Bahaween

Yea, that stands for Bah Halloween! I ain’t into it anymore. Steph normally puts together cool little bags of treats that I hand out to the kids around the holidays, but I told her to skip it this year. I’m transporting a record number of little ones now from Victor to Driggs in the afternoon. On the average a couple of kids out of the bunch say thank you for the ride, and goodbye. Most days there is nothing…

My job is to show up on time, drive them to their destination and make sure they get off the bus safely. I have a new technique now in front of Barrels and Bins where I stop my big old bus diagonally, blocking the whole area and preventing other cars from getting around me. This lets the kids go either direction safely.

btw: I took this shot of The Bird at Alki Beach, back in the nineties…

Published
Categorized as The Bus

Short Katniss

Driving a bus in a small town is worlds apart from big city transit, from whence I came. This morning I was tracking down a new address off of 4000 S and I came to a couple of small dirt roads heading South. I was looking for S 700 W but since neither road had a street sign I was a bit perplexed. I suspected the second one but wasn’t sure which and it may have been further on down 4000.

I spotted a woman in a hoody jogging towards me so I stopped at the second road and waited for her to reach my bus. This was 08:00 in Teton Valley and I had nobody coming for as far as I could see. I rolled the window down and before I could say anything she said “Hi Jim! It was Lisa from Head Start (not Jake from State Farm). I hadn’t recognized her because of the hoody.

I asked her if this was 700 and she said “I live on 600 so this must be 700“. I followed her assumption and successfully picked up a short version of Katniss Everdeen and took her to today’s Halloween party at the Community School.

This just wouldn’t have happened in the sprawling concrete jungle of King County, WA.

I also should have checked the map before I headed out :-) Click image for map…

Published
Categorized as The Bus

GPS Bag

The UPS guy managed to dodge all of the driveway resurfacing stuff last night and drop off my new Garmin GPS Bag. It’s a weighted bag thing that I can attach my GPS to and then plop it up on my dashboard. When I settle down for the night I can just pick it up and put it on the floor out of sight. It looks nice there among my other desktop toys, but it’s heading to the truck tomorrow…

Update: It works great!

Published
Categorized as Travels

Cousin Maury

I took my cousin Maurice to a Strip Club in Reno, many years ago. I was working on him, you see, as he was an up and coming Catholic priest in the Reno diocese. He put on his street clothes that day and we hung out with the ladies for the afternoon and had a great time.

I was a bit worried about Maury. He seemed to have no interest in women which, considering he was a priest, was fine, but I sensed a leaning in the other direction. Maybe that afternoon did him some good because the last I’d heard he had married a woman with three kids, and I’m not sure if he left the priesthood to do that…

I guess I landed alright, I have a new daily 0745 pickup out at Hatches Corner that lets me enjoy sunrises like this while working on my paperwork, and I have a woman too…

Hey, we also got our driveway redone tonight!

Published
Categorized as The Bus

The God Antenna

There’s a new study just released by the Bacon Eaters Against Vegans council which claims that eating raw carrots causes Cancer. They also state that the risk can be reduced significantly by boiling the carrots for several hours and the only really safe way to consume them is to eat them when they turn to mush.

Then I hear that Boehner and his GOP goons are pushing through a two-year budget deal that would fully fund Obama’s rogue operations through 2017. How are they going to pay for it? With cuts to Social Security and Medicare of course.

And finally, the Mormon Church in Driggs has constructed a battery powered antenna in the corner of their parking lot, to talk with God, I assume.

I don’t know what this world is coming to but in the meantime I’m going to go make myself a bacon lettuce and carrot mush sandwich…

Published
Categorized as Various

Toro

These are photos of a leaf blower on the ground with leaves. Because I can…

Published
Categorized as House

Fitzgeralds Barn

The old Fitzgeralds barn off Packsaddle is beginning to cave inward. I briefly stopped today on the side of the road after dropping off a client and with the Tetons covered in fog and the sun shining bright, I grabbed this shot.

Published
Categorized as The Bus

Garbage

We’ve got a new garbage can! Thank god, the one we had was passed on by the previous owners 11 years ago and quite frankly, I didn’t like touching it. We also have a new disposal providor, a recycling company that’s been here for a few years that took the business away from our old guys.

There’s a lot of controversy going around about the politics of the takeover, but I don’t care. My bottom line is: We have a new can, the delivery day is the same and so is the cost. As far as loyalty to Voorhees, not once in the last eleven years have they contacted us and thanked us for being their customer and always paying our bill on time…

Although, I did have to call RAD yesterday. On my way home I spotted the RAD recycle trailer dropping plastic bottles all over Ski Hill road. They were apologetic and sent a crew out to clean it up. Hey, stuff happens… Rock on RAD!

Update: I emailed RAD to let them know I posted about them and got a very nice reply:

Jim, Thanks for the email and heads up on your blog post. I appreciate the honesty in the writing. Now, It's our job to do a great job for you and the rest of the community. You will definitely be getting a lot of appreciation from us! Sorry again for the plastic bottles and thanks for calling it in. David Hudacsko RAD Curbside Founder/Owner

Published
Categorized as House

Dirt

This is a great time of the year out by the Big Hole mountains. The soil is dark brown and the greens are vivid. The views of the Tetons aren’t bad either.

There are some nice shots behind the photo click below and you will notice two shots that were taken within seconds of each other. I may have captured a shot of that pesky Grand UFO in the second shot.

Published
Categorized as The Valley

Family Birthdays

Steph’s been crafting out lately on Family Birthday boards. She’s making one for each of her families households, color coordinated to individual color schemes. Each monthly peg contains a birthday charm for a family members birthday so you can see at a glance who’s birthdays are coming up.

Published
Categorized as Family

Symegry

Symegry (pronounced like imagery) now has images in Google, Yahoo and NPR.

Hmmm, 621ms is just over 1/2 second, sweet. The site loads no images, just my html5 base, jQuery, my css and javascript code, along with a couple of plugins. The processing time occurs when you select the News you want to view.

Published
Categorized as Site Stuff

Mellow Evening

It was a beautiful mellow evening so I went for a stroll around the property. The warm weather has kept the leaves on the trees longer than normal, so trying to get them off the ground now just seems futile. Maybe this is the year we just leave them on the ground.

Click the photo below to see my shots…

Here’s a painting I just did from one of the leaf shots:

Published
Categorized as House

Thresher

We’ve been driving by the old General Mills silos in Newdale for years now, but lately the silos have been glimmering at us in the Idaho sun like something new, so I pulled over today to check things out.

It seems a large conglomerate named Agspring has bought out the General Mills’ Idaho grain operations in Newdale, Blackfoot, American Falls, Rockford, Idaho Falls and Pocatello, and renamed the operation Thresher Artisan Wheat.

Compared to most of the run-down old silos around here, these things are impressive! They do need to fix their silo sign though…

Published
Categorized as Travels

Burnt Stick

Steph let out a shriek this morning as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror before climbing in the shower with me. “How could you look at me” she cried! I told her “I don’t look at you, I know what you look like“.

Really” she said…

Thinking quickly, as her hand hesitated on my hot soapy back I said “I could draw a picture of your face with the charcoal end of a burnt stick, in the dark“.

My back is clean so I think it worked. ?

Published
Categorized as House