My blahg

It's a...

2012-01-26T17:38:00.000-08:00

GIRL!

We went for our anatomy ultrasound yesterday morning, at 19 weeks and 4 days into pregnancy. It was a lot of fun. The technician was really friendly, and knowledgeable, and Jeff and I really liked her.

The baby slept through a lot of the ultrasound; just like in the past couple ultrasounds with my midwife, the baby likes to keep her hands up by her face. She was cross-legged for a while. A few times she stretched, and we really got to see her long legs. Then she settled into an acrobatic position where her feet were up by her head and she fell asleep again, just like that.

The ultrasound was great! The baby's heart has four chambers, her spine looks good, she has a nasal bone (so probably no Down's Syndrome), and she doesn't have a cleft palate. I think we determined that she has all of her fingers and toes. She was measuring at 19 weeks exactly, and she weighs 10 ounces.

The technician gave us a DVD of the whole ultrasound, a CD with 17 pictures from the ultrasound, and she printed out two pictures for us to take with us.

One of the pictures she printed is a 3D one. My honest opinion is that most of the 3D ultrasound pictures make babies look like Pompeii victims. (Usually when I see them, I want to say, "Oh, I'm so sorry your baby got covered by a volcano." Instead I say, "Awww... How cute!") The exception is 3D pictures of babies that are about ready to be born. If you check Google Images, there are a lot of pictures that show the 3D ultrasound picture next to the picture of the newborn baby, and those are kind of cool, because you actually get to see what the kid is going to look like before it is born.

But at 19.5 weeks, all babies still look like Pompeii victims, and our child is no exception. It's all right. I still love looking at the picture anyway. She has a little nose! And a mouth! And a chin! And eye sockets! And her hands are up by her face, just like they usually are during ultrasounds. So that's neat.

Our other printed picture is a potty shot that says GIRL and has an arrow pointing at very obvious girl parts. I won't be posting that one online, because it seems indiscreet to post pictures of someone's genitals on the Internet. So, you'll have to take my word for it.

Our CD of images has some great stuff, including pictures of hands, feet, limbs, and all of that great stuff.

Over the past week and a half I've been feeling the baby move more. Still not a ton, though. It turns out the placenta is on the front of my uterus, so it acts as a buffer when she moves around, and that's why I'm not feeling her much yet. As she gets bigger and stronger I'll feel more.

After we found out that she's a girl, we called all of my family to let them know. My dad didn't want to know--he jokes about how it's cheating to find out before the baby is born but actually he kind of isn't really joking. So, I didn't tell him, even though I talked to him right after the ultrasound, because I asked if he wanted to know and he said he didn't. It can be a surprise for him later. The thing is, though, once we come up with a name for her, we'll start calling her that. And sometime someone will be talking to him about the baby and they'll slip and say "she" or something. So, I doubt he will actually make it until June without finding out. But, whatever.

I think I'm looking more pregnant now. I still fit into pre-pregnancy clothes, sort of, but the pants are very uncomfortable, and t-shirts make me look especially pregnant. My mother-in-law got me my first maternity outfit (a shirt and some black pants), and when I realized I was wearing the pants every day I went out and bought some maternity jeans. So, now I switch back and forth. I haven't bought any other maternity shirts, because so far I'm doing all right wearing loose non-maternity shirts. This picture is from a few days ago (19 weeks 2 days). I'm not big enough for strangers to comment yet, but my clothes definitely fit differently.

Our other fun baby news is that we're starting birth classes. Last week my midwife talked to us about the different options and we decided to do Brio. Brio is pretty much a modern version of Bradley classes. I keep hearing about HypnoBabies, and I am interested in trying that, but at $300+ per type of class that we do, we're not spending $650 on childbirth prep classes, and I wanted more of a logical and practical foundation before I try something like HypnoBabies, so Brio it is. Maybe I can buy used HypnoBabies materials online or something; otherwise, I'll probably do one of those classes when we have our next baby. We're excited about the Brio classes, though. They go for 12 weeks, and start next Monday.

Braces, Christmas, Arizona, Business, Baby, etc.

2012-01-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I feel disappointed that I'm not blogging as often as I used to. It's actually okay, though. Any hobby someone sticks with over time will tend to change a little, as the person changes. And that's all right.

I could write probably about nine different blog posts right now, and instead I'm going to condense them.

Braces
I got braces! My teeth weren't bad, but I have one upper tooth that is really rotated, and a spot where my lower teeth are crowded. Pictures taken from my right side always look bad because the rotated tooth is prominent from that angle.

I can remember when I was 11 or 12 or something, I used to have this plastic stuff that would melt and then harden again, and you could make things out of it. I made a lot of different things. I remember I tried to make myself braces once. The model was more like a retainer; I tried to use a paper clip for a metal part, but it didn't really work right, so I moved to an entirely plastic model. They were basically like whitening trays, or, a prototype for Invisalign. Of course they did nothing, so I gave up on that.

The timing was basically determined by insurance. At Jeff's current job, insurance covers adult braces. (Not 100%, but most insurances won't cover anything after you're 18, 21, or 26 at the oldest.) So, this was a good time. We researched a lot to make sure it was ok during pregnancy, and only real problem is that it's just one more uncomfortable thing. (And it is.)

I got ceramic ones, and the conservative estimate is that I'll wear them for a year. But maybe less.

Christmas
For Christmas we stayed in town. We spent Christmas eve with Jeff's family, because that's their tradition. We stayed the night there, actually. And then, on Christmas day Jeff and I drove down to Jessica's house to have dinner with a bunch of my family: Jess and Mitch, Sarah, Jason (he was down visiting from BYU-I), my dad (up visiting from CA), and my grandpa (on loan from his old folks' home in Salt Lake). It was a lot of fun. We made out with some great loot, too, because this year Jess and Mitch were giving to Jeff and I in my family's sibling exchange, and Jess got us a personalized sign to hang in our house. We really liked that. Plus, she made me some bands for adapting pre-pregnancy jeans to pregnancy, which was thoughtful and relevant. Sarah brought her puppy ("Skunk"?), too, and it kept playing with the cats, so that was fun to watch.

One of the best Christmas gifts was something Jess gave to Jason. SO, here's the story (as well as I remember it): After Sarah lived with Jess and Mitch, Jessica gave her a framed picture of Jess and Mitch and their cats, to take to her new apartment. Jessica still checks with Sarah sometimes to see if she has it, and she does. THEN, after Jason lived with Jess and Mitch this summer, they drove him up to his dorm at BYU-I, and sometime when he wasn't looking, Jess put up a framed copy of the same picture (of her and Mitch and their cats) in Jason's dorm. After they left, Jason texted (I think?) and was like "ha ha, very funny." Or something. But Jessica still checks with him periodically to see if it is still up, and so far it is. BUT THEN! When Jason came down for Christmas (or right before? I don't know), when Jessica asked Jason about the picture, Jason said that he still had it--right by the 8x10 I sent him of Jeff and I and all of our animals. Then they had a conversation kind of like this:

Jessica: Really? Did they really do that?
Jason: Uh huh.
Jessica: Really, though?
Jason: Yeah.
Jessica: But seriously, come on, did they?
Jason: Uh huh.
Jessica: They really did?
Jason: Okay, no they didn't.
Jessica: Challenge accepted!

SO, Jason was even already there--for Christmas--this year--and Jessica got a group picture, for some reason or another, and she went to Costco, and turned it into a poster. I think it was a picture of Jess and Mitch, and Sarah and Jason. I forget. The cats weren't in the picture, unfortunately, because the pictures that had them in it didn't come out right.

It was the funniest to watch Jason unwrap this poster, all rolled up, because he was totally not expecting it. And, my poor little brother, I think he kind of wants to be cool up at college, and it's kind of weird to have a poster like that. But also it's kind of awesome and random, so I hope he does put it up.

For the sibling exchange we had my little brother Brandon, so we had to mail him stuff. It was so lame, because I thought he was coming up to Utah with my dad, so I hadn't mailed his gifts, but then I found out he was staying in California. So I sent his package priority (2-3 days) on the Tuesday morning before Christmas (4 delivery days out). Would it be there in time? The post office guy assured me that it would. "Oh, yeah, it'll make it." So, readers, want to guess when the package was actually delivered? ... Wednesday! Not the next day. EIGHT days later. Four days after Christmas. (Heyyy.)

Arizona
The day after Christmas, we drove down to Phoenix to spend a week with my sister, Tracy. We had a great time. It was a very relaxing vacation, which was just what we needed. We slept in, and ate good food, and did just enough tourism for us to feel like we were on vacation. We hiked at ...South Mountain? and we hiked at White Tank ... something Preserve. We visited the Botanical Gardens. And we visited some of my friends from back in Provo. It was so much fun to see them and their kids. And then we drove back. Our books for the trip were: Currency Wars (James Rickards) and Ina May's Guide to Childbirth. It was a long drive, but we had a great trip, and we really enjoyed spending so much time with my sister and her family.

Business
My property management business is continuing to grow. I recently hired a lady to help us as a "Part Time Office Manager/ Property Management Assistant." So, her primary responsibility so far is to help us with our office organization--she's doing a lot of bookkeeping for us, and helping us transition from Quicken to QuickBooks for 2012. She also has about 20 years of property management experience, though, so as we get caught up on bookkeeping, we will begin to have her also help out with property management tasks--primarily for interactions with tenants. She's been working for us since the week before Christmas, and I like her a lot. She brings a lot of good ideas and useful experience to our business.

So, one of the big reasons for hiring her is in preparation for the baby being born. All by myself, I think it would be really difficult to become a parent and still be growing my business (or even meeting the needs of my existing business). Instead, my hope is that I can continue to expand my business as much as possible during my pregnancy, and then my job can transition into marketing and owner relations. Those aspects of property management are a lot easier to do with a baby than all of the running around parts of the job. With a good team, I can continue to grow my business, provide excellent service, and set things up so that I can be a mom and raise my kids.

Baby
Pregnancy is still going all right. A few weeks ago my morning sickness finally went away, so I'm not nauseous all day every day anymore. That's nice. I still get tired a lot. For the past week or so, every day at about 2 pm I start to feel like I haven't slept in months. I'm just exhausted. Making a baby is a lot of work, I guess.

I think I'm starting to feel the baby move sometimes. I wasn't sure if I was feeling it or not, but over the past week it's become more distinct. I only feel it sometimes, and when I do, I usually start to feel it a couple minutes after I lay down for bed at night. That's kind of cool.

We have another appointment with my midwife next Monday. She said if it is a boy, we may be able to tell at that appointment. We're planning to do the anatomy scan the week of the 23rd, so either way we'll know the gender within the next couple weeks. It's something I think about every day, though. Today I am 17 weeks and 3 days pregnant, and if we went to a for-fun ultrasound place, that's far enough along that they would be able to tell us the gender, and it would be accurate. So! Why don't we know?? I really want to go find out! But then I'm like, "Oh, Emily, just be patient. You'll know really soon anyway." And that's true, too.

Lately I feel like the baby will be a girl. For the first while during pregnancy it seemed like it would be a boy because almost everyone I know has has boys. But who knows. Jeff and I don't really care whether it's a boy or girl. We maybe slightly prefer a boy, because Jeff loves to play rough with Chalcy and boys play rougher than girls. And I can think of a few boy names that I like, but I struggle with girl names. And, a boy would be a better farm worker, maybe. But, boys have lots of energy. And little girls are sometimes just so sweet. It would be a lot of fun to have a daughter. So, our preference isn't much of a preference, because either way will be a lot of fun.

Last week I got my first maternity outfit. My mother-in-law took Jeff and I shopping for Christmas, and I got these cute black pants and a blue top. The pants are extremely comfortable. I still fit into almost all of my regular clothes, particularly if I'm standing. Sitting down makes regular pants uncomfortable.

And, I think that's pretty much everything.

The Mystery of the Barking Dog

2011-12-20T19:40:00.000-08:00

We re-rented the front of our house, and so we have new neighbors again. They seem very nice.

They have a dog. As part of discussion before move-in, I reminded them that we do not allow aggressive or excessively barky dogs. I asked if their dog is aggressive or excessively barky. They told me it isn't. They said the dog does bark when people comes to the door, or if people invade the dog's territory, but otherwise it doesn't bark much. (That's acceptable.)

Over the past week or so they've been gradually moving in. I can tell that they've brought the dog now, because it started barking around 1 pm today, and it has kept barking all day long--it's 8:15 pm as I type this and the wretched beast is still barking.

If you've ever met our dog, you'll know she is almost completely silent. That's on purpose. Jeff wanted a Chihuahua and I said "no way, Jose," because Chihuahuas are almost always extremely barky. (Does anyone disagree with this? Go visit the small dog room at the humane society and then visit the big dog room.) The reason I screen for barky dogs before accepting a rental application for our house is because our last renters had a dog that was extremely barky and aggressive when he was outside, and moderately barky inside. I hated it.

I don't mind hearing the neighbors' dog bark occasionally, but all day long?? Shouldn't it have a sore throat by now?

So, my dear friends, how did this happen?? Please vote.
a) The dog is adjusting to the new home and it will get much quieter very soon; it is not actually a barky dog.
b) The owners didn't realize their dog has a serious barking problem because it actually only barks when they are away, so they really do believe it is a quiet dog.
c) The owners lied or really exaggerated: the dog is barky and they knew it. (Asked about their dogs, how many owners would actually say, "Oh. Actually our dog is very barky, so this may not work out.")
d) Someone has been knocking on the front door all day long and the dog is just barking about that.
e) It isn't their dog. Someone else's dog is in the front of our house.
f) Some other reason. (Please explain in the comment space below.)

If this happens again tomorrow maybe I should text them to let them know there may be something wrong and they should probably check on their dog because it has been barking for x hours. Or slip some poison under the laundry room door. (Of course I could never actually do that, but my goodness, make the noise stop!)

And, for extra credit, will someone please explain to me why they keep making dogs like this? If it were up to me, all barky or otherwise "bad" dogs would be neutered or spayed, and then sent to Australia to live out the rest of their miserable lives hunting wild rats and being eaten by fleas.

Advice for Job Seekers

2011-11-28T11:08:00.001-08:00

I'm hiring again. Right now I'm looking for a part time assistant to do office work (mainly bookkeeping) and eventually expand to help out with property management tasks (like taking calls and showing available apartments). The position starts at only 8 hours per week, but we expect that it will grow pretty rapidly. (Our other positions have basically tripled in hours over the past few months.)

I posted the ad on Saturday, and (less than two days later!) I already have over 30 applications from people who are interested. This response is typical.

This will be the fourth person I've hired over the past six months, so I'm certainly no hiring expert, but it's becoming really clear to me that there are a few simple things that people can do to increase their chances of getting an interview.

1. Use a professional e-mail address. Your e-mail address should not have words like "babe," "hot," "stud," "angel," "chick," etc. If your e-mail address has one of those things, set up a free e-mail address with Gmail that just has your name, and maybe a few numbers. (If you're a grown up, maybe it's time to say goodbye to your embarrassing e-mail address anyway?) When I receive resumes from stupid or flirty e-mail addresses, I assume that the applicant is unprofessional, does not pay attention to details, etc, and unless the person immediately appears extremely qualified, these applications go straight to the rejection pile.

2. Pay attention to job requirements. For this particular job, I am requiring a few things: a background check is a condition of employment; applicants must be totally comfortable using Microsoft Word, the Internet, and Google Maps, etc; they need to have an insured car and valid driver license... and, we're looking for someone who has Quickbooks experience. They don't need to have used Quickbooks for 10 years, but frankly, my understanding is that it takes some time to learn to use Quickbooks, and that's part of the reason we're hiring to begin with. If your resume includes experience as a "Sandwich Artist" and a few months as a receptionist, you're going straight into the rejection pile. (And, why did you waste my time?) If you don't have the qualifications for the type of job you want, why not get them? You don't need to have an entire college degree in a related field, but you could at least take a few classes so that your skills will be a better match with what you want to be doing. Or buy a book to study and practice at home. People who think that being a "quick learner" means they don't need related experience are kidding themselves. Being a quick learner may be enough for a job at a sandwich shop, and it will certainly help you as I'm teaching you to use our industry-specific software (which I don't expect anyone to already have experience with), but I still expect you to bring something to the table.

3. Don't bury your qualifications. I have received so many extremely wordy resumes. I understand that applicants want credit for as many things they've done as possible so that I'll know they're extra qualified for something, and they can apply for as many different types of jobs as possible. What actually happens, though, is that it buries your qualifications. When I "read" your resume, I'm skimming, and I'm looking for specific words that match what I put in the job description: Quickbooks, financial, bookkeeping, real estate, etc. Don't use complete sentences. Bullet points that list your skills at the top are even better. If you actually do qualify, don't risk being accidentally overlooked because your qualification was not obvious.

4. Act like you read the job ad. You don't have to rewrite your resume for me, and you don't have to spend hours creating the ideal cover letter, either. (Although both of those things would help you significantly.) However, if the ad says you're sending your resume to Emily, why address your e-mail to the Hiring Manager? Are the two seconds it would take to insert my name really too much? If you don't want to waste your time on a cover letter, send me a very short e-mail that makes it sound like you read the job ad. Something like:

Dear Emily,
I have experience with Quickbooks, I speak Spanish, and I would love to grow with your company! My resume is attached. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Job Hunter

I've had thoughts of expanding my job application instructions to something like this:
"Read this carefully: If you wish to apply for this job, send your resume to Emily at ---@---.com. To prove that you actually mean to apply for this job specifically, answer the following questions in the text of the e-mail: 1. Have you ever used Quickbooks before? 2. Do you have a reliable vehicle? 3. How many hours is this position? If you do not include the answer these questions in the body of the e-mail, your resume will not be considered. Thank you."

5. Don't bother including an objective on your resume. Objectives were really popular in the 80's, I think, but they haven't been popular for a while now. I don't actually care what you're looking for--I just care if you can meet my needs. That's what I'll be paying you for. If you include an objective anyway, try to have it sort of match my job. If your objective is all about something totally unrelated to the job that I'm offering, not only does it draw attention to the fact that your qualifications are probably for some other field, it also gives me the idea that you would rather be doing something else, so you probably won't do a very good job at my position that you're applying for, since you don't care about it.

Anyhow, these are just some of the thoughts I keep having as I peek at the e-mails and resumes I'm receiving. These things seem like common sense to me, but the same issues come up over and over again, so I guess it's common lack-of-sense. About 80% of the applications I receive have one (or more) of these problems. The good news is, if my suggestions sound new to you, changing a few simple things can probably move you into the top 20%, which will dramatically increase your chances of getting an interview (and a job).

Pregnancy Jokes

2011-11-26T11:05:00.001-08:00

Jeff and I have two favorite pregnancy-related jokes.

Our First Joke

The first joke started back when we were trying to conceive. When you're trying to conceive, you're supposed to act like you're pregnant, because maybe you already are! Obviously there's some sense to not doing risky things when you could be pregnant, but acting like maybe I'm pregnant felt pretty ridiculous. (And, then, it was just kind of disappointing when I wasn't pregnant the first month.)

Anyhow, Jeff really wanted me to be careful, though, because mistakes in very early pregnancy can have serious consequences. Fair enough.

So one time I had a sore throat. I searched online for "sore throat pregnancy" (or something like that) so that I could find a safe method for treating a sore throat. To my surprise, the top results were pages answering the question of whether a sore throat is a very early pregnancy symptom. (It could be! The charts show that women who turned out to be pregnant had a slightly higher incidence of sore throats...)

It all reminded me of when one of my friends in high school thought everything a particular boy did was related to her: "Oh, he looks sad, maybe he's thinking about how I didn't call this Saturday?" Uh, no. Maybe he's realizing he has a test next period. (He wasn't interested in her at all, so it was kind of silly for her to act like everything he did had to do with her.)

So, Jeff and I had a good laugh about people seriously wondering if they're pregnant once they notice a sore throat.

After that, any time either of us had a symptom, we diagnosed it as an early pregnancy symptom.

"Oh, your nose is stuffy? You must be pregnant!" Anything! Symptoms that seemed especially unrelated to pregnancy became our best indicators. That was our favorite joke while we were trying to conceive.

Our Second Joke

So, I've had morning sickness for...oh, about 6 weeks now? I don't remember how this one started, but at some point I started telling Jeff, "You make me sick!" I say it in a really irritated voice, as if I find him absolutely disgusting. But actually, he got me pregnant, so he did make me sick. So we both laugh about that, because I'm being literal about a statement that is typically used figuratively. Funny!

A BONUS Joke

So, recently I went shopping and I came back with a lot of random stuff.

Me: I bought a lot of random stuff. Like, I got a pineapple. This is what happens when I have weird tastes and I go to the grocery store: I'm so used to everything sounding bad that I buy everything that has appeal to me and I get a lot of weird stuff.

Jeff: Like oranges?

Me: Uh huh. Well, not oranges, but mandarin oranges. But not in a can this time.

Jeff: They have a peel.

Me: Hahaha! Good one.

+1

2011-11-19T16:29:00.000-08:00

We're expecting!

Baby is due June 16th.

This is our ultrasound from Thursday. Baby is about the size of a grape, and kind of the shape of a gummy bear. The right part of the blob is its head, and the left part of the blob is its body. My midwife was able to point out all of the arms and legs, the spinal cord, and the jaw. It has a strong heartbeat, and it was moving its little limbs around as we watched it.

I have been sick, sick, sick for about a month now. I get nauseous soon after I wake up, and usually I just stay nauseous all day long. Nothing really makes it better, except for chocolate, which really doesn't sound good to me in the morning. Now, Jeff makes me hot chocolate every morning, and that makes my days about 80% better. I still have a lot of days where I just spend most of the day sleeping and feeling awful, though. We've had my assistant come over much more often to help me keep up with property management stuff and household stuff. That helps somewhat. And right now I'm on the "Things That Sound Like They Will Not Make Me More Sick" diet. Hopefully I'll start feeling better soon.

We picked an excellent midwife. She's very experienced, and she's always booked about 8 months out, with a waiting list. We called her as soon as we knew I was pregnant, and we're excited to be working with her. Jeff and I both want to have an out-of-hospital birth, for a variety of reasons. We have excellent insurance, so a hospital birth would pretty much be free, but it's an easy decision for us: we want the very best for our child, and we won't get the best at a hospital. For Jeff, it's all about statistics: out-of-hospital births statistically have better outcomes (for example, much lower rate of c-sections, lower rates of postpartum depression, etc). For me, it's about the experience that I want to have (I attended four of my mom's home births). At this point we're leaning toward having a planned home birth, but my midwife also has a very nice birth center, so we're still considering that option.

We've only [tentatively] picked a girl name: Renesme. We could also combine my mom's name (Karen) and Jeff's mom's name (June) to make something really special, like Juren, or Karune. We could use the same naming convention if it's a boy--my dad's name is Robert and Jeff's dad's name is Thomas, so we could call him Tombob or Botom, but I'm just not as sure about those. Just kidding.

Learning to be a Good Employer

2011-11-14T12:21:00.001-08:00

I hired a lady several months ago to do some cleaning, organizing, and personal assistant type work for me. It's been working out all right. She was promised just 4 hours of work per week, but she's more than happy to work more hours, so it's fluctuated. For the past week and a half, we've had her coming every week day for 3-4 hours. Now, primarily she does cleaning, but she also runs some errands for me.

Today something happened that kind of put a bad taste in my mouth.

We're renting the front of our home again, and last week this lady offered to put an ad online for me, from her house. So she did, sometime at the end of last week. Honestly, I think the ad is terrible. It doesn't highlight features of the home, and it abbreviates too many words (which means it won't come up in searches), and she only posted it on Craigslist, which would be perfect, except that here in Utah people all use KSL, not Craigslist. Of course, I have gotten absolutely no response from the ad. Jeff says her ad is okay. It's better than nothing, and I've been too busy to spend time on that, he says. Well, that's fine.

Today, she asked me something to the extent of how did I want to handle payment for her placing ads. "Oh," I said. "Right. How much time did you spend on it?" "About fifteen minutes. Because it was the first time, and I had to download pictures." "Oh. Hm. Okay."

Now, here's the thing. I absolutely do not expect this lady to spend a second of her time working for free. I have every expectation that she will be paid for every bit of time that she spends working for us. That's only fair.

Really, though, I kind of thought that I had already paid her for her time that she spent on the ad. See, she comes late almost every time she works, and then she frequently leaves a little early, too. So I thought maybe she left early and completed her shift at home the day that she placed the ad. I didn't clarify that with her, though, so maybe I should have.

Here's the thing: I pay this lady cash every day that she comes to work for us. It's a pain, and it seems nit-picky to reduce her pay when she works 10-15 minutes less than her scheduled work time. What is 10-15 minutes if she's been working for 3-5 hours? Plus, we don't have a time clock in our house, so I don't want to accidentally round her time down just because I wasn't paying close attention to the time when she arrived or left. So I just round up. To be nice.

There have been a few times lately where I've invited her to eat lunch with me. On the clock. Just to be nice.

And, she's kind of a slow worker. We think we're over-paying her, by at least a couple dollars an hour. It seemed worthwhile when she was helping organize, but now she's not doing organization, and sometimes we wonder what's taking her so long to get things done.

We also reimburse her mileage when she runs errands, at .50/mile. It is obvious to me that she rounds these figures up. For instance, today she drove out to one of the properties I manage to drop some papers off, and she told me it was 35 miles. Google Maps says her drive was 23 miles, round trip. That's an extra $6 right there.

So...today I wasn't really sure what to do. The amount of payment in question is only $3. When she left today, she she was short on her time even today by 10 minutes. So I paid her the rounded-up amount for her hours today, and decided I would just think about what to do.

Here are my thoughts:
1. I should pay her the $3, I guess, since obviously she doesn't feel like she has been compensated for that time.
2. I should keep track of the time that she works, to the minute, and if it means she's getting loose change instead of dollars, well, that's what she earned.
3. Google Maps will be our authority for determining mileage.
4. If I feel like inviting her to eat lunch with me, I will, but I probably won't really feel like it.

Do I really need to be so militant about all this? It seems a little ridiculous. But still, really, she knows she comes late. (She apologizes when she does.) So, why would she make a big deal about a few minutes of work that she did from home, at her own suggestion?

I don't know.

What do you think, readers? What is the right thing to do? What would a good, fair employer do?

Ducklings and a Buck

2011-11-06T16:28:00.000-08:00

Ducklings

Jessica told me she knew someone who was looking for a home for their ducks, and wondered if we were interested. We were. Jeff has actually been asking me to get ducks for about a year now, and one time this spring I actually looked for them, but I didn't find any.

So, this Friday the family brought their three ducklings to our house. We like them.

They're really cute. And they were raised by a bunch of kids, so they're pretty friendly, too.

The ducklings are going through their voice change right now, which is absolutely adorable. They say "peep peep QUACK peep QUACK."

This morning I put them out in the yard with the goats. It took them about 5 minutes to find the drinking pond and start swimming in it. Ducks are fun.

New Goat

We have our buck for the year. We got him a couple weeks ago. Supposedly he's hot stuff, because he has a bunch of champion goats in his lines. It was kind of an ordeal getting him. Here's what happened:

We had been watching KSL for a decently priced buck. I found one, and the guy was willing to deliver for the cost of fuel, so I called and told him I wanted it. He was going to deliver the buck last Thursday, I think, and then it became last Friday night at 7pm. We were not excited about that time, but we figured it would be ok. Except the guy didn't come at 7. He called around 7 saying he was coming at 8. We kept waiting at our house for him (on date night) and he kept not showing up. At 9:40 (past our bedtime) the guy was on his way, with the goat loaded up, about 40 minutes away. Sigh. Well, okay. So we kept waiting, and finally the guy got here, after 10pm! We unloaded the buck and put him in with the does, and went into the garage to pay the man and have him sign a receipt for us, and to get the registration papers for him. So I was like, okay, so, $150 plus $20 for delivery. And the guy was like, "Wait, what? No, I had him listed at $300." And I said, "Uh, no, it was definitely $150, and I didn't even see any other bucks posted by you." [Awkward pause.] "Well, I just listed him a few days ago." So it was a big miscommunication, but actually Jeff and I were no way going to pay $300 for a buck, because we would never be able to resell a buck for that much. I brought out the printout of the ad that I saw on KSL ($150), and the guy realized what I was talking about. We talked about paying to rent the buck (yes, people do that); the guy wasn't that interested. Finally, he suggested we pay $200, and we weren't crazy about paying that much for just a buck, but we were both tired and wanted to be done with things, so we just did. And then, I was looking at the papers, and it said the buck's parents were the same as the other goat we thought we were buying. Oh well.

So. Now we have him. The guy said he is about 6 months old...and so far he is totally uninterested in the does. And I know some of the does have been interested in him. So, I don't know what his problem is, but he better not actually have a problem.

Also, he has no name yet. I need to come up with something so that I can send his papers in.

Other Things

We went to St. George. It was fun.

Work, New Cat, Temple Pictures, Garden, and Moving.

2011-10-15T10:25:00.000-07:00

Work

I've been busy with work lately, which is a good thing. A man in northern Utah asked me to manage his house for him. He's moving out of the country. Then, another man who has eight apartments and lives out-of-state asked me to manage for him too. So, this month I've spent a lot of time showing vacancies lately, and also responding to maintenance issues at the apartments. I've actually been busy enough that I haven't been doing any more marketing, although I plan to pick up with that again soon.

Jeff is back to work, too. He has been for a little while now. He did get multiple job offers again, but one of the jobs offered higher pay and really good benefits, so he accepted that one. It's with a company that most people have heard of. Jeff doesn't really like the job very much, because it's taking a long time for him to actually get started doing programming, and he is bored. That should improve over time, though. He keeps finding out about new benefits--we already knew our health care would pretty much be free, but on the first day of work he found out they were going to give him an iPhone--and pay for his service. (Cool! Although Jeff is kind of disappointed because he really likes his Droid.) Then, Jeff offered to work later hours so that he can work some hours with the Australians that are on his team...so the company gave him a credit card and said they will pay for his dinner every day. Nice!

New Cat

I brought home a new cat. I was showing the home that I'm managing to some prospective renters and I asked if they had any pets. (The owner allows up to two, with pet rent.) They said no--well, they do--they have cats--but they're getting rid of them. "Oh," I said, "Are they good at catching mice?" I explained that we've looked for a mouser before, but people always list cats online saying they would be good at catching mice, or saying they would grow up to be good at catching mice, but I want a cat that already catches mice.

They said, "Actually, they are!"

So we talked some more about it, and after I showed them the rental home, they invited me back to their house. I met two of their cats, and decided to take the one who had more of a history of catching mice. Her name is Kitty, she is 17 years old, and she has long fur that started getting ratty a few months ago. She is sometimes really friendly and sometimes really aggressive. Perfect.

So I brought her home, and let her out in the barn, and then I didn't see her again.

Jeff thought I was joking when I told him I'd brought a cat home, but it didn't really matter because she isn't really our pet, she's just [supposed to be] living in the barn and we're feeding her. We'd talked about getting a barn cat before, so it wasn't completely out of the blue.

And then, after a few days of Kitty being missing, I was out doing some work in the barn and I heard a meow that wasn't Paley. I walked around the corner, and (!) there she was! So I showed Jeff our new cat. And I fed her. Paley does not like Kitty. Kitty is disinterested in Paley.

Temple Pictures

This week my Relief Society (ladies church group) did a "Wonderful Wednesday" activity. The main project was making temple pictures. The pictures are beautiful (and popular up here in Utah) but if you just go buy one they usually cost about $200, so although I've wanted one for a while, I haven't bought one. For the activity they charged us $53, though, and that was totally worth it.

I invited my sister Jessica, and we each did pictures of the temples where we were married. (Jess did Salt Lake and I did Jordan River.) It was pretty easy. Basically, what you do is mount a print onto a board. Let it dry. Texture the print. Let it dry. Paint your frame. Let it dry. Add screws and little metal things to the back of the frame. Insert the mounted, textured print. Tighten the screws. Wait a day and add the bracket thing that lets you hang it. Then hang it.

Garden

My garden didn't go quite how I planned, mainly because I was unable to get a fence up to protect my garden from goats. So I never planted my garden. But, after I abandoned so many healthy plants at my in-laws' house, my father-in-law planted anything that seemed like it might survive. This resulted in a lot of produce, actually. We've been picking and eating purple tomatoes when we go over to my in-laws' on game days. And, I've had a couple of the Rich Sweetness 132 melons. They're small, but they're pretty delicious. A couple days ago, my father-in-law tore out all of my garden and harvested what he could. Frost is coming soon, anyway, and I think he is planning to plant some trees where my garden was growing. It was nice of him to let my stuff grow at their house.

Moving

We're only sort of moving. We've been living in the back portion of our house, and we've had the front part rented out. The guys living in the front have been there for over two years, but now they're moving. So we're going to move up to the front! I think it will probably need new carpet, and a little bit of work done...but we plan to move in the beginning part of November. I am SO excited to have a kitchen(!) and a bath tub(!) and a bigger office area(!) and a fireplace(!). Jeff is worried that moving will be a lot of work, and getting organized will take a long time. It kind of will, but I don't think it will be too bad, because we won't have to pack, or load things up in a truck, or anything like that. We'll just take things and put them in their new places. Easiest Move Ever. Did I mention I'm excited to have a real kitchen? Because I am. We finally got an oven back here a few weeks ago, though, and that's already been excellent.

We're busy and we're happy and these are the things that are going on.

Yeild for Pidestreines.

2011-10-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

Want to see something kind of funny?

Recently, Jeff and I stopped by our Walmart for something and as we were leaving I noticed this:

"Wait. Isn't yield Y-I-E-L-D?" I asked Jeff.

"Is it? Yeah, I think it is."

"It definitely is. Stop so I can take pictures?"

"Sure."

So I got out and took pictures. (Because, how often do you actually see failblog stuff in real life?)

The next day we stopped by Walmart for something else, and they had already changed them:

Nice!

Jack-O-Heifer, New Neighbors, and Work (or lack thereof)

2011-09-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

I've been in one of those moods lately where I feel like I don't have anything to blog about. I guess I actually do, though. We went hiking near Heber for Labor Day. And we went to the State Fair. That was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the agriculture buildings more than I used to. It was fun to see the goats that people were showing. Also, the lady that a bunch of our goats are from was there, so it was fun to finally meet her. We talked with her for quite a while.

Farm News

Our animals are all doing well. Turkey is getting big. I wonder how much he will weigh for Thanksgiving.

Daisy lost one of her front teeth. Poor little girl! I suspect one of the goats shoved her too hard. (They're always trying to establish their pecking order.) We were wondering, will she have a gap in her smile forever??? Do cows have baby teeth??? I finally looked it up. Cows do have baby teeth. (GOOD.) Daisy will grow a new tooth in about a year and a half.

(I kept trying to get a picture of her goofy new smile and she wouldn't cooperate. So, maybe later.)

New Neighbors

Did I mention we have new neighbors? Because we do.

A couple days before our old neighbors moved, we were talking to them, and joking about whether the new people realize we have goats. Our old neighbors said yes, actually, they were excited about the goats. (They must not have shown the house at 6:30 am when our goats are noisy, I told Jeff.)

They really are excited about our animals, though. The neighbors have two kids: Peyton (a boy, 10? years old) and Tristen (a girl, 4? years old). They are adorable, and friendly, and they like us a lot. We went over to introduce ourselves right after they moved in, and Jeff told them they're welcome to come over any time to visit our animals.

So, they do.

Seriously, the kids hang out in their backyard (by our fence) waiting for me to come outside. "PEYTON, PEYTON! THE LADY IS OUT!" "CAN WE COME OVER?" "Sure!"

I let them collect eggs with me one of the first times they came over. I told them they could each take two. They thought that was a lot of fun. Peyton has come up with a schedule. He thinks it is a good idea for them each to collect two eggs once a week. That's fine.

They like to "help" me milk. "Okay. So you normally milk at 7:00? We'll be outside at 6:55. Wait for us, okay?" It's pretty cute. They come out with me, and I've shown them how to milk, so Peyton always wants to do as much of it as I will let him. He knows to spray the teats, and wipe them with a goat wipe, and then to spray one squirt of milk not in the bucket. "Let me do it, okay? I know how." Sure. So I'll milk one side, and Peyton milks the other side, at the same time. He chatters with me all about how fun it is to have nice neighbors, and about how farm work is like chores--except it is fun. And he talks to me about how farm food is better than food from the store. Then when we're finished milking, he likes to come inside and help me filter it.

Jeff thought it was really funny the other day because Peyton had suggested that he could help with the farm work and we could share milk and eggs and meat. So then we were in filtering the milk and he explained a good way for us to do things: when we filter the milk, if we get two quart jars, he'll take the one with less in it. Hahaha! He wanted to take half of our milk. "Yeahh, probably not every day, but sometimes you can!" "Oh, I mean, I know not every day."

So he wanted to try raw milk. I told him he had to ask his parents. So they both ran back to their house, and their parents discussed it and decided it was fine, and they came back and I let them take a quart of fresh, warm, raw goat milk back home. (Labeled, of course.) The next morning, Peyton told me he didn't really like it. It tastes really different than store milk. I asked if he had it cold. "Halfway cold." "OH, well you should try it when it is cold. It tastes a lot better cold!" So later he did, and now he says he doesn't think he likes store milk anymore because raw milk just tastes better. Good kid.

He told me he can milk for us when we go on vacation. It's tempting. He usually milks about 1/2 of one goat all in all, so I don't think he would actually be strong enough to milk all by himself yet, but maybe next year. It's cute that he enjoys it so much.

They also help with feeding the animals. Tristen likes to feed Daisy bottles. They both like feeding the chickens.

The thing about kids is, they're really funny. Sometimes I wish I could just do farm chores without "help" (because it takes about 2-3 times as long when they come over), but mostly we just really enjoy having them visit. They say the funniest things. Peyton was AMAZED by the door to our garage (from the hallway by our front door). "I can't believe this," he said, just standing there, staring. "I've always wanted to see one of these. It's just like I imagined." "What?" I asked. "You have an upside down door!" "Huh. I guess I do." "You never noticed???" "Well, I hadn't really thought about it."

Jeff's Job

Jeff got a surprise at work recently. Not this past Thursday but the week before, Jeff's CEO called him into a conference room---and said Jeff would be taking a six-day furlough, starting that Friday. They put 80% of their employees on unpaid leave, because they were having financial problems. Basically, they were receiving investor funds and the last installment was two months overdue. Jeff asked a lot of prying, hard questions, and left work with the impression that the investor had probably walked. "Take a vacation!" they told him, but Jeff knew after their conversation that he had pretty much been laid off.

So, the six-day break became a six-day intensive job search. We were disappointed about the furlough because Jeff really loved his job. He liked the work environment, and he liked what he was working on. Too bad.

This past week, Jeff has been to a bunch of interviews, and he got his first job offer. He has a few more second interviews at the beginning of next week, and he hopes to make a decision about his next job on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Finally, last night Jeff got a call from the CEO of his company. We assumed it would be notification that Jeff was laid off, and it basically was. On the message, the CEO told Jeff that unfortunately they were unable to secure funding, and everyone was going to be on "indefinite furlough" and he understood if Jeff wanted to find a new job, but the CEO hoped that he would still be able to secure funding.

So, I guess that's that. We are grateful that we are very prepared, and we don't live on the edge; we haven't had to change our spending at all. So that's a blessing.

Em's Job

I've still been doing a lot of marketing! My 500 flyers came, and they look SO professional. I think they turned out really nice. I sent a bunch last weekend to people who are currently trying to rent their homes. No response from that yet. I also talked with a guy who e-mailed me this week about managing his home for him. I think that one is going to work out. So, that will be really exciting.

I would love to get busy doing more real estate work and less marketing. (I think these things just take time.)

We're gearing up for a couple vacancies--we've gotten notice for two of our properties. It's kind of bad timing (summer would have been better), but not a big deal.

I also ordered my second set of postcards for the 273 people. I think they will arrive on Monday.

I'm participating with the National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM), and I love their meetings. Everyone is very friendly and helpful.

Well, I think that's about it for now! We're doing well, and we're really happy.

A new heifer, more work, and preparedness blog posts

2011-09-04T14:17:00.000-07:00

This week we got a Jersey heifer calf!

I told Jeff I would milk for three months if he would get me a calf. He agreed. We named her Daisy, she is eleven days old today, and she is absolutely adorable. We won't actually get milk for a couple years, but we're still excited to have her. I bought a halter for her, and we're teaching her to let us lead her, but cows don't really like going where you want them to. We (okay, I) wanted her so that we can use her milk for cream, butter, and cheese. Her mom gives 6-7 gallons per day, so Daisy should be a pretty high producer. When she is full grown she will weigh about 800 lbs.

I've been working on building my property management business. So far I am not managing much, so I've been working on marketing a lot. I sent out 273 postcards to people who either bought or tried to sell multifamily housing in Salt Lake county within the last year. A couple people called from that, but it hasn't resulted in any new management contracts---yet. I also developed a flyer for other Realtors to give to their clients that are having trouble selling in this economy. I designed sticky notes (with a message to the Realtors), and once the flyers arrive (probably Tuesday), I will be able to go out to other real estate offices and introduce myself to other Realtors. I had 500 flyers printed, and I think they are a good direction to head.

Last week started a property management blog. I am http://thepropertymanager.wordpress.com. I have other websites, like my name .com and slcpropertymanagement.com, but I don't know how to put a blog on one of those sites (yet) so I figured I might as well start anyway. The blog only has a few posts so far, because it is new. I keep checking statistics to see if other people have found it at all, and it never has any views at all. That's okay! I'm still excited about it. These things take time.

I have also written more emergency preparedness blog posts.

I haven't mentioned this for a while on this blog, so there are a lot of new posts. I finished my series on sprouting, and then I wrote about: HAM radio, storing various types of fuel, food storage for restricted diets, a couple posts about specific eFoods Direct products, and bartering. Now I am writing a series called "Preparedness Chickens" which is to help people understand how they can start keeping chickens in their backyard, as part of their emergency preparedness and food storage.

11 April 2011 - Sprouting: How to Choose Seeds
18 April 2011 - Sprouting Supplies
25 April 2011 - Try Sprouting!
2 May 2011 - You'll wish you had a HAM radio!
9 May 2011 - How to get your HAM radio license
16 May 2011 - Storing Gasoline?
23 May 2011 - Storing Propane for an Emergency
30 May 2011 - Food Storage for Restricted Diets, part I
6 June 2011 - Food Storage for Restricted Diets, part II
13 June 2011 - Kerosene, White Gas, and Butane
20 June 2011 - Storing Wood or Coal
27 June 2011 - Best. Snack. Ever.
4 July 2011 - eFoods Direct Blueberry Muffins Recipe
11 July 2011 - Bartering in an Emergency
18 July 2011 - Everyday Bartering
25 July 2011 - Prepare to Create Value in an Emergency
1 August 2011 - Preparedness Chickens - part 1
8 August 2011 - Preparedness Chickens - part 2
15 August 2011 - Preparedness Chickens - part 3
22 August 2011 - Preparedness Chickens - part 4
29 August 2011 - Preparedness Chickens - part 5

I have three upcoming posts about chickens, and then I will be moving along to another topic. There has also been a change in the schedule, so now I will be posting every other Monday, instead of every Monday.

Well, this is about enough for now. We're doing well. Please think happy thoughts of me finding properties to manage. :)

How We're Doing

2011-08-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

We've been doing really well lately.

Jeff got a new job. This spring, after 7 out of 9 managers at his old job all quit within a few weeks time, Jeff decided he was ready to move on. He started taking calls from recruiters, and he went to several interviews. Finally, he came home from one of the interviews really excited about the company, and it seemed like a good match. After he got an offer from them he gave notice at the old job...and places he had interviewed with kept presenting him with job offers. On the day before he started his new job there was basically a bidding-war between two companies, which was pretty flattering. He took the job that he had been so excited about.

He's been at the new job for a couple weeks now. He really likes it a lot. He feels like he will be able to make a difference, and he really likes that the team works together so well. So, Jeff is very happy with his new job.

We got a lot of goats! First we got the mama and doeling (which were afraid of people). Then we got Sunday, Claire, and Star. Then, we saw another registered Nubian doe online, giving as much milk as Sunday, and we decided to buy her and sell Sunday. Except, then Jeff thought maybe we should keep Sunday after all, because she gives so much milk. But, we did sell Bucko. And then Caroline kidded! Finally! She had two bucklings. And we were Very Responsible, and we disbudded them (burned the horn buds so that no horns will ever grow). We played with the bucklings and enjoyed them for a couple weeks, and then we sold them. And then a couple days ago I finally sold the mama goat and the doeling.

So, now we're down to:
1. Feta - Our original goat. But she's doomed. I was trying to sell her but she isn't purebred and she has horns, and she hasn't had babies (so she hasn't given milk), so she isn't selling for enough. She is worth more to us as meat.
2. Caroline - we're finally getting milk from her!
3. Sunday - She is listed for sale.
4. Claire - She is SKINNY, still, just like she was when we bought her. We are going to try deworming her and giving her some immune support stuff, and we'll see if that helps her.
5. Star - We tattooed her, and now she is in the process of becoming an official registered goat.
6. Mercedes - My favorite goat, because she is so, so easy to milk.

We are getting a ton, ton, ton of milk. I separate cream about twice a week. Sometimes we make cheese and butter.

I also ordered chicks online, which I already blogged about. They're getting bigger. They're outside now. I've been selling some of those, too.

I think that's all of the farm news.

I also finally joined the Weston A. Price Foundation. Jeff and I have been big fans of it for a while, and I thought it was time to pay up so I will start receiving their quarterly journal, and so that I can participate with people locally who are interested in the same sorts of things. I met the local WAPF chapter leader, and it was a lot of fun to talk all about raw milk and butter, and goats, and good food.

This last Monday I started trying to follow the GAPS diet. I've been reading the book about it, and it just makes so much sense. On the GAPS diet you eat no refined sugar (only honey and fruit as sweeteners), no gluten or starchy foods (so, no white flour or potatoes, etc), and no lactose. I'm planning to stay on the GAPS diet for a year and a half, probably. We'll see how it goes. I am not perfect about it, but I think I'm doing pretty well.

In other news, I am still starting my business! I am working on building my property management business. I am developing a website, and putting together mailing lists of people who may be interested in property management (like, people who bought multi-family housing within the last year...because maybe they realized it is more hassle than they want). I hired a handyman to work for us part-time, so that we can offer clients discounted rates on repairs or service. If anyone knows of someone who could use a property manager in Salt Lake county, please let me know!

I think those are some of the main things that have been happening.

The Post Office called me at 6 am...

2011-07-22T15:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, my Post Office called my cell phone at 6 am. The call was from a restricted number, so it was kind of a surprise.

My package arrived!

We've been wanting to replace some of our hens, since they're getting older and they're not really laying too much anymore.*

Up until now, we've been happy to try a bunch of different chicken breeds. We didn't have a preference, so having various breeds made it so that each chicken was unique, plus we got to see their varied personalities.

Now, we know what we like: Araucanas and Delawares. No more messing around with red hens and black hens and speckled hens--a flock of Araucanas and Delawares is a perfect flock. And, anyway, when it comes to keeping chickens, it's okay that every bird isn't unique.**

IFA (our country store) stopped selling chicks months ago, so I looked all through the local classified ads for young Araucanas. Nobody has them! (I found some older ones, but we were hoping to raise them from chicks, since it seems like that makes a big difference in how our birds turn out.) I also checked with a lady nearby who sells tons and tons of chicks, as a business--but she is all out of Araucanas for 2011.

Hm. So, I ordered them from a company on the Internets!

They required a minimum order of 25 chicks (and they had no Delawares available until the end of August, which is too late), so I ordered 25 Araucana pullets***!

Neat. I figure I can sell the extra ones online.

So! Here we are with more chicks. This time they are in our garage, in a special chick playground that Jess gave us. I'm being extra careful to keep Paley's dish full of cat food. As long as I don't starve her, she should leave them alone.

We've decided to try our best to raise our animals organically, and these chicks are the first to benefit from that--they are eating organic chicken feed! (The adult chickens will finish off our conventional feed, and then we will start buying organic food for them, too.)

That's all I have to say about them for now.

Oh, except, when you order chicks from this place online they always include one rare chick along with your order. I don't know what kind it is, but it has feathers on its feet, so I'm hoping it is fluffy like my little white bird. (She has feathers on her feet too!)

* Time to learn another homesteading skill.
** See previous footnote.
*** Pullets means they should all be girls.

More Goats?? (Our revised plan.)

2011-06-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

We were (already!) getting really tired of listening to goats. It was a little bit funny, because the goats got hoarse voices from complaining so much. But mostly it was just obnoxious. (Even J thought it was obnoxious, and usually I'm like "J, this noise is awful!" and he says, "I kind of like it. You know, it's just the sounds of a farm. It's kind of relaxing.")

And then there was this...the doeling has been sitting on one side of the fence, and her mama has been sitting on the other side of the fence. Occasionally she stands up to look over the fence. Sometimes they make distressed cries for each other.

[Mama by the fence...]

[Feta screaming at the door, by the Comcast internet cable which they have pulled down, and doeling by the fence, where her mama is on the other side. Feta made a rotten babysitter.]

The mama goat hates being milked, too. Goats normally like to be milked, because they don't think of it as being milked, they just think of it as being fed good stuff, and it's kind of nice that we relieve the pressure in their udder while we're sharing such good food. Each time we milk the mama goat we have to corner her, or trick her into coming for grain so that we can catch her. Then we drag her across the yard, pick her up and put her onto the milking stand, make her actually stand up, and we only get about 2 cups of milk each time we milk her, and she doesn't eat much grain, so it isn't fun for her. So for that it just really isn't worth all the trouble.

Plus, now that I've spent some quality time with the mama goat, I've gotten to know her a little better. I'm realizing the people we bought her from took awful care of her. Basically, I think they just didn't take care of her. When we got her up on the milk stand we realized her feet are a mess. You're supposed to clip goat hooves every couple weeks or so, but I would guess that she never had her hooves clipped at all. They are all torn and misshapen, and they've grown really messed up. Plus, she is missing some of her front teeth. Poor goat!

We have bad goats.

So, what to do? J and I have been talking about just spending the money to get good goats. Good goats mean more milk, a more pleasant milking experience, and then when we breed them, more good goats (which will sell for more money, too).

After listening to our goats complain so much, and rationing our precious milk that we've been able to get, we think it's time. So today my assignment was to find a good goat, and just buy it. And then, we can sell the mama goat and keep the baby, or whatever.

So, I looked online and found some good goats for sale. I talked to the owner for a little while; she was selling her whole herd because she is moving. So, these were not her rejects, which is a good thing. I ended up buying three Nubian goats! They are:

"Sunday" who is 3 years old, and she's had triplets the past two years. She gives 8 cups of milk each time you milk her and she has awesome teats, which makes her a really amazing dairy goat. Her head looks Nubian and her body has a lot of white (not normally a Nubian thing), so I don't really know what the deal is there, but she's supposedly full Nubian.

Sunday is very friendly, and after you milk her she won't get off the milk stand until you give her some kisses. Sunday was actually raised indoors, as a pet, kind of like a dog. The people kept her as long as they could, and then she got to be too big. One time they got a call from a neighbor, "Your goat is on my counter eating my bananas!" She just went through the neighbor's dog door. Oops. The only other thing is, the people who raised her taught their kids to pull her ears if she knocked them over. So she doesn't like her ears touched, and she isn't good around kids without supervision. (The lady said, "But, what I've found is that if one of your kids wants to go visit her, you can give them a spray bottle, and if she tries to stand up on them have them spray her and she will leave them alone.") Sunday is great.

"Claire" who had her first kids in December. If you let her hang out with her kid, the kid doesn't nurse much anymore, and she still gives 4 cups of milk each time you milk her. The funny thing about Claire is, she's a papered goat (fancy) and...she is from the same farm that Caroline came from! I thought that was funny. So there's this lady who lives up in northern Utah, and we've bought two of her goats...from other people! Supposedly she likes to keep track of her goats, though, so the lady I was buying from gave me the other lady's phone number, and I'm supposed to call her any time I have questions. She runs the 4H stuff up in her area, and she judges in goat shows, and so forth. Funny, eh? So, Claire is a really nice goat. She looks like Nubians are supposed to, but she is pretty skinny. She just never put weight back on after her pregnancy. A vet checked her out and she's okay, though. She just needs to keep eating good stuff and she will be fine to breed again later this year.

"Star" who was born in December. She is Claire's daughter. Claire was pregnant with Star when the people bought Claire, so we can register Star and she will be a papered goat too! Star is very friendly. She still follows her mom around a lot--when we put Claire into the crate in the back of the truck after I bought them all, Star followed Claire and wanted in too. When I go outside, Star forgets all about her mom and follows me instead. It's really cute. For a doeling, she has very good teats, so she looks like she will be a promising milker. She will be old enough to breed in December too.

[Star, Claire, and Sunday]

Anyway, it is exciting to finally have some good goats. Now we will have enough milk to drink, and enough milk for cheese and cream. Maybe even enough for butter. And milking will be pleasant, because these goats willingly come to the milk stand and they like to be milked.

Also, it turns out I like to milk them. I thought it would be fine, but it actually feels pretty fantastic. I get that same excitement that I felt when I picked up the meat from our cow. We're being self-sufficient! I am pretty good at milking, too. There's a little bit of a trick to it, but I got the hang of it right away.

So, I talked to the people today about our mama goat. I told her maybe we should just sell her; she isn't producing much, and she's not very good, etc. They suggested it could be because this is her first year. They said she will probably do better next year. They said maybe we should let the doeling be back with her mama, and milk the mama goat once a day (to make up for the buckling that we left behind), and then try again next year. J and I talked about it and we think she may be just really stressed, too, and that could be part of why she's having problems (with her attitude and her production).

SO, we reunited our herd. Now we have eight happy goats in one happy herd. Or, three happy herds, actually, since Feta and Caroline hang out together, the mama and doeling hang out together, and the three from today hang out together. (Bucko just goes around flirting with all the girls, and the cow likes everybody.) Now, we will sell Bucko (so that he doesn't get anybody pregnant next month when breeding season starts), and we may sell Feta (since who knows whether she will get pregnant or not, and we don't want goats with horns), and then later in the year we will probably get a good, papered buck, and produce a bunch of fancy, papered kids. In the meanwhile, I don't have to listen to goats complain, except when they complain because they want to be milked--NOW, please!

We are still waiting for Caroline to kid. She faked us out yesterday by moaning for hours, and rolling around, and scratching at the ground, and laying down and standing up and laying down and standing up, etc, but then in the evening she stopped the whole charade and started wondering why we were off in this area away from everyone else?? so this morning I released her from the special birthing area. Maybe she'll just stay pregnant. Hopefully not. (And, I don't think that happens.)

Goat drama.

2011-06-26T12:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we drove all the way down to Payson to pick up a couple more goats.

Our goat Caroline is about to kid (she IS pregnant after all!) so J has been trying to find another doe in milk so that we will be able to milk two goats instead of just Caroline. There's a little bit of a process to milking (cleaning supplies, etc) so milking two goats doesn't take much longer than milking one. And you get twice as much milk.

J finally found this place that had three Nubian does in milk. One had two kids, another had one kid, and the third one had a kid that had died. The one with two kids looked the most Nubian, so we bought her.

Our original idea was to separate the mamas from their babies at night, and milk the does in the morning, and then let the kids be with their mamas during the day instead of us milking at night. So everyone would get milk and we would all be happy. Right?

No.

We were only going to need one kid for our plan to work, so we bought the mama with her doeling, and left her buckling with the original herd. (The babies are big enough that they can be separated from mama now; they were actually all listed for sale separately.) There was no reason for us to pay for a buck that we don't need or want. And, if we did buy him, pretty soon we would need to separate him from the herd anyway because he would start trying to breed his mother and his sister. We don't want to be inbreeding here.

So, we took everyone home and the mama goat hollered and hollered all day yesterday. She was missing her buckling. Oh, good grief. We separated Bucko from the herd, too, because we didn't want him to breed the mama goat, and he hollered and hollered all day too.

The other problem was, these people that we bought the goats from didn't actually milk their milk goats. They used to before, but they hadn't in a while because they're busy people. So their goats (except the older ones) were all afraid of people. Not the best.

Today we caught the mama goat and put her on the milk stand, not to milk her but just to let her realize that she can have GRAIN (!!!) on the milk stand. We didn't let her doeling follow her to the milkstand, and they both totally freaked out to be 15 feet apart. So, separating them every night is going to mean that they will holler and holler every night. It isn't going to work. We have neighbors.

Better that they just forget about each other and the mama goat becomes a milk goat instead of being with the doeling. (Like she is supposed to be.) And then, we can bottle feed the doeling until she is weaned the rest of the way, and then she will be friendly with people instead of terrified of them (like she and her mama are now). Milk goats are supposed to be friendly with people.

So, today we let Bucko back into the herd (breeding season doesn't start for a month anyway), and I caught the doeling (much harder than it sounds), I stole her away from her mama and the herd, and put her in Chalcy's backyard (which has a 6' fence). We put Feta in with her so that she isn't alone. Goats are herd animals, so they don't do well alone. Now everyone at our house is very concerned. Feta does NOT want to be over there with the doeling (and without her herd) so she keeps screaming. The doeling wants to be following her mama around so she keeps crying. The mama goat is very concerned about her lost babies so she keep calling to the doeling from the other side of the fence. Caroline should be kidding any time now, but she is not too worried about the new goat commotion because she was with Feta before, and now she is with Bucko, so, no big deal.

Hopefully everyone will calm down in a day or so. We will try to milk the mama goat tonight, and then we will try to bottle feed the doeling too. When Caroline kids we will put her kid(s) with the doeling, and then maybe Feta can go back to the rest of the herd and everyone will feel better.

Any suggestions for names? So far we've thought of Polly and Penny. Or, Betsey. Right now they are "the mama goat" and "the doeling". We need to come up with names.

Chalcy!

2011-06-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

Chalcy turned one year old on Cinco de Mayo! I realized, we brought her home a year ago on June 15th. A year ago today, I took this picture:

Now here's one of her with J, from a few days ago:

We like Chalcy. She's pretty good, except when people come over. We're working on that.

For Chalcy's first birthday, we bought her a Big Girl Bed, which she really likes. Periodically we've done trials to see how she will do if we leave her out of her kennel at night, and she has usually failed. Months ago she chewed a bare spot into our bedroom carpet when we tried to let her sleep in our room. A few weeks after that we tried to let her sleep in her room (aka. the guest bedroom) without closing her kennel, because it has fake-wood floor instead of carpet. She chewed the edge of trim around the window. So, even though she is kind of too big for her kennel, she kept having to sleep in it anyway. Lately, we've tried letting her sleep in her room on her Big Girl Bed and it works. She does just fine! So we tried letting her have access to the whole house at night. That works a little less well, because she will come stand outside our door, and just stay there. Her favorite place to sleep is on the floor by my side of the bed. When I get up, I have to watch out or I'll step on her. During the day she sleeps there a lot too.

Chalcy is almost always silent, which is nice, because I don't really care for barky dogs. She does alert us when she sees a strange object or hears an unusual noise. There have been a few times where she's started barking in the middle of the night. We always help her investigate, until she is satisfied that everything is okay. Otherwise she'll keep barking for quite a while. When she does bark, she is very loud. This last weekend, our city had "Country Days," which is the annual city festival thing here. As we were falling asleep, we could hear the country music from a few blocks away. That was fine. After that was all over they started doing fireworks. Fireworks make a loud "BOOM" sound, and it concerned Chalcy. She started barking and barking from her room. So, we brought her into our bedroom and opened the blinds, and showed her that the fireworks were the cause of the noise. She stopped barking right away, and we all sat there and watched the entire firework show from our bedroom window. Chalcy was fascinated.

Chalcy still knows tricks. She is still good at all of her puppy preschool stuff, usually. We've taught her a few other tricks too:

J taught Chalcy "Back!" which means "You're too close, scoot back." Chalcy has a different concept of personal space, so it isn't unusual for her to come up and lean against us or put her face right up close to our faces while we're sitting down (because we're her height!), etc. "Back!" has been a fantastic trick because Chalcy gets so excited when people come over that sometimes she's a little too friendly. We tell guests they can tell her "Back!" and she'll scoot away, and they try it out, and it works, and it makes them feel a lot more comfortable to know she will leave them alone if they want her to. It is also a good way to remind her that she is not allowed to be near us when we're eating.
For Jessica's birthday I taught Chalcy "Giddy up!" which means, "Come through my legs so that I'm standing over you like I'm riding a horse." Every time Jess would come over, she would always try to stand over Chalcy, because it kind of looks like you're riding a horse. Chalcy always backs up, though, instead of just standing there. So I taught her this trick because I thought it would be funny. And it is.
Chalcy knows "Jump!" which means, "Jump!" This is pretty impressive and amusing, because she is massive and she'll jump up (not just forward) and get her back legs off the ground too.
We taught Chalcy "Speak!" which means "Bark!" Since Chalcy is so quiet, it is my secret hope that if we wanted her to defend our house, I could motion to her to bark without the invaders noticing me, and then she would look fierce. Actually, though, an invasion would most likely be pretty unusual and it would be enough to get her barking anyway. Chalcy was surprised and a little confused when I taught her this trick, because we also taught her "Quiet!" because she used to bark if she wanted to come inside, or if she wanted to come out of her kennel because people were over. Now she just stands by the door when she wants in or out. So learning "Speak!" was kind of like teaching a kid to eat cupcakes on command, or something. (REALLY? You really want me to?)

Those are the extra ones (in addition to sit, wait, watch me, drop it, leave it, lay down, come, etc.) Most of them go along with hand signals, because she learns hand signals faster.

Chalcy also knows some "tricks" that are not really tricks.

We discovered this one when my brother was over last week. If you pat your lap, Chalcy will come put her head in your lap, where you pat. That's how I usually tell her she can cuddle with me that way. I didn't realize it was a trick, though, until I was demonstrating to Jason how to get her to put her head in his lap and she came across the room to put her head in my lap instead, because I'd just pat my lap. It seemed impressive. Then the next time Jess came over she wanted to see that trick. Uh, she's always done that. It isn't a trick. But it kind of is.
Chalcy is polite about being fed. It started because I didn't want her to rush me when I fed her, back when she was a puppy. Here's how it works: I fill her food dish, and put it where it goes. I tell Chalcy to sit, and she does. I tell her to wait. I go fill her water dish, and put it where it goes. Sometimes I'll make her "wait" a little longer, and then I tell her "Okay" and she'll go eat her food. It's a pretty strict routine now, so I don't even really have to tell her what to do. I bring food out, she sits down. I get water, she waits, and she'll only approach her food after I give her permission. It's nice.
Chalcy goes into her kennel very readily. This isn't an exciting trick either, but it is useful. Our main command is "Kennel up!" and that means "Please get in your kennel, and if I don't look angry you are not in trouble and you will get treats for getting in your kennel" or it means "You are in big big trouble because you did something you knew was wrong, and the only way that I will be happy with you is if you go into your kennel, RIGHT NOW. No treats." She always kennels up, immediately. Very good. There are also a lot of other things that mean "Kennel up"--"Time for bed!" and "Back to bed!" and "Sorry!" all mean to kennel up. Plus, if I put my shoes on and pick up my purse, Chalcy will go get in her kennel, because she always has to be in there when I leave (and I'll give her treats).

Chalcy still loves Paley. When we go into the hall outside and Paley is there, Chalcy wag wag wags her tail and puts her mouth on Paley, or licks her. Paley rubs up against Chalcy, too. But, if I call Chalcy to come inside, or go outside, she'll still obey. So that's just fine.

Chalcy loves toys. Any toy we give her is the Very Best Thing she's EVER seen in her Entire Life (!!!!!). It's really cute. She tears stuffed toys apart really quickly though, even "durable" ones, so she doesn't get many of those anymore. Chalcy also loves tug games and fetch games and play-rough games, and basically any game you can think of. She also likes sticks and bones.

Chalcy loves people. All of them. She wants to be near us all the time. And preferably, very close. She is very affectionate. Also with our guests.

Chalcy likes dogs. Especially little ones because puppy preschool had puppies in it, and they were her friends, and I don't think she realizes they grew up too. Big dogs are more intimidating, but Chalcy is not aggressive at all; it just takes a little time for her to warm up. When dogs bark at her she looks at them, but she doesn't bark back. This makes me proud of her when we go on walks, or to the dog park.

Chalcy loves chickens. They squeak and have feathers that fluffle all over, they flop around really cool when you shake them in your mouth, and they run on their own--until they stop. We raised a few sets of chicks inside, and that helped Chalcy realize that we do NOT put our mouths on chickens. EVER. Except, when we're outside with her, occasionally she forgets and starts chasing a chicken until we remind her not to, so now she just doesn't get to be where chickens are unless she is under close supervision.

Our puppy is probably pretty close to full size now, and I'm looking forward to her rabies booster shot this summer (who looks forward to that??), because when we visit the vet we can find out how much she weighs. Can you imagine if she were to continue growing at the same rate next year too?? She won't.

Anyway! We like our dog. That's all.

Best Father's Day Ever!

2011-06-19T16:14:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago I had a really excellent idea. What if I had my primary class (ages 8-9) decorate ties for their fathers? The kids would have a ton of fun decorating ties, the dads would receive a cool gift that they would treasure forever, and I would have the joy and amusement of watching several of the men in our congregation wear ties that my class designed. Win-win-win!

I checked to see if Father's Day was one of my weeks to teach (because I alternate with another teacher) and it was! So I ordered a bunch of white ties online, I bought some fabric markers, and got some cheap gift bags. Today all of my kids were there except one. We had a shorter than average lesson (about Jesus being The Good Shepherd, and what shepherds are, and why Jesus is like our shepherd, and why we should follow his voice because he will lead us) and then I announced our activity. The kids were so excited! I told them they don't get another tie if they mess up, so they each had to draw (on paper) a practice version of what they were going to do. I approved each design, and handed out ties, and let them start coloring.

We ended up with a wide variety of designs. (If the picture is too small, click on it so that you can see it bigger.)

From left to right:
1) Her dad's name spelled out as an acrostic: Excelent. Dad. Wonderful. Awesome. Ridiculous. Dude. There was space left over, so she repeated the whole thing. There was still space left over so she wrote YOUR THE BEST DAD EVER! (Looks great!)
2) Stars all over the top of it, and then she wrote The Best Dad in the world! Then she drew a random shape and colored it at the bottom. (He's going to love it!)
3) He wrote The Best Dad In The world and then drew a big BYU logo and a big Green Bay logo. The bottom of the tie has a whole bunch of BYU and Green Bay logos. (Wow, that looks really good!)
4) A bold zigzag-type pattern in blue, red, and purple. It looks pretty cool because the colors blend together just a little bit. (Nice!)
5) She drew a whole bunch of light green stripes, really close together. Her dad likes stripes, she said. In the middle the tie says Your the Best dad in the world. She kind of ran out of space a little for the end of "world" so it is on the next line. On hers the stripes cover the skinny part of the tie that tucks in back, too. (Good job!)
6) Another striped tie, with #1 Dad in the middle. Her dad likes green. She was kind of worried because the stripes were not all perfectly parallel. I told her it looks really good. It came out great. (Wow!)
7) She made a diamond pattern and then colored in all of the diamonds with the colors all mixed up. (She finished after I took the picture, while I was helping the other kids put theirs in gift bags.) On each of the diamonds she wrote a letter "D". Her dad's initials are C.R. "D" is for "Dad." (I bet your dad is going to really like that. It's so colorful!)

"You guys, your ties all look REALLY GOOD, so you should tell your dads to wear them." (One girl said, "Yeah, they can wear them next week!" "That's a great idea!")

So anyway, it was kind of silly, but I bet their dads will be really surprised. They'll have the perfect tie to wear for every future Father's Day, and hopefully some times in between.

California, again! (part 2)

2011-06-10T09:47:00.000-07:00

On Monday we went to a park!

We had been planning to go to the beach again, but my sister Steph is in a walking cast right now and the beach wasn't going to be very fun for her. So instead, we went to a park near her house. Steph brought her boyfriend and their new pug puppy ("Pippi"), plus my brothers. My mom came (with melon! and games!), and eventually my dad showed up too.

It was a pretty cool park, especially for like, 5 year-old kids. It had lots of exiting play equipment, and a water park--all out in the open and free. There were also basketball courts (which my teenage brothers enjoyed) and covered picnic tables (which the grown-ups enjoyed).

The weather was absolutely perfect. J and I mostly just sat at the picnic tables, playing with the puppy and chatting with my sister. After Mom showed up, we played a few games of Rummikub. When my dad got there, he brought a bunch of little water guns and secretly handed them out to everyone. After that, there were little water fights going on, especially among all the boys. At one point, my dad went up to this 8 or 9 year-old kid who was also at the park, because he had a supersoaker, and Dad said he would give him 50 cents if he would soak my brother. That was pretty funny, because then my brother ran like crazy, and this kid we didn't know was chasing him.

After that, we went over to Steph and her boyfriend's house. We watched the second half of Dirty Dancing, because it was on TV and my mom loves that movie. I don't know that I'd ever watched anything in HD before. It was incredible! It made the movie look like something that was filmed on a regular camera or something. We ordered pizza, and just hung out for a while. J took a nap with the puppy.

That evening, J and I drove down to San Diego to find a hotel for the night, because we had an appointment with Garin to go across to Mexico at 9 am. We stayed at the Best Western Seven Seas, which seemed extremely fancy and modern compared to the Vegas Chalet Motel. The only thing was, the room was kind of small and crowded, and one of the main walls was entirely mirrored. Mirrors would normally make a room seem larger, but since it was reflecting VERY busy stripes on the drapes and a VERY busy pattern on the bedspread, the mirror made the room seem really overwhelming. It didn't matter too much, though, because we basically collapsed on the bed and slept until we absolutely had to get up, and left in a rush.

On Tuesday, we met Garin as planned. (Garin is always very punctual.) We went across the border. We met up with our driver, another one of Dr. Llamas' sons. (The other son, Andrew, who picked us up last time, is now in medical school!) He drove us straight to the clinic, which is in the same place it was last time. J and I met with Dr. Llamas together again, like last time. This time we talked with the doctor about the improvements that J has seen from his worms. Dr. Llamas asked a bunch of questions and took some notes. They were deciding between giving J 10 or 15 more worms. (Ultimately they decided to do 15 more.) Then he went through my interview responses and lab test results, and we talked about my medical history, but I don't really have much of a medical history. We went through the consent forms, and so forth.

Then, we went into the other room to get our worms! I got mine first. J made a video for me, and took some pictures. It took 3 minutes and 45 seconds for me to start feeling the worms. It was so itchy. I really wanted to scratch my arm, but you're not supposed to, so I didn't. I guess that was my main reaction--I was surprised by how itchy it felt when they were going through. (It was still itchy even a few days after I had gotten them.)

When J got his worms it took 4 minutes and 2 seconds for him to start feeling them. He said it felt just like it did last time. No big deal.

So, we waited for a little while, because they always have you do that just to be sure you don't have a bad response (but nobody ever does). And then, they checked the information on lines for going back across the border, and this time it was going to be faster to go across by foot. The doctor's son drove us to the line, and we waited for a little while and eventually got through the line, and we walked back to our cars.

We went out to lunch with Garin, because it was about lunchtime. J and Garin have some common interests, so we enjoy spending time with Garin. He is great for conversation.

After lunch, we drove back up to my grandparents' house. We were exhausted from the drive. I talked to my grandparents for a while again that evening. The caregiver let me feed my grandma her dinner.

Then, Wednesday morning I took some more pictures of my grandparents' house, so that I will be able to remember it. I will really miss going there. We met up with my dad to visit with him for 20 minutes or something. And then, we got in the car and drove up to Utah. (Oh, but we did stop at a Trader Joe's for French Truffles, just on our way out of town.)

The End.

California, again! (part I)

2011-06-07T09:50:00.000-07:00

We drove back down to California for Memorial Day weekend. We left Utah on Saturday and came back on Wednesday.

Saturday night we stayed in a totally run down Vegas motel. On accident. I picked it using Google Maps on my phone. Basically we kept calling places and they were completely booked (ohhh, of course, people go to Vegas for the long weekend). And then I called this place and they had a vacancy! Okaywe'lltakeit!

We showed up at the Vegas Chalet Motel and the lobby was locked. They had to buzz us in. Well, that's ok. Signs everywhere: no visitors after 9 pm. We payed for our cheap motel, and as we walked up the stairs to our room, we heard sirens drive past. Hmm. When I flipped the light switch, nothing happened. Hmmm. Eventually we figured out how to have the light switch match up with the bedside lamps. The room looked like something maybe from the 60's. I'm serious. Old, mostly-matching furniture. There was a chair blocking a door, and it had this big tear in the fabric. The carpet was really worn out and had lumps in it. The sink was chipped. The artwork was old. Basically, it was just a really old room. Everything seemed quite clean; the bathroom wasn't gross or anything. (The shower head was even kind of fancy.)

We were happy to not be sleeping in our car.

In the morning I was talking to J about how seriously run down the place was. He said, "But if you think about it, it would have been really hard for anyone to prepare a place this nice for even a king, traveling a thousand years ago." "Well. That's true." So after that we kept joking about how fancy it was, as if we were royalty visiting 1000 years ago. ("What is this?! Water? Coming from the wall! Remarkable!" Because, of course, nobody had hot showers a thousand years ago.) So, we had a lot of fun with our old run-down motel. And then there were sirens in the morning, too. The front desk buzzed me in, I checked us out, and we continued on our way to California.

When we got to California, we weren't really sure what to do! It was early afternoon. So, we decided to go to the beach. It was so sunny and nice...but then we got to the beach and it still sunny, but not nice at all--it was windy. We changed into our swimsuits anyway, and when we stepped from our changing stalls outside, we realized that the wind made it really cold. No big deal! I put on my sweatshirt and J put on his coat. As we walked toward the coast, we were pelted with millions of airborne particles of sand. (Imagine a money booth filled with sewing pins instead of money, and that's basically what it was.)

Maybe the wind would die down, though, we hoped. Maybe when we put our towels down and sat down, closer to the ground there would be less wind and it would be better. As we tried to put our towels down, they flew like flags instead. They were hard to hang onto. Eventually we got them down, and we sat on them so they couldn't fly away. (It was partly how we got them on the ground to begin with.)

We sat next to each other and the wind was coming from J's side, so things were a little bit better (for me!). But actually, they weren't. We tried to rest, but it was really uncomfortable to keep having sand blown at us. I pulled my hood closed better so that I didn't get as much sand on my face. J covered his head with his coat. We stayed there for ten minutes or something, "enjoying" the beach. Then J decided he wanted to go in the water. He put his coat back on, and I held his towel and our flip-flops so they wouldn't fly away when he got up. J walked along the beach, getting his feet wet for several minutes. By the time he came back I felt like I had enjoyed the beach as much as I wanted to. J had too. We decided to leave, and realized that in the time that he was down in the water, his towel had been buried in sand. Just from the wind. So, that was kind of funny.

We left the beach and went out to meet up with my best friend from high school, Erin, and her husband and kids. We had dinner with them, and visited for a while. It was a lot of fun because we hadn't seen them since our wedding.

We went to my grandparents' house that night. One of the reasons we wanted to go to California this time was because I wanted to visit my grandparents at their house one last time. My grandparents are both pretty old, and they have nurses at their house all the time now, so my mom's family decided it is time to move them to a place where they can get better care, or, rather, cheaper care that's good enough. In Utah, their money is going to go a lot farther, so they're making my grandparents move. It's kind of sad. (It will be nice to be able to see them more often, anyway. They're moving up this weekend.)

We talked with them for a couple hours that night. J thought I should share memories that I have with them, instead of just talking about our life up here. So I did. They loved it. I have a lot of memories with them. We used to visit their house about every other weekend when I was growing up. A lot of times I spent the night. Grandma would do crafts with us, and we would go on walks, and we would cook and bake together. Grandma used to always come to our friend birthday parties. Sometimes I "helped" Grandpa at his nursery, which mostly involved playing, getting bored, and then not wanting to do things like fill pots with dirt, but doing it a little bit anyway, and then wondering loudly and repeatedly when we were going home. Sometimes he'd let me choose a plant to keep (like, a pansy or something) and it seemed really exciting and like it was a big deal. We talked to them about their memories a little bit, too. They've been living in their house for 40 years. That's a long time.

Anyway, after a couple hours, we were all pretty tired, so J and I brought things in and stayed the night there.

Those were the first couple days of our trip!

Learn About Steaks: Rib Steak!

2011-06-04T13:06:00.000-07:00

Among our cow meat, we have ribs, and then we also have rib steaks. What are those? I waited to cook them because I wasn't sure. I had heard of rib eye steaks...but rib steaks? Maybe they just shortened it on my packages because they could only put a certain number of letters?

Nope, they're a real thing.

The 'rib section' of a cow includes ribs numbers six through twelve (so, seven in all), and butchers can make that section into a 'rib roast' all in one piece (or multiple, smaller roasts), or they can cut the individual ribs with steaks, and then they're called 'rib steaks' instead. Some people call these cuts "prime rib" but it's actually kind of a misnomer because they can actually be "prime" or not, and it depends on the USDA grade.

Rib-eye steaks are basically rib steaks where the bone has been removed. They may be from a particular portion; I'm not really sure. It seemed like different websites said different things.

[Note: In the pictures our steaks are kind of small. It's because they are veal. These cuts actually do come quite a bit larger.]

Rib steaks are supposed to have a lot marbling and fat (so, flavor), because of the muscles that they're from, so people don't usually marinade these steaks.

Instead, it seems like the most popular way of preparing rib steaks is the Sear & Blast method. So, this is what I did to prepare ours.

Here's how it works:
1. Preheat your oven to 450 F.
2. On the stove, get a cast iron skillet really hot.
3. Season your steak. I just used salt and pepper.
4. Sear the steak for 3 minutes on the first side, and then flip it over.
5. Move everything into the preheated oven.
6. Cook it in the oven until it is done. (We like our steaks pretty well done, so I think it was 7 or 8 minutes for us. If you want it medium, it's about 6 minutes.)

And that's it. Then you eat it.

Isn't that so easy? Basically preheat everything, start it on the stove, move to the oven, and finish it up.

Your homework:
1. Fill in the blank: A popular method of cooking rib steaks is ________ & _________ .
2. True or false? One must always marinade a rib steak.
3. Cook a rib steak, or a rib eye steak, or prime rib, depending on what is available at your store! (These steaks can also be called market steak.)

(Is anybody actually trying this with me? You should, because steak is delicious, and then later when you're picking a steak you'll know what the actual choices are. They actually don't all taste the same.)

An update on J's hookworms!

2011-05-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

This weekend someone posted a comment on one of my old hookworm posts, requesting another update. My hookworm posts have been pretty popular, and it's been a little while, so here is the latest!

J is doing very well with his hookworms.

Every night J needs about one hour less sleep than he used to. This is big indicator for us of how he is doing; back before hookworms, when J was extremely allergic to our house, he needed a ton of sleep. Then, when I replaced our floor (and he was not allergic to our house anymore), he needed about the same amount of sleep as I do. Now he needs about an hour less sleep than I do, and he feels great.

J has a complete remission of his joint pain. I don't think he even ever thinks about it anymore.

As far as allergies go, J can tolerate a mild exposure with no allergic response whatsoever! This is exciting, and makes life nicer. The last time we visited my sister Jessica (who has two inside cats), J had no allergic response as a result of our visit; not even a delayed or mild response. That was nice. Also, sometimes when we are outside sitting in the yard, or laying out in the sun, my cat Paley will come and climb up onto J. She'll rub against him, and lay down and get comfortable with him. Last weekend she climbed all over J and sat with him for about a half hour, purring and purring (of course), and J had no allergic response to that either.

After a full cat exposure (really rubbing against her, snuggling his face into her fur, etc), J does have a mild allergic response. Nothing like the pre-hookworm days, though. J's eyes get a little itchy, I think.

J has no negative side-effects from the hookworms at all anymore. He hasn't had any negative side-effects for several months now. So, overall it's been a complete success.

The big news is, we're going back for more worms! This weekend we're planning to drive down to CA to visit my family, play at the beach, and meet up with Garin (from Worm Therapy) and Dr. Llamas!

J is planning to get 15 more, I think. We suspect that more worms will enhance his improvements that he's had so far. We're interested to see whether J can get to a point where he could mow our lawn or clean the barn (those tasks usually get him sick for a few days).

AND, it looks like I will probably be getting worms this trip! I don't have severe allergies at all. I do get a stuffy nose when we sleep with our door closed (which I suspect is from who-knows-what in our air ducts), and my nose gets stuffy when I do the things that would make J really sick, like cleaning the barn, etc. J and I think that hookworms kind of belong in a symbiotic relationship with people, and we think hookworms may be advantageous to me as a preventative treatment.

It's been pretty exciting to see J's very obvious improvement. Several of our family members are considering treatment, and a couple have already even contacted Garin about it. Neat.

If you haven't read my previous posts about hookworms, there have been four:

12/20/10 post part I about J getting worms
12/20/10 post part II about J getting worms
2/12/11 post Hookworm Update!
3/2/11 post mentioning J's hookworms after surgery.

The Five Star Problem

2011-05-19T15:56:00.000-07:00

Has anyone noticed this lately?

It seems like a lot of companies are discovering how online reviews work:
1. If you have positive reviews (especially a lot of 5 star reviews), new customers will seek to do business with you! :)
2. If you have no reviews, or negative reviews, new customers will be hesitant to do business with you. :(
3. (You do not actually have to be a good company to get a bunch of great reviews.) :)
4. Why not just pay for reviews, or write them yourself? :D

[5. Because Emily can tell the difference, and then even if your business actually IS good, she will avoid doing business with you because you are shady, and you're trying to mislead people.]

The truth is, before I do business with almost anyone, I always check reviews online. If your business has good or pretty good reviews, I'll try working with you. If your business doesn't exist, sorry, I'm just not comfortable hiring you, because I can just make my map a little bigger and find someone that is less likely to rip me off, and more likely to give me a positive experience.

I do the same thing with products. When I consider buying a particular book that looks pretty good as I flip through it: what does Amazon have to say? If it has 4.5-5 stars, I'll buy it. If it has 2 stars and the reviews talk about how incorrect the information from the book is, or whatever, then I trust that it isn't worth my $20, and it certainly isn't worth the time I would spend reading it. (If there are only a couple reviews, and they disagree about the quality, I'll go with the review that provides the best evidence for their rating.)

Of course, every business has a few bad experiences. Sometimes customers are unreasonable and they leave a business angry because they didn't get what they want. Just because a company has one bad review doesn't mean it's a bad company. I know that, and I don't expect a place to have perfect reviews. I prefer that they don't. Usually if a place has 50 five-star reviews it's a red flag.

Here are the things I look for if a company's reviews seem too good to be true:

1. Do the reviews kind of sound the same? Do they abbreviate the same words, or have similar grammatical errors? Are they about the same length? Do they seem to comment on the same features, in the same ways? Also, were they all written on the same day, or within one week, or kind of in spurts?

2. Do the reviewers use names that look like real people? Meaning, are all of them a first name and a last initial? Are all of them "dreamprincess4309823" and those sorts of names? Usually a balanced sample of real users will have a variety of types of user names "John Smithington" "Bobby W." "susy" "byucutie48" "AfRiCaQuEeN" etc. Some people capitalize their names, some do not. Some use full names, some do not. Some add numbers to the end of their names, others do not. Etc. Usually fake reviews seem to follow the same sort of naming convention: lowercase first name and then four numbers, etc.

3. What do the reviewers' profiles look like? Do they include a picture or bio? How often do they review places? If everyone only has one review and it's for the place you're checking out, this is a red flag. With real reviews, it seems there are still some people who only review the one place, but other people have a few places they have reviewed. The reviews should seem compatible. (So, for example, the person should not have reviews for places all over the country for car dealerships. Nobody buys a car in a different state every other day.) If you're really looking at a whole lot of reviews for one place, some of the people should have at least several reviews. Some people should have pictures or favorites, etc. Usually on a real person's profile, the reviews will vary. So, if a person gave your place 5 stars but they gave their last review 2 stars, that's a good sign. If they only give places 5 stars, it could be that they only go online to review things they LOVE, but it's unlikely.

4. Is the number of reviews typical or reasonable for the type of place it is, where it is located? For instance, if you're looking at a really big, popular place that has been around for quite a while, 50 reviews may be reasonable. If you're looking at a place basically nobody has heard of, and when you go in they have no customers waiting, and they have 70 glowing reviews while the competition usually has about 3 reviews, that's fishy.

5. Do the great reviews comment about negative things, too? This is a good sign. If a reviewer gives 5 stars and talks about how great the service is and how much money she saved, and then says "but the wait was a little long, next time I'll get an appointment," or something, this is a lot more likely to be real. Real people writing honest reviews will talk about good things and bad things. Likewise, real negative reviews often mention good things: "He was clean, and he showed up on time, but after that everything went downhill!" Fake reviewers usually only gush about how excellent the place was.

6. How does the company respond to negative reviews? If they apologize and talk about things they have done to remedy the situation, that is a good sign. If they totally deny the claim and fabricate something else, that is a bad sign. Also, as a potential customer, don't you think the business trash-talking a customer (even if it is legit) is really unprofessional?

7. Are reviews really polarized? If there are 1 star reviews and 5 star reviews, but not much in the middle, this is a bad sign. Often, the people who leave 1 star reviews express doubt about the legitimacy of the 5 star reviews. If the reviews are legitimate, the ratings usually vary more.

These questions are usually more than sufficient to separate the wheat from the tares, if you know what I mean.

Let's review some case studies!

Case study #1 - Auto Maxima (South Salt Lake)- used car dealership and auto body shop
68 reviews. 4.5 stars.
Maybe you remember the experience I blogged about before. These guys are so sketchy!
1. Do reviews sound the same? Yes. Most of the reviews have non-native English. 'Dollars' is repeatedly abbreviated as 'dols' which is kind of unusual. Many of the reviews mention the owners by name. Many reviewers say their car was "smelly" or talk about dents in their car, or both. Several people say they have bought 3 cars from them. Most of the reviews are written totally lowercase.
2. Do the reviewers use names that look like real people? Sort of. On Google, most of the reviewers do not have names. Several have only first names. A couple are names that sound like businesses.
3. What do reviewers' profiles look like? Bad. Most only have 1 review--for Auto Maxima.
4. Number of reviews reasonable? No. Nearby, Low Book Sales has 190 reviews, which is to be expected because they are huge and they advertise a lot. Auto Maxima is tiny; they only sell about 4 cars at a time. Other small dealerships nearby have mostly 0-4 reviews. One place has 14 reviews, but they sound like they have been around for a long time, which Auto Maxima has not.
5. Do the great reviews comment about negative things too? No. Out of all of them, only one does.
6. Company response? Completely denied all claims from 1 star reviews. Wrote "thank you" in response to several of the fake reviews.
7. Polarized reviews? Yes.
CONCLUSION: There is a lot of reason to be suspicious of these reviews. (And, after our experience, we know they would have ripped us off, so it would have been better to avoid them.)

Case Study #2 - Radiance Salon (Riverton) - a salon I was thinking of going to because it is close, and pretty on the outside (I ended up sticking with my stylist that I love, even though she is far.)
58 reviews. 2.5 stars.
1. Do reviews sound the same? Sort of. All of the 5 star reviews are recommending particular stylists, and claiming that the people give the best haircut the person has ever had. All of the other reviews complain that the guy who schedules appointments messes up a lot, the workers are really catty, things are way overpriced, and people mess up their hair.
2. Reviewer names look real? They're fine.
3. How about reviewer profiles? Bad. Only a couple people review anything other than this salon.
4. Number of reviews reasonable? A little high. Upscale salons tend to have more reviews (like, 30, sometimes) than little cheap places. However, many of these reviews were posted on multiple sites and they are double-counted.
5. Do great reviews comment about negative things too? No. Except for the most recent review, which claims that the place is under new management and that they asked her to write a review. Her review is really good, and she lists one drawback, which is that she has to drive 30 minutes to get there. The other good reviews should be like that, kind of. (Also, this suggests the salon may have actually improved.)
6. Company response? Creepy! They posted a 5-star weird review complaining about people coming into the store with a black raincloud over their heads, etc. It looked like it was supposed to be from a customer, but it was obviously from the owner or someone because of the comments they made.
7. Polarized reviews? Yes.
CONCLUSION: At a minimum there is some serious drama going down there; the complaints seem well-substantiated and legitimate. The positive reviews seem uncharacteristic. However, things may have improved with new management, maybe.

Case Study #3 - Alcor Cresta Veterinary Hospital (Midvale) - Chalcy's vet, which I found because of the reviews online.
44 reviews. 5 stars.
1. Do reviews sound the same? Nope. Some reviews are long, some are short. Some people have typos, some do not. Some people misspell the vet's name. Some people write with several paragraphs, some people write one paragraph. People describe different experiences and things.
2. Reviewer names look real? Yes. Wide variety of user names.
3. Reviewer profiles? Varied! Some have pictures. Many have 2 or 3 reviews, for reasonable things. Some have only 1 review but a photo on the profile.
4. Number of reviews reasonable? Yes, but a little high. Most nearby vets have about 20 reviews. Some have 10. A few have no reviews at all. One vet nearby has 70 reviews.
5. Do great reviews comment about negative things too? Yes. The signage is kind of bad, although it is better than it used to be. It can be hard to get parking. (I experienced both of these things, actually...the parking lot is tiny; there are only spaces for like 3-4 cars in front. The first time we accidentally drove past because we missed the sign.)
6. Company response? None at all. There are no negative reviews to respond to. None of the reviews seem to be written by staff, though.
7. Polarized reviews? No. All reviews are 5 stars.
CONCLUSION: There are more reviews than average because Dr. Good really is an amazing vet that everyone loves. Seriously, he's wonderful, and the prices are really reasonable. We went for all of Chalcy's puppy visits (1 visit to say hello, plus several more for her puppy shots), plus I've called them for help a couple other times, and they are outstanding.

Case Study #4 - Neerings Plumbing & Heating (Salt Lake)
134 reviews. 3.5 stars.
1. Reviews sound the same? Yes. Most of the reviews are one or two sentences long and say something like "Matt was great! He fixed our furnace. Thank you!" or "This was a great experience. Thank you Steve!" Very little variation, actually, except among 1 star reviews.
2. Reviewer names look real? Not really. Most are by Firstname Lastname. On Google the reviewers all use names that are first names only, like "Charlene."
3. Reviewer profiles? VERY BAD. The 5-star reviewers have all reviewed the same places! "Diggity Dog Resort" "Starving Students" "Barristas"and several of the same car dealerships. Yikes! What are the chances that a whole bunch of random people would all visit those same places, and all have 5-star experiences, all within the same period, and not visit or review other places? This is very obviously a case where Neerings hired some company to give them a whole bunch of fake 5-star reviews. So, if you were to just look at one reviewer, it would seem good because they haven't just reviewed the one place, but actually it is way worse.
4. Number of reviews reasonable? Much too high. Neerings advertises a ton, though, so this wouldn't be a huge surprise...but Action advertises a lot and they have 12 reviews. Most of the other plumbers in the area have about 10-12 reviews. (Note: Whipple has 225 reviews--which are also super polarized...225 is way too many, and it just seems to be the number necessary to balance out all of the 1 star reviews.)
5. Do great reviews comment about negative things too? No.
6. Company response? None, and there should be. Plus, all of the 1-star reviews are rated "unhelpful" a whole bunch of times...even though the reviews actually are helpful. This is pretty common with sketchy companies.
7. Polarized reviews? Yes. It's all 5-star and 1-star reviews.
CONCLUSION: The 1-star reviews all state that Neerings is way overpriced, and I suspect this is true. Neerings definitely has almost entirely fake reviews.

It's important not to judge places too quickly; to accuse someone of fabricating reviews is a pretty big deal, and it's really rude if you don't actually know they've lied. On the other hand, I think it is really awkward that places want to raise their reviews and improve their online presence by lying to us. (Come on, guys! Show some class.)

Be smart, folks. Do your homework.

Extreme Barn Makeover

2011-05-13T09:53:00.000-07:00

I'm sure I must have posted pictures of our barn before. It looked like this:

Except worse, because that was a long time ago and since then the goats have been eating off the sides, so they were more brown.

So, it was pretty run down.

While my dad was staying with us, we had him paint it. The color we chose is a Home Depot match of Martha Stewart's color called "Barn." (How many people actually use it to paint barns, though?) Now it looks like this:

Cute, right?

We're thinking it may be fun to gather the animals together and take a picture in front of the barn, to send to the previous owner. The man built this barn and they had animals while their family was growing up. They have lots of nice memories, but they just assumed everything he built would be torn down for a fancy new home when they sold the house. (It would match the neighborhood better.) He was excited to hear that we were planning to have animals. I think he would get a kick out of seeing how we're improving the place and using it. We'll see.

BEES??

2011-05-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

I'm super interested in getting bees.

I read several homesteading themed blogs, and a couple of the people are getting bees this year. Amy (at Homestead Revival) especially keeps blogging about it, and I love her posts about bees.

Plus, a couple that we know from church is getting bees this year.

And, I've started reading Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis, which is fascinating and actually gets me a little misty sometimes. (Okay, both times, of all two times that I've read the preface. I had to stop reading when I was reading it aloud to J, because it was making me sad.)

Anyway, I think I want bees. They would be good for our garden, plus we would get honey, and we would help restore a species that is extremely valuable. We don't grow mono-crops, so I think we're pretty ideal that way. Plus, we would get honey.

And, how much work could it be?? They're industrious creatures, right?

So I'm learning about bees now. Usually you have to order bees earlier in the year, like in January or February, but I saw some available online even like a week ago.

But, the getting-started costs are probably about $350. You have to buy the bees, which are $80-100 per cage (which is one hive worth of bees, plus a queen). Plus you have to buy actual hives (wooden boxes, usually), and the frames that go in them, and special bottom and top pieces, and you have to put the hive on something so that it isn't directly on the ground. A hive ranges in cost, but I think it's about another $100 for all of the different parts. Plus, you have to get a smoker (so you can calm the bees when you need to go out to the hive and inspect or do things) (another $30), and a bee brush, and a hat and veil (another $30+). Bee suits are optional, although I don't really think they are. A lot of people just wear jeans and put a rubber band at each of the ankles so that bees can't get up inside. Supposedly bees don't sting through heavy jeans. A full bee suit is about $150+. And you need gloves. Bee keeping gloves go up to your elbows! So, all of this is a bit much for an impulsive purchase. It doesn't exactly fit in our budget for this month.

And, there are getting-started classes, which I would definitely want to do before we tried to get-started. But those classes are pretty much all in March or April, and not in May. Intermediate classes are in May, but we're not intermediate.

Plus, also, J is not really excited or interested in getting bees. We've had some quality conversation today, though.

Me: "But J, think about it! If we got bees, we could have a land of milk and honey! If Caroline kids we'll have milk, and the bees would give us honey! It would be like in the Bible. You like the Bible!"
J: "We could have a promised land? Right here at our house?"
Me: "Yes!"

And then later...

J: "So you said the 3lb hives of bees usually come with 12-17 thousand bees, right?"
Me: "Uh, I think so."
J: "Could we start with, like, 50 instead?"
Me: [pause] "Fifty thousand? You want three beehives?"

We also talked about putting hives on our roof, so that they're not really flying around our yard as much. I've seen pictures of that online. I don't know whether it would work well or not.

The real problem is, back in 2003 J lived in Texas. He had this chihuahua dog that he absolutely loved ("Bubba") and it used to always play with these two pug dogs (a male and a female) that belonged to someone else. One day he went outside and found all three dogs were very, very sick. There were dead bees all over the place. J rushed all of the dogs to the nearest vet. On the way, the girl pug died, and a few hours later the boy pug died. After 17 hours of expensive medical treatment, J's dog died. Bubba had 70 bee stings. They counted 25 bee stings on the girl pug's ear--and her whole body was covered in stings. His dog that he loved so much really, actually, really did die of a killer bee attack.

It's not that common, I tell J. Bee attacks are very unusual. And, the bees we would get would not be Africanized honeybees. They would be docile European ones. J worries about killer bees: they are in Utah now. And, they sometimes take over European honeybee hives. So we could be inviting killer bees right into our backyard, maybe. We looked it up online, and that actually does happen sometimes. (I think there are probably things that can be done to make it extremely unlikely.)

J warns me that he would not help with bees at all. Ever. Even if I needed help. So I tell him I wouldn't even ask for his help, I wouldn't need help anyway, they would just be my project. He's hoping that by next year my interest will have faded. Eh, we'll see. I think it would feel awesome to have our own fresh honey. And, they would be good for our garden.

Which, by the way, we don't actually have yet, so it's okay that I am not getting bees this year because I should really be focusing on my garden anyway. Guess what! I tilled the land for it this week. My father-in-law brought a bunch of compost over, and then I used his rototiller to blend it in with the soil. The final size of my garden is about 12 feet by 32 feet. I measured because I need to have a fence installed or I will not have a garden at all--the goats will be extremely persistent about trying to eat my garden before I do, so I think I'll need a 6' chain link fence. Maybe I am already too busy for bees anyway.

For now, I think I'll just keep reading about beekeeping. My neighbors' bees will pollinate our garden anyway.

Awesome souvenir from Boston

2011-04-30T20:16:00.001-07:00

Jess and Mitch recently got back from a trip to Boston. (Actually, it was a trip to Quebec, Montreal, Maine, and Boston.)

I drove them to the airport, and picked them up when they got back, so they wanted to bring me something. We don't really buy each other stuff just for the sake of buying stuff, so they weren't sure what to bring back until they were at a market in Boston.

This is what they brought me:

They were at this market, and they saw the pineapple and decided to bring it back for me. The reason for that was, last year they went to Hawaii. They wondered if I would like anything, maybe some macadamia nuts? I told them I wanted a pineapple, please, please!

I went to Maui back in 2002 and I absolutely loved the pineapples I had while I was there. Our resort served them with our breakfast, we had them at a luau, and I forget where else, but I thought they were wonderful. They taste completely different than pineapples here.

Jess and Mitch brought me my pineapple. I was thrilled! The pictures we got were blurry.

So, this time, when they were in Boston, they thought it would be funny to bring back a pineapple again. They both kept laughing about it on the way back and as they gave it to me. Apparently, although people return from Hawaii with fresh pineapples all the time, it isn't as big of a trend in Boston. At the airport they saw the pineapple as Jess & Mitch's luggage was being scanned, and they were really interested in it. [From what I remember:]

Airport person: "...is that ... a pineapple?"
J or M: "Yeah."
Airport person [confused]: "You're taking a pineapple?"
J or M: "Yeah."
Airport person: "I'm going to have to take a look at that."

So they took it out and looked more closely, or did little airport-safety tests, or something, and discovered that it really was a pineapple.

Awesome.

Happenings!

2011-04-30T17:47:00.000-07:00

Real Estate:

I graduated from the Real Estate Academy I've been attending. I took (and passed!) the licensing exams. I interviewed at a couple different offices (and talked with a few others), and I found a broker to work with. I will be working for Community Property Management, which works with Community Real Estate. The broker's name is David Anderegg, and he's had his office for about a year. He's just started the property management brokerage, but he has a bunch of experience managing properties, so I think he will be great to work with. I submitted the application to actually get my license, and the Division of Real Estate is processing it, and they said I should receive my license in 5-7 business days, which should be sometime next week.

Farm:

The cow is still pretty little.

We're down to one turkey. The one that's left is doing really well. It's out with our chickens.

We still don't know whether the goats are pregnant or not. They'd better be.

Garden:

It's growing. I transplanted it into bigger pots, and it is still in J's parents' greenhouse, where it is doing really well.

Family:

My dad is visiting! He is in town for two weeks, and he's helping us with a bunch of things. He and I built a big shelf for our garage, and we organized the garage. He's been painting an apartment for us. He is also painting our barn. (So far he's put new plywood up to cover the old, really worn out plywood.) We're enjoying his visit. I think he is too. He plays with Chalcy a lot, and she gives him lots of kisses.

Gay Mormons?

2011-04-28T16:49:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to let people know about this book.

About a year and a half ago, my brother-in-law, Brent, realized he is gay. He’s an active LDS guy, so for a long time he didn’t even consider that he might be gay. (He just wasn’t interested in girls because, you know, he was a “late bloomer,” and things like that.) He knew he should like girls, and he wanted to, but even though he prayed to be attracted to girls, went on a lot of dates, and had his hormone levels tested, etc, nothing changed. Meanwhile, he’s had all these experiences where he feels “brotherly love” towards other guys.

Once Brent realized what was going on, he did a lot of research on being Mormon and gay, and I don’t know what else. He helped start a gay club at BYU (although it is not officially recognized, they do have permission to meet). He also attended different conferences and firesides, etc, and he started hosting parties at his parents’ house every quarter, or so.

The thing is, it turns out, there is this whole group of great, faithful LDS people (mostly guys) that realize they’re gay. They pray to like girls, they fast to like girls, they go for counseling, sometimes they get married to try to cure themselves, or various different things, and none of it works. They believe that the church is true, and they love the gospel…but they don’t know what to do. A lot of times their families disown them. Some of the guys commit suicide. It’s really sad. I think most gay Mormons are extremely lonely.

Brent started a project of collecting people’s stories for a book. After a lot of work, it’s ready, and he has it available on Amazon. It’s called Gay Mormons?: Latter-day Saint Experiences of Same Gender Attraction. The book contains thirty-six stories, and at the beginning it includes information about the Church’s current position on homosexuality, plus several pages of resources at the end, including support groups, books, Church articles, etc. Brent set the price as low as they would let him, so he isn’t making any profit or royalties at all. The main purpose of the book is to lighten other people’s burdens--by letting people who are struggling know that they are not alone, and by encouraging everyone to be compassionate.

I helped Brent with proofreading the book, so I’ve read most of it. Although I am not usually very interested in issues of same-gender attraction, I’ve found the book to be pretty interesting. None of the stories are crude or antagonistic towards the LDS church, or anything like that. The book doesn’t have any sort of political or religious agenda, which is kind of nice. After reading Gay Mormons? I don’t know what causes people to be gay, or what God expects of gay people, and I don’t feel like I need to know. I do feel totally convinced that gay people don’t choose to be gay. I feel compassion towards people who struggle with same-gender attraction, and I think that as members of the Church, we have a serious obligation to love everyone, to include them, and to treat all people in a Christ-like manner.

I’m not very liberal. I don’t usually blog about this sort of thing, and I don’t anticipate future blog posts on this topic, but I thought I would mention Brent’s book just in case anyone is interested. It seems like it will be really relevant, timely, and helpful to a lot of people.

Barnes & Noble, IT’S OVER!

2011-04-11T09:08:00.000-07:00

Look, Barnes & Noble: it’s not me, it’s you.

We’ve had a normal relationship, I suppose. When I first started going to Barnes & Noble, I was young. Every moment we spent together was thrilling, and I couldn’t wait to go back. Barnes & Noble, you made me feel special, and our future seemed promising. You had so many (!) books, and you even let me stay and read if I wanted to. I thought it was love, but it was really just infatuation. Of course, not every relationship is meant to be. Over time, things between us have grown stale. We’re off-again-on-again, because I just can’t seem to break things off completely. I keep going back hoping that Barnes & Noble will be fun and exciting like it used to be. Things were so cozy between us. Every time I go back, though, you keep reminding me why I shouldn’t. We really just need to cut things off completely, but it’s hard. We have so many nice memories, you know?

This is what happens, every time:

1. I decide to treat myself by buying a book I want now, instead of buying it online for cheaper, and having to wait for it to arrive. I go to Barnes & Noble. It probably won’t be full price. Sometimes I see signs that say things are 20-30% off, or something. Anyway, who charges full price for books? Even the grocery store doesn’t.

2. Ughh. It’s full price. (Everything is.) Do I really want to pay $30 for something that costs $17—including shipping—online?

3. Uh, uh, IMPULSIVE INDULGENCE: I guess so! After all, I’m already here. I thought it would be a difference of like, $4, but hey, it will be fun to have it now.

4. Approach cashier.

Cashier: “Are you a member of our program?”

Me: (friendly) “Nope!”

Cashier: “Do you want to join [and pay 3 times as much as you should really be paying for your one book you’re buying today]?”

Me: (slightly irritated because they’re asking me to spend even more) “No thanks.”

Cashier: “Okay, your total is $x. A member would have saved $5.”

Me: (groan) (not in a mean voice, just disappointed) “And if I would have bought it online, I would have saved $15. I was just trying to treat myself, but I probably shouldn’t have. It really isn’t a very good idea to shop here, is it? Oh well. I guess I’ll try to still enjoy my book anyway. ”

Every time I buy something you taunt me by telling me how much I could have saved. Do you think that will make me want to join your program? It doesn’t. It reminds me that I’m an idiot for not being patient enough to just buy it online.

If I’m consciously choosing to pay more than I should, don’t rub it in! For goodness sakes, make me feel like I’m a princess while I’m in your store. Every single person in your store is choosing to indulge. We don’t need you. Nobody needs you anymore. Don’t you see? You’re not selling books like you used to, you’re selling a service now. The service is immediacy, and indulgence. That’s why you started your nook. It gives people something immediately (!), and brings it to them, instead of making them come to you (an indulgence). That business model is successful because it makes people happy. (And doesn't require printing anything.) Think about that for a minute, would you?

For now, I think it’s time that we take a break. All of our nice experiences are in the past, you know, and it’s just time for us to move on. We haven’t enjoyed each other for a while.

Don’t worry about me. I’m sure I’ll be okay. I already have my eye on someone new, you know. Amazon and I have been spending a lot of time together, and we’re really happy. For one thing, he makes me feel special. He thanks me for our time together, and he doesn’t use me like you do. Just upgrading my shipping option will work better for me, I think.

So long, Barnes & Noble. Thanks for the memories.

[Sorry the formatting is messed up. That sometimes happens when I copy/paste from Word. Oh well.]

Them Aminals, They's a Growin'

2011-03-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

Want to see a quick farm update?

All right.

Here are the turkeys. Chalcy stepped on one of the turkeys before we left, and when we came home one of the turkeys seemed lame. It's always sitting, never standing. It kind of uses one leg and a wing to scoot over to the food and over to the water, and to scoot over to lay in a good spot. I feel bad for it because the other birds walk on it and peck at it, so it doesn't have as many feathers. But it doesn't look weak, or anything. It's still getting fat. It is alert and other than looking broken, it's really healthy. I guess it will probably eventually die, but I don't know what else to do about it. Turkeys don't get to go to the vet. So far it's doing good. I'm hoping it can just keep surviving as a basically one-legged bird. We'll see.

Here is Chuck. He is very cute, but he has a one track mind, seriously. "Milk??? Did you bring me milk??? Is there a bottle somewhere??? Milk??? I like milk, did you bring me milk???" (Dude, you just ate.) "If I follow you and keep nudging you, maybe there will be MILK. I like milk. ... Did you bring milk??? If I suck your finger I will probably get MILK."

Here are our goats. The girls (the black and white ones on the left) are hopefully, hopefully pregnant. We don't know yet. If so, they should kid in June, I think. (If not, they are just fat, which they don't deserve to be if they're not going to give us milk.)

Bucko is getting bigger (and he has horns), so he and Caroline keep re-challenging each other to see who is actually the dominant one in the group. Caroline is still winning, but that won't last really long. Here are a couple pictures that I took this afternoon, like two seconds apart. Neat. This is how they decide who wins... They jump up to look big...And then they push against each other to see who can push the hardest.

And here is a fun picture of Paley, when she snuck into our house yesterday and Chalcy immediately greeted her with many, many, many kisses that were full of love and slobber. Notice how Chalcy's mouth hangs when she bends over. It's pretty funny looking. Also, when I put poor Paley back outside, she was soaking wet. Silly dog.

(You can only sort of tell in that picture how fast Chalcy's tail is wagging.)

[Jess wrote about our animals recently and she has a fancy camera, so her post has fancy pictures.]

Happy Anniversary to Us! part II

2011-03-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

SO, when we last left off, J and I were exhausted from camping for just one night, because we're wimps, I guess. We found a terrific hotel and slept all afternoon.

Potash Road!

When we woke up we decided we didn't have time for much, but we did have time for something, so we decided to drive along one of Moab's three scenic byways. We drove down Potash Road, because it was the shortest one, and we knew it was going to get dark pretty soon.

Potash Road is a special scenic byway for a lot of reasons:
1. It has "Wall Street" which is a stretch of the road where all the rock climbers go. As you drive by you get to see lots of people climbing.
2. It has pre-historic Native American rock paintings on some of the rock.*
3. It has two real, authentic, genuine dinosaur footprints. You can either trust that they're on the rock that the placard says, or you can hike up and see for yourself, which I did.
4. It has the...jug? arch? It's an arch on the side of a rock which makes it look like a handle.
5. It has an interesting potash collecting operation at the very end of the byway. Potash is used in gardens, or something like that.
6. Potash road goes along the Colorado river, which is sometimes pretty.
7. When you reach the end of the special scenic byway, you have to turn around and drive back, which gives you a chance to see all of the same things from a different angle!

We really liked Potash road. Way to go Utah, for maintaining that road!

So let's see, after Potash road it was dark, so we headed back to our hotel to not soak in the jacuzzi because everyone else was using it.

Negro Bill!

Then, on Sunday we hiked! We decided to hike along Negro Bill's trail, which is 2.2 miles long, and leads to the Morning Glory arch. We thought 4.4 miles would be long enough, for us. It was. It was supposed to have very little change in elevation compared to the other hikes we found, but I think the statistics were for the total change in elevation instead of like, the actual amount of feet that we went up and down and up and down and up and down. I messed up one of my knees when I hiked the Grand Canyon a couple years ago, and I've just started doing physical therapy for it, but inclines and declines make my knee hurt. Anyway, it made it so that 4.4 miles was plenty, thanks.

Pretty much everyone brought their dog on that hike. I don't know how they let us in because we didn't bring Chalcy. Somehow we got in.

I learned some Hiking Pro Tips:
1. Just because everyone in the parking lot is wearing heavy jackets does NOT mean you will actually need or want a heavy jacket on a hike. Use common sense. Everyone can be wrong. Although I hadn't planned on bringing my jacket, so many people we saw in the parking lot were wearing coats that J and I both grabbed ours. They must know something we don't, we thought. Actually, they didn't. We wore our coats for about 10 minutes, and then just carried them the whole way out and the whole way back. Dumb! I knew better.
2. If you think you kind of need to use the restroom at the beginning of your hike, you still will after several miles and more water.
3. If you wear shoes that "breathe" and you hike somewhere dusty, your shoes will "breathe" in dust. Lots of it.

There were tons of places where you have to cross the river. That kind of kept things exciting.

We ate a bunch of the eFoods Direct Tropical Fruit Medley, which is SO delicious. It's good too because the ingredients are basically just dried fruit (and coconut oil), so J can actually eat it! We both really like it. It was perfect for hiking and in the car.

The arch was pretty enough. It looked like an arch. Except, it sort of didn't. I was talking to J about it ("OH! There it is! That's the arch." *photo of J* *photo of J*) and he thought it wasn't the arch ("Noo, I don't think so. That can't be it, can it?"), and we kept hiking until we realized the bottom of the arch was actually a dead end. So it was the arch, for sure. We both had kind of expected the hike to open up out of the canyon to something flat. We saw no delicate arch; that was what we had kind of been expecting. The Morning Glory arch is more like, you're at the bottom of your shredder and you see a gap of light above you. Eh, oh well. You take what you get with these sorts of things. We liked it.

Shooting

Something we had hoped was that it would open up so that we could get away from the riverbed and go shooting. That didn't happen. So instead we went back to downtown Moab for lunch (J had ice cream and I had pizza**) and then we decided to go out to Canyonlands to go shooting. Annnd we did.

By then it was really windy, so we didn't end up shooting much at all. Still, I got to shoot my new revolver (a Taurus 94..1?)...which has a tighter trigger than the one I had used before. And something about the ammo isn't quite right because the shell ejector thing doesn't work. So now I need to take it in and have someone look at it. Too bad.

We also shot our pistol (an LCP), which I like slightly better than I did the last time I used it. J liked it. The thing is, it's just really hard to shoot. It has a very long trigger pull (a safety feature!) so it's just tricky for my small hands. It's perfect for concealed carry, though.

Then it started getting dark and we went back to our Riverside Inn. The man at the front desk re-opened the jacuzzi for us, which felt GREAT because I was sore from our hikes. It was also very hot, so I think we only actually were out there for 15 minutes.

We went back inside and set Relationship Goals Made on Your Actual Anniversary for Working On Until Your Next Anniversary. Should be fun.

Monday

We thought we would go back to Canyonlands again on Monday but it was so windy that it was no fun. So I had pizza for lunch** again (!!!) and we went home a little early, which was fine.

Hooray! Happy anniversary to us. We're excited that we survived our first year of marriage and we're looking forward to another year of marriage [one that isn't our first year of marriage].***

In conclusion, here are my reviews for our Anniversary Trip to Moab, 2011:
1. Camping at Slickrock something: 3/5 stars
2. Riverside Inn: 5/5 stars
3. City Market grocery store: 4/5 stars****
4. Moab, as a city: 4.5/5 stars - Hotels are generally overpriced, and there is no Chipotle.
5. Gas mileage in a Yaris: 5/5 stars - Basically, about a tank and a half to get there and back.
6. Cellphone reception in Moab: 4.5/5 stars - Very impressive. High reception almost everywhere except when you're really really in the middle of nowhere. I didn't expect that.
7. Paradox Pizza: 5+/5 stars - They deliver, and it didn't say to where. How about Salt Lake?
8. Wind, in general: 2/5 stars - Windmills are really cool. I told J I'd like one. But other than that, wind blows. It ruins camping, hiking, and shooting, and makes driving less comfortable.
9. It's Sew Moab: 3/5 stars - Cute little fabric store*****, but the lady basically told us (right after we left our campsite) that we were no way going to find a hotel because of the race, and that made me feel like living life was hopeless.
10. Being married for an entire year: 5/5 stars

* It also has modern rock graffiti made to look like ancient paintings. Because something about really old graffiti gets people excited about creating new graffiti that looks old.
** SUCH good pizza. It tasted like pizza you would get in Italy. Man, oh man. The place is called Paradox Pizza, and it's amazing.
*** This is the first time I've ever been married, so I've been kind of new to this, but I think I'm getting the hang of it now.
**** CityMarket, you could have had 5/5 stars except that your selection of flashlights was pretty pitiful.
***** Every time we travel somewhere I get a piece of fabric to remind us of the trip. So, instead of buying stupid souvenirs to hang onto (or awkwardly display in our home), we will eventually have a quilt with something for each of the trips we take. We can be wrapped up in our memories together (awwww!). Also, this means it only costs us $1.50-$3 to remember each place we go. Perfect.

Happy Anniversary to Us! part I

2011-03-21T16:35:00.000-07:00

This Sunday was our first anniversary(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). To celebrate, J took Friday and today off of work so we could have a nice four-day weekend. We decided to spend our weekend in Moab because I'd never really been, except one time when we drove through and I said I thought it would be fun to come back sometime.

So we went back--with 4,000 other people. Our anniversary just happened to fall on the same weekend as the Moab Half Marathon. I wished my knee were fixed and I could run too.

The drive down to Moab was pleasant.

We had decided to spend our first evening camping. J and I both think we like camping*. Friday night we went to Slickrock something camping, which is a camping place where you sign up for a campsite and everyone has their own little spot with a place to put your tent, and a picnic table and a fire ring and a barbecue thingie. J was surprised. He'd never been to a commercial campsite. He thought I had booked one that would be in nature, because that's the only kind of camping he's done. I have fond memories of Campland on the Bay, though, and I thought it would be nice to have clean bathrooms and showers and a jacuzzi.

We got the most private site, which we knew wouldn't be that private, because, come on, it's camping. And it turned out to be in the corner closest to the roads, so we got to listen to traffic all night long. Hm. BUT, I barbecued our steak dinner and things were great!

(I forgot paper plates and the little store was closed, but it was totally no problem because I made makeshift dinner plates by folding heavy-duty foil in half and putting a few layers of paper towels in the middle and then closing them. Why did we even think we needed paper plates to eat steak??)

Then, when we were trying to sleep our air mattress kept deflating and we were basically sleeping on the ground. And it was so cold that one time we both happened to wake up in the middle of the night. Since it was during the quiet time and we couldn't re-inflate our mattress with the noisy compressor, my poor sweet husband re-inflated our mattress with his lungs. And we went back to sleep.

When we woke up for real-morning, our mattress was deflated again. And it was SO windy. We couldn't get our fires to stay lit because the wind kept blowing them out. Eventually we were able to cook our really cute, very well planned breakfast...but as we waited for it to cook**, we kept chasing our stuff that kept blowing. The paper towels were the worst, because they started blowing down our little road thing and the unrolled as they went. AUGh! And then as we kept trying to pack up our tent it was so windy that everything kept blowing away***. It was a disaster. That was when I remembered I don't love camping all that much.

We were happy that we had only paid for one night of camping. We packed up without even packing our tent back into its little bag. It would have been impossible, really. And then we started looking for a hotel, because we were both super tired.

Everywhere was expensive. (Partly I think it was because it was one of their busy weekends, and partly I think it was because it's Moab.) We called a whole bunch of places, and it seemed like we were going to have to pay $130/night even for a run-down place. Unless we went to Green River (like 45 minutes away), and then we could pay $90 for something.

As we started driving we decided to check the Riverside Inn. Angels from Heaven must have intervened, because they had a vacancy (!) and the room was only going to cost like $80 with tax (!) and they were willing to clean it quickly (!), which was absolutely essential because we were totally exhausted and we were not going to wait until 3pm to sleep (even if it meant paying $130 for a run-down place).

We sat in the car, in the parking lot and we read together for another half hour after J paid for our room. Then we went in, claimed our room, and immediately collapsed in a heap on the bed for a nap which lasted all afternoon. Complete bliss.

*We thought.
** (Burn.)
*** Oh my gosh. Our tent windows pop out a little, and to keep them popped out you're supposed to stake them down. I actually attached mine to the little sign that said which site we were at. Okay, get this, our ENTIRE TENT (and all of the contents) were kept from totally blowing away just because of the way I fastened our window cord. But of course the tent still flew in all directions...just it was tethered to the wooden sign so it didn't actually fly away. I was so sure the tent was going to break itself.

ANOTHER new addition!

2011-03-08T09:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, right as I was getting ready to go do an activity with my friend, J called with some exciting news: a bull calf was born! So, my friend and I changed our plans and we went up to go get the calf instead.

We found the place again, and this time I took Chalcy's kennel so the little guy wouldn't have to be hog-tied like our guys last year. We also brought a tarp to cover the kennel so he wouldn't get too much wind or rain or...SNOWSTORM?! Driving back took forever because the freeway was a parking lot. We made it, though.

We decided it would probably be best to put the little guy in the other half of the barn instead of putting him with the goats, because the goats might butt him to establish their pecking order. And actually, that would probably kill him. So I put out some fresh straw, and I carried him out to the barn, and dried him off a little better and left a dry towel on him, to keep him a little warmer.

The guy at the dairy told us this guy is a twin! The cow's ultrasound had shown that she was having a heifer calf. So they had her in their nice, cozy "way to go for having a girl" place where they deliver heifer calves with special treatment (since they keep them and want them to grow up to be strong milk cows). And then she gave birth to our little bull calf instead. The people at the dairy were surprised and disappointed. "I guess the doctor was wrong...but he's never wrong..." the guy said. So this little calf's mama got to relax a bit and they cleaned her up and sent her back out to the muddy fields...where she promptly delivered a heifer calf in the mud. Surprise! Twins!

I think that's why he's so little. He seems really healthy though, so that's good.

He's been trying to learn to stand up. Last night he could get his back legs up but not his front legs. Today he can sometimes get his front legs up and stand for a minute, but I guess it takes some work to get those front legs up after the back legs are up. He kinda leans on his...front elbow things?... for a little bit and then pulls himself up. Standing is tough when you're a brand new baby.

He's also trying to learn to drink milk replacer from a bottle. Not sure why calves are so reluctant to do this. He's not actually trying, even. I'm trying to make him try to learn to drink from a bottle. He puts up a fight while I pry his little calf mouth open and shove the bottle in his mouth, hold his mouth closed, and then reach in the sides of his mouth to try to squeeze the nipple so that he'll taste some milk and figure out the whole sucking thing. He hasn't got it yet. We'll try again later. He'll get the hang of it eventually.

The guy at the dairy says he thinks they may have another bull calf for us in about a week. (We had wanted two.) It's such a drive to go get them, so we'll see if we're up to it. We may just have one guy this year. He can be friends with the goats, anyway, so he won't be alone like a single calf would have been last year.

New additions to our little farm!

2011-03-05T13:50:00.000-08:00

Today I asked J if I could go buy turkeys. He said yes, a turkey would be just fine. I invited him to go with me, and he was going to come, but then he decided to stay home instead.

So I went.

I wasn't sure if our IFA would have turkeys at all, because for some reason I think only certain locations carry turkeys (but I don't know why I think that).

They had turkeys!

I asked someone to help me (because birds are not a "help yourself!" sort of thing). I said I wanted two turkeys*. He said ok, and I started selecting chicks. I chose lively ones.

"Do you have other turkeys at home?"

"Nope! We do have chickens though."

"Oh. Well then you probably want to get a third turkey, actually."

"Why?"

"Because turkeys are flock animals, and if anything happens to one of them, if you only have two, you're pretty much outta business. But if you have three, then you still would have two, and then you're okay."

"Oh. Hm."

So, since J wasn't there with me to decide we didn't want turkeys after all, instead, he bought me three turkeys! (Thanks J!!!! <3 <3 <3)

The turkeys seem to have longer necks than chicks. They seem smarter than chickens, maybe because they're not jolty; they don't make the same sharp movements that chickens make. They were "straight run" so they could be boys or girls. (But with turkeys, it doesn't really matter like it does with chickens.)

I had to buy special turkey feed for them, because they can't eat chick feed. Chick feed is medicated, and it kills turkeys and ducks. Huh. I didn't know that.

We may or may not be able to integrate the turkeys with the chickens. It depends on how aggressive our chickens are (the big black one is mean...) and then later it will depend on how aggressive the turkeys are. We just have to watch them and see how they are together.

Fun, eh? The plan is, we'll have one for Thanksgiving and one for Christmas, and one to sell or eat for no particular occasion.**

*One for Christmas and one for Thanksgiving, and so that the poor one turkey doesn't have to be all alone.
**I was saying we could call the birds "Christmas" and "Thanksgiving" and wondering what to call the third one. J suggested we call it "MLK." We don't usually eat turkey in celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but...maybe! (Why not?)

Emergency Preparedness!

2011-03-03T11:57:00.000-08:00

A little while ago I mentioned I've been blogging for eFoods Direct lately. I write a post on emergency preparedness every Monday. It looks like the new site has launched now! Neat!

Want to see what I've blogged about there?
1. Why I Choose to Prepare
2. 2011 is Your Year to Prepare!
3. Collecting Important Documents
4. Emergency Preparedness on a Budget, part I
5. Emergency Preparedness on a Budget, part II
6. Which Emergencies are You Preparing For?
7. Involving Kids in Emergency Preparedness
8. Fire Extinguisher Basics
9. QUIZ: How prepared are you TODAY?

I have a bunch of other posts (on a variety of preparedness topics) scheduled for upcoming weeks, so there's a lot to look forward to.

I also really recommend going in and reading all of the posts by Rock Waterman. He writes about storing water (and sometimes he writes about other things), but he's fun to read.

I'm so excited about getting prepared! When I found out I was going to be writing about emergency preparedness I made this whole long list of different topics I could write about. Some of them are things I already know about, and some are things I'm learning about before I blog. I love writing about this stuff. I love being prepared.

A couple days ago I (finally!) filled my water storage barrels. We bought water storage barrels a few months ago and then left them empty. It felt really good to cross that off of my to do list.* The thing is, we're headed toward some really significant inflation really soon.** Things are probably going to get pretty bad, so it makes a lot of sense to do what we can now to prepare.

* No, really, it did. I use an app called "Astrid" which reminds me of my to do things all the time. "Won't you please just take care of this?" it asks. "You'll feel better when this is done." "This won't take long, I promise." GO AWAY!
** It's already happening, actually. J likes pre-sliced packages of cheese, and last week we realized the packages are now 6-7 oz. of cheese instead of 8 oz. Ice cream comes in different containers now too, because they're like radio-sized instead of lunchbox-sized boxes now. Hmmmm. Think about this: how much work does it take to change the size of an ice cream box? They have to change the machinery to work with different packages...they have to change their stuff that they use to print the boxes (to print a different size box, and to say a different amount on the box)...now, why would they go to all that trouble?

Presidents' Day

2011-03-02T16:04:00.000-08:00

If you want to enjoy your Presidents' Day cookie cutters, you've got to remember them at precisely the right time. Remembering that you can make cookies shaped like presidents does no good at all if you remember for Halloween or Valentine's Day, or on some random summer day. No, you've got to remember you have Presidents' Day cookie cutters on Presidents' Day, or a couple days before, and if you don't, well, you're out of luck.

BUT I REMEMBERED!

So I suggested to J that we make some Presidents' Day sugar cookies, in celebration of presidents. I made the cookie dough and cut cookies, and then for our Presidents' Day FHE, we decorated presidents* and delivered plates of cookies to some of our neighbors.

It was a lot of fun.

*I asked J if all of the Washingtons had faces, because I was going to use the skin-colored frosting to make beard-colored frosting. He assured me that all of the faces were done. So I made beard-colored frosting. And then he realized one wasn't done after all. Ohhh, no. So he suggested I make one Obama-Washington (with beard-colored frosting). No way! So I scraped the edges of the white (wig-colored) frosting, and made just enough face-colored frosting for the poor guy. We** only celebrate presidents that act like presidents.
** I

Surgery! aka. Our Fancy European Vacation!

2011-03-02T15:08:00.000-08:00

Where we last left off, J had discovered his finger was going to need surgery after all.

So anyway, I took J on Friday* for his surgery. We met his doctor and a few nurses, and a hospital guy with forms**, and the anesthesiologist. Everyone was very aware that they had a special goal to not eliminate J's hookworms.

The day before the surgery I talked to Jessica on the phone for a little while about how she and Mitch are thinking of maybe going to Europe. As we discussed Italy, I wanted to go too. Jess suggested I come with them, and I said uh, I don't think we're really going anywhere because now we're going to be paying medical bills instead.

SO, at the hospital we kept joking about it being our fancy European vacation. When J was put in his first hospital bed, we evaluated our resort's amenities:
Me: "What a great view out the window!"***
J: "Yeah, and look, it even has a flat-screen TV!"

The head-nurse came to introduce herself and she said they'd try to take good care of him. She brought him his "party hat"**** and promised J she would have some warm towels for him back in surgery.*****

And then eventually J was taken back to surgery, and they told me to go wait in the waiting room, and I went to eat french toast instead. And then I went to the waiting room. I felt really nervous for no reason in particular. Actually, here's the reason: I've never had surgery (or waited for anyone to have surgery) and having someone cut J up makes me nervous.

After a little while the surgeon came and found me in the waiting room. He showed me pictures of the x-rays from surgery and explained what he did. ("The pins look bigger in the x-ray than they actually are.") He gave me a list of the medications/anesthetics that they gave J. Neat. Also, if you look at the top-right x-ray, see how messed up the bone is? That's from the day of the surgery. Hm. No wonder setting it wasn't an acceptable solution.

After a bit longer, I got to go back to the recovery area, where J was happy but pretty medicated. He was eating soda crackers ("They don't have MSG! I even had them check!") and drinking juice. He was super happy because he had expected the surgery to hurt and it didn't hurt at all. (Good job, guys.)

The nurse gave me J's prescription for pain meds and I went and filled it and came back.
J: "Oh, you're back! Did you go somewhere?"
Me: "Yeah, remember? The nurse told us all about your pain medication and I went to go pick it up for you."
J: "Huh. She did? I guess that may sound a little familiar. So do I already have my prescription?"

And then when it was time to go home, J complained about how short our vacation was. He thought maybe he would be able to go back to work that afternoon, and then later we realized how funny that idea was. He slept all afternoon and pretty much all weekend, too. Poor guy.

J's mom brought over her ice machine so he could ice his hand effectively.

That sums up the surgery.

After a couple days, J thought he may have lost his hookworms, because all of his pre-worm symptoms were back. He talked to Garin about it and, with the list of stuff they gave him in the hospital, Garin was pretty confident that the worms were still there. After 7-10 days or so, J's hookworm effects came back. So he didn't lose them after all.

The week after surgery, J went back to the doctor for a check-up, and for his first physical therapy appointment. At that appointment, his physical therapist made a fancy special plastic splint which I keep teasing J about, mostly because it looks like something an action figure would wear, and I think it looks like it should be able to shoot lasers.

Physical therapy seems pretty ridiculous because--come on, it's a pinkie finger! How do you even exercise a pinkie finger?? But it's actually pretty amazing--when J first took his finger out of the special plastic splint thing, he could barely move at all. So it turns out to be important to do his special exercises. So he's doing them.

Next week J's doctor will remove the pins.

* Way back on February 11th.
** Which is kind of a joke, because actually everybody has forms they want you to fill out, so why have a form guy at all?
*** (A landscape photo hanging on the wall.)
**** A surgical hat thing. But the nurse actually called it a party hat. So then J and I talked about what a great resort it was because it has parties, and I became a little jealous that I didn't get to go. Until I realized, what kind of party doesn't let you bring a guest, anyway? So then we complained about our resort's lousy parties that are no fun at all.
***** "Ohhh, J, you're going for your spa treatment on our fancy European vacation!"

Hookworm Update!

2011-02-12T11:18:00.000-08:00

[This is an update about J's hookworms. My previous posts about this are here: part one and part two.]

J has had hookworms for almost 12 weeks now.

He was sick for about 4 weeks. He has been better now for about a few weeks*. While he was sick, J was absolutely exhausted. He slept about 11-12 hours per day. His guts hurt. He found that Hydrocodone was the most helpful for pain relief.

At about his third week of having worms, J's pain became so intolerable that he had to choose between getting rid of his worms and taking Prednisone, which is an immunosuppressive drug. It worked extremely well, but it is also very dangerous, so he only took tiny doses. He took it whenever he was really hurting, until week six.

J didn't miss much work while he was sick, but there were a lot of days where he would come home early in the evening, or take very long naps during his lunch break, because he just really didn't feel well. For pretty much all of our weekends he slept for the majority of the days.

Honestly, we were kind of frustrated with his sickness. We felt like we had an unclear expectation of what his "worm flu" was supposed to be like. Up until J actually got the worms, we thought that he would probably feel slightly sick for the first few days he had the worms.

After we met with Garin and the doctor, I don't know whether we just misunderstood or what, but I think we expected that about two weeks into having worms J would experience mild discomfort for a couple weeks. After J became sick and had been sick for a little while, the expectation was that it would become much better very suddenly at about week six. J says about 85% of the suffering happened between weeks 2-6. After that he got better over the following two weeks, until he was not having any pain from them at all.

So far, the results are:
1. J would never, never get 30 worms all at once. He suspects 10 at a time would be ideal, and 15 would be acceptable (because going to Mexico each time is a hassle.)
2. As far as allergies are concerned, J has occasionally been friends with our cat to see how he is improving. At the beginning, J would touch the cat and have a very delayed (and reduced) allergic response. Partway through his sickness, J discovered that he could touch the cat (but not really cuddle her and rub her against his face) and he would have no allergic response at all. Now, as of yesterday, if he rubs the cat in his face, he does still have a small allergic response that is somewhat delayed. Of course it is nowhere near where he started.
3. J was also seeking to improve some mild joint pain. It is totally gone.
4. J used to wake up with a stuffy nose every day, and now his nose is always dry in the mornings. This started at two weeks.
5. J thinks he may be interested in increasing the number of worms he has at some point in the future.
6. People we know have also seen J's improvement; J's parents and my sister both have cats, and we have visited them successfully, with no allergic response. Members of each of our families have approached us with interest in learning more about worms. We recommend Garin as a provider of hookworms.
7. J underwent surgery yesterday and all of the doctors and nurses involved were careful to accommodate him. Garin was a great resource for J as he tried to work out the anesthesia. A couple of the doctors were especially interested and asked J a lot of questions. They seemed to think that it was unusual but great that it was working for him.

[Note: I've written another update about the hookworms. It is here.]

* "During which I got a cold, and a broken bone, and surgery! So much for being well, eh?"

Life Update

2011-02-07T16:01:00.000-08:00

Things Happening:

1. My mother-in-law is helping me organize our house! I am not very talented when it comes to organizing, so her help is MUCH appreciated. She is also helping with other things.

Back from when our roof was leaking almost a year ago, we tore down a bunch of drywall to find the leak. And then we left it because other projects were more pressing. My mother-in-law helped me install drywall* in our alcove. I did the joining tape and spackling, and I painted it, and replaced the carpet with more fake wood floor. Now it houses our two big [empty!] water barrels and some shelves. Oh, I guess this isn't really about actual organizing--we've done that, too.

2. I installed fake wood floor in our old office! The idea was to swap the dining room and office, because the "dining room" has new carpet and the office had very old carpet. Having our table, refrigerator, and trash cans on carpet was just not the best. Now, we're not sure if the "dining room" will actually be moving to the fake wood floor bedroom or not. We'll see.

3. I'm teaching 8 year-old kids at Church this year. Last year J and me taught the 5 year-old kids. It was pretty fun. This year, we were assigned the kids who are turning 9 this year. So far I really like them. It seems like they all want to be best friends with me, which is fun. They fight** to sit by me. I've decided to stop trying to get the kids to sit still during class. Here's the thing: they have to sit still for Sacrament meeting (before my class), and they have to sit still for Primary (after my class), and it's just not worth it to me to try and make them sit still in my class too. So we DO THINGS.

A few weeks ago we acted out our whole lesson. The last time I taught, we made salt dough maps of the places Jesus lived (because that's what the lesson was about). The kids are loving it, and I feel less stressed about them not sitting still. We still look up scriptures together--I think that's super important, that the kids become really familiar with the Bible and learn to use the maps and footnotes, etc. I want them to love the scriptures as much as I do, so I'm trying to make the scriptures more exciting and easy to relate to. We'll see how the rest of the year goes. Maybe I'll change my mind about letting them be so squirmy. So far everyone really likes it. I think it's important that we stay structured enough that the kids can feel the Spirit and actually learn about the gospel.***

4. I am taking a GNOWFGLINS class about Cultured Dairy. I was going to do the Fundamentals class when Wardeh started it, but at the time I was just about to get married and trying to graduate and about 3000 other things, so I ended up canceling my membership. I knew I wanted to do it eventually, though. This month the Cultured Dairy class was beginning so I decided it was time to come back. In the class we will be learning to make a whole bunch of yogurts and cheeses**** so J and I are both really excited about this class because we love cheese! So far we've only had the introduction class, but tomorrow we'll actually start making things, so I'm excited. I've already been having fun meeting people on the forums*****.

5. I've been blogging for eFoods Direct! (I'll post separately about this when the new site is released.) My topic is "Emergency Preparedness" and I blog on Mondays. I absolutely love it. I've cared a lot about emergency preparedness for a really long time so it's fun to blog about it, and learn and think more about preparedness. J and I actually revamped our preparation efforts last fall because we're worried about the direction our country seems to be headed...but that's another blog post for another day, maybe.

6. J broke his finger. At the gym. He thought it was just sprained or strained, but he kept re-injuring it, and it kept not healing. Last Thursday (12 days after the original injury) he went into urgent care to have it x-rayed. It was definitely broken. Poor guy. The urgent care doctor said for sure we'll be meeting our deductible. Too bad.

So then on Friday, J got an emergency appointment to see a o. surgeon to have it looked at, and the doctor said "this needs surgery..." but then we talked to him about setting it. The trouble is, it broke at an angle so that the muscle in J's finger will naturally kind of slide the bone right back out. The doctor said there was a chance setting it would work, but maybe only a 10-50% chance. We decided it was worth trying. So the doctor set J's finger and it hurt very very badly. As he was massaging J's finger, I tried to distract my poor husband:

"So, J...what is your favorite flavor of ice cream?"
"Aouhmmm...cookies and cream..."
"Really? You like it better than all of your other flavors?"
"Uh...uh...aihhuhm...yeah."
"But what about chocolate peanut butter and strawberry? You like it better than those, too?"
"Uh...Yeah."

Poor guy. I don't know if it actually helped distract him from hurting at all, but it did make him happy because he thought it was really silly for me to be asking him about ice cream.

Anyway, after the doctor set his finger, they x-rayed it again to see if it stayed in place. IT DID! So J was splinted up and sent home with a return appointment for today--if his bone stayed in place, he would get a cast. If not, he would get surgery and a little metal plate and pins to hold his finger together. (Ouch.)

We hoped and prayed his finger would stay in place. J was very, very careful not to bump it over the weekend. (But it didn't actually need to be bumped to slide out of place.)

We went in for his appointment today and he had his hand x-rayed again to see how he'd held up over the weekend. Here is the new x-ray. What do you think, readers? Cast or surgery? (It's a strange angle because the splint is on and it holds fingers in a strange position for x-rays.)

The doctor said it looked good! He said it had moved a little bit, but not very much, so J was probably out of the woods now. He said he had tried to call his colleague who is a hand specialist to get his opinion on whether it was good enough or not, and he wasn't able to talk to him yet, but most likely J would be just fine in a cast! The doctor said he would talk to the specialist and call J back this afternoon to confirm it was all right.

The doctor said it was kind of like if you ask your mom, "Mom, can I spend the night at my friend's house?" and your mom says, "Probably, but I'll have to check with your Dad." And you're kind of like, "Well, hmm, can I or can't I?" And maybe your dad will say, "Oh, no, remember, we grounded him last week," or something that Mom just forgot or didn't know about, but probably you can. The doctor said it was like that. He said we shouldn't get our hopes up, but J could go ahead and get a cast because it looked good.

So, of course, we immediately got our hopes up.

We went to the casting room where J was going to get his cast. J broke his wrist when he was 12, so he's had a cast before. I asked him over the weekend what color of cast he'd get if he could get a cast and he said white. White? "Do they come in other colors?" he asked, not sure whether I was being serious or not. "Of course they do!" It's been a long time since he was 12. I suggested he go with pink or red, since it's about time for Valentine's day. We also discussed more work-appropriate options, like khaki or grey. (I don't think they come in those colors, though.) J wasn't sure which color he would want.

When we got to the special cast room, the girl putting his cast on showed him a ring of different cast color swatches. His cast would be on for two weeks, and then he would come in for an x-ray to be sure things were healing up right. The girl explained that they would remove the cast at the two week appointment. I suggested pink or red again, because Valentine's day is especially relevant for the next couple weeks. J was not convinced. The girl suggested red with pink hearts ("She's just a Ute, that's why she wants me to get a red one," J countered). So she suggested pink with red hearts. J picked dark green.

The girl wove cotton around J's fingers. He would have his index finger, but the other three fingers would be in the cast, and the cotton would keep them from rubbing and getting blisters. Oh. Then she put a special sock on J's arm, cutting holes for his finger and stuff. She wrapped cotton all around his arm and hand, carefully doing the spots where there would be edges of the cast, so they wouldn't rub. She got his green cast stuff out and got it wet. She brought it over to J and started to put it on...

And then the doctor came back in the room. He finally spoke with the hand surgeon, and unfortunately J's bone wasn't quite perfect enough. He will be needing surgery after all. Too bad! So the girl removed the little bit of green that she'd put on J, and she splinted his hand back up (on top of the cast stuff), and bandaged it all back up, and cut off the cast part that didn't need to be there since it is only a splint and not a cast. J will most likely be having hand surgery on Friday, but it will depend. It's too bad because it is going to be much more painful and expensive. We'll know more later.

* Although we both enjoy building things, we also both agree that we do not like installing drywall. It is heavy, and not fun to work with, and the insulation is a pain to work with. She was very pleasant about helping, though.
** Reverently, of course.
*** "Sister K! Can I sit on this tower of 4 chairs?!" "Yes! As long as you remove all of the chairs beneath you except one."
**** We're learning to make sour cream, cultured butter and buttermilk, clabbered milk and cheese, heritage yogurt, greek yogurt, kefir and kefir cheese, kefir cream and ice cream, ricotta and soft cheese, cottage cheese, feta cheese, Middle Eastern fresh cheese, Queso Fresco cheese, fresh Cheddar cheese, traditional Mozzarella cheese, and we'll learn about keeping mother cultures so that we can just keep going.
***** Can you imagine? There are other people like me that like doing things like making cheese. NEAT.

Something funny from today...

2011-01-29T21:30:00.000-08:00

This made us laugh today:

Chalcy heard our neighbors' dogs barking outside so she stood up and looked out the window. (Of course.) She didn't bark at them; just watched them. She'd never done that before.

Seeing her at the window, we realized (HOLY COW!) our puppy is getting big. Our bed is normal-height. Our window is normal-height. You can see J's nightstand on the right, and my dresser on the left. Standing up like that, our little puppy is taller than me (but not J yet)!

Another order from the Community Food Co-op of Utah!

2011-01-25T09:45:00.000-08:00

I used to order from the Co-op back in 2009, and then life was busy and I stopped ordering. Saturday mornings were a difficult pick-up time for me, and I was away from my house so much that I wasn't cooking all of the food that I got.

Life is less chaotic now. (Is that really true? It seems weird to type. I think it is true.)

I've been trying to eat more fruits and vegetables, so it seemed like a good idea to order from the Co-op again.

So I did.

And then I waited, and waited, because the Co-op is still a once-a-month sort of thing. This Saturday I picked up my order!

I ordered a Standard Share, so it included:

1 lb. lean ground beef (85/15)
2 lbs. chicken thighs
2 lbs. pork loin roast
2 8oz. top sirloin steaks
5 tangelos
5 Fuji apples
5 d'Anjou pears
1 5 lb. bag of potatoes (5 lb. bag)
1 bag of spinach
3 tomatoes
1 cauliflower
3 small zucchini (or I could have picked 2 bigger ones)

Plus, I bought two add-ons:

Artisan wheat bread
Sourdough bread

This time, our goal is to use all of it. So far we have eaten all of the sourdough bread (you can see I started it before I even got home!), most of the wheat bread, one apple, the cauliflower, and one tomato. Plus I cooked all of the chicken thighs, but we haven't eaten them yet.

We added up approximate values of each item, and we estimate that through the Co-op, it costs about 50% of the price we pay at our grocery stores.*

J and I are always impressed with the quality of the food--it is always excellent. The fruit is never bruised or cut, or damaged at all. Nothing is ever stale. It's just great food. (Look at the tomatoes, for instance-- they're not even Roma ones, although those are usually cheaper at the grocery store.) We like that they try to buy from local growers, so that's good too. (Of course, I don't know how many local growers there are in Utah in January, but during the summer I know they often buy local.)

If you're thinking about trying out the Community Food Co-op of Utah, I highly recommend it. It's not a poor people thing, it's a meet-your-neighbors, eat-fresh-food (and save money too!) thing. So, don't feel awkward about it like I did before I went. The more people who participate, the more food everyone is able to get, because they can get better deals when they purchase more.

They have about 50 pick-up location in Utah. Most are at churches (all different religions--lots of Methodist, Lutheran, and Presbyterian ones). Some are at other places, like Salt Lake Community College, or Wasatch Co. Parks & Recreation, or at senior centers. My pick-up location in Salt Lake was a church, and so is my location down here, and I don't even know if anybody from the church is actually there; they just have a big open room that the Co-op people use, and you walk in and you walk out. Kind of like voting. (Don't feel awkward about it not being your church. Nobody cares. They just seem to choose locations with enough space.)

I just ordered for February and the Standard Share is $24. Separately, a Meat Share is $15 and a Produce Share is $10. The tasty, tasty, fancy sourdough bread is available again in February, and it costs $2.10/loaf.*** The order deadline for February is Friday, February 4th. Distribution Day is Saturday, February 19th.

It really is such an awesome deal. I love the Co-op.

* Even if you estimate the zucchini has having a value of $0, which is what J thought we should do.**
** No, but actually, I like zucchini. It tastes great cooked in a pan and added to red pasta sauce. Or in soups. J and I decided that almost always, one of us likes each item that we get from the Co-op.
*** The other add-ons are: Nutty Guys' Snack Sampler (4lbs nuts) ($15.55), Colosimo's Hot Polish Sausage ($3.75), Daily's sliced bacon ($1.85), Miss Essie's Barbecued Pulled Pork, 2lbs ($7.55), Chaparros Pork Tamales ($5.60), Nutty Guys' Blueberry Flax Granola ($5.60), Jones Bees' local honey, 2lbs ($6.30), 6 Stone Ground Wheat Ciabatta Rolls 4x4 ($3.15), and Farnsworth's Fresh-pressed Apple Cider 1/2 gallon ($3).

Just a couple thoughts...

2011-01-19T12:36:00.000-08:00

I just trimmed our goats' hooves. I've known that it needed to be done, but I didn't know how, so I kept putting it off. Today I finally just Googled it and went out and did it.

It was really easy, actually. Nobody really liked having their hooves trimmed* but almost everyone cooperated enough. I had to hold Bucko down to do his, and I cornered Feta. It was all right though. I didn't make anyone bleed, and it was pretty obvious what needed to be trimmed. It only took five minutes. Not bad at all.

I had another similar experience last week, with sprouting. J and I have been wanting to try sprouting for a while. It just seemed like a good, wholesome idea. But we didn't know how to do it. J already had a Sproutmaster tray and we had some sprouting seeds, so I just tried it out. There really wasn't much to it. Not bad at all.

Sometimes there are things that I want to do that seem like they will be hard, and I don't feel like I have a clear understanding of what will be required. I tend to avoid these tasks, even if I actually want to do them. Often, if I just try, it turns out there was really not much to it.

I need to remember that.

The other thing that's been on my mind lately is Facebook.

I was going through my list of Facebook friends, and it kind of made me sad. So many of my "friends" used to be friends, but they just really aren't anymore. I haven't talked to my best friend from elementary school pretty much since middle school (she wanted to be popular). We've been Facebook friends for a couple years now, and we still never interact. So, what is the point of that? In elementary school we had sleepovers, and played at each others' houses, and we told people we were actually sisters, and one time I told her we should jump in a mud puddle during recess and we did and I got us both in trouble. That we were best friends for several years is meaningful to me. But if it isn't to her, is there any point in being "friends" on Facebook? Since we're "friends" I can see the pictures she posts, and once in a while I do. It's kind of fun to know where old friends ended up and what they're doing...but seeing pictures and simultaneously knowing that despite the ease of staying in touch with old friends she chooses not to kind of makes me sad. Is there any value to that?

The other people that confuse me are people that were friends, but briefly. For instance, old classmates. Just because we have one class together (or ten classes together), should we stay friends? Were we even ever really friends? Sometimes I feel like I should keep them on my list for "networking" purposes. But what does that even mean? And is a "friend" that is not really much of a friend even worth having in your network anyway? Because suppose one of my "friends" works for XYZ company and someday I want to (which is unlikely anyway), are they going to help me out? I haven't decided. If one of them wanted my help with something, I would be happy to help them, but I would be happy to help strangers, too, so I don't know where that leaves things.

What about old church friends? Or old neighbors? Mission friends? Missionaries that were in my mission but I only knew them and wasn't actually great friends/companions/whatever with them? People that I knew while I was on my mission?

I think some of my "friends" decided not to be friends with me after I got married. Especially male friends. Well, that's fair enough. Do I de-friend them now? Do we stay "friends" so we can see pictures of each others kids?

What is a friend, anyway, I guess?

I'm thinking about going through and really cleaning out my friends list on Facebook. (What is the standard for deciding who stays and who goes, though?) I think it may be kind of like housekeeping--get rid of the old to make room for new experiences and new friendships?

Maybe the standard is that I should keep people that I actually interact with, who make me feel happy. And then I should focus on improving those friendships instead of thinking about old friendships that just are not really friendships anymore.

Thoughts, anyone?

*Except Feta maybe did because she started licking my hand while I was trimming her front hooves.

I Made a Felt Name Book!

2011-01-09T14:21:00.000-08:00

Last spring I found some blog posts by a girl who made her kids name books out of felt.

I thought it looked like fun, so since I don't have any kids, I decided to make one for my nephew*. I originally thought I would make it as a first birthday present, but it wasn't done it time (November), so instead it became a Random Day in January present. Fun!

Here are some pictures of the finished book, which was opened today.

I tried to give each page different textures where I could. I felt especially clever about using beads for ants, a screen on the house, and fur for a rabbit. It was a fun craft.

Now J wants one too. We joked about keeping the book and someday when we have a kid we can name our baby Nathan Andrew (whether it is a boy or girl) so that we could keep the book and enjoy it.

* Here is a funny story: When I first started making the book, I showed J. He was very polite about it and thought it was neat, but at one point we were talking about it and I realized he thought I was making it for our nephew Nathan on his side. Who is eight years old. We enjoyed a good laugh over that one.

Our silly dog.

2011-01-07T07:09:00.000-08:00

Chalcy is eight months old now, and we've had her for about six and a half months.

We still like her.

During November and December she went through a naughty, uncooperative phase (where she just plain ignored us when we would ask her to do things). It was also a very, very slobbery phase. I started calling her "Madame Slobber-Face," which makes J laugh every time.

This month, just like magic, it seems we have our sweet old puppy back--Chalce is starting to slow down (just a tiny bit), she is back to being more obedient, and she is learning to lick her lips* when she is drooly, instead of swinging pendulous slobber all over everything.

Here are some things Chalcy enjoys doing:

Chalcy loves to play fetch. She nudges her slobbery toys into our hands and laps because she wants us to throw them for her. Again! Again! Again!

Chalcy likes chasing her tail. Sometimes she cheats by leaning her bum on the couch so that her tail can't escape! And then she just chews on her tail. Other times, after she's caught her tail enough she'll go after her back left paw. And she'll chew on that while she hops in circles.

Chalcy likes to defend us against unusual objects. This morning we have a drill out on the floor and Chalcy is barking at it. She's not a barker, but she knows when she needs to protect us. Dogs have instincts for that sort of thing, of course. We got a new (to us) washer like a month ago and Chalcy bark-bark-barked at the dolly J used to move the washer into our house.

We have chicks** again, and Chalcy loves them. They are in our office, because they don't have all of their feathers yet and it's too cold to put them outside. Every day, Chalcy spends most of her time laying in front of the chicks, just watching them. Sometimes she tries to get a little too friendly (by putting her mouth all over a chick), and then Chalcy has to kennel up as a punishment, so she's learning not to do that. Usually she takes one of her toys into the office and lays down to chew on her toy while she watches the birds. [Please ignore the pre-organized state of my office in this picture.]

Chalcy also likes to be with us. She is such cuddly dog. We stopped allowing Chalcy on the couch*** but she is so tall that she can sit on the couch without being on it. Her paws are all on the floor, so how can I complain? Clearly, she's already "off." It makes me laugh.

Last night, we had a trial run of letting Chalcy sleep outside her kennel. We put a couple towels down on our bedroom floor. We don't have a dog bed yet and we wanted her to know that it was her spot to be. We're not worried about her having accidents inside; she's totally housebroken. We just worry about her bothering stuff: getting into the trash, stealing things, getting too friendly with the chickens, etc. We closed the door to our room and picked up our phone chargers so that they weren't tempting her. Success! She came to the side of the bed to say hello a couple times last night, but she didn't bother anything at all. Way to go, Big Dog!

* Do dogs have lips? Well, she licks the edge of her mouth. (Best. Trick. Ever!)
** We have one black chick (half Australorp, half White Leghorn) and one yellow chick (supposedly Araucana, but I don't think it actually is) and we got them when we got chickens for J's mom.
*** Most of the time, which means we're breaking the Big Important Rule of having dogs, which is: "Be Consistent About Enforcing The Rules."

Sorting through papers...

2010-12-27T15:56:00.001-08:00

I'm sorting through a bunch of my boxes that we brought up from California.

I have journals and letters and all kinds of fun stuff. I'm really enjoying my writing from when I was little.

Here's something I wrote maybe in second grade, because it seems to be with some second grade stuff.

Earth Day

Today is Earth day. People can plant seads. Natchure is a big part of Earth day. People should at least recycle today. People recycle glass so they do not have to boil sand to make glass.
So lets recycle today.

Also, in my journal from when I was twelve years old, it seems all of my journal entries begin by describing how I woke up. Like, "I woke up at about 6:45" or "I arose late because..." or "I woke up relitively early."

I'm great!

Christmas Highlights

2010-12-27T07:53:00.000-08:00

This year, J and I had my brother Tyler as our person to give to in my family's exchange. We got him some clothes. I started wrapping the first shirt, and in my efforts to make it not look like a shirt, I ended up with an interesting shape that I thought would look pretty silly with eyes. So I added eyes and a mouth, and giggled to myself.

J was on the phone with his friend, so I got a little carried away with wrapping everything. Tyler's other presents were shaped like other animals. Then, when I got tired of making little statues out of gifts, I just started adding eyes to everything. I added scary teeth and menacing eyes to one present. For one little gift that we were giving Jess (and Mitch?), I drew one of those little disguise faces with glasses and a nose and mustache. I just kept enjoying it, so I kept going. As I laughed about my little amusement, I texted Jess and told her I was making the presents into creatures. She didn't quite understand. [Hm, I thought I got a picture of all of them, but maybe I only have a picture of the first ones. Oh well. You get the idea. The rabbit had a cotton tail on the back, and its hands are holding the tag. Fun.]

My family loved it. Steph kept not letting Tyler open any of his presents until her boyfriend came over, because she wanted him to see them. A few people from my family texted me about them. Tracy told me I should make it a tradition. So, that was something fun.

For J's dad, I Photoshop-ped a photo for him. See, he and I have this long rivalry. For his birthday last year, I gave him a U of U hat. It really surprised him, and it was pretty funny. So J's parents gave me a BYU hat for Christmas last year. J's dad and I put our hats on for a funny picture together, on Christmas morning. He never wears his hat. He definitely wouldn't put it on for a picture, except for the picture where I was right next to him wearing a BYU hat. So, from the instant we took the picture, I knew I wanted to cut his head off. In the picture, I mean. I wanted to paste that head onto some other picture. My graduation picture ended up being pretty good for that. It's still pretty obvious that it was Photoshop-ped, but that just makes it funny. I painted a frame bright red to put it in. Everyone got a kick out of it. He liked it.

For J's mom, we gave her chickens. Two White Leghorn chickens, actually. The special thing is, they are white egg layers and ours are brown and green layers, so we'll know which eggs are hers. It's a gift that keeps on giving! J's mom has been saying she wanted chickens for over a year, so we thought it would be fun to give her a couple of her own. We put them in a wrapped box and waited for someone to notice that the box was making noise and sometimes moving. Nobody noticed.

J moved the box to his mom's feet, and after a while she saw it move. It was the funniest thing, because she absolutely stared at the box after that, to verify that she had actually seen it move. She had, of course. "It's moving! My box is alive! I can see it breathing!" she suddenly announced to everyone. "I think I'd better open it now," she declared, even though it wasn't her turn.

Everyone was fascinated. What could it be? J's dad had a very interesting expression on his face. He couldn't think of anything that would be alive that he wanted. He tried to be a good sport about it anyway, but he wasn't too excited.

"They're chickens!" she announced. "Two of them!"

"At first we worried that Snickers [their outside cat] might eat them, but they have beaks and claws, so I think they'll be all right!" I explained. I think J said something about how great the birds would be for fertilizing J's dad's garden.

J's parents were not too sure what to say. J's dad was not at all excited, but was being nice. Maybe they could build a chicken coop, or fence off the yard in one place to keep the birds from getting to the garden... "I've been saying I wanted chickens for over a year!" J's mom explained to the other people who were confused about why we gave her chickens.

I explained that they can let the birds live with our chickens, and that we picked white egg layers so that we could identify which eggs are hers. That was the plan all along. J's dad was very relieved. Everyone enjoyed watching his expressions throughout the chicken gifting.

The birds sat in their box the rest of the morning, no problem. When another family came over to visit Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas, the kids all enjoyed petting the chickens. Their smallest boy really thought the birds were very interesting, and kept opening the box to check them out.

I gave J what he asked for, which was a shower filter (and refill), and two fancy-schmanzy brands of hair gel that do not contain MSG. It was really hard to find them, actually. His brand that he has been using changed their formula, and now he can't use it anymore.

J gave me what I asked for, which was a book called Seed to Seed, which is about growing heirloom plants and preserving seeds. The book looks really boring, actually. Also, really useful. I started reading it last night and I think it will be extremely helpful.

He also gave me what I wanted and did not ask for, which is a Taurus 941 revolver. It was a surprise present. When I took my Concealed Carry class, I chose one that was more than just a bare-bones class. I took a class from Welden Andersen, with Self-Defense Solutions. It was a great class, and Welden really knew his stuff. When we talked about the different kinds of firearms and different things, he passed stuff around. He had a ton of stuff, and a very useful, thick handout for the class. Also, his class included range instruction. We went out and shot targets (and we shot metal guys that fall over if you hit them right)! He looked at how we were shooting and gave people help when they needed it. I tried out my Ruger LCP, but I didn't like it at all. It was so hard to pull the trigger (a safety feature!) that my accuracy was abysmal! Since I only had hollow-point ammo ($) for my Ruger, after I shot one magazine on the Ruger, Welden let me shoot his revolver.

The revolver was amazing. I always kind of thought revolvers looked a little stupid, like, what, do you think you're a cowboy in the Wild West? But actually, I shoot extremely accurately with that revolver. It was wonderful. I liked it better than the guns I shot in my Pistol Marksmanship class, and of course better than our guns. It was very easy to shoot, and I just loved it. I wrote down the specs (Taurus 94! .22 ammo! 9 shot!) and dreamed that someday I would buy one. Recently, J and I discussed getting another small gun and I told him I wanted this particular revolver. I told him how much I love it, and that I would rather spend personal money on it than buy an off-brand one like he was suggesting. So he surprised me with it. I'm way excited! (Now...how to conceal a 4" barrel?)

We also got a neat present from J's dad. He made us a feeder for our goats. The goats toss their hay around and waste about half of it. J's dad built us this feeder (his own design), and he installed it, and now the goats don't waste any hay! And, it doesn't get wet and snowy. It is just perfect; exactly what we needed.

So. We had fun. We enjoyed spending a bunch of time with J's family. We had a wonderful dinner together. Some of the grandkids performed "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." J's dad did a neat little presentation about Zacharius. The grandkids did a costumed performance of the Christmas story (including: a donkey wearing a kangaroo skin, a girl doll with lots of curly hair that was baby Jesus, and two Marys that took turns). J and I slept under the tree at his parents' house on Christmas Eve, and it was very nice. I hadn't done that in a long time.

Now, back to being productive.

Heirloom Seeds!

2010-12-26T15:45:00.000-08:00

I am interested in trying to grow heirloom plants and preserving seeds.

Last year I ordered a Baker Creek catalog and looked through it, but I didn't end up actually ordering anything, because it was too late in the season and also I knew things were going to be way too busy.

This year when the Baker Creek catalog came, I decided I would go for it! I read through all of the descriptions and picked out some plants that sound fun to me. I ordered them, and then I talked about them with J to try and get him on board for a big garden next year. He was not as excited about it as I am, but he decided he would garden with me and it can be something we enjoy together. Good!

Christmas came early for me this year--on Christmas Eve, my seed order arrived!

Here are the things that I ordered:

Melons
1. Early Hanover - small, sweet green melons that were famous at the turn of the 20th century!
2. Ginger's Pride - The largest melon they carry, which averages 14-22 lbs. per melon! "The flesh is very sweet, melting, and of excellent quality."
3. Petit Gris de Rennes - Small, orange melons with a grey-green rind. French melon, rare in USA.
4. Rich Sweetness 132 - From the former Soviet Union. Red, striped with golden yellow. Tiny melons.
5. White Sugar Lump Watermelon - Rare, with creamy white flesh. Light, sweet taste.

Berries
6. Hardy Kiwi - Little kiwi without fuzz! Eaten like grapes. Grow on vines.
7. Yellow Wonder Wild Strawberry - Creamy yellow strawberries that are supposed to be very tasty and also easy to grow.
8. Narangilla - Fruit from the Andes. Sweet-and-sour, orange flavor fruit. Good for juice.

Tomatoes
9. Brave General - Big, beautiful Russian tomatoes from Kazakhstan. Rich, sweet taste.
10. Violet Jasper - "Tzi Bi U." Asian tomatoes that are violet purple with iridescent green streaks. Dark purple-red flesh. Very high yield.
11. Hawaiian Pineapple - "1 lb fruit with yellow-and-red mottled flesh." Sweet, fruity, pineapple-like in taste.
12. White Queen - White tomatoes! sweet, citrus taste. Part of American history.

Vegetables
13. Corn Rainbow Inca Sweet - Multicolored corn, good fresh, or good for grinding into flour.
14. Squash Zucchino Rampicante - Italian vining zucchini, which is used in Italy to stuff gnocchi and ravioli. (I remember it!)
15. Lettuce Little Gem - very small, green romaine type. Heat tolerant variety.
16. Carrot Jaune Obtuse du Doubs - A lemon-yellow carrot that comes from France. Originally used for livestock, but popular now because of its sweet taste.
17. Artichoke Purple of Romagna - Large, round purple chokes.
18. Cauliflower Purple of Sicily - Purple cauliflower. Sweet. Cook to bright green. Easier to grow than white varieties.
19. Asparagus Mary Washington - Popular, long green spears.
20. Cucumber Sikkim - Fat, large fruit. Good cooked or raw. Rusty red color.
21. Carrot Parisienne - Small, round carrots. Popular in France. (These ones were my free gift; every order comes with a free pack of seeds!)

Herbs
22. Hyssop Blue - Attracts bees and butterflies. Antiviral plant used to treat flus, etc.

Anyway, that's everything. My father-in-law has already started looking at our backyard to think about where my garden will go. I don't actually know what can be grown in this climate, or how to grow any of it, so it will mostly be a big experiment. I'm looking forward to it.

Learn About Steaks: Top Round! (and "How to Make Beef Jerky!")

2010-12-25T19:53:00.000-08:00

Okay, so basically, if you were to slice a cow once, in order to just cut its back legs off (but all in one piece), the piece with the back legs is called the "Round." So, the Top Round is pretty much from the top of that piece. I think kind of on where the hips are. Which is also where the cow's rear-end is. They can make that part of a cow into steaks or roast, or both!

I originally pulled a Top Round steak out of the freezer because J and I were going to make breakfast burritos with steak in them. At the beginning of my research I learned that since they're not fatty, Top Round steaks end up pretty dry if you try to cook them in a pan. Instead, Top Round steaks can be cooked with a slow, moist method, or, people commonly slice Top Round thin and dry it out, to make beef jerky! So I put it in the refrigerator to defrost, and we used a Sirloin steak for the burritos instead.

Making beef jerky is simple! I combined a few recipes to make my own recipe.

After the Top Round steak was defrosted in my fridge, I trimmed all of the visible fat. Fat doesn't dehydrate (it just spoils) so that's why Top Round works well for jerky: it's already lean.

I put the meat in the freezer for about an hour, just to make it firm. Then I sliced* it as thin as I could. When people make beef jerky, they usually try to cut meat against the grain. But, you can also cut it with the grain and it still works.

I wasn't very good at slicing it. I ended up with a lot of little pieces and only a couple big pieces.

Then, I seasoned the slices. When you're making beef jerky, salt is a helper! Salt helps the drying process. I seasoned our steaks with: salt, garlic powder, onion powder, brown sugar, honey, and paprika. I put the steaks all in a quart freezer bag and I added some vinegar. I mushed the meat around to make a marinade. (The picture below is pre-mush to show how much vinegar I added.)

I put the bag of meat back in my fridge to soak up tasty, tasty flavors.

NOTE: People online really like adding soy sauce and worcestershire sauce for their marinades. Most of the recipes I saw online contained both. Apple cider vinegar is also popular. Be brave! Try something fun. Worcestershire sauce contains soy sauce, and soy sauce naturally contains a lot of MSG, so I didn't use them.**

You can marinade your meat for as little as a few hours or up to a day. My day was busy, so I left my meat alone for 23 hours.

Then, I took the meat out of the fridge and put it on trays in my dehydrator. (No overlapping, so the air can move around.) I ground pepper on the strips of meat. I stacked the trays in my dehydrator, set the temperature at 145 degrees F, and plugged it in.

NOTE: Most recipes online recommend spraying your dehydrator trays with nonstick spray first. We don't use nonstick spray at our house, so I didn't do this. If you use nonstick spray, I really recommend using it when you make beef jerky because I had to scrub, scrub, scrub my dehydrator trays.

NOTE: Be liberal in your use of pepper and seasonings! I thought I was putting way too much on, and my jerky came out tasting barely peppered (or seasoned!) at all.

The recipe that I was following that said 145 degrees recommended cooking for 8-10 hours, until the jerky was brown and would bend "like a willow" but not break. My jerky was actually done after about 5 hours. I think it was because I sliced the pieces pretty thin and I didn't have that much drying all at once.

NOTE: You can make beef jerky without a dehydrator! You just use your oven at a low temperature, and prop the door open with a wooden spoon or something, so that the air can circulate. If you're doing this, maybe Google it, though, because there may be other special instructions for oven jerky. (Every site I looked at mentioned ovens too, though, so it's a respectable alternative.)

When my jerky was done, I let it cool a bit and then I put it in a freezer bag to keep it from becoming stale.

Results: We've been eating jerky over the past few days and it is fantastic! "Em, this jerky's really good. The more I eat it, the more I like it," J told me. I had no idea how simple it was to make beef jerky! We will definitely be making a lot more in the future.

Your homework:
1. Point to your "Top Rounds." (HA ha!)
2. Cook a Top Round steak! (Remember, slow and moist, or JERKY!) If you make beef jerky, give yourself an automatic "A" for this assignment.

* See my knife in the pictures? It is a Cutco "Trimmer" knife, and it cost like $60. I bought it because one of my classmates "just needed to practice" his sales pitch, and "it was okay if you don't buy anything--even just watching helps." Lies! If you say no, they try to sell something cheaper, and the sales pitch just goes on forever. BUT, seriously, if I could afford to, I would buy the entire giant, super spendy set. Because I love, love, love this knife! My one Cutco knife is definitely my favorite item in the kitchen. It cuts perfectly. It's like, the Dyson vacuum of kitchen knives: you think you're fine until you try one and then you realize it has always been missing from your life.
** Actually, all of the big commercial brands of beef jerky contain MSG. Most of them don't even hide it at all. They list monosodium glutamate in the ingredients. I just can't in good conscience eat that stuff anymore. Sometimes we'll see places advertising "home made beef jerky!" and I'll feel hopeful, but I've never seen a brand that J could actually eat. It has been a fun treat to have beef jerky around. J really likes it.

How to make ICE CREAM CAKE!

2010-12-20T14:33:00.001-08:00

This year J wanted an ice cream cake for his birthday!

Of course nowhere sells ice cream cakes that he can eat, so I made one for him. It was surprisingly easy.

I picked a "safe" recipe for chocolate cake, which I found online. It is called "Sandy's Chocolate Cake," and I found it on allrecipes.com. I followed one of the people who left a comment, and I changed the recipe from 12 servings to 9 servings, to make a 2 layer cake instead of a 3 layer cake.

The ingredients were:
2-1/4 cups packed brown sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened
3 eggs
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup and 1 tablespoon baking cocoa
2-1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sour cream
1 cup boiling water

Instructions:
In a mixing bowl, cream brown sugar and butter. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat on high speed until light and fluffy. Blend in vanilla. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; add alternately with sour cream to creamed mixture. Mix on low just until combined. Stir in water until blended. Pour into two greased and floured 9-in. round baking pans. Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes. Cool in pans 10 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

So, I just followed those instructions. Except, instead of greasing and flouring my pan, I traced the pan on a paper towel, and cut it out, so that I could plop a piece of paper towel in the bottom of the pan. Then I just poured the batter on top of the paper towel and cooked it that way. My grandma taught me to do that one time when we were making a cake at her house, when I was 14 or so. I tried to warn her that there was no way it would work, because you really need to grease and flour the pans. She told me we didn't need to. She was right. When you're ready to take the cake out of the pan, you loosen the edges with a knife (if you need to), and then since the paper towel is at the bottom, it'll just come right out of the pan. (I set a plate on top of the pan, and flip the whole thing over and pull the pan up off of the cake). Then you just peel the paper towel circle off of the bottom. So, so easy!

I made my two halves of the cake and let them cool completely. I was putting Haagen Daaz chocolate peanut butter ice cream in the middle (it is "safe" and it's J's favorite flavor), so I put the two containers in the fridge while my cakes were cooling. That way the ice cream wasn't melty, but it was soft enough to spread around pretty easily on the cake.

I trimmed the cakes so they were round, instead of slightly cone-shaped (because I cooked them in a pie dish!).

I put foil on a plate, and set one of the cakes on the foil-plate, upside down. Then I spread 1 1/2 or 1 1/3 pint containers of Haagen Daaz on that bottom cake. Then I put the top cake on top (right-side up). I kind of smooshed it together a little, so that the ice cream would get into the top layer of cake, too. I covered the whole thing with foil, and put it in the freezer overnight.

The next day, I made the frosting:

Ingredients:
1/4 c. and 2 tablespoons butter
2-1/4 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate
2-1/4 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate
3-3/4 cups confectioners' sugar
3/4 cup sour cream
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions: For frosting, in a medium saucepan, melt butter and chocolate over low heat. Cool several minutes. In a mixing bowl, combine sugar, sour cream and vanilla. Add chocolate mixture and beat until smooth.

I used some 70% Lindt chocolate and some 85% Lindt chocolate (which are both "safe"), and I weighed them on our kitchen scale.

I frosted the cake right before we were ready to serve it, because I wasn't sure what it would do if I froze it (like, would it turn gray on top, or something?). Actually, though, we froze the leftover cake, and the frosting did just fine.

I'm sure you could probably do this with a cake from a mix, and any kind of ice cream--just make two circle cakes, let them cool, put softened (not melted!) ice cream on one layer, put the second layer on top, freeze it together, and add frosting.

It was really tasty! Everyone loved J's cake.

Our Experience with Worm Therapy, part II

2010-12-20T12:29:00.000-08:00

We met with Garin, from Worm Therapy at a particular parking lot, on the US side of the US/Mexican border. It was easy to find the lot, and easy to find the place he suggested we meet.

Garin was fantastic! It was obvious that he is very passionate about his study of hookworms, and he is totally dedicated to learning all about them and sharing potential benefits with people.

So, we met up with Garin, and he walked us across the border. It took about 2 minutes. As we walked across, he asked me what I thought about J getting worms, and I told him it seemed like it made a lot of sense, so I'm interested to see how it goes. He was excited that I was supportive of J getting hookworms.

After we were about 15 or 20 feet into Mexico, Garin spotted our driver. Andrew came up and said hello, and we followed him to the car, which was on the other side of the street. Andrew is the doctor's son, we learned, and he will be going to medical school next year. His English was very good. (So was his driving, thankfully!) As he drove us to the clinic, we all talked. Andrew has worms, and he shared his experience of how they worked for him. Basically, occasionally there are people who have incredible, fast results from the worms, and just have an all around excellent experience. Andrew is one of them. Garin warned us that Andrew's results were not typical, and that we shouldn't get our hopes up. Andrew was obviously really excited about them, though, so it was fun to hear his experience.

The clinic was not far from the border. It probably took us about 10 minutes to get there. We went inside, and Garin went upstairs to let Dr. Llamas know that we had arrived. J and I went in and sat down on some sofas to wait. Andrew offered us something to drink, or something to eat. We had water. Then, we were invited upstairs, into the doctor's office.

Dr. Llamas was really great! He talked with us for, oh, probably an hour or more. We went through J's whole medical history. We talked all about J's family members, and their medical histories. We talked about J's lab results.

Dr. Llamas talked to us about Vitamin D, and how it has been proven to prevent many diseases and cancers. He had a chart that showed all of the ranges of Vitamin D levels that you needed to prevent different things. You could look across the top, find what amount you have, and bring your finger down the chart to see everything your level of Vitamin D was enough to prevent. J's vitamin D level is high enough to prevent...rickets. LOL! And that's it. It's kind of funny, because you don't need much vitamin D to prevent rickets, so almost everyone would be safe from that, but then the ranges of Vitamin D that you need to prevent all of the cancers are quite a bit higher. Dr. Llamas strongly recommended that J and I each take 5,000 IU of Vitamin D every day. He said that there is another study that is being done, where people take a huge dose (50,000 IU? I don't remember anymore) of Vitamin D once a week for 8 weeks, and then once every other week thereafter. He said the results of that study look promising, but that for now we should stick to 5,000 IU daily. Dr. Llamas said that we needed to take Vitamin D3 that was not with other vitamins. Older women can have problems if they take too much Vitamin D because they also need to be taking calcium, and high levels of Vitamin D with calcium can cause problems. But doctors can help older women manage it; it isn't hard, he said, but it just depends on how much calcium they are taking, and so forth.

We both loved Dr. Llamas! We wished he were practicing here in Utah because he actually listened when we talked to him. It was really neat, because we talked about J's experience with raw goat milk curing most of his allergies overnight. We also talked all about how J had been diagnosed as bipolar, and used to take a ton of different drugs for it, and he couldn't keep a job, and he couldn't handle relationships, until 3 years ago when he eliminated processed foods and artificial stuff from his diet. His bipolar symptoms totally disappeared. J is not bipolar. After a little bit of experimentation, he learned that he is extremely sensitive to MSG. When J accidentally has some MSG, the same symptoms come back. He can tell within a few minutes that he's had some, and then he starts having rapid cycles, which gradually get better over a few days. In the past, when we've talked to doctors about these things, they think J is crazy. He isn't. His whole family saw him stop taking allergy medications after he started drinking raw goat milk. His whole family knows what he used to be like before he realized he was sensitive to MSG, and now his whole family knows he's just a normal guy. Dr. Llamas was fascinated. He said he'd never heard anything like it. He said that since we know MSG causes those reactions, it is an auto-immune response, and he believes the hookworms will likely be able to help with that. Dr. Llamas is very interested to see what results J has with the hookworms.

Dr. Llamas also talked with us about how many worms J should have. The standard starting dose is 25 worms. Unfortunately, there are some side effects at the beginning of having worms, so some of the people who come in can't start with that many because their intestines are in pretty rough shape, and a worsening of symptoms would make things much worse for those people. Those people often have to start with 10 worms. You don't want to go over the number of worms you can handle, because if it's too hard on your body and you end up needing to get rid of them, you have to start all over, and you lose a lot of time. So it's better to start low and add more later. J is in good health, though, so the doctor recommended he start with 30 worms. We decided that sounded all right.

The doctor suggested J pick a target item. It needed to be something that would cause a reaction for him. He said a lot of people use a cat. Basically, he wanted J to have something pretty measurable to use, to gauge how the hookworms are working. J is extremely allergic to cats. We have my cat, Paley, but she is an outside cat now. If I hold Paley at all, or pet her, I have to wash my hands and change my clothes, because J will have allergic reactions to me after I've been with the cat. Usually after about 3 minutes, J's eyes become red and puffy, and he gets dark circles under his eyes. He starts feeling blah, and needs to lie down. So the doctor agreed that Paley was a good target item. I said, "Oh, she'll love that!" Paley always wants to be friends with J, and he likes her, but he just can't touch her. So. That should be fun.

Usually the doctor does a physical examination, too, but he didn't feel it was necessary in J's case. (I think this would probably be more useful for things like psoriasis.)

After our interview, we went into a different room where J was going to get his worms. Garin met us there. Garin explained the procedure. The hookworms were in tiny vials (they put them in different increments so that they can give people different numbers of worms. J tried to look inside one of the vials to see them, but of course, they're too tiny to see without a microscope.

Dr. Llamas put the worms on a bandage, which he put on J's arm. Garin started a timer, and we all chatted while we waited for J to feel the worms going through his skin. (What hookworms do is, they burrow through your skin. They travel through your bloodstream into your lungs, and then you cough them up and they go down your throat, into your digestive system. When they get to the spot they want to be, they latch on in your intestines, and hang out. Hookworms drink blood, they don't eat your food, so they stay tiny--they're not worms that grow to be 15 feet long or anything!) After a few minutes J started laughing because I guess it felt pretty weird for the worms to go in. (Garin said it's hard to do placebo studies with worms, because it's hard to mimic the feeling of the worms going through the skin. So if people who get placebos have a chance to talk at all with people who get worms, they can always tell immediately who actually got the worms and who got placebos.)

When the worms go in, they shed their little casings, which they leave right beneath the skin. It's a trick on the immune system, because the immune system sees the casings as the invaders, and it responds to those while the actual worms go along their merry way in your bloodstream. So Garin warned J that where the worms entered he would get red bumps. They are itchy, kind of like mosquito bites.

Anyway, they wrote down how long it took for J to begin to feel them going through his skin. They had us wait 30 minutes for observation, just to be sure J didn't have any really weird reaction (but they said nobody ever does). J gave the doctor a cashier's check, and the doctor gave J a box of medicine that kills worms, just in case J wanted to get rid of them ("but please talk to Garin first, unless it's an emergency!") and a prescription for the medicine, in case he needed it at the border (but nobody ever does).

I took several little videos as J was getting his worms, and some pictures. Then, Andrew drove us back across the border. The line to go through on foot was longer than the line to go through by car. Andrew said people were going across to buy stuff for Thanksgiving. A lot of people there celebrate Thanksgiving, I guess! While we were driving, and waiting to get across, we chatted some more with Garin. We talked about his experiences working with Jasper Lawrence, and we talked about his experiences in medical school (he attended 1 year and then decided it wasn't for him), and I asked what his parents thought of his hookworm stuff. We talked about what his hopes were for hookworms, and what challenges he was facing. We talked about his hookworms, and what they did for his psoriasis. It was all very interesting. It was fun talking with Garin. He has a lot of personality!

Eventually we got to the border. The border guy talked to Andrew in Spanish about who we were and why we had been in Mexico (to visit a doctor). He looked at all of our passports and looked to be sure we were the people on our passports. And then we drove through.

Andrew dropped us all off at our parking lot, and J and Garin agreed that they would be in touch at certain times about how J's progress was. With worms there is a certain timeline for different symptoms.

That was about it. Our families had been quite concerned about us visiting Tijuana because of the violence that has been going on near the border. Actually, though, most of our time in Mexico was at the clinic, and there were no portions of our visit where we were walking down Mexican streets, or trying to go through crowds, or anything like that. We felt completely safe for our entire visit. We were escorted to and from the clinic by Andrew, who is Mexican, so it wasn't just a group of Americans bumbling around. I wouldn't hesitate to go back.

J was to leave the bandage on for a few hours, just in case one was a little slow, or something, but it usually doesn't take that long. When J took the bandage off Wednesday night, he had a bunch of red spots.

Now, it's a few weeks later. The spots got bigger, and a little swollen, and they're starting to disappear. J's had some allergic symptoms which we attributed to the worms. He also began feeling a little nauseous about a week ago. He hates nausea! For the past two weekends, he's spent bunch of time resting. Supposedly weeks 3-6 are the worst (as far as symptoms go), and he's in week 3. He's hoping he doesn't feel this way for the next couple weeks. He's kind of wishing he would have gotten 25 worms instead of 30.

We have seen some positive improvement with allergies, though! Every morning J used to wake up with a stuffy nose, but for the past week his nose hasn't been stuffy in the morning. Also, last Saturday he pet Paley. Yesterday he pet his parents' cat, and touched his face afterward. He had no allergic reaction! His eyes weren't even a little bit red...until like 3 hours later, when he had a very mild cat reaction. So, now he has a delayed cat allergy that is not nearly as bad. It's an improvement, for sure, and we're eager to see how things continue to improve (since this is the very beginning).

Our Experience with Worm Therapy, part I

2010-12-20T11:35:00.000-08:00

So, as I mentioned in my last blog post, we recently went to Mexico for J's hookworms (necator americanus).

When J and I were researching helminthic therapy, we didn't find a lot of people's experiences online. There was almost nothing, really. We didn't find any negative experiences documented online at all, but there were only two or three people telling about their positive experiences. I decided I would like to blog about our experience with hookworms especially so that if someone else is researching (or considering) helminthic therapy, they can see how J's experience goes. We would have enjoyed reading something like this as we were learning about it, anyway.

All right.

There are a few companies that offer hookworms. J actually heard about Jasper Lawrence in 2006. Supposedly, Jasper went off to Cameroon to infect himself with hookworms. Back in 2006 J looked extensively for a company that offered helminthic therapy, and there was just not much out there. Now, Jasper has a company based out of the UK. We contacted them first. He was very expensive. He wanted to send hookworms by mail, but not to the US. He was willing to send them to Canada, and I have half of my relatives in Canada, but that seemed really awkward. Jasper had us fill out a really long pre-interview form, and we did, but we didn't hear back from him. We were not very impressed, and we moved on.

J found another company, Worm Therapy, and began to contact them about hookworms. J began talking with Garin, who runs that company. We had hoped that they would be willing to ship worms to J (because really, no, really, we won't tell...) but they wouldn't (really, no, really they don't ship worms). That would have been a lot easier. Their process was, you set an appointment, you have lab work done and submit the results to Garin, you meet at the Mexican border, you go to a clinic in Tijuana, you meet with a doctor, the doctor determines how many worms you can have, and then the doctor gives them to you (along with medicine that kills them, in case you ever decide you want to get rid of them).

Since my family lives in southern California anyway, going to Mexico wouldn't be too bad. For J's worms, it was going to cost a little over $2,000 (plus the costs associated with J's lab testing).

We decided to do it.

J had some required labwork done (just at a nearby place that does that). I think part of it was an HIV test. It was also optional (but recommended) that he have his Vitamin D levels tested. Almost everyone is Vitamin D deficient, but Vitamin D deficiency is linked to auto-immune disorders, and the hookworms also work better if your Vitamin D level is not deficient. We decided to have that test done as well.

When the results were back, J forwarded them to Garin. Everything looked all right, so they set an appointment for the day before Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving!

2010-12-13T12:15:00.001-08:00

This year for Thanksgiving, J and I drove down to California. We left on Tuesday and we took Chalcy with us.

On Tuesday, we spent all day driving. The trouble was, Chalcy is OCD with her bathroom habits. She will only relieve herself in our backyard--not on walks, not on hikes, not outside the vet's office on a patch of grass, not outside puppy preschool on a patch of grass, or at the dog park. Only in our backyard. It's a pretty good problem to have, as far as dog problems go. At least she doesn't chew our stuff.*

Anyway, so Chalce tried to hold it the whole way to California. We knew there was no way she could hold it for 10 hours, so we kept stopping. At first we only stopped every few hours or so, but after we had been driving for a while, we worried that she would have an accident in the car, so we stopped much more often (every 30 minutes or so). She liked all of the times we let her out of the car, but after we would walk around for 10 minutes and nothing was happening, we would get back in the car and keep going. Just past Vegas, J started to play rough with her when we took her out. Still nothing. We decided to put her in the hatchback portion of the car, since it at least has a plastic lining thing. That worked great! J put some clothes beneath her to absorb any accident. Then we quit stopping as often and we tried to just get to my grandma's house. It ended up taking us twelve hours. Chalcy totally made it, accident free. Good girl.

We were so sick and tired of stopping all the time, though, so I told J we should buy her some doggie diapers for the trip back up. We decided it would be worth it, at almost any cost. As we were heading into California, J became a little drowsy and I read him "testimonials" from fancy doggie diaper websites online. Some of them were pretty funny.

When we got to Grandma and Grandpa's, we picked our room, visited with my parents, and went to bed. It was already pretty late, and we were getting up early the next morning.

On Wednesday we went to Mexico! J had an appointment to get hookworms in Tijuana. I think I would like to blog more about this separately, so for now I'll leave it at that. It's an interesting story, though. After Mexico, we drove back up to Grandma's house and visited with my mom and brothers for the evening.

On Thursday, we celebrated Thanksgiving! It was fun because my family all came over to Grandma and Grandpa's, and the boys played with Chalcy a whole lot. I helped my mom make some posters for her Weight Watchers meeting that she was going to lead the next day. We got to meet Steph's boyfriend Alan, and we got to see Nathan look surprised (some more).

Friday, J and I attended my mom's WW meeting as guests. It was fun because there was this lady in her group who kept talking and talking, and finally at some point she mentioned being Italian. At the end of the meeting she and I talked for a little while in Italian, about all kinds of different stuff. I enjoyed that. (I don't know if J had ever really heard me speak Italian with anyone before, either, so I think it was kind of interesting for him, too.) Then we went and helped my mom move stuff to a smaller storage unit. We got my boxes separated out so that Sarah could help me bring them up to Utah. (Hooray!)** Then we went over to Tracy and Freddy's house to pick up the barbecue and see if we could fit it in our little car with the seat folded down. IT FIT! We also helped them pack for a little while, because they were moving to Phoenix the next day.

On Saturday we had a long (but very nice!) breakfast with Steph and Alan. We thought Alan was great! (Steph was too.) Then we bought doggie diapers at Petco. And J took my dad out to lunch, and I visited with my mom some more. I don't remember what else we did.

And then, we got up at 4 am on Sunday to start driving home. Sunday was supposed to be sunny, until partway through the week when it switched to being a big snowstorm. By leaving so early, we figured we could drive through Cedar City, etc, during the warmer parts of the day, and be home in the early evening. Sarah drove up with us, so that if she wanted a break from driving we could help her, or if she had any problems with the snow, we could help her. She was just fine, as it turned out. But I think she was glad she had left early anyway. The snowstorm made our drive back very slow and a little slippery.

And we made it home safely.

The end.***

Oh, and the picture of Chalcy with something in her mouth is from when we gave her pieces of ice from the cooler and she ate them.

Oh, and the other funny thing was, at 5 am on Sunday, we discovered the largest size of doggie diapers didn't fit Chalcy. So we had to use duct tape to re-size a diaper by extending its velcro attacher-things. You can see it in the picture.

* Except our chickens. Ugh.
** Except now we have Mt. Emily in the garage. Sigh.
*** Except for the story about the worms.

Learn About Steaks: T-Bone!

2010-12-12T13:42:00.000-08:00

Is anyone interested in learning about different types of steak with us?

I was thinking it might be fun to share some of our adventures as J and I learn about different types of steak. The thing is, J and I tend to buy ground beef, or cubed steak (plus one time I bought chili ground beef, and once or twice I've bought roasts). So we're not fancy at all when it comes to nice steak. Not yet.

So far we've tried ground beef (which we added to our pasta sauce), a chuck roast, and just now I cooked some T-Bone steaks.

Each time we try something new, I learn how to cook it properly. As we eat, we discuss what part of the cow the meat comes from.* (Most delicious anatomy class ever!)

Today we learned about T-Bone steaks. J guessed that they came from a vertebrae...and he was right! The curve in the bone at the middle of the top of the T is the round part of the vertebrae.

T-Bone steaks are especially fancy because the meat on the different sides of the T are both desirable ones. The larger side of meat comes from the "short loin" and the smaller side comes from the "tenderloin**." Both the short loin and the tenderloin are on the sides of cows, just after the ribs.

When you cook T-Bone steaks, you're supposed to cook them dry, so your main options are to grilling and broiling. You don't have to worry about tenderizing these; they're already tender.

I decided to follow a recipe on the Food Network website. It was way easier than I thought it would be. You heat a little bit of oil in a pan. Salt and pepper your steaks. Put the steaks in your pan, and brown each side (it takes about 4 minutes for each side). Then, move them into a preheated 450 degree oven.*** Cook them until a thermometer reads 120 degrees. (They say 6-8 minutes for a medium-rare steak. I cooked mine for about 10-12 minutes for pretty well-done steaks.) Then take them out and let them cool 10 minutes and cut them off of the bone. (I omitted this step, and J and I each cut our own steaks off of the bones, because it wouldn't have felt like T-Bone steaks if I had pre-cut them. And it would have made them look much smaller.)

Results: I ate mine with steak sauce (after trying it without)**** and asparagus. J ate his plain (and without asparagus). We both thought it was very tasty.

Your homework:
1. Point to where your T-Bone steaks would be, if people had short loins and tenderloins. (Optional: point to a T-Bone on a real cow, or on any other willing and available model.)
2. Try cooking a T-Bone steak!

* Sometimes I use Chalcy to demonstrate. Is that awful, or what? She's big enough. Don't worry. We won't eat our dog.
** Filet mignon comes from the tenderloin, actually. Mmmm.
*** Yes, I used my toaster oven again. :)
**** Not because it tasted bad without it; I just love my A1.

We got our meat back!

2010-12-04T14:25:00.000-08:00

This Thursday I drove down to Spanish Fork to pick up our meat!

We ended up with 150 pounds of veal! I paid and waited while they brought the meat out to load up. I wasn't sure how I would feel about it, since I know where the meat came from, and all.

It was just fine! As we loaded the meat into my coolers, I felt awesome! I felt like Nephi bringing back food for everyone after his bow broke, or something. I was so proud that my efforts over the past year will be feeding our little family. (And our friends.)

I stopped by Jessica's house on my way home. She and I have a joke that I took the calf to go live with a new family, on a farm.* So of course we joked that I was driving home from visiting the calf. It was fun to see Jess.

When I got home, we put the meat in our big freezer. Today I actually counted it out. This is what we ended up with:

Ground beef patties - 20 packages, 5 patties per package
Ground beef chub things - 7 of them
Short ribs - 4 packages
Rib steak - 9 packages
Sirloin steak - 5 packages
Tenderloin - 1 package
T-Bone steaks - 10 packages
Round steak - 1 package
Tip roast - 2 of them
Top round steak - 3 packages
Chuck roast - 5 of them
Cubed steak - 3 of them
Rump roast - 4 of them
Stew meat - 3 packages
Pot roast - 1 of them
Soup bones - 5 packages

I think the steaks have 2 per package. And I forget how many pounds I had our roasts cut to. Maybe 4-5 pounds? Now we just need to decide who all we are sharing with, and then start learning how to cook our different cuts of beef! It should be really good, since it was raised on our little pasture, with no steroids or hormones or anything. We did supplement with some grain.

We're pretty convinced now that we will be getting another calf for 2011. We may try a Holstein this time. We'll see.

* Oh, gosh. The kids who live on the other side of our pasture (little kids, like a 3 year old and a 5 year old) always stand on their side of the fence and they're friends with our animals. They liked the calves all right, but they really like our goats. They feed the goats, and call out to them, and the goats come visit. Anyway, as we were loading up Chuck to take him off to the meat place, the kids were over at their side of the fence watching. I don't remember if they asked what we were doing, or if J just volunteered the info, but J started to tell them, "We're taking him to go get meat!" and my jaw dropped. "NO!" I told J, in a sharp whisper. "DON'T!" "Why not?" "J. You are a bad person. You don't tell little kids like that!" "Ohhhh. Well? What do I say now? I'm in the middle of talking to them!" "Nothing. You can cut off a sentence and little kids don't realize it. They think what you said just didn't make sense, but that happens when adults talk to them anyway." "Okay." So he just kind of smiled at them. Their mom told us later that it was kind of funny because the kids told her we were taking the cow to go get meat. But like, they didn't realize the cow was the meat. They thought we were just taking him with us and bringing back meat. So it was all okay, because even though J practically told them we were eating their friend, it was still totally over their heads. Crisis averted.

Other Things We Have Been Up To

2010-11-16T15:22:00.001-08:00

New Mexico
Last weekend, J and I went to New Mexico for J's grandpa's 95th* birthday! We drove down to Farmington on Friday afternoon and drove back up Sunday afternoon.

It was such a nice trip! We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express, which was pretty new, and very pleasant. We had breakfast Saturday morning with J's parents and some of his other relatives. Lots of fun. It turns out, one of J's cousins that he doesn't know very well actually has goats. He's into a lot of the same things as J is, and J just had no idea until his aunt was telling us about it.

We went out to J's grandpa's orchard for the birthday celebration. We talked with him for a little while, and he told us some neat stories.

J's dad grew up on the farm, and he took us for a tour on Sunday morning. It was neat to see a lot of the things I had heard about when I interviewed J's dad for my class last year.

One of J's uncles is a private pilot. He offered to take us up in his airplane to see the orchard from above. It was fun! He gave us a demonstration of weightlessness--he had us each put something out in the palm of our hand, and he went up and then dropped down, and our stuff floated above our hands. It was pretty intense. He also let me fly the plane a little.

We went to dinner at Tequila's, which is J's dad's favorite Mexican restaurant, because they have amazing salsa.

Those were some of the highlights.

Calves
[Warning: you may not want to read this.]
We made an appointment for the calves, with Circle V (in Spanish Fork), which is where some of our neighbors process their meat. We were supposed to take them down to Circle V last Tuesday, except that J didn't want to drive his dad's truck after our experience with the new truck on Monday. So we rescheduled for Saturday morning.

Friday evening I went outside and everyone was crying, and I thought I could hear Stew mooing from back behind the chicken area. Sometimes the calves get into the chicken area and a couple times they've gone back behind the barns from inside the chicken area. There's kind of a corridor between our barn and the wall in the back of our yard. When the calves get back there, they can't figure out how to get out and they moo.

Stew was kind of echoing, though, which was weird. When I went back to lead him out, I found him back in that area, but instead of being in the corridor, he had fallen into one of our irrigation wells. We have two wells, and we use them to switch the direction water flows when we're irrigating; they're square-shaped cement holes that are about 3 1/2 feet wide, 3 1/2 feet long, and about that deep, too. Anyway, Stew fell front-first. His front legs were at the bottom of the well, his neck was towards the bottom but bent up, and his back legs were sticking up out of the top. Poor guy. He was mooing and mooing. He was pretty scared, and he had feces all over, because animals do that when they're scared.

I tried to shift Stew a little to help him get up, but he didn't budge. He mooed some more. I scratched his neck and rubbed his head for a few minutes, and told him everything was okay. (It wasn't.)

J got home about then, and I had him come back behind the barns to see if we could pull Stew out by his back legs. We couldn't. He didn't even budge. Well, maybe he budged, but that was it.

What next? We decided we would need some men to help us get him out. We went to our neighbor's house to see if he would help us. He said he was in the middle of planning his wife's funeral** but if we would give him some time to finish up, he would be right over. He could bring his mare and we could put straps around the calf and have her pull him out, maybe.

We went back home, and Stew wasn't mooing anymore. He wasn't moving anymore, either. Poor guy. The weight of his own body broke his neck. What a terrible feeling--he was such a nice guy! What an awful way to die. Plus, after raising him for 10 months, and bottle feeding him 3x/day for two months, and spending lots of money on food, we were not going to get any meat from him. It was all a waste.

Our neighbor came over and he was all suited up for the task, and he brought some ropes and stuff, and we let him know that Stew didn't make it. (What a great neighbor though, eh?) We let him go back home to be with his wife.

We called a large animal vet to see about having him removed. After all, people have horses die and they have to do something with them, so there must be people who can do that sort of thing. When J explained where the calf was, the guy wanted J to get a bunch of guys out to our house to help him pull the calf out. (Uh, the reason we were hiring you is so that we don't have to ask our friends and family to do it.) So J wasn't sure the guy knew how to get the job done, and it was going to cost $150 (ouch). The guy was going to come the next morning.

J called some of his family to see if he could get help, but they couldn't or didn't answer or something. He called our home teacher, and got voicemail. He called the next day; he couldn't come. J called one of our neighbors (who used to be our home teacher), and he agreed to help! He came across the street within five minutes or something. He had a "come along" which is a tool that you attach to something, so that you can lift heavy things, or move them. He hadn't used it yet, but he thought it might be good for this task.

It was.

They hooked it to a tree over the well and eventually got Stew out. There was no way even 4 or 5 guys could have done it. Stew weighed about 400 lbs, but he was also caught on something.

They pulled him out to our truck; I put a tarp in the bottom of the truck. They used some wood to make a ramp and used the come along again to get him up into the truck.

What a friend, though. We really felt like we needed help, and it was such an awful task, but our neighbor just stepped right in, and he didn't complain once. It was such a relief to have the help; it really meant a lot to us.

Saturday morning J and me drove Stew to the dump. And then we drove him to the county dump, because it is the only one that accepts dead animals, we found out. The inspector there was super helpful.

Then we went back home because we were supposed to have Chuck down to Circle-V. J got the trailer attached to the truck, no problem, but Chuck didn't want to get inside. (Even with food to lure him in.) J put some grain bags down, to make a little ramp up. Chuck was still not interested. He's big enough that you can't push him or pull him.

I had the idea that he would probably step into the trailer to suck on his bottle. I went and grabbed one of the (empty) calf bottles out of the garage. It worked.*** J and I got out of the trailer and closed it up. We drove down to Circle V.

They don't actually slaughter on Saturdays or Sundays, so we put Chuck in a pen behind the building. We glued a little label onto his rump so that they would know who he was, and we poured some grain for him to eat, and then we left him there. It made me kind of sad. I liked our calves.

I feel less bad about eating our own meat when animals die and go to waste. It just seems like life is so fragile, and either our animals can die and rot and become dirt or they can nourish us, and sustain our life, and they can be a gift to other people, and nourish them, too. It's almost a beautiful thing, looking at it that way, that they can go to so much good, instead of just decomposing. When the dog kills chickens, or Stew dies, it seems like their lives were just wasted.

Anyway, enough about all that.

We're thinking we will probably get another calf this winter, since we will only be getting 1/2 the meat we were planning on.

My Little White Bird
Do you see the little white bird in the first picture of the calves? She is my Silkie chick. After Chalcy killed her buddy (the rooster), she didn't have a flock anymore. So last week she started hanging out with the calves. She would cuddle with them when they were laying down (they were warm!), and follow them around when they walked around the pasture. It was pretty cute. Also, isn't that sad? She lost her rooster buddy, and then she lost her flock of calves, too. Now she kind of hangs out with the goats. A lot of times she comes over to me when I go outside. I like her.

Volunteering
I was asked not to say much about this**** but after orientation, hours of interviews, and a pretty thorough background check (they actually called 5 people), I am now volunteering with an organization! When my background check came through, they called me and let me know that they had a couple matches for me in the program. I picked one, things were approved, and we have been moving forward. I'm really excited about this. (Is that vague enough? It seems like it is going to be a pretty big part of my life for at least the next year, and probably longer, so I wanted to at least mention it.)

Chalcy
Our dog is doing well. Lately she loves to chew on things. Usually she does not chew on things she is not supposed to, but she really tears her toys apart.***** I think for her, pulling stuffing apart is kind of like popping bubble wrap is for people.

Chalcy is also a teenage puppy, and she is testing all of her boundaries. Sometimes she runs around our house and climbs over our bed. NO. Or she bugs the trash. NO. Or she steals napkins and rips them up. NO. (I'm such a fun-hater.)

Chalcy LOVES her bell. We put a bell on the doorknob so Chalcy would let us know when she needed to go out. For a long time she wouldn't touch it, because I accidentally got her toes when I "rewarded" her for ringing the bell (by opening the door). Now she rings the bell and takes a step back. And waits. And rings it again. I let her out, and half the time she just wants to play. We leave her outside sometimes, because otherwise we're in and out, in and out. When it was snowing it was even worse, because the snow was SO FUN, but it was COLD. So she would ring the bell to go out, she would play, and then I would bring her in because it was too cold for her to stay out. She would warm up for, oh, 2-3 minutes, and ring the bell again.

Chalcy thinks I'm around just to be friends with her. All day she follows me around and tries to stuff toys into my hands.

Chalcy stayed with Heather and Josh while J and I were in New Mexico, and we really appreciated them letting her visit for the weekend.******

Our next trip is going to be to California, and we're bringing Chalcy with us so my family can meet her, and so she can try traveling with us. It should be fun.

Chalcy is BIG. She can't stand up all the way in her crate anymore. I think we're going to try to get her a dog bed and see if we can transition (and get her huge kennel out of our living room!), but I don't know if she will be obedient enough for that to work yet. I guess we'll see.

Okay, I'm about as caught up with blogging as I need to be for now, so I'm going to cross "Blog about Subaru" off of my list, and get back to doing other things.

* He is old.
** How's that for bad timing? She has cancer, and it's terminal. She just has one of her lungs now, and she's not doing too well. It's really too bad. They're a very, very nice family.
*** How sad is that? All he wanted was a bottle. He had nice memories.
**** On Facebook, which probably also means on blogs.
***** Remember "Sid" from Toy Story? It's like that. Fox only has one eye and one ear left, and I stitched up his face. Chalcy pulled Lobster's eyes off (because they poked up), and that pulled his head open. Giraffe's ears and horns and tail were all gone the first day, its hooves were gone the next day, and by now Giraffe has stubs for legs and only part of its head. Squeaky Bear doesn't squeak anymore because Chalcy bit his head off.
****** Seriously, thanks so much, guys.

Car shopping wraps up.

2010-11-16T13:14:00.000-08:00

I knew it wasn't fair to keep wanting a Subaru Baja because there are almost none of them listed for sale, and almost none of them listed for sale in Las Vegas, and the same even for southern California.

Plus, Bajas were kind of more than we wanted to spend, unless we got a 2003 one that wasn't turbo, with tons of miles. And then how good of an idea was that, really?

So we started looking at trucks again.

J wanted me to test drive a Ford Ranger, since that was one of the types of truck we were considering before the whole Baja thing.

Last Monday there was a KSL ad for a Ford Ranger that was a pretty good price. It was up in Bountiful, but J wanted us to go up during his lunch break to test drive it, so it wouldn't sell before we had a chance to see it. (A couple of the other serious contenders sold before we could get to them.)

He called, and the lady told him someone was coming from Logan with cash, but she said she would call back if the Logan person didn't buy the truck.

She did call back (the guy just didn't show up), so we drove up to Bountiful in pouring rain to go test drive the truck. It was immaculate. They had it detailed every year, the lady told us. J and I both test drove the truck, and it was fine. The tires made a bunch of noise, but the lady's husband warned us that they would, so it wasn't any surprise.

I liked the truck all right. It was similar to a Tacoma, because it was kind of a narrow truck, so it didn't feel like I was driving Noah's Ark. It was nice because it had four wheel drive and a V6 engine, so the truck was capable of doing the truck things we wanted it to, but it was also comfortable to drive. Really, it was a pretty good compromise for J and me, because it was a TRUCK (instead of a vehicle shaped like a truck that has about the same power as a car...what's the point of that?), but it was pretty inexpensive, and it had 4WD like I wanted, and it was not so huge that I hated it.

We decided we were ready to take it to a mechanic and then, as long as everything was fine, we would buy it.

The lady didn't want us to take the truck down to our mechanic, because Bountiful is not super close to South Salt Lake, and she didn't want her insurance to be responsible for such a long drive. Fair enough. We took the truck to her mechanic (Evans Automotive?) instead, in North Salt Lake.

CJ (at the auto shop) had the truck lifted on one of their lift things, and had one of the mechanics start checking it out. We talked to him for a little while about trucks, and towing, and just a bunch of different things. It was pretty interesting. Then he took us out to the shop to see some things-- the front brakes really needed to be replaced. The back ones still had some life. The tires were worn really weird.

We went back inside for a bit, and they lifted the truck higher so that we could walk beneath it. It was in pretty good shape, he said. There was some rust, but it was better than average, for its age. The owners maintained it very well, because the... fuel filter? had been replaced. And when people don't replace fuel filters, you may end up with a problem with some pump that could end up needing to be replaced or causing problems, or something. But this truck was fine that way.

So we knew we would need all new tires, and new front brakes. Plus we were going to put a tow package on it, because it just had a tow hitch on the bumper (and those are pretty much the same as not having a tow hitch because they can carry almost nothing). CJ said in Salt Lake vehicles usually go for 10-15% below Blue Book values. He recommended asking the lady to cover the cost of brakes and tires, and he told us it was safe to buy the truck, but that it's usually a good idea to go home and think about it first. Mmkay, thanks.

I ran a CarFax* on my phone, and it came out great.

J called the lady back and negotiated with her, since the tires were worse than we realized, and they hadn't mentioned the brakes to us at all. She took a few hundred dollars off, and that was a compromise that we were fine with.

We all met at our bank to set up a car loan, and things went fine. We had already submitted paperwork** when we thought we were buying the Subaru, so things were ready to go.

After we officially bought the truck and the lady signed the title over, we went to follow her back up the hill to her house, to remove the truck's plates, to pick up our little red car, and to get her "Truck" file, with all of the maintenance records.

We drove out of the parking lot, turned the corner, J began to accelerate after the turn, AND!

WE LOST CONTROL OF THE TRUCK!

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

The truck swerved into the oncoming traffic lane. J corrected*** and it skidded towards the curb on the right side. J corrected again and the truck slipped back towards the oncoming lane. He corrected again and it went towards the right curb again. J corrected one more time, and the truck began spinning forward down the street.

There was just no way to avoid an accident. (RIGHT right after we bought it!) The truck kept not gripping the road at all. We just never got any traction at all. J was not pressing on the brake or the gas, because he thought that was the right thing to do. It was just what I was afraid of, and just the reason I didn't want a 2WD truck. But I didn't think it would be a problem with this truck.)

The street had a 30mph speed limit, so the cars coming toward us could see that we had lost control of the truck. They stopped in their lane, 6 cars all lined up.

The truck spun across the road and finally landed in the oncoming lane, right where all of the cars were lined up. When the truck stopped, we were facing our lane (at like, 5 o'clock position from where we started).

J and I didn't really feel the truck hit anything, but J opened his door to survey the damage. The we had stopped spinning 3 inches from the line of cars. It really was a miracle--we didn't even hit mailboxes or parked cars, or anything. J closed his door, and got us back into our lane that we belonged in. We pulled over as soon as we could, because we were both so shaken from the experience.

The lady we bought the truck from came back, and parked in front of us. She had been a little ways ahead, but in her rear-view mirror she saw us spinning in the middle of the road. She said nothing like that had ever happened to them while they had it. ["This. Truck. Needs. New. Tires," I told her, super irritated and shaken. Because when you just buy a truck and then it spins out and you wonder what you've gotten yourself into, you feel irritated and shaken, and it's ok if you let the person who just sold you the truck know you feel that way. "I was actually going to wait until next spring to replace them," she said.]

We put 4 wheel drive on (it had been in 2WD, because you're not supposed to need 4WD for just rain...) and followed the lady home very, very slowly.

Our warm-fuzzies for the truck were gone, and neither of us wanted to drive it all the way home from Bountiful. I agreed to drive it, because it was supposed to be my truck, and I worried that if I didn't drive it, I would be afraid to drive it in the future.

I took State Street home, instead of the freeway. I drove slowly, and accelerated slowly, and I don't think I ever went faster than 35 or 40mph. I kept it in 4WD the whole time.

We had already planned to replace the tires and brakes ASAP, but those tasks became even more urgent. Neither of us were going to drive it again until the work had been done. Also, in the maintenance records, the top record (from September of this year) had a highlighted note about checking the brakes and alignment. Heyy.

So I price-shopped and compared different things, and ended up taking the truck to Big O Tires, since I think like 7 people have independently recommended them to me, and their prices were reasonable. We got all new tires, new front brakes and rotors, and had the alignment corrected--it was wayyyy off. (The wheels were pointed outward, so...no wonder we had problems.) Plus, the truck had 10 ply tires, and it was actually supposed to have 4 ply tires. That means that the tires were wider than they were supposed to be, and that means that the truck was less stable because the weight of the truck was distributed over more square inches of tire than it was supposed to be.

Anyway, after that I had an emissions test, registered it, had a tow package installed (by U-Haul****), and I insured it. Now it's just great. It feels completely different to drive. J and I both feel safe driving it.

This past Saturday we used my truck to tow the DOOOOMSBUGGY. No problems. It towed like a champ.

One final thing: want to see something funny? Look at the second picture on this post. My truck is the one in the back. The one in the front is our neighbor's truck. We have the same truck. They look almost identical. Except if you look closely, the neighbor's taillights look black. And our neighbor has a black plastic thing across the very front. But they're the same truck, both white, both with an access cab, both 4x4s, etc. Pretty funny.***** (Also, if you look closely at the picture, Paley is in the driveway and her eyes look creepy.)

* A real one this time.
** Banks want a ton of paperwork from us--full leases for all of our rentals, etc.
*** Over-corrected.
**** Poor guys! We were talking to them about whatever that thing is that you put a ball on, and then you stick it into the tow thing with a pin...? We wanted to take our tow ball off of the bumper and put it on the new metal thing, because the ball we already had was a 2" ball, and that was what we wanted anyway. They volunteered to go out and take our ball off of the bumper, while we were inside paying. Except, the ball was rusted. And they really couldn't get it off, even with their spray stuff and their tools. They decided to take the tow package off, so they could access the bottom of the ball better. So they actually installed our tow package twice. Thanks! (It was nice, though, because we never would have been able to get the thing off by ourselves, without impact tools.)
***** J sent him a funny text about how we like his truck, but please don't park in front of our garage, ok? Or something like that. It was kind of funny, except our neighbor never replied to the text, so then it just became awkward. I'm sure they must have noticed our truck by now, so maybe he was just confused when he got the text.

The Subaru Baja from Auto Maxima

2010-11-16T11:58:00.001-08:00

I worried about this happening--I write cliffhanger blog posts! Since I never finished my story about our floor, I knew I really needed to wrap this car story up. Did we buy the Subaru Baja? Did our mechanics find anything? I'll finish the story in THIS post, ok?

[If you forgot what was happening, this story is continued from part one, part two, and part three.]

So remember, I had decided to keep quiet about my suspicions that Auto Maxima was doing some shady things. If there was really a problem, our mechanics would reveal it, anyway.

Not long after that, J texted me:

J: Turns out the subaru has been in a very minor accident, Gustavo just disclosed. Hmmmm. We'll see what the mechanic says about it (Wed Oct 27 12:11pm)

I replied:

E: I've been very curious. I think many of their reviews are fake. I think some are real. I think the mechanic will be able to let us know more. Can I call you? (12:14pm)

So I called J, and I explained why I was pretty convinced that some of the reviews were fake. J agreed that it was pretty likely. We decided that we would tell Action Auto Repair to especially watch for accident-related damage, because we suspected Milla and Gustavo were not being straight with us. J said Gustavo was delaying taking the Subaru in--he was supposed to take it at 10 or something that morning, but he was just now getting to it. He said Gustavo mentioned the accident pretending that he had already mentioned it before. (Uh...we would have remembered that.) It was just a minor accident, though, he said. The airbags were not deployed, or anything like that. Nothing serious. Gustavo was also going to e-mail J a copy of the CarFax report. J said he would forward it to me as soon as he got it. Great.

J texted me: Bill warns that subarus are unusually vulnerable to undetectable engine damage when hit from the front. (12:32pm)

He also forwarded the CarFax to my e-mail...

Except that it wasn't a CarFax report; it was actually a report that eBay does for all cars listed on the auto portion of their site. Still, it had useful information. The report indicated that the Subaru had never been in any accidents...BUT it was not driven between February and May of this year. And not driven much since May, either.

So the Subaru was listed on eBay Motors. The seller had 302 transactions and 100% positive feedback. Hmm. That's a lot. So maybe they were not as deceitful as they appeared? If they had sold 302 cars and everyone on eBay gave them positive feedback.

I pulled up the listing on eBay so that I could check out the feedback. Only about thirty of the transactions were from this year. AND, all of the feedback was from buying things, not selling. Last year they sold a lot--but still no cars. They sold face cream, and make up, lingerie, and just some really random things. I wondered whether they listed vehicles on eBay just to be able to give out copies of the vehicle report, since maybe the eBay one is less revealing than real CarFax? Not everyone has cars checked out by a mechanic before they purchase, so it would be a good plan for fooling a lot of people.

It was weird though...why would Gustavo tell us that it had been in a small accident if the vehicle report was clean? Didn't that indicate the report was not accurate? Also, I noticed the Subaru had actually been in Texas up until now. Hmm. And it was in an auction. What causes vehicles to be in an auction but not reported for something or another?

J and I e-mailed back and forth.

J's e-mail: I just checked out usedcars.com to see prices of Bajas around the nation. It's easy to see that the deal we have brokered is a very good price relatively speaking. So, there is a discount there for something undesirable like damage. How much that's worth to us or how bad the damage might be will hopefully become clearer to us today. (1:42pm)

My e-mail: Yeah, I'd say it's probably 50/50--it may still be worth it. What does the warranty do, if we were to insist upon the warranty based on new information? Do they replace/repair/refund/or what? Any idea?... This is great fun! If it turns out to still be worth getting, I will name the car Carmen, maybe, like Carmen Sandiego, since we're so interested in where she's been and what she's done. Ha! And I will like her all the more, because she's been on adventures. (1:51pm)

Soon after, J called because he was on his way to the shop. The mechanic told us what we had been waiting to hear:

The Subaru was in a major accident--it wasn't a small hit at all.
- The unibody frame was bent. This would mean that we would wear tires faster. Subarus require special tires, so we would have to buy a $600-$700 set of tires every 10,000 miles. (Ouch.) Plus, it would all just get worse, from being driven.
- The radiator was hit, and it was cracked. A new one would be $300 new.
- The right wheel axel shaft (?) was torn and leaking. It would cost $200-$300 to fix that.
- One of the lights was broken. It would be another $200-$300.
- The rear wheels fell off before. The body was scraped up from it. (Uhhh, that's a lot different from what Gustavo told Jeff originally. When they were first making the deal, Gustavo said the worst thing about the car was a missing hubcap. Hmmm.)

J told the guys at the shop that he was getting it for $4000 under Blue Book. They told him "this is why you brought the car in" and told him definitely, definitely don't buy it. Even way below Blue Book.

J and I agreed that we would not be buying my perfect, favorite Subaru Baja, which I loved so much.

J called Gustavo back. I didn't hear the call, but here is the part of the conversation that I remember from what J told me about it:

J: The mechanic advised me that this vehicle was in a major accident. The unibody is bent.
G: Take it to another mechanic. They each have their own opinion.
J: I am comfortable with their assessment.
G: It's not that big of a problem. It can be fixed.
J: They advised me not to purchase it at any price.

That night, J left a review on Google. He wrote:A couple days later, Milla posted another review:

It's kind of a funny review, because there are hints of the truth, but basically the review is totally false.
- The actual deal was not for $9000...it was for $11,700, with them also including some detail work on our car that we are about to sell.
- J didn't leave a bad review because he couldn't have the car for $9000... like... why would we pay $85 to take it to our mechanic if we hadn't even agreed on a price? (Also, he almost didn't want to leave a bad review at all, because it could be bad for their business. But we decided it was better to leave a review for future people thinking of buying a car from them. But he kept his review all just factual information. They may be very good at detailing cars, we decided...)
- Scott said "there is no frame damage even idiot can see it"? Hmmm. Is Scott a real person? Does Scott work for them? Frame damage isn't exactly something subjective. And Action definitely wouldn't tell us there was frame damage just for fun. Milla and Gustavo do collision repair...but they wanted one more opinion? Why would they want one more opinion? The car probably came to them crunched up to begin with. They know exactly what happened to the car.
- Why would we make up stuff about the wheels? What is our incentive for that?
- Also, they never did provide a CarFax.

They listed the Subaru on KSL as a Featured Ad, and then after a little while the ad went down. I suspect they've probably sold it. Too bad for whoever bought it.

The car shopping continues...at Auto Maxima! (part 2)

2010-10-29T10:11:00.000-07:00

[Continued from car shopping and Auto Maxima (part 1).]

So it turned out, J didn't actually expect to pay $9,000 (plus the trade in). He thought they would make a counteroffer. They just didn't know how to do business quite right. They could have at least countered $100, if they weren't going to lower it at all, because that keeps things moving. J loves haggling. He thinks it is great fun. I do not.

On Tuesday, J wanted me to scan a bunch of documents, because we are refinancing our Yaris, since rates have gone down. I really hoped he had gone back and I was scanning documents for the Baja, but I had been pretty frustrated with him, because he was immediately ready to go back to looking at that one Tacoma (which was probably smoky) and the Isuzu. So I figured we were done with the Baja.

EXCEPT! J really did know that the Subaru was a great deal, and he wanted to make me happy, and he knew that it would meet our needs really well, so he actually DID go back. He was going to keep it all a surprise, and one of these days I would go outside after he left for work and he would have taken the Yaris to work, and instead of the Elantra being there, my new, perfect Subaru would be waiting for me.* Even though I had been a pain Monday evening after we test-drove the Subaru.

The thing was, it was going to take a few days for it all to wrap up, and he felt like it would be deceptive to keep it a secret for so long.*

"The loan docs are for the Baja," he told me.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Really?" I was so excited.*

He told me he had gone back and talked to Gustavo, and he had offered $11,000 without the trade in. Basically, Gustavo had asked if we would maybe want any detail work done on the Baja, in the future. He offered to include that. Instead, J negotiated to have him fix the dents on the Elantra, and detail the Elantra, since we're about to sell it. And then it would be worth more money to us. So the negotiated price was $11,700--for the Baja and a bunch of work on the Elantra.

"WAY TO GO!" I told J.* What a great solution! They get the money they want to pay their taxes with, or do whatever they want, and we get a bunch of stuff that has value to us.

"I told him the Elantra has to be done before we close, because that's our leverage. If we close and it's not done, they may not do it."

"Right."

"But he wants to close by Friday, because, you know, the end of the month. So I'm kind of putting him under some pressure, but he thinks he will be able to do it. I'm going to give him a deposit of $500 so he doesn't worry about doing the work on the Elantra and then us not buying the Baja, or something."*

J pulled up the reviews on Google for Auto Maxima. "They have great reviews! There are 29 and they're all 5 stars, except one. But I don't know, because someone came later and even defended them after the one negative comment. I bet they're good for the work, even after we close. We can probably trust them."

J had scheduled to have Gustavo take the Baja to our mechanic** the next morning. I helped him scan loan docs, and as long as there were no major surprises at the mechanic, things would all be in place and they would sign a contract! Tuesday evening, J and I were both very excited. Also, we looked forward to being done with our car shopping project. And J looked forward to being done driving the Elantra.

The next morning, I started looking at the Auto Maxima reviews online and I became a little concerned. As I read through the reviews, I noticed that most of the reviews read similarly. Little grammar mistakes appeared frequently, and they seemed to be written by someone who spoke English as a second language. (Although Milla and Gustavo speak English very well, I am pretty sure both of them speak English as a second language.) There were other similarities, too:
- In many of the reviews, the reviewer does not capitalize the first letters of sentences.
- The reviews focus on the same things, like price, and like buffing headlights, and how dirty (or filthy, or stinky) their car was.
- Verb tenses are not correct in many of the reviews, like, they use present-tense where they should use past tense.
- Several of the reviews mention Milla and Gustavo by name. All in a row.
- Many of the reviewers use "dol" as an abbreviation for dollars.

I looked for other used car places in the area, and most of the other places had 1-2 reviews. Some had 7. Low Book Sales (which does a TON of advertising) has 79 reviews. So...how, exactly, did a tiny dealer nobody's heard of get 29 reviews? Most other places had 3 stars. Some other places had 2 1/2 stars. There were a couple 3 1/2 - 4 star places. So...earning 5 stars from 28 people would seem to be pretty challenging, wouldn't it?

I began clicking on the names of the users who had submitted reviews. Most had only reviewed Auto Maxima.

Hm.

Uh oh.

The one bad review was beginning to seem much more relevant.

I noticed that Auto Maxima is a sponsored page on Google. So they must think online presence is important. Also, their website is intense. There are 19 different sections on their website. They specialize in detailing cars, actually. On their website they have before/after pictures, they have a forum (with four sections: auto detailing questions, car buying tips, car selling tips, and auto body work. In all, there are 27 total posts.), a blog, reviews, their location, a link to their Google profile, a link to Facebook, etc.

Okay, they are on Twitter and Facebook. On Facebook they have 17 friends. Two of the friends are Milla (she has 2 profiles for some reason), and one of the friends is Milla's daughter. So. It's just a little weird that they go so overboard for a tiny place that sells 4 cars. But, obviously they think online presence is important. And of course if you think online presence is important, you're going to want to have good reviews. It is important to have good reviews.

I remembered that Gustavo had said the windshield was replaced. Hm. Okay. It could have been hit by a rock, or something, and that's what we had just assumed. But they are an auto body place. I began to develop the idea that maybe Gustavo and Milla were fixing cars up and then selling them as though they had never been fixed.

Could this be possible?

I hoped not. I loved the Baja. I was so excited that the Baja was going to be mine.

But it's true that you get what you pay for. Was the low price an indication that they weren't being straight with us?

I decided not to tell J that I thought the reviews were made up. The car could be fine, anyway, and I didn't want us to not buy a perfect car just because the reviews were fake. After the inspection by our mechanic, we would know more.

[To Be Continued]

*What a guy!
** Have I mentioned our mechanic before? We take our cars to Action Auto Repair on 3900 S. We started going there because Jiffy Lube told me I had like, 20 rock chips to repair. I took the Elantra to Action Auto Repair because they had a sign up with their rock chip price on it, and it was like $10 instead of the $25/chip that Jiffy Lube wanted. The guy climbed up on the front of my car to look very closely, and feel the windshield. "Welllll," he said. "You do have a lot of rock chips..." he kept looking, "but they've all been filled." So he didn't charge me anything for his time, and I left with a great feeling of not-having-been-ripped-off. We've been back a few times, and they're not the cheapest place out there, but their rates are very reasonable, and they're very good, and they're honest. We like them.