See Laura? I'm Alive...

Happily my Mom decided that the weather was too rotten for me to ride my motorcycle, and insisted that she and my Dad drive down and pick me up.  I'm glad she did.  All that snow fell yesterday while I would have been trying to get home.  Like 7 or 8 inches.  Not so fun on a bike.  I definitely wasn't dreaming of a white Christmas yesterday morning.  None the less... white.

PS - Lookit!  A photo!

I Should Have a Picture but I Don't...

I always feel kind of bad when I post without a picture.  People who read blogs like pictures, but for some reason for the last five or six years I couldn't bother myself to take any.  There are very few.  In fact the years seem to have just disappeared.  I wonder what memories I'll have from these years.  These blog posts (which I stopped for a long time), are the only chronicle I have of this time, aside from a journal I've written during sometimes somewhat infrequent Sacrament Meeting attendance.  That, and I guess yearbooks from school.  That's where I did most of my living anyway.  But it wasn't real.  It was only a safe proxy for real life.  I could leave and be alone.  My relationships with people there were on some level play acting at real life, to fool myself into feeling like I was still living.  That sounds pretty sad, but it is what it is.  I'm working on it.

Anyway, on Friday I paid the impact fees to the fire district for my house, printed out the corrections that the County Building Dept asked for and turned them in.  If I didn't make any new mistakes that require correction in my corrections, I may soon have a building permit.  And it's snowing.  It's been colder this winter than it has for the last few.  So the snow has stuck a little longer than it usually does.

The cold has created a bit of a problem too.  When I bought my bike the guy said it was a little cold blooded and pointed out that he'd installed a battery tender, with I guess the addition of a part he didn't give me, you can plug it into the wall and trickle charge it in the winter.  I thought nothing of it, but when I got back from Thanksgiving at Dave's in Seattle the battery was dead.  I had to push start it.  I thing I might have injured the battery a little while ago, when doing some routine maintenance on it I checked the battery cells and found them low on electrolytes   So I got some Brondo... Not really.  I put some tap water in, only to discover that the last owner had installed an after market gel battery.  From what I read it doesn't necessarily destroy it to add water to a gel battery, but you definitely want it to be distilled water.  The process of the battery can concentrate minerals present in the water, and that can ruin the battery.  I of course added tap water, which fills my shower head with hard water deposits and boiler scale about once every two or three weeks.  You live you learn, huh?

Anyway, in the cold weather the battery isn't charging while running.  I can only charge it enough for one electric start if I'm lucky.  If not I end up riding down the hill in front of my apartment, either on the sidewalk or the wrong way on the one way street, so that I can start by compression.  I tried for about an hour on Friday to get running fast enough on level ground to get it to turn over.  No dice.

So I need to take at least the battery home to Cache Valley to trickle charge it over Christmas.  And I'm thinking I might ride the bike.  It's raining right now, in Salt Lake, and snowing in Cache Valley.  And I'd drive my car, but I'm pretty worried about it.  There's a nail in the rear passenger side tire that is slow leaking, and I discovered on Saturday why it won't hold any oil.  I thought it was because I burned the rings when I ran it out of oil because the electrics in the dash failed and the check oil light didn't go on.  I probably did that, so it is almost surely burning oil there, and the compression is nearly gone.  The 0-60 time had roughly doubled.  The big problem I found however, is a big crack in the engine block.  Oil is spitting out of it all over the engine compartment.  That could conceivably lead to the car starting on fire as I drive it down the freeway.  Hence, my thinking about riding the bike, even with the rain and snow.  I don't know.  I guess I'll figure it out.

Saturday I went out to Magna and worked on the fence.  I finally got all the materials and started installing the top rail.  It ended up really ugly.  I was so far off that I took the top rails off and re-cut several of the line posts to try to equalize the height.  I also got a couple new terminal posts.  I placed one at the north east corner of the lot, and replaced the one at the north west corner.  I did this partly because the one at the north west was out of line, but also because some friends who are redoing their back yard offered me the chainlink fence that surrounds it, and it is a foot taller than I cut the original north west terminal post.

While I was working, Tony, the guy next door who had been over the lot line came out and chatted.  He's a super friendly guy, and pretty funny.  He just had a pace maker put in, and he said he was going to the shopping center so he could ups the pace maker to start and boost Christmas shoppers cars.  He also had some useful advice on fence building.  He's done chainlink a few times before.  I tried one of them, but learned a useful caveat.

If you are going to dispense with the bucket and mix the concrete directly in the hole, make sure you place the post before you mix it.  I just poured in the ready mix then the water and went to town.  The hole openings were small, so you couldn't get in there to stir it up very well, and I don't think the stuff at the bottom got very well mixed.  As a result it was super dense and hard, and even hammering on the top of the posts didn't drive them far enough in for comfort.  So place the pole in the hole, then mix the ready mix and the water incrementally around it.  Now you know.

The guy next door on the north is also super nice.  He saw me hauling milk jugs full of water that I'd brought from home and came out and told me I could use his hose spigots in addition to the power outlet he'd already offered.  I had enough water, but I took him up on the power outlet.  I had borrowed Dad's circular saw to cut the pipes once I placed them.  But I started to get really irritated by some wild rose bushes that are right by the fence line.  I kept getting snagged by thorns as I walked by, so I put the ripping blade on the saw and went to town.  I'd cut about a quarter of them down when I severed the power cord.  Sorry Dad.  That was the end of the work I could do Saturday, so I took it home and fixed it by patching it with a soldering iron.  It was a pain, but it worked.  Hopefully the solder won't be too brittle and break.

Anyway, I'd better figure out about going to Cache Valley.  It's 10:00AM on Christmas Eve.

Library?

So, today I applied for a part time job at the Salt Lake Library.  If I get it, it should be just enough to pay my rent after all is said and done.  I hope I get it.  Although it is a relatively low paying part time job, I've always kind of wanted to work at the library.  We'll see what happens.

They wanted a cover letter, and I think I might have over-shared, but I wanted them to get an idea of me.  Here is the text:


Dear Selector,

I am applying for a Library Assistant position.

My pre-teen and early teen years were... awkward. I quickly realized that a good fat book made an excellent shield against the interest of girls and other types of friends. And libraries, the repositories of these marvelous shields became my Fortress of Solitude. For me, the library was the happiest place on earth. Disney Land didn’t stack up to the stacks at all, in my opinion.

Then two great things happened  I fell in love with the content of the books I was reading, and I developed some social skills. The library was still the happiest place on earth, but it became for me a platform for sharing the literature that I found so valuable with others. Through high school I was the bane some English teachers, and the primary collaborator with others, because I had already read the material we covered in the classes. I did whatever I could to promote the stories to other students. I became a big believer in the idea of bibliotherapy, that there is a right time for a right book for everyone, and I was constantly giving friends reading recommendations. I also began to write.

On my first tour through Utah State University I decided I should do something sensible and marketable. I got a degree in Tech Writing, and did an internship at the Interactive Media Research Lab. At the end of it I realized there were no tech writing jobs at the time, so it wasn’t so marketable, and that I didn’t want to write instructions for programming your DVR or legal warnings for prescription drugs anyway. So it wasn’t so sensible a decision either.

I went back to my love of literature, and back to school. I got a degree in English Education and a School Library Media Certification. Originally I had decided only to look for media center jobs, but was eventually recruited to teach Language Arts at East Hollywood High, a charter school in West Valley, with the understanding that I’d take over the media center after the current director retired the next year. I did so in ‘08, and ran it actively through that school year. Unfortunately the crash in home prices cut property tax revenues, out of which schools budgets are taken. Budget cuts meant that we didn’t have any money for the library. I bought books with my own money for a while, but after that year the principal realized we could meet the accreditation requirement of having a full time Library/Media teacher, even if I wasn’t in the Media Center. I was returned full time to teaching English and Yearbook/Journalism, and though I was the titular Director, the Media Center was turned over to an office aide. I was unhappy with the principal’s decision, but I loved my students and loved the material I was teaching. I continued at the school for two more years.

When I went into contract negotiations at the end the last school year the principal informed me he wasn’t bringing me back for 2012/13. The vice principal had suddenly quit, and he had a friend he wanted to give the position to. Unfortunately it was only a part time position and his friend taught English and Yearbook too, so he increased the English class sizes to accommodate cutting two sections of it, and gave his friend my job and the vice principal job. I was crushed. It was the middle of June, and all the schools do their hiring for the next year in March, April and May. I applied for a couple of the remaining jobs but was left without a teaching position this year.

This was all particularly dismaying because I was in the early stages of building myself a house, and I’d counted on my salary for my maintenance while I dedicated my savings to the construction. I’m still in the early stages of building, but I find myself needing at least part time employment to pay rent while I work on the house.

So, I’m applying for a Library Assistant position. The hours I can work are flexible, and I think I have all the requisite skills. I’m familiar with library procedures  cataloging and circulation. I have computer technology, design and photography skills. I understand, speak and write passable Spanish. I love literature, film and music, and I think working for the Salt Lake Library would be a very cool job. I hope you’ll give me the chance.

Thanks,
Mike Jones

Crap.  I just realized that I sent the un-spell checked version.

Ham...

For Thanksgiving Dinner up at Dave's in Washington, Nic made a ham.  After returning to Salt Lake I found myself caving it, and I remembered a couple years ago getting one for a good deal after some holiday.  I don't remember which.  So I decided to go buy one.  They were three bucks a pound, and each was 7lbs+. I wondered if $21 was reasonable, given I'm trying so hard to be frugal, living off savings as I am.  I decided to do it.

So I have been eating it for two meals a day for four days, since Sunday.  I cut off all the spiral cut stuff, and froze the bone and the rest.  I've made it through all the spiral, which I estimate as 4lbs.  Now I'm going to make a white bean soup out of the bone and the rest of it.  I suspect I'll be eating that for at least one meal for the next three days.  All in all, I think eating for a week on $29 (the ham and the soup stuff) was a pretty decent deal.  But I probably won't eat any more ham for a couple more years.

Post-Thanksgiving discounted pie, on the other hand...