I've bought my son Charlie a camera. I had great fun on E-bay losing the auctions with seconds to go! I finally won one. I'm replacing his 4 mega pixel Kodak C330, which was stolen, with a 5 mega pixel Kodak Z700. It’s bigger. It looks more like my Canon in shape so it should be easier to hold on to and it has a 5x optical zoom instead of the 3x he had in the 330. The controls should be almost exactly the same so anything he learned about the old one should apply to the new one.

We went to my niece, Terilee's wedding yesterday. The groom, Jared works at Concrete accessories. Rick and I were in there the other day, but he didn't tell me until we were on our way home that Jared was Terilee's fiancé.

I’ve started taping in the upstairs bathroom. It’s going fast, but it’s a lot of work. I’ve taped in the shower; tomorrow I’ll do the rest of the bath. Then comes texture and paint. Then tile, reset the toilet and install a new sink (since the old one’s color doesn’t match the new floor). I don’t have a lot of time though with two vacations coming up and my class started.

This is my last class and I will be done! Sweet!

We bought a new ride on lawn mower because the old one would no longer start. Well I fixed it, so now we have two. I’ll use the old one for mowing weeds.

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To repeat another post. I now have a source so I'm publishing again with a link to the source


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I’ve taken to spending 30 minutes a day digging under the house. The hole under there is not getting much bigger it seems. I’m doing that instead of running on the treadmill since my foot won’t allow much running. I replaced one section of AC ducting under there, and I thought it looked good but the duct tape isn’t holding so I have to keep redoing it. I’ve stripped the upstairs bathroom. I’m going to have Rick finish the floor then I’m going to completely rebuild it with a tile shower instead of a tub. I’ve found that the water leak was just water running out of the tub and not a problem with the plumbing. The new floor and tile shower should fix that.

Yesterday we took Grandma’s old John Deere up to DI but they wouldn’t take it! I think they were just too lazy to lift it out of the truck. Mike, my brother-in-law took it. Cosmetically it still looks really good. It just had flood water in the engine and the transmission wouldn’t go into reverse. I bought another John Deere. I was using an old door for a ramp but it folded in the middle with the mower halfway off the truck. I ended up with the back wheels on the ground and the front wheels on the truck. William and I used a 4 by 4 beam to lift it up and set it on the ground. No harm done.

We went to Adam’s funeral Thursday. The graveside was very hot, so they didn’t spend much time there. His first wife showed up with a paper and took their son. Ivan and Meredith are exploring legal options to keep him. I don’t know why Adam had custody, but I do know he’d be better off with Ivan and Meredith.

I just read that Mexico has a cliffhanger in their presidential election. The last thing they need is the marxist. (The driveby media is calling him a "liberal"!)

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Is Hamas crazy? Their little show of force against Israel is summed up nicely in this cartoon from Cox and Forkum.

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I almost missed the deadline for filing for Ivan Cooper’s last two years on the water board. I’m running against two other people. Last time I ran I lost by less than 100 votes. Let’s hope I win this time. And this time I’m going to actually campaign!

You know those stories of people who are fired and they go nuts so the cops have to shoot them to keep them from harming others? Well there was a guy who got fired at a mine and he jumped into a 70 ton dump truck and did 1.5 million in damage, including starting a huge fire. When the fire trucks arrived he rammed them with the dump truck. So a rookie highway patrolman had to shoot him. You know some cops go their whole career and never pull their guns and this guy has to kill someone after two months on the job. What’s worse is this happened here at Simplot less than 10 miles away and it was Adam Cooper who was shot and killed. He's the son of my neighbor Ivan Cooper. He was angry about being fired and his wife divorcing him. Charlie Cooper his brother was the one who had to identify the body since everyone else was out of town.

Some moron said the cop should have shot the tire out and it would have stopped him. Yeah right, if the bullet didn’t bounce back and kill someone else instead. I’m really sure a bullet from a pistol is going to penetrate a three inch thick truck tire!
Adam used to be like part of the family. It’s very sad.

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I spent all week getting the fifth wheel ready to take to the family reunion. First the tires were old so they were dry rotted and I didn’t want to go through what Stan did with his—one blowout after the other. So five new tires. Then the refrigerator didn’t work on gas so I looked for a new control board. I finally found one online but they called back and told me it was no longer available. I started looking around and whenever I found one I called to make sure they had it and they all referred me to the place that I’d already tried to buy from. I finally gave up and bought a new one. I found a huge RV store in Vegas that had them in stock. Then I had all the little repairs… On the way back I expected my battery to charge, but it didn’t. I thought I had fixed that!

We had a good time. We went up Friday and stayed until Sunday. We probably stayed longer than anyone; of course we had the nicest “tent”. My father-in-law looked at the fifth wheel and said: “So you’re going camping, huh?” I told him “Sure, city style!”

Judy told Patty she’s so glad she married John since everyone is picking on Patty now instead of Judy. Some of the kids were shooting lizards with BB guns and showing them to Patty, who would scream and create a scene. Nothing fazes Judy anymore so they don’t tease her anymore.

The Yankees blew a 9 to 2 lead yesterday—losing 12 to 9. They blew it again today—losing an early lead because of bad pitching. It wasn’t even a good team! Washington?

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From Cox and Forkum:

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I think people have lost sight of what the immigration debate is all about. It’s about controlling our border so that we are protected from terrorist attack. It’s become a debate on what to do about illegal aliens who are already here. That debate won’t make us safe. We must control the border first.

There are a few hateful and bigoted people who are making the debate unpleasant for everyone and making those who want to convince illegals to leave and become legal before returning look bad. I heard a story on the internet that may or may not be true. It goes like this. A woman sat down in her seat on an airplane and the man next to her seemed hostile. Finally he asked her how long she’d been in the country. She asked him, “Well how long have you been in the country?”

He proudly replied, “My great-grandparents came to this country.”

She responded with, “I’ve got you beat. I’m a Native American.” He shut-up and didn’t say another thing the whole flight. It’s a nice story if true. This next one is true.

The Review Journal, a Las Vegas newspaper, reported on a woman whose husband was being deported as an illegal alien. She was of course upset, as she should be since her husband, the father of her six children, was going to be out of her life unless she chose to go to Peru (which would require her own immigration nightmare) or figured out some way to bring him back. As she was being interviewed someone drove by and yelled out the window of his car: “Go home!” With tears in her eyes she said, “I’m a native American. Where can I go?”

Now I’m sure the idiot in the car didn’t know what the interview was about. He just saw brown skin and spouted his hatred. How many more idiots are out there ruining the landscape for a reasoned debate?

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Notice the difference between Cynthia McKinney and Condie Rice. The congresswomen has no class, is looking for trouble, and seems to be a racist bigot with something to prove. Condie is a classy lady, doesn't have to look for trouble, (libs cause her troubles and she deals with them well) and has absolutely nothing to prove to anyone.

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Cynthia McKinney

Condie Rice.

Some of my crazy students decided to protest Congress’s decision to do something about illegal immigration. When the little darlings came back, I asked them what they were protesting about. None of them could tell me. They hadn’t a clue. I think I like Newt Gingrich’s plan best: set up centers in Mexico so people can get checked out and get an ID which they can use to enter the US, any employer hiring someone without such an ID gets a huge fine, and the twelve plus million illegals will leave because they have no jobs. They can come back if and when they qualify for an ID card. And of course seal the border!

We’ve had proficiency testing this week. We caught one girl with a cheat book. Dumb girl, now her test is no good. I guess it’s still not over. She’s denying she was using it to cheat.

I was all ready to finish chopping up one of the trees tomorrow, but I guess Eric finished it today. Of course he left a mess on the ground for me to clean up so I guess I’ll keep what ever I clean up.

I finally got the phones system I want. We hung a base unit in the kitchen and we have nine cordless phones to go with it. We went a little crazy with the buy two get one free sale. We can actually add one more, but we’re done I think. All the phones are speaker phones. They have voice mail (which I don’t know how to use yet), and they can act as walkie talkies. We only have two other phones still hooked up. They’ll go soon.

We had a staff development day Monday. This crazy guy was the speaker at the Orleans casino. Apparently he was the teacher of the year or something. The parking lot was so packed it took almost an hour for Robert and me to get out of the parking lot. He was so late getting to his meeting. As we got in the car I noticed the lady next to us in her large SUV (which proved to be too large for her) had her wheels turned way out. I told Robert if she kept backing out like that she was going to hit us. Can you see it coming? We didn’t even try to pull out because it was too busy, but she did. And (you can still see this coming huh?) she scraped my mirror across her fender. It left an 8 or 9 inch crease on her fender, but only a little scratch on my mirror. She gets out—doesn’t even look at her fender—and says, “Looks like someone parked too close! You’re going to have to move first, because I can’t get out.” She gets back into her large SUV and she still hasn’t looked at the damage to her car! I wiggled the car back and forth until I was well away from her and after a few minutes she left. I guess I could get her for hit and run.

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It’s a strange thing. I’m working on a Master’s degree at Capella University. After I finish this class, I’m two classes away from finishing. (I’m burnt out! I want it over!) Like I said, it’s a strange thing. I’ve found that when I have a paper or project due, I sweat and fret; do more research, then sweat and fret again. This usually happens over several days. Finally I kick out a decent paper in an hour or two. I think that my mind has learned to refuse to produce until the junk I’ve collected percolates in my brain a while and then when it’s ready (usually just before a deadline) it slips into output mode and out pours the paper!

Last Friday, I had a kid tell me to shut-up. My immediate reaction was to grab him by his jacket and tell him not to ever speak to me that way. Now a week later, the story is that I picked him up and spun him around my head! When the kids ask me if that is true, I just smile and flex my “incredible” muscles. Rumors, aren’t they great?

Wednesday, the 1^st of February I put my youngest in the MTC (LDS Mission Training Center). Charlie’s going to Viña Del Mar, Chile on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It was hard to let him go, though I’ve done it four times now. (My first son went to Islas de Gran Canaria (Canary Islands), my second son went to Orsorno, Chile, and my third went to Argentina. Everyone in my family except my daughter and me speaks Spanish—well Charlie’s still learning but he will be—so it’s interesting around here, especially since there are four different dialects, between my sons and my wife who was born in Mexico.) I guess he’s a little harder to let go because he’s my last one.

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My water heater rusted out and my chiropractor mentioned they now have electric on-demand water heaters. I found one on the web that was reasonably priced (about twice the cost of a regular heater) and am now the owner of a Stiebel Eltron Tempra 29 tankless water heater. Notice the three power cables going into the bottom and the sub-panel behind my grand-daughter. When it's on it uses three 220 volt 50 amp circuits. When it's off it uses only the trickle of power necessary for the temperature readout LED.
It works great and it's nice to take a shower and not have to worry about running out of hot water. As you can see from the size, it also frees up all the space the tank took before. We gained another closet! That's always nice!
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Since I got sick and missed all but one day of school last week, I've kind of had the Christmas season sneak up on me. I'm still recovering but I've got to find something for my wife for Christmas. I'm at a loss. Usually I come up with something, but this year I'm drawing a blank.

I'll think of something--I guess.

I've taken to wearing a bracelet. It says "Just Say Merry Christmas." It's a response to the politically correct crowd who are afraid of offending those who aren't afraid of offending us!

You can get these at World Net Daily Store

(See picture above right.)

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Charlie, my youngest son, got his mission call last Friday. He’s going to Viña Del Mar, Chili. When he gets back that will leave me and my daughter as the only ones who don’t speak Spanish. It’s not like I’m not trying, but for some reason, I don’t seem to be making much progress. ¡Es tan duro para mi para aprender Español! Well okay, I’ve learned a little bit.

We had a great Thanksgiving. Several relatives like my fried turkey so I ended up frying 5 of them over the course of the holidays.

My daughter-in-law managed to acquire nine tickets to The Blue Man Group on Friday. We were sitting in $100 seats! The show was very entertaining, surprisingly enough.

Since my daughter-in-law is now on track break from school, I’ll be riding with my son for the next three weeks. That means advantages and disadvantages. Since he gets out before I do and I get out an hour before my daughter-in-law I’ll probably be getting home about an hour earlier than normal. But since my son starts an hour before I do I’ll be getting up earlier, not fun…

My second son has a phone interview with Sierra Vista. If he gets the job, it’s possible he’ll be riding with us too. This could get interesting!

We’ve been building a house for my in-laws. It’s almost finished. The main house is done, but we need to finish the two bedrooms and the master bath. I was trying to spray texture yesterday and it wasn’t going well. I did notice the air compressor was running too much but I couldn’t really check it, because I would have had to go through the living room and track wallboard compound on the carpet. It turns out the pressure regulator was leaking air which didn’t just cause the compressor to run too much, but also caused 80 psi instead of 20 to be fed to the texture gun. Well duh, no wonder it wasn’t working right!

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After a 3 month wait, I had the lasic surgery in my left eye redone. This time the trauma was much less and this time it worked! I now have what is called mono-vision. My right eye sees distance, (about 20-30 with a little astigmatism, they may still fix that, I haven’t decided) and the left is focused for reading. It took only a few hours after the surgery and I was reading with that eye. I had to pull my computer monitor closer, but I can function without any glasses at all for the first time since Jr. High. It is so liberating! I can even wear cool shades! Of course for the last 3 months, since the first surgery, my left eye has been worthless, but now I’ve decided it was worth it!

For the past few years, my wife and I have commuted to two different towns to go to work. Me to Las Vegas and she to Mesquite. We live about halfway in between. Since our gas bill has risen to about $600 a month, it’s been a challenge. She was just offered a job locally, so her drive will be 10 miles round trip instead of 75 so we’ll save considerable money on gas, and apparently she gets a raise too!

Now if I could just get a job locally…

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With the indictment of Tom DeLay and the accusations against Bob Bennett in the news, we once again see the dishonesty of the Democrat party and their accomplices, the news media. Tom DeLay was indicted for one reason, the Republican rule that an indicted leader must step down. The fact that they have such a rule and that the Democrats don’t, gives strong evidence that the Republicans are the more honest party.

The Bob Bennett fiasco shows the shrill nature of the Democrat party. Any sane person who listens to the exchange Mr. Bennett had with his caller would understand that nothing racist had occurred. So either the Democrats are dishonest or they are not sane. You decide…

More tee-shirts from Thoseshirts.com. Aren’t they fantastic? The shirts are great too.

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What is it with libs? Are they so arrogant that they really believe that all people--at least those that count--agree with them? I'm a teacher. A math teacher. The reason I mention the last is that those of us in the math department tend to be more conservative than those on the other side of the building, you know those English, history, and social studies types. However there are plenty of the lib type in the math department, too. I started at a new school this year, so I don't yet know who are the conservatives and who are the libs, except for one. This tattooed young lady, showing lots of cleavage, (I hope she dresses more conservatively next week when the students start) asks me my last name and when I tell her "Bush," she says, "I won't hold that against you!" I didn't know what to say, I should have a witty response for inane comments like that. Instead I just gave her my most disgusted look.

These arrogant, petty haters of Bush (and America, yes I do question their patriotism) are attempting to destroy our nation. They tried before during the war in Vietnam, you know the one we won over there but lost here on our own soil. Now they're doing it again because they're angry, bitter, and they lost the last two elections. The liberals haven't been out of power since FDR and they don't like it! So they lie about Bush, lie about the war on terror, and refuse to face their own hypocrisy! Good! That means they shouldn't win anymore elections!

I wish I could believe that, but after all, we voted for Clinton in this nation—twice! I hope the nation has wised up, but I won't hold my breath.

You can get the shirt (but not the model) at http://www.thoseshirts.com/cat.html

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