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Well, we had our own earthquake event today. As a former twenty year resident of the SF Bay Area I’m a veteran of some pretty significant earthquakes and I can call this one small with some degree of authority. It was just a jolt actually, quick with no aftershocks, almost like something shifted up in the mountains and the ripple just floated down to us.
Here’s a closeup of the epicenter and here’s an outer view.
Some news articles: Local News, Outside the Valley, Older Article.
Took this shot while leaving my sisters house this evening.
The traffic light in downtown Driggs has been the only real one in the entire Teton Valley while Victor’s had it’s little intersection light that lets Hwy 33 traffic continue through, stopping the Swan Valley traffic, but that’s changing. Construction is now underway to install a full fledged traffic light in Victor along with new sidewalks.
I dropped my bus off this afternoon at All American Tire for an A service and went walking up to, and around, the construction. Traffic’s flowing pretty good and the local businesses are doing fine. I also noticed a strange square in the ground, and that the Brakeman Burger building is for sale. Construction is halting for Labor Day weekend.
My nice little summer break officially ended today. I put an hour on the Trpta books getting the Chevy jumped, charged, and ready to go. Karen needed a 4-day to recharge her batteries so I’ll drive tomorrow and be back on route next Tuesday.
It’s been a good break! My tan is fabulous, I know this because Steph commented on my little glaring white ass in the shower this morning. Too bad nobody else will notice that great contrast.
I’m very pleased that I survived vacation with no accidents and never got arrested, although, that Montana Mounty did gave me a warning ticket for rolling through a stop sign leaving a gas station. (Yea, how many of those do you see at gas station exits…)
I didn’t hurt myself, ok, not too bad. I did take a tumble heading back to my motel from a dingy downtown bar but I wear my sunglasses at night so what do I expect :-)
Now, if I can just remember my passcode to log onto the vehicle computer tomorrow, and the pin number for the gas card, I’ll be good to go. I’m looking forward to paychecks going into my bank account, seeing my regular customers again and hanging out with a brand new crop of Community School kids!
One of these days, the vole that’s been tearing up our lawn is going to come face to face with the great hunting cat, Piper. His ass will be grass, so to speak…
Some amazing neurochemical research has been floating around the net lately asserting that the hormone released when people are in love is released in animals in the same intimate circumstances. The chemical is called oxytocin.
I only love four things in my life: my woman, my son, my cat and my truck. The chemical reaction between us humans is as expected, warm, fuzzy and all that stuff, but my relationship with Piper and Jill are different.
Piper and I have bonded tightly over the years and I know she loves me. There’s a guttural sound that escapes sometimes from her purrs when we’re close, hard to describe but I feel it. Oxytocin in action.
As to my truck Jill, when we pull into the garage after a long road trip and I shut her down, she talks to me. It’s a kind of metallic engine cooling down chatter that only an old engine could make. Obviously no oxytocin involved here but I sense the love. I take a moment to thank her for getting me home safely, and we move on to the next ride…
The wettest August since we’ve been here is finally drying out and the sky was showing it’s appreciation over our mountains this morning.
I created a few databases some years back for a variety of projects. One contains all of the 3,141 counties in the U.S. and the other all 20,253 cities. Each contained the most current web sites for that entity. Over the years, stuff has changed, so I took it upon myself to scrape the internet today for the most current web sites for each County and City in the United States.
The project is done and my databases are updated. You can enjoy the benefits of this electronic venture by visiting Here.
btw: My friend Skoge was in the line of fire of that California earthquake: account.
Our abnormal August rain has resulted in a miracle on our yard. Wonderful mushrooms are popping up all over, some of them gigantic! I love mushrooms and the amount of money we’re going to save at the supermarket should be significant.
I think I’ll start with the large ones first and see if the little ones grow up. Look out frying pan with butter, here we come! (Click below for more…)
Please, don’t try this at home! Parmesan baked Goldfish dipped in fresh unpasteurized raw goat cheese straight from the Farmers Market are like Crack!
Help me please, intervention needed!
A nice rainbow dropped out of last evenings thunderstorm, right into Teton Creek across the way. I have the location pinpointed now so maybe I should wander that way…
Our August weather has been highly abnormal. We’ve had way more rain than usual, with flash floods happening south of us and the barley and hay farmers are losing their crops. This is the time of year when everything normally dries out and the harvest begins. The potato guys, on the other hand, are loving it. Their harvest happens later in the year and the extra water is great.
There are two types of potatoes grown here, russets and reds. You can tell them apart by the color of their flowers. Russets are white and reds are well, red. It should also be noted that these potatoes never get eaten! They’re seed potatoes which get shipped around the country to other farmers.
I’ve got a new application underway called StateTown (www.statetown.com). It’s a highly responsive and minimal html5 app utilizing my nice css rounded corner boxes.
Try it out and see if you get it! Click Here.
If that’s not your cup of tea, here’s all of the blog posts that have made it on to Pinterest.
I had a code epiphany recently. All of my photos are stored on Flickr and organized into sets, which correspond to their related post. The viewer program I wrote several years ago sorted the sets alphabetically by name. Dumb! They now appear by most recent first. Much more logical! Here are all of my 527 Photosets, current, to the very first…
…and of course, you can explore all of the new Flickr content coming in, by clicking Here.