April 2012 – Page 2 – Bus Driver Jim

Cache Clawson

The Cache Clawson Cemetery is an old cemetery in Tetonia, ID. I’ve been wanting to visit here for years, and today being quite a beautiful spring day in Teton Valley, was it.

It’s also a very sad and solemn visit as we have a connection to one of these graves. Cody Fullmer was the son of a good friend of ours, JoAnn. Cody took his own life last year, during a wave of suicides that has rocked our small valley.

I end this post with an audio/video of what I think may be wolf chatter. The sounds were happening all around the valley and I think it was wolves communicating.

SlideShow (Cache Clawson)

Cottonwoods

We’ve got a lot of cottonwood trees around here. They’re members of the willow family, not a very long-lived tree (70 years average) and they’re very fast growing.

Also kind of gnarly in the spring as the winter beats them up pretty good.

I shot this coming into the Tanners ranch last Tuesday. There used to be a giant set of antlers in the middle of that entrance, hmmm…

The road looks fine now but it is The Road From Hell in the winter. You should see the curve up ahead, around the corner. Truly the hardest place for us to get to!

Baja Fish Tacos

My sister and I had lunch today at the new Tex-Mex place, Fuego Grill. It’s in the building where Miso Hungry used to be. K-Dawg and I were going to have the fish tacos there for lunch a while back, but she took off on a little break.

Meanwhile, Sis tells me that she and her kids had the tacos recently and they were Great! So, we chowed down on them today, and yes they are terrific.

So is the place and the rest of the menu. It filled up to capacity while we ate. Next on my agenda here is the Chimichanga. It’s true that for a restaurant to succeed they need great food at a reasonable price. Fuego succeeds.

The Fuego Grill: (Fuego means Fire in Spanish)

Here’s an article from the Valley Citizen. Here’s their Website. Here’s their Facebook.

They also serve breakfast on the weekend from 9 to 2. Hmmm…

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. – Albert Camus

Piper Scare

Piper insisted on being outside yesterday because it was a beautiful day. I knew I would be gone longer than normal so I left food and water out for her. When I got home, she bypassed the gravy food I’d set out and went straight to bed. I just figured she’d had a full day and was pooped.

She stayed there all evening which is unusual as she normally comes to my office for some playtime. She was in her bed (which sits at the foot of my bed) when I retired. I woke up in the middle of the night and scrunched down to her, falling back asleep with my hand on her butt.

She didn’t get up with me and then I knew something was wrong. I had to get to work but I returned early morning to check on her. She was still in bed so I carried her to her food but she just walked on by and plopped down on the family room floor.

You know, it’s an interesting thing that I refuse to spend a dime on my own health care but I didn’t hesitate a second scooping her up and taking her to the vet hospital. I dropped her off and then continued my route.

The vet called and said she had a temperature of 105 and he wanted to do blood work. I spent all afternoon fearing the worst with tears welling up occasionally and I realized how much I care for my baby cat! She’s been my partner these last few months, bonding together night after snowy night.

I got the diagnosis at the end of the day: blood looked good! She has a bladder infection and after antibiotic and steroid injections the prognosis is good and the vet said she should be returning to normal. She’s in bed now. I’ll be giving her some oral stuff twice a day for a while. I am very relieved to say the least.

But what caused it? I think I may have figured it out! When I brought her food and water in I noticed the water looked funky, kind of dirty and oily and I thought what the hell! Some animal had messed with her water, and I think it was a bird. Because she was out there longer then normal she was thirsty and drank her water anyway.

Lesson learned. The birds don’t have my sympathy this summer. I have a cat.

And a gun…

Next morning update: She’s much better, wants to go outside (I’m not letting her…) and unhappy with me for squirting pink stuff down her throat with an eyedropper :-)

Friday update: She’s relapsed and I took her back for blood work. She got a big shot of stronger antibiotics, and got hydrated. Back tomorrow morning. The vet also scrapped my bird theory saying cats eat birds and there’s nothing there to harm them. Which means she has something viral going on.

She’s sleeping soundly in her bed, on the floor, because Steph is finally coming to bed, tonight.

Evacuation

Due to a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on the Grand Valley Fault between Madison and Teton counties today, Homeland Security directed our buses to evacuate Basin High School, our alternative school here.

We took the kids to a Red Cross base established at the fair grounds. You know what the worst part was? Mike and I got no lunch! And I realize now, I work for the government.

I know that my employer is federally funded but the fact that the government can tell us what to do, whenever they want, just kind of blows my mind a little…

Anyway, the whole thing was a simulation, part of a statewide emergency preparedness exercise. There was supposed to be some fake blood but I didn’t see any.

Mike is our new Safety and Training guy who drove up with a bus from Idaho Falls to help out. We were supposed to get lunch as part of the deal. I ended up buying him a burger at the new Basin Burgers place, where the old Burger King used to be. Not bad…

Hanger

When we moved here to the valley, the place was booming! A year later, the economy tanked. There are now more vacant lots here than there are people.

I’ve been aware of this strange construction north of the Middle School and decided to investigate it today. It’s a cool work of art but I don’t think that was the intention.

I drove back to the base after taking this shot and ran into Public Works Henry. This guy has lived here forever, plows our roads, and does pretty much every other Public Works job in town. He would know!

Sure enough, it’s an uncompleted airport hanger. Like every other project here, the money suddenly dried up and the job just stopped. What are they going to do with this monstrous structure of steel and concrete now? Just call it a work of art I suppose…

Alta To Home

Shot this today driving back from breakfast on the hill.

Later on, I shot this quick video of Piper on the driveway:

Easter Brunch

I drove up to Grand Targhee this morning for Easter Brunch. I also thought I’d run into George, who’s a server up there. I first saw him in the Valley a few months ago, riding smack dab in the middle of the southbound lane of Hwy 33 on a fat tire snow bike. You don’t see many black guys in the valley, much less pulling that trick.

He ended up riding on my bus to Victor a couple of times, so I got know him. He’s a very interesting guy. This morning he was my waiter!

The Branding Iron opened at 0900, I had a reservation and I was there at 0855. I loitered around and watched George vacuum.

Grabbed a window seat…

This was round one, I really came for the crabcake bennies.

Second round…

There was lots of other food there, but this did my lightweight stomach in. Oh, and my friend Karen mentioned me in her Blog last Wednesday.

SlideShow (Easter Brunch)

Random City

Ok, say your life sucks where you are. You want a new start but you have no clue where to go. You want a program that will generate a random city that you should move to!

My new app can help. If you have a State in mind, click on it. Otherwise, just click on the ?? up on the top to generate a random State and City for you!

The program selects 10 Cities from the State at random and then selects one random City from that set. Once selected, you can analyze it, view it, and check the weather…

The new program is Here. Enjoy!

Update: I’ve been playing with it, and have blown my own mind… Gone!

Mt. Hunt

I discovered a great new weather map from Weather Underground! Enter your location (city, state or zip code) and you get your current weather. Here’s ours.

I spotted something on this new Google map that I had never noticed before. If you travel between Driggs and Jackson by plane, which a lot of people do, you would fly right over Mt. Hunt. I never knew this particular mountain existed before seeing it here.

The significance? Hunt is my sister and her kids surname, and they fly out of Jackson!

Tietze’s Syndrome

…otherwise known as Costochondritis, has been diagnosed as the reason for the chest pains that have had me wondering about my mortality lately.

Actually, I made the diagnosis, with a little research… I’ve had a gut feeling that my heart was fine, but why was my chest hurting? Here’s what I found:

Costochondritis (kos-toe-KHON-dri-tis) is an inflammation of the cartilage that connects a rib to the breastbone (sternum). It causes sharp pain in the costosternal joint — where your ribs and breastbone are joined by rubbery cartilage. Pain caused by costochondritis may mimic that of a heart attack or other heart conditions.

The prescribed treatment was Ibuprofen, so I took some today. The pain dropped by half within the hour. The articles I read mentioned it usually occurs on the left side of your chest. Yep! And a possible cause was repeated minor trauma to the chest wall.

Then I got it: seatbelt shoulder straps! I drive for a living and I have them on all the time, on bumpy roads, and they cross exactly over the location of pain. Damn!

Since I don’t have health insurance, I just saved myself a bunch of money :-)

Silo Shots

The morning sun was reflecting nicely on this old Tetonia silo.

SlideShow (Silo Shots)

NBC Sucks!

I swear, this Blog has a mind of it’s own! I left it alone longer then usual yesterday and it activated the My Masters Dead routine that I had developed a while back. I better adjust the timing function to trigger after two days, not a few hours… ;-)

On a very serious note, I’m really disgusted with the mainstream media, particularly NBC! Regarding the Trayvon Martin insanity, on March 27th the Today Show broadcast a seriously edited clip of the 911 call that just contained: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good – he looks black“, thus implying that a racist stereotype was being made by George Zimmerman, and furthering the hate-mongering going on now.

A transcript of the complete 911 call shows that Zimmerman said, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”

The 911 officer responded saying, “OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?”

“He looks black,” Zimmerman said.

This kind of media crap makes me furious!!!

Blog Completed

This is a WordPress automatic post that the creator of this blog has set. He has not connected with the blog within the prescribed time and we have to assume the worst, and stop here… Can someone come get his cat?

Program List

I put together this summary of my various programs as a means of posting it to Pinterest, which needs a fairly good size image as an anchor. The intent is to give more people awareness and access to my apps. Of course, you have them all right here →

It looks like this on Pinterest. Click the image once you’re there, to open the program.