever ask why? Let's look at selfish reasons. The Iraqi's and Afghani's are better off with Bush, so they like him. They don't trust Kerry to continue the fight. They and other nations don't give a rat's behind about quality of life in America. They care about their own lives, thus the support for Bush in those two countries. Other countries have citizens and subjects that are jealous and envious of our prosperity and freedom, so they support leaders that are bad for us. They certainly don't have our best interests in their hearts. So only an idiot would care if they liked us or not. Idiots like those who supported the lying, flip-flopping, war hero (in Vietnam, not here) who committed treason after he returned from Vietnam and who did not receive an honorable discharge for his service until after Jimmy Carter pardoned him.

Interestingly enough, one other country celebrated the reelection of George Bush. The story, in NewsMax tells us of Iranians dancing in the streets with joy. Why? Because they hope they're the next country freed of tyranny by the blood of our soldiers. And our wonderful soldiers are glad to do it. This is the month of Thanksgiving. Be thankful for them, and our strong president. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran are!

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Again a good one from Cox and Forkum 

Latest from Cox and Forkum (coxandforkum.com) 

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.

Richard's main page

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.

Richard's main page

Cox and Forkum have done another great cartoon!