The No Place Like Home Blues...

I'm having a bit of a Job week. That is to say that everything seems to be going wrong and I am feeling quite sorry for myself.

I was kind of bummed because the agents for the sellers of the house upon which I had made an offer had seemed to blow my offer off. It was significantly under the asking price. The frustrating thing was that my agent couldn't get ahold of the seller's agency. They had three different numbers and none of them were picking up when we called, and they hadn't returned any of the messages.

Rich seems to be losing heart in the search. If he spends many more hours he isn't going to have made much when the commission comes. I was ready to buy the house that I had decided on as a backup if the summer wanned and I hadn't found a house I really wanted. The asking price was only $49,000 and he didn't seem to want to move on it (presumambly because depending on how he values his time he might have actually come out behind on that commission.) Anyway, while he didn't talk to me about it it sold. So now I was without even a backup.

Then, this last Friday the 72 year old front office secratary who is going to be in the library during the 3 periods I'm teaching English and Yearbook this school year, called to say that she wanted to move her stuff in, but she thought that we should move the furniture around a little. I said that would probably be fine, but I wanted to come in and look at what she wanted to do. She handed me off to my Principal who said that he wanted to talk to me about my room. He asked me if I got his email and I said I hadn't. The nice folks who were providing my internet access moved away, and I'm not going to get my own connection since it is my sincere desire to move from here as soon as possible. I told my Principal that I was going to be coming in to look at the library with Ginger and he said he'd talk with me then.

As I was riding my bike in I got run off the road by a careless semi driver. I ended up riding hard into a sewer grate that popped my tire, and I had to walk the last two miles in my flip-flops, which rubbed holes in my feet. I got to school and told my Principal about it and he commiserated and proceeded to tell me that the Special Ed department wanted my room and he was going to move me to the worst room in the school to let them have it. This room is impossible to teach in. I know because it was my room the first year I was there. This was horribly, horribly dissappointing. This is especially so since after my first year he promised me a nice room next to the other English teacher with a wall of windows, then forgot and gave it to a new Social Studies teacher. I had to settle for the room across the hall, with no windows, and bad heat and air conditioning. Still it was a huge improvement over my other room, and I settled in. So, it is a great irony that I am now being kicked out of it and banished to what feels like nothing less than a gulag in Siberia.

I tried to convince him to give me the room I'd originally been promised after my first year, and send the new Social Studies teacher (the guy from the beginning of the year got fired (the Principal seems to fire or pressure out anyone who rubs him wrong, so that each year I've worked there we've had about a 30% turn over in the staff.)) over there. I don't think he bought it though. I thought I had him until he realized I was only going to be in that classroom for two periods per day. Anyway, it just kind of sucks.

So after all that I went into the library with the secretary and she told me that basically she wanted to make everything like it was before I'd changed everything when I moved into the library at the end of last year. I explained why I'd made the changes that I had, to try to improve the discipline in the library. As it was, the library was a place to go to avoid class. I was pretty adamant that it become a place of order. She more or less called me a tyrant and wondered why couldn't I just let her have it her way, and when I didn't relent she began crying a little.

I talked quickly and kept her talking, and eventually it came out that what she wanted was just to have a desk space that was hers and hers alone. The way I had it we were going to be using the same desk. She wanted a place that was her own where she could put her stuffed animals and her paper weights and her tape dispenser, and by implication, and place where she could root her identity. In the end that was why she was there. It wasn't becuase she needed the money. Working where she does, doing what she is doing is a statment of identity and purpose for which to live. Eventually we compromised by me setting up desks for us both at the front of the library.

And it came to me that that was exactly why I was having such a hard time. Things have been going worse and worse with my apartment to the point that I kind of feel like my place isn't here anymore. That's why I started looking for a house. I wanted a place that was mine, and could be a representation and even maybe a part of me. But it seemed with all these setbacks almost like a voice saying, "You see yourself here? No, you can't live here. Oh, your marginally interested in this place? No, here's a crap place in a bad neighborhood that doesn't meet your expectations or needs."

Now the same thing was happening at school. I was getting kicked out of my room and given the worst piece of real estate in the building, and I was being edged out a little in the library too.

The upshot of it was that I saw then that they house that I had been most interested in of all that I saw was still on the market. It's the house on 13th East in the gully with the south facing wall of windows. I called the only contractor I know in Salt Lake (one of the teachers who took his leave from the school after my first year), and tried to get him or one of his guys to go look at it with me. It was still on the market I assumed because it was in really rough shape, and I wanted his opinion on whether I could afford it with repairs. The thing was that he took a long time getting back to me. Finally this Sunday in the middle of the night I woke up and decided I was going to make an offer on it no matter what.

Remember how my internet is gone? When I went to the library and got my email there was one from Rich saying the seller's agent on the house I had offered on had finally gotten back to him and that my offer was the highest, but still not enough for the seller to cover their debt. As a result it was going into short sale and I could re-offer when the bank took over, and find out in six months whether I got it. Also, the house on 13th East was sold.

So, I've been feeling sorry for myself, and trying to fix my bike, which I might have broken more while trying to fix. At the least I've ruined $15 in parts. Whatever. I'm going to go get some more and keep at it.

Butterfield Canyon...

A couple of weeks ago Mr. Forsberg, The Incestuous Mr. and Ms. Doherty (Foresberg joke), and I went for a walk from the summit of Butterfield Canyon toward the overlook of the Great Big Hole in the Ground. We started late and had to turn back before we reached our destination, but walking up in the sunset and down in the twilight was really, really pretty. Here are a couple of videos.

Going Up...

Coming Down...

The Next House...

I made an offer on another house. If you follow the link you'll see the listing with pictures. It looks neat from the outside, but inside is truly horrendous. It was being rented, and the renter just split. As Rich and I were looking around we found a note from the owner saying, "Hey, I'm assuming you've left because you haven't paid any rent for a while, but please get in contact with me."

We also found blood smears on the ground next to the stairs down to the cellar and in the cellar a couple of planters with a sunlamp. I wonder what he was growing next to the furnace. Anyway, we kept looking around and found that the source of the terrible smell was two fold. There was a little surprise in the toilet, and a dirty diaper on an entertainment center in the master bedroom. I was in the living room and heard a bump in the kitchen, and I thought someone might be there, but decided it was probably a rat in the cabinet.

A little more searching found a bench warrant for the renter, and it all came together. Anyway, the roof is bad. Its really bad. It will have to be replaced. There were three different places where the ceiling had fallen in because of water damage. Also, there looks to be some water seepage in the cellar stairs. But aside from that, the foundation looks pretty good, and the walls are straight, which is better than I could say for most of the other places I've seen this age, and the yard has some real potential. The kitchen has been re-done, and and the exterior paint, although cracking now was really elaborate. Also, there is some cement work with individual colored tiles. The front fence is really nice, and there are landscaped planters in place of a tree lawn. It looks like the owners put a lot into the place before they started renting it.

The offer I made is significantly lower than the asking price, and though like the other house I offered on, I'm not super excited about the place, if I get it for this price it will be too good a deal to pass up.

We put it in the contract that the seller's got to get rid of all the renter's crap. I hope he does. Literally.

No House for Me...

A couple of days ago the lady who was representing the sellers on the house called up and said that they had higher offers. I was a little confused because I thought she had told us my offer had been accepted. Actually I think she was confused, or maybe duplicitous, and told me wrong. She said everyone got one more final bid, and I raised mine by $6,500, but apparently I got outbid by about $6000 more. That meant the house went for $112, 500. That's still a pretty good price, and I probably would have paid it if they had just been upfront. The only reason that I can figure out that she would have dealt with it this way is if she was really incompetent (the asking price was way too low), or because she wanted to impress the seller by how much over the asking price she could get.

Either way it kind of sucks, because that's two weeks of my rapidly dwindling summer wasted while I waited around for this to work. Not to mention that emotionally it is just a big disappointment. I know that I wasn't that excited about the house anyway, but emotionally I was already kind of moving myself out of here, and down there. The whole thing just kind of sucks. It has driven me to start watching The O.C. on hulu. That's kind of like the bad tv equivalent of drinking. I hope she knows what she's done to me.

Identity...

I have begun this week to study for my Praxis exam. I have to take it before my first two years of teacher licensure are up or my licence will apparently be revoked. I only know this because they told me this at the end of my teacher training. The state board of education has never sent me anything or really even acknowledged my existence. I suppose its possible that my employer never checked my credentials, and that the board never got my info when I graduated. Who knows?

Anyway, I'm studying for my Praxis, and I was reading about Erik Erikson, a Neo-Freudian who came up with an eight stage theory of human development. This is it, coppied from Wikipedia an minimally edited by me:

1. Hope - Basic Trust vs. Mistrust - Infant stage. Does the child believe its caregivers to be reliable?
2. Will - Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt - Toddler stage. Child needs to learn to explore the world. Bad if the parent is too smothering or completely neglectful.
3. Purpose - Initiative vs. Guilt - Kindergarten - Can the child plan or do things on his own, such as dress him or herself. If "guilty" about making his or her own choices, the child will not function well. Guilt is quickly compensated by a sense of accomplishment.
4. Competence - Industry vs. Inferiority - Around age 6 to puberty. Child comparing self worth to others (such as in a classroom environment). Child can recognize major disparities in personal abilities relative to other children. Erikson places some emphasis on the teacher, who should ensure that children do not feel inferior.
5. Fidelity - Identity vs. Role Confusion - Teenager. Questioning of self. Who am I, how do I fit in? Where am I going in life? Erikson believes that if the parents allow the child to explore, they will conclude their own identity. However, if the parents continually push him/her to conform to their views, the teen will face identity confusion.
6. Love (in intimate relationships, work and family) - Intimacy vs. Isolation - Young adulthood. Who do I want to be with or date, what am I going to do with my life? Will I settle down?
7. Caring - Generativity vs. Stagnation - the Mid-life crisis. Measure accomplishments/failures. Am I satisfied or not? The need to assist the younger generation. Stagnation is the feeling of not having done anything that is of value to the next generation.
8. Wisdom - Ego Integrity vs. Despair - Old age. Some handle death well. Some can be bitter, unhappy, dissatisfied with what they accomplished or failed to accomplish within their life time. They reflect on the past, and either conclude at satisfaction or despair.

Erikson believed that you had to understand and embrace both poles of each stage (ie - Intimacy and Isolation for the 6th stage) for it to come to the final conflict that would resolve the stage for you, at the end of which you would have the proscribed virtue or power.

So I was trying to figure out where I went wrong, and I was thinking about stage 4, thinking about comparing myself to others for self-evaluation. I did that for a really long time. I think that was the primary concern of my teenage years. It became an obsessive-compulsive thing. I have this great memory from the early days of my relationship with Cami when I was constantly trying to measure myself up against Peter, and she finally got tired enough of listening to it that she cracked and said rather sharply that she didn't care and didn't want to hear anymore about Peter. Its a fun irony.

I guess I'm thinking now that I didn't "go" wrong. I just had some conditions that screwed things up, the same as anyone else I guess. I had anxiety-attacks that made me rate myself very low compared to my peers in that 4th stage, and that dragged it out. I think I was going through stage 5 starting at the beginning of my 20's, really because of religious mis-conceptions. I was happy with my identity until then.

I'm banging away at stage 6, through depression and anxiety. I've got isolation down. I guess I just need to figure out intimacy, then I can have a crisis experience. Its tempting to believe in that, but I'm not sure I do. If I'm reading it correctly and Wikipedia isn't lying, according to Erikson I must have had these climactic crisis experiences to conclude each stage, but I don't know if I believe it. I spent years trying to force a crisis that would get me through this Love stage, and I think to a large extent I've stopped believing that there is any one climactic moment. I don't disagree with the idea of moving through the stages, but with the idea that the climaxes come.

I think more realistically that one day I'll look back and see that it happened somewhere out there over a period of time and I'll go, "Huh." And that will be it. It will be less like an hour long tv drama than like geology. Huge, largely indeterminable periods of time that only have just enough in common to call them ages. At least that's the way I'm feeling these days. Kind of sucks then that we're hardwired to look for narrative then, huh?

The 4th of What?

So I didn't realize it was the 4th of July, but their are a lot of fireworks going off, so I kind of figured it out.

Anyway, here is a Google SketchUp of the house I might have bought. Where this is a short sale the bank has to approve the price the sellers have accepted. I don't know how long that will take. It could well be 6 months where I wait patiently and they finally say no. Not fun.

So, this is done from memory, but I think it's pretty close. I could be a little off on the size of the rooms, but I'm correct on the square footage of the house. The main floor is 696 sq. ft, and there's a dug out shelf basment that is big enough for laundry and a little storage.

This upper floor is about a hundred or a hundred and fifty square feet bigger than my apartment, but it actually feels smaller because of the way its laid out. If you have any ideas on how to fix it let me know.

Watching the videos that Nathan and Miriam sent of their new house kind of makes me embarassed. I'm realizing more as I've been trying to buy a house how much money I don't make. As it is this would be totally impossible if I were trying to support a family.

I watched the pilot on Hulu of a new show coming next season called Glee about a teacher who takes over his school's glee club. The big conflict in the episode is his wife telling him she's pregnant, and he decides he has to grow up and get a real job, so he gives the school his two weeks notice. A bit to close for me.

The truth is that most of the teachers in my school have second jobs or spouses who bring home the bacon.

Funny Things, But Sad Too...

I don't really like it when people email me in association with everyone they know to tell me about the funniest thing they've ever seen for the moment, but here's this.

Its from a website where they guy digitally removes Garfield from the comics. It makes Garfield funny, but also changes the focus to how sad John's life is. What's worse is that as I was laughing uncontrolably I started to realize how much like John I am becoming, just with the dignity not to get a cat to assuage my loneliness. Funny.

There was this site too, to which people send awkward family photos. It had this lovely picture.

Browning...

Well, my offer was accepted by the seller. Now on to the bank. I can't really decide if I'm happy about it. I think I am. Maybe. The house just doesn't have much character. There's another house I saw in a worse location for $28,000 more, but it captures my imagination. According to Rich I can pretty much get out of the deal anytime up to signing the loan. We'll see what happens. But I've definitely got to get rid of the rose bushes. That's the first thing.

Garbage and Houses...

Yesterday I didn't do much. I was kind of bummed about it, because I had every intention of being a useful member of society, but I slept poorly the night before and spent most of the day falling asleep repeatedly on the couch. I've been stressed that I haven't relaxed from the last school year, so I don't sleep well. Ironic, huh? But I did do one useful thing yesterday. I was taking out the garbage and found that one of my neighbors had moved out, leaving some really nice stuff in and beside the dumpster.

This tabley-drawer thing was one of those pieces of furniture. In Cleveland we used to do what we called "tree-lawn shopping", which involved us going out on big garbage day and taking home the best of the really crappy furniture that was on the tree-lawn awaiting pickup. So I was no stranger to this pass-time. (So many hyphens! Need more perentheses!)

I looked at this tabley-drawer thing, expecting from my former forays into reclaimation that it would be made of cheap particle board with a thin vinyl veneer pasted on it, or if the tossers were high class that it would be a laminate wood. I was, however, surprised to find it was in fact hardwood. At least most of it is. I don't know for sure, but I think that makes it pretty nice. I mean I think you'd pay tens if not a ten of tens of dollars for this piece of furniture. I didn't really have any use for it, but I decided at the very least I should bring it inside and take it to the DI later.

The thing about hardwood and iron is that it is heavy, which meant that I wasn't really strong enough to cary it up to the door and down the stairs safely by myself, especially not in flip-flops. I figured this out when I stumbled as my flip-flops, dragging on the ground caught the toe and rolled as I started down the stairs. For a moment I was sure I was going to end in a broken pile ontop of a broken pile of what used to me furniture at the bottom of the stairs, but by bravely using my elbow as a brake on the textured plaster wall and heroicly wrenching my back to maintain balance, I halted my downward motion. Eventually, I got it in the apartment, and now it sits classing up the place, but still without any other real purpose.

So that was yesterday.

Today I went an looked at houses with Rich. We found one that I really, really liked, but that will be beyond me. There's little chance I could make it work. It is in a fantastic neighborhood, near Laird where Dad grew up, in a house that is now worth about a million and a half dollars. He checked because he recently saw it was for sale. It is right on the edge of the gully there, and is almost like a partially earth sheltered house. It's surrounded by woods and has these huge cool sky lights and an enourmous fire place.

The problem is that the roof is basically falling in, and would not only have to be resurfaced but probably restructured. There's dry rot throughout the exterior, and all of the parquet wood flooring is buckling and coming up. All of that said, it is priced at the top of my means, so if I bought it I probably wouldn't have money to fix it up enough to be liveable. But what a perfect house for me. I would love to be able to do it. I'd really, really love to be able to.

After that we looked at a couple of places I wasn't interested in, and that aren't very interesting, and as we were looking for one of them we saw a place that sold pupusas. I told Rich how good they were and he decided he wanted some lunch so we came back around the block to it. I think the place was just opening. The guy who was serving us was still fixing up the windows, and made some executive decisions about what should be on the menu while we were sitting there. I ordered two pupusas, and Rich got two pupusas and a tamale, and I was surprised at how big they were when they came. They were fantastic tasting too, as good as I've had.

When we went to pay the guy was embarassed when I gave him my card, and told me he couldn't run a card for less than five bucks. My total was only three eighty-something. It was an amazing deal, and Rich had to pay for me because I only had a dollar in cash. I'm definitely going back there. It's on the corner of 5th East and 27th South if you want to go.

After that we looked at a place around 33rd south. I liked it. It was small, but the guy who owned it was an artist, and he'd really done some great things with the place. The price was a little high for me, but besides being small I really liked it.

We went out to north Taylorsville after that and Rich showed me a split level that I think he wanted me to buy, because it was a good deal, but it was big, and in a crappy neighborhood, and I wasn't into it. It probably will be a good deal for someone, but the sureno graffitti at the entrance of the subdivision and the half wall out front that was new painted (presumably because of graffiti) pretty much sealed my decision.

Following that we went to a place further south in Taylorsville that was in a really nice neighborhood, and looked really good. It hit the market two days before and already had several offers on it, none of which had been accepted by the bank, and the sellers realtor was refusing to let it be shown anymore, which Rich thought was actually against the law. We couldn't go in it, but he thought we should submit a high offer and see if I outbid the other buyers. That scared me. He asked me how high I would be willing to go, and when I told him how far I could go he agreed that from what we'd seen I probably wouldn't be able to outbid the other people.

We were talking about the competition in this price range and he was really surprised. He just sold his daughter's house in St. George, and is helping her find a new one up here, and he said that things in my range are going really really fast, and they taper off up to around three hundred and fifty or three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars, where houses seem to be languishing on the market for months until their sellers are forced to mark them down into the active range.

I think that all the people who can just pay a little over a hundred thousand, like me, watch the news and said to themselves, "Maybe now I can actually buy," and they all hit the market at once. Whatever it is, our experience seems to be that if you don't get an offer in in the first day or two that it is listed, and if it isn't accepted, that you don't really have a chance unless the money falls through for the person who did.

We had one more house to look at back near downtown on the east side, but we were both tired of it, and didn't have a lot of hope, but Rich said we were going back to my place and me might as well drive by.

For the price, and the neighborhood, I was expecting it to be old and in really bad shape. Besides, it was a short sale, which is good for the seller, and less bad for the bank than forclosure, but I don't think lives up to its marketing for the buyer. The price at which the selling agent lists it is pretty arbitrary. It can mean that even if the buyer offers more than the asking price, it is still subject to the bank's approval. They often end up spending up to six months maundering on whether it is better to sell at that price or forclose. It's not a quick process where you are paying pennies on the dollar like the market seems to want to portray it.

Anyway, for all of this, when we found the place I was blown away. It was in great condition, and priced even below the house on Roosevelt that I'd thought would be a great deal. What was better was that this was the first day it had been listed. We called the selling agent and she said that the sellers were expecting someone else to come look at it so to just go and knock. We did and got in to see it. The design is nothing to write home about, but it was well kept, and it was in the right neighborhood, and the asking price was amazing as far as quality to dollars as far as what we'd seen so far.

We were both pretty excited as we drove back to my place and we decided to make an offer on the spot. It took a while to make up the papers, but I submitted it tonight. I offered the asking price minus closing costs. By 5:00 PM tomorrow we'll know if the seller has accepted the offer. If they do, it will be off to the bank. When we talked to the selling agent as we were prepping to send it off she said she'd already got another offer on it, but it was a lowball offer. Rich said it was probably an investor. This area in the city and the price range has a lot of speculators buying up these houses and hoping to make cosmetic improvements and sell them for a profit as soon as "the downturn" ends. Anyway, I'm sure there are going to be several more offers in the next couple days, and if the other houses we've seen are any guide, I'll probably get outbid. But my fingers are crossed anyway.

Condos and Townhouses...

Well, I've been avoiding looking at condo's and townhouses because my intent in getting out of my apartment was to get out of a situation where a landlord should be taking care of stuff but isn't, and where I don't have to worry about things making it so I don't get a deposit back. Also, I'm not that into the idea of neighbor's who share a wall or ceiling with me. Especially if they have kids.

But I thought I might make an exception for this place. It might be a little bit of a stretch with the money, but hey, its downtown. I'll be able to afford the monthly payment if I put a little more into the downpayment. Its not that far from 20% to 95%. By the way, can anyone spare a few bucks to help out with that?

Let me know what you all think.

Sheesh, with the houses...

Rich, my agent (did I mention he mostly guides hunting and fishing trips for a living? That's a big fish,) called today at 12:30 and said he had appointments to see some places starting at 3:00, but that all but one of them were "under contract" which seems to mean that they have had offers that the owners have accepted and they're just waiting for the money to come through. I was still really anxious. I'm trying to be non-chalant, but this kind of thing is really hard for me.

The first house we saw was the one on Sunset Ave, and it was truly awful. It was really, really bad. The floor was about as rotten as the back bedroom in the cabin was when Mom and Dad had it fixed. The babysitter, who didn't speak english was the only one there and I had a hard time with her spanish, but she seemed to be saying that the furnace didn't work at all, that the electricity only worked sometimes, that the water came out brown half the time and then shut down. The design of the home was terrible, and the yard was really bad. The garage looked big from the outside, but when you went in it it was small. Then we saw a door on the side and opened it up to find that they were using half the garage as an illegal apartment. There was no bathroom or kitchen in it. It was really bad.

The second place we went was the one on 9th west (it seems to be so sold it doesn't show up on the website anymore). It was "under contract", so it was unlikely that I'd have been able to get it, but it was well taken care of. It was very out dated, and the furnace was ancient, and the addition on the back seemed to slant down a little, but everything else was in good shape. It was a little creepy. There was no one there and we used one of those remote key boxes to get in. The old lady who had lived there's stuff was all around still, like her clothes, and old pictures, and a bunch of catholic pictures and crosses, and it smelled like old people. But, like I said, it was the best place.

We drove by the one on Jeremy St., but they had wanted 24 hrs notice before anyone came by and Rich didn't get it. It was "under contract" too anyway. It looked ok from the outside, but the street definitely didn't look good.

Then we went to the one on Roosevelt (which is no longer showing on the website either) which had been my greatest hope, but when we went in it was really awful, almost as bad as the first one. It smelled terribly of cigarette smoke, and there were cigarette burns in two of the four different styles of bad carpet. The kitchen was pretty awful, and it was hard to imagine anyone fixing food there. There was a bunch of panneling on the walls, some of which was ripped out exposing pipes. The addition on the back was leaning pretty badly, and wen we went around to the front again we found that it was too. There was a big picture window in the front and as we were looking at it it looked like the window was a straight rectangle, but the hole for the frame was a parallelogram. The people who were there were inspecting the house for the buyer, and they'd left their level out, so we put it up there for confirmation. The window was in fact square.

Here are the other houses that I was interested in, upon which my hopes have bit the dust. The one on center street in Midvale (off the website aready, sheesh), the one in West Jordan, and the one in Sandy.

So, all in all, my first house hunting expedition to the interiors was pretty discouraging. If all of these houses that were bad, or in bad locations (for me at least) were being sold as fast as they were it doesn't bode well for my search. I think what it said to me was that I neither have, nor make enough money to be choosy about where or in what I live, as long as I want to buy a single family home.

Waffle Makers, Bikes, and How I Spent My Saturday...

Mark LaRocco and I decided to go for a bike ride on Saturday. The chance of rain was 30%. Despite the fact that it had rained about every day for like a month we decided 30% was a safe number.

I slept poorly the night before, worrying about whether I made a poor decision in purchasing a waffle iron. It's an ongoing saga. I started out buying this one at Walmart. It was twice as much as the Durabrand one, but I'm a huge waffle fan, so I thought it would be worth it. It required a 3 prong plug, which I found I didn't have at counter level in my kitchen (actually I don't have any plugs at counter level, and use an extension cord,) so I cooked them on the ground. What I failed to realize is that the outside of the waffle maker is heated too. I can't figure out what possible function they have for that. People make waffles with little kids. Why would they make an appliance that burns you unless you handle it just with the little tiny handles? So I burned my arm when I reached over it for something. It burned the waffles even though you can supposedly adjust the heat, which I did to the lowest setting, and the waffles are square, which has always been a second-best waffle shape to me. Circles are tops. Anyway, it went back.

So rather than get the crappy Walmart brand which I'd done once before, and liked so much that I left it at my parents house when I moved to Salt Lake, I decided to search around. I went to a couple places before finding this one at Smith's Marketplace, (formerly Fred Meyer's), that I decided would be adequate. But I found to my horror when I opened it that the waffle patterna made a lot of little tiny divots rather than fewer deeper ones. That was totally unacceptable, so back it went.

In exasperation I bought the only other option at Smiths. This one. I was nervous about the stainless steel surface again, but it was round, and it says it has extra deep grids. So, even though it was $30, I bought it. I was so worried about the purchase that I got up at 4:00AM after tossing and turning, and started looking at it. It advertises "Cool-Touch" handles, which I think turns out meaning "extra-burning-hot other exterior surfaces". Not only that but the design makes it so that when you over fill it it leakes over at the lower handle, where there is an in-explicable opening in the plastic were the batter goes down into the interior and shorts out the controls. So, it's going back. Anyway, it's a big headache and I don't think the product I'm looking for is actually on the market right now. I've bought three other waffle irons in my life, for other people, and used two of those and the experience and product were great. I guess times have moved on.

So much for waffle makers.

I was awake anyway, so I took the early train down to Sandy to get the bus to Provo to go ride bikes with Mark, but to my chagrin, when I arrived at the bus both bike spaces were taken, and I had to wait an hour for the next bus. So I rode around and looked at houses that I'd mapped for possible purchase. But then I get lost and barely made it back in time to get the bus. This is the route I took. It rained the whole time I was riding around.

When I got to Provo I got off the bus and rode to Mark's place, and we decided to ride the Provo River Parkway from Utah Lake to Vivian Park in Provo Canyon. We read about it on a website by a guy who calls himself the Mad Scientist. He mentioned that there would be "BYU students and other young hardbodies," so we thought it was a pretty good choice. This is a picture of the guy that he put on the site. We smiled.

The sky was relatively cloudy in the north but we were trusting in the 30% from the weather service. Mark went out with his bike before me and I turned back into the apartment to get something. By the time I turned around it was a pelting downpour and Mark was instantly soaked. So that was fun. It rained off and on all day.

The website said that the trail was 14 miles long. We failed to include the ride out to Utah Lake in our estimation of the ride, and we definitely failed to take into account all the times that we'd get lost. Also, I don't really think I thought about the fact that the 14 miles was one way.

We arrived in a downpour at Vivian Park. We sat under a pavilian and talked about things like pedophilia, desert reclamation, and Daisyworld for about half an hour until the rain let up a little and started back.

At one point on 9th east we went through an intersection where a woman was stuck in the left hand turn lane in a huge stalled camper. Mark and I started trying to push her, but it was too big for us. Everyone was honking and angry, but then a father and son got out of their truck and helped us get her to the side of the road.

After we got back Mark's girlfriend, Holly, came over and Mark made some breaded fish that he'd caught on a fishing trip to Cabo San Lucas the week before. I don't like fish, and only remember enjoying eating once before, when Mark's dad Rich made it. Mark's was the second best fish I've ever had, but just not quite un-fishy tasting to enjoy. He gets an A for effort though.

Eventually they drove me to the bus stop, because I was worried I was too late to ride, (and I was pretty tired of riding anyway), and after two more hours on public transit I rode from the Trax to my apartment building just as night was falling. In the end I think my tally for the day was about 46 miles. Not bad.

That wasn't even a very interesting story to me. Oh well.

Videos from the Trail...

North of Ensign Peak...

Because Cami got the joke...

Houses and Bikes...

I spent the first week after school lying on my couch feeling crappy because I wasn't doing anything about finding a house. I guess that's not true. I spent most of the week analyzing an mls site (cityhomessaltlake.com) in minute detail trying to figure out all I could without actually calling anyone and setting up appointments to see properties. I've spent the better part of this week trying to figure out how all of this works. It turns out there doesn't seem to be much chance of me being able to buy a house without a realtor, and there doesn't seem to be much for a realtor to do until I get pre-approved for a loan, so I buckled down and got an appointment to see the mortgage lady at my credit union. I still don't know if I'm suposed to shop around for the best pre-approval.

I've been in contact with two realtors by email, one of whom is really helpful, the other of whom is horrible, but when it comes down to it, I'd far rather use someone I know and like. To this end I asked Mark LaRocco to put me in contact with his dad, Rich. He spends most of his time guiding big game hunts now, but he's still got his realty licence, and does a little now and again.

I realized yesterday that 1) I was feeling guilty for not actively doing something, which indicated that lying around for a week didn't decompress me from the recently completed teaching year (at least for me that is very necessary), and 2) that sitting around totally sedentary and alone probably wasn't a good combination for my emotional and physical health. So I went for a bike ride.

I'd been curious for a while where the end of The Avenues was, and if the mountain behind it was accessible, so I spent some time playing on Google Maps and found the highest point (that I could see right then) was Terrace Hills Dr., and that beyond it were a couple of trails. I hopped on my bike and started riding up there with the intention of locking my bike and walking up the trail to the top of the mountain. It's not a very big mountain, kind of a big hill, and the road takes you most of the way up. So this is the ride.

I think it was about when I was crossing 11th Ave. that I realized my heart was about to explode. I mean really, it was doing very unpleasant and frightening things, so I got off of my bike and lay down on the tree lawn. After it felt like it was kind of like "normal way overworked because I'm not in as good of shape as I think I am", I got back on the bike and kept riding. I was about about half way up Northcrest Dr. when I realized my heart hated me. I walked then rode, then walked, then rode the rest of the way up to the top.

When I got to the top I got off of my bike and sat on a green electricity box and contemplated locking my bike and continuing up the mountain, (which the sign informed me was part of the Bonneville Shore Line Trail). As I sat there I found that blisters were spontaneously forming on my arm where I'd burned myself a week and a half before, and on my left index finger. That seemed really weird, and kind of freaked me out. I'd never heard of strenuous exercise causing that, so I just decided to ride home. I took a slightly different route, a couple blocks down for part of it.

When I got home I mapped the route on Bikely and was disappointed to see that it only showed an 873 foot climb. I thought it was more. It felt like more. Still, that's 873 feet over 2 miles (it was 4 miles round trip). I guess that really isn't that impressive.

Pride scarred (and bored and anxious) I decided to go for another ride today. I mapped out a route that seemed to take a back utility road from just below Ensign Peak above the Staker/Parson gravel pits and over the mountain to Bountiful (I guess its actually North Salt Lake, but Bountiful sounds better). It was pretty strenuous riding up above Capitol Hill. To my credit I rode the whole way.

This ride was a much more respectable 1890 ft. climb and just under 13 miles. I shot some little videos of some of the scenic bits of the trail, and one foolishly long sequence of me riding through a meadowy part that probably looks like what ended up on the editing room floor when they were cutting Cloverfield. But this post is too long already, so maybe I'll put the videos up later.

Let it suffice to say that it was really lovely in some bits. There was a storm chasing me from the south but the mountain stopped it and it was sunny on the other side as I came down from the summit. One part I was not pleased with was that on the Salt Lake Side I had to go around a gate that rich people put up. I was (self)righteously disgusted by the wealth, but it was far worse on the other side. The development has crept up the mountain since the satellite pictures were taken for Google. It was a sea of these terrible "mini-mansions" that all look very similar, cost obscene amounts, and are terribly wasteful. I felt some pleasure to see how many of them were for sale. However, I don't doubt that in my lifetime the development on either side of the hill will grow up to the summit and join. It won't be a trail ride then; just a ride through suburb streets, that is if they don't put better gates up to keep the riff-raff out.

Oh, by the way, I've been listening to this song today, over and over.

School's Out for Summer...

So, school's over.  What now.  On Friday, our teacher check out day, I decided on the spur of the moment to go scout a route I'd come up with on bikely.com for a bike ride.  I found a road that went up a canyon from Herriman and over to Tooele.  The streetview on Google Maps showed what looked like a gentle ride up a flatish road, but didn't go all the way through.  I assumed it was because the road crosses a spur of the Camp Williams Military Reserve, and it was some kind of no-no to photograph.  So I drove it.

Bikely has a nifty elevation profile that you've seen on some of my ride maps.  I didn't bother checking it

since it looked so docile on Google Maps.  I failed to take into account that the Oquihrrs are some big freaking mountains.

Driving up it was amazing.  The road is about ten feet wide, and

 leaves the floor of the canyon to wind along the mountainside.  There are some really steep pitches with tons of hairpin curves.  It felt like driving in the Alps.  (That's a suspect statement since I've never left the continent.)  There was a lot of rock fall from the heavy rains we've been

 having, so even through the road was paved it didn't seem paved.  I definitely wouldn't want to try to ride on in on a road bike.  Also, with the curves and

 the steepness, there were a couple of close calls with other traffic.  It's really just one lane.  After one of them I had a huge adrenaline rush and wondered what I was doing there.  It was scary.

The other side of the pass isn't paved, and I was really getting scared.  I was praying that I was on the right road.  There was no sign, and there were several other roads that went elsewhere.  I just stayed with the widest one.  But after falling fast through some tight curves it levels out and becomes paved.

I drove out of the canyon and past Tooele on a country road that dropped me in Stansbury Park, just south of where you catch I-80.  I was looking to see if there was any way to get around having to ride on the freeway.  I've done it before on some of the big rides we took when I was a little kid, but now that I think of it it is kind of terrifying.  Anyway, there's no chance.  I-80 seems to be the only road that passes on the north side of the mountains.

As I was driving past I saw the exit to Saltaire and decided to go out and walk down to the water line.  I'd been to the water at the Great Salt Lake once when I was a kid and thought I'd regret it if I didn't stop for a moment.  So I did.  Walking down to the water was absolutely disgusting.  I was wearing flip-flops and my first step on the half mile long "beach" resulted in my foot sinking in really foul smelling quicksand.  This continued for a while, but eventually I made it to the water and washed my feet.  The thing was that the water smelled just as bad as the muck I'd walked through.  The lake was pretty though.  There was a rain storm that squalled over while I was there, and the water was blowing in toward me.  It wasn't like the tide you sometimes get at Bear Lake.  Rather, it looked almost like a river flowing very shallowly toward and away from me at the same time.

Anyway, on the way back my flip-flops got stuck in the muck and I had to walk back to the water to wash them off.  Then I walked back to the parkinglot barefoot.  I found a shower station at the building that I'd missed before, and washed off, but everything still smelled, and I wished I had soap.  Come to think of it I should sanitize my steering wheel and gearshift.  I used my hands to get some of the muck off.

I found that there was a really bizarre frontage road that runs from Saltaire to the Airport by driving along it.  At one point it is just a bunch of uneven unlined cement slabs.  Strangely there was a bunch of very slow moving semi-truck traffic on it.  I kept passing these weird little derelict buildings too, that were covered in graffiti.  At one point I saw a tag that one of my stranger students had put on her class binder during second term.  She'd written that it was some meaningful mark to her in one of her journals.  I wondered how she'd gotten all the way out here to make it on a chunk of cement by this road, and with whom she'd come.  I'd never heard any of the kids talk about this place.

Anyway, it was kind of a weird adventure that day.  More stuff happened, but I'm tired of writing and it wasn't as interesting as the rest.  Mostly it involved me driving around looking for houses that had for sale signs, but weren't listed.  Not much to say on that.  Then I got dinner and went home.  Oh, well.

Now I've got ten weeks stretching in front of me, and it's both far too short and far too long, and I don't know what I'm going to do.  Such is life.  My life anyway.

Psychology...

I just finished reading A Theory of Human Motivaiton, by Abrabam H. Maslow with my kids.  Some of them got really into it, and some didn't.  We read it mostly based on my only qualifying principle of curriculum development, which is whether I'm interested in it at the moment.  I don't know if that's really good, but it seems to be about the only way I can run a dynamic class.  If I'm curious about a subject we usually read about it.  That's about it.

Anyway, I can't exactly remember what got me started on it, but I told the kids we were going over it for a couple of reasons, first being that it was good reading comprehension practice material, and second, that I thought an understanding of it could help them lead better lives.  And I believe it's not inaccurate, but after about a wee

k of studying it I don't feel as strongly about it as I did in the beginning.  In any case, at the end of it I asked the kids to do a free write in which they speculated on their levels of attainment of the five basic needs, upon which level of need they were living, and how they might achieve a higher level on the hierarchy.  I thought it might be good to try to write about it myself.

There are a few principles you have to know to get it.  First...

So I started writing this a while ago.  Days?  Weeks?  I ran out of the interest, or the energy neccessary to finish it.  That happens to me a lot.  I find in t

he last few years that I get 3/4ths of the way through stuff and run out of gas.  ADD?  I guess.  Anyway, instead, here are some pictures.  I found this little video about aging pics to look like they were shot with a Holga, a kind of legendary cheap Russian medium format camera with a plastic lens.  I bought one a few years ago, but it was just when the world was really making the transition to digital cameras, and I had my first, and all of the s

udden it just seemed like it wasn't worth the money to develop film.  But I guess I can photoshop the pics to make them look like I shot them with the Holga, now.

Pics.

This one doesn't look as Holga-ized, but oh well.

Spring Break...

So, it's Spring Break for me, which means mostly I've been laying on my couch reading and eating way too much.  I read Brisingr, the newest Christopher Paolini book, which was more of his same, not great, a little geeky pretentious fantasy nerdy, but ok fun.  I read a crappy graphic novel, A History of Violence, which is a very rare failure of the "book is better than the movie" rule.  I read a really good graphic novel called Allan's War.  It was just a biography of a GI during, a little before, and a little after WWII.  I really liked it.  The story seemed to be pretty much a transcription of the taped interviews that he made with the guy.  The art was good.  I guess I also finished the second book in the Maus series, by Art Speiglman.  I don't know how to enjoy that one.  It's a holocaust survivor narration, a biography of the author's father.  It's pretty depressing, but good.  I also read most of the Wheel of Time prequel, New Spring, by Robert Jordan.  It's more of the same from Robert Jordan.  Not his best, but far from his worst so far.  I'll probably finish it tomorrow.

Also I watched the complete run (6 episodes) of a British comedy series called Hippies, starring Simon Pegg, and a one season American series called The Black Donnellys.  Hippies was funny, but the Black Donnellys wasn't great, which was why it only lasted a season, and got pulled without a resolution to all the story lines.  Oh well.

So, that's been my vacation.

However, Wednesday afternoon I did take this bike ride.  I went as far as I could up City Creek Canyon, until I ran into the snow a little way above the water station.  It was pretty, but not as nice as when I went up there last fall.  I liked it better then.

Maybe I'll go for another bike ride today.

It's Been a While...

So, it's been a while since I wrote on this blog.  You could check my school blog which I update daily, but I suspect you'd find little interest in the journal prompts I give my kids and the sentence long summaries of what we did in class each day.  Today I had them write about whether if they could choose an age at which to stop aging until their death at the end of their regular life span, they would, and if so which age and why.  After that I read Howl by Allen Ginsberg aloud to them, and had them write their responses.  Almost none of them actually did it.  Mostly they just sat there and looked bored.  I think that says something about my school and my kids.  I can read Howl out loud without fear of parents and administration freaking out.  But it's more.  It doesn't get a rise out of the kids at all.  Oh well.

Maybe it was my reading.  I'm really sick with a cold and I was hacking my life out the whole time.  Now I have a lovely sinus headache. 

I'm listening to Elliot Smith right now.  Needle in the Hay.  I tried playing it for Nicole, the Special Ed administrator today.  She was sitting in her office playing guitar during lunch, and I ambled in and played a bit with her.  One of our students came in and played about a thousand times better than either of us.  He just came back after being kicked out for a semester for getting caught with pot.  He never did a single assignment when I had him during first trimester.  He just sat around drawing pictures of drum kits.  But Nicole says he's a lot better now since he's back on his medication.

Since I last wrote I have finished with my tenth graders, and am teaching the eleventh graders their second trimester of English.  I had them all in two periods, but they were overpacked, so I moved my yearbook class down to the media center during one of my library hours, (I also took over the media center since I last wrote) and opened another english class.  

The media center is fun.  I've changed things around a fair amount.  It is starting to reflect my personality.  I'm making everything more basic.  I rearranged the collection, moved all the couches into one area, and started weeding.  The first thing on the chopping block were the many harlequin romances that were choking our fiction section.  I have no idea why they were there.  I checked to make sure that they weren't ever checked out before first, which they weren't, and started pulling them.  The other English teacher and I are having a Read-a-Thon on Wednesday, and we're going to run little contests and games, and I think the harlequins are going to be prizes.  Last time we did it the prizes were just bits of garbage out of our desks, so maybe this is progress.

Anyway, I was thinking yesterday as I was coming home from church, (I've been going pretty regularly again) that it's not inconceivable that I've been pretty intensely depressed for the last couple of years and haven't really been able to see it.  I mean I pretty much shut down all my relationships but two, I haven't made even an acquaintance, at least not outside school, and I have been relatively happy to spend ninety-nine percent of my free time alone.  I think if indeed I have been depressed generally that I haven't noticed it that much because I can't.  I can't really seem to do anything about it, so I think I've come to not let it intrude in my daily life that much.  I mean there have been short periods where I was really acutely depressed.  The whole Christmas holiday was really obviously awful for me, for example.  But what I mean is that although it kind of directs the course of my life, I don't let it spoil my day.  If I did I'd just be a wreck all the time.  I think instead I just shut down all non-critical systems in my life, anything that isn't really necessary to the continuation of it, and just continue on.  And although I'm depressed, I'm not really unhappy.

Anyway, I was just thinking yesterday as I walked that I couldn't really decide whether it was a good thing or a bad thing.  Maybe its neither.  Maybe it is just a thing.  Maybe it's part of what Hamlet designated as neither good nor evil, but thinking makes it so.  Hamlet was the last thing I did with my tenth graders.  Whatever.

I'm going to bed.

I Need a Golden Helmet...

I need it because this is how I feel. I got a little teary when I looked at this guy's expression. This is how I really feel tonight.

Somewhere Inbetween...

Do you ever get the feeling that your life has paused between key frames in a film. You feel blurred, in motion from somewhere to somewhere. But for the moment you are paralyzed, and you can't see who you were a moment ago or who you're going to be when the motion ends.

I've been feeling that way yesterday and today. I numbed my mind last night with all the stuff I use to distract myself from myself, but felt horrible in the morning, like I always do when I'm like this. The morning usually brings a little clarity, but only a little.

In the night I was in the shower and decided to shave my face into a new shape. I was going for a kind of Buffalo Bill look, but I think it came out more like a prison inmate. What I was really thinking was that I wanted a real Van Dyke, like I was a character in a Rembrant painting. The goatee is too round though, and I was too chicken to trim the sideburns higher and more pointy. So it became Buffalo Bill, or more realistically, prison inmate.

So I'm I shot the photo, and it was very blurry. I didn't want to set the camera up again, so I just photoshopped it until it looked lookable. And now I have to try to figure out how on earth I can teach the kids something tomorrow.

PS - This is what I have been listening to this evening.

Playing with Bikes...

So, you might not realize it but you're looking at about two pretty solid days of work. Yesterday I spend the better part of the morning, all of the afternoon affixing the brake levers to my satisfaction on the home made bullhorn bars, then scraping all of the decals off of the bike with my thumbnails. The bullhorns and brake levers were ok, but the decal removal was awful. I tried using an exacto-knife at one point but it brought up about as much paint as decal, so I reverted back to the thumbnails. They hurt terribly.

In affixing the brake levers I realized a couple of things. When I cut the drops to make the bullhorns I should have left more of the vertical part. They're too short to be able to support the levers and allow for one course of bar wrap above. Originally I was assuming that I could get some mountain bike style brake levers, because I'd seen single speed bikes with them. Well, I don't know how they work them out, but I couldn't find them online anywhere, and the old levers were fine. In any case they work ok. The other thing I realized was that the cable housing for the brakes was so old and weathered that it had cracked at the point of insertion into the brake lever on both sides, and I'd need to replace them.

I'd bought some new cables previously, because the cables on it were scary rusty, but I hadn't put them on yet. The yellow housing was one of my favorite parts of the bike, and the housing on the new cables was the dull black you see on it. Oh well.

Before I started on the cables I decided to run to the library where I had some items on hold, and to stop at a bike shop on the way to buy some of the cushy jell inserts that you put under the bar wrap these days. But the bike shop didn't have them. I'd struck out with them before on Slime tubes to fit my 27" x 1.25" wheels. Maybe I should go back to the other shop up in the avenues. This one is just so convenient.

Anyway, after my trip, with bare bars and cracked cable housing, I came home and started working on the rest of it. The first cable I changed was for the front derailleur. Due to bad design, the cables had been totally exposed and they were really rusty. So I switched that our and bent the metal bits that routed the cable to try to fit the whole housing along the cable's route. It didn't work well, and when I was trying to fix it I got sidetracked adjusting the derailleur. I'm no good at it. I never have been.

But this time was worse than most. I was playing with the clamp position on the seat tube, and while trying to loosen the bolt that held the clamp closed I inadvertently tightened it until it sheared off at the midpoint, leaving the threaded in the clamp. So, I'm going to try and drill it out, but I might have just given myself an excuse to update the drivetrane. What a mess. I was very frustrated and angry, and watched Topgear for a couple of hours to calm myself down, then went to bed.

This morning I decided that the fact that I'd crippled it wasn't a reason to finish the cables, so I set to work on that. It took a surprisingly long time, mostly because the bolts for the brakes are located in places that are about ten millimeters too short to be able to get my little ratchet into. Then when I did get to them the fell apart unexpectedly, pieces flying over the dirty floor, and getting lost under all the mess. Eventually, however, I was able to finish it all.

Following that I was going to secure the cable housings with some zipties, but when I looked for them in the store I found only neon colored ones, and decided to pass for the time being.

The next thing upon which to work was the helmet. I purchased the retro-reflective tape some time ago, but hadn't put it on the helmet as an excuse not to ride my bike to school in the morning. I hate riding in the dark. If I'm not visible, then I don't have to. Anyway I decided it was time to begin remedying the situation, so I pulled the tape out. I was thinking of making a skull out of small square pieces at first, but moved on when I couldn't design a pleasing one on my computer. I couldn't figure out what to do instead of the skull and sat thinking for some time when it came to me all at once and I started making a pattern to cut from. It's not perfect. I made it from two strips of 1.5 inch tape, so it's 3 inches wide, and the sides turned out not to be perfectly symmetrical. But it was close enough for me.

Anywho, so much for the first two days of vacation.

The Ride I Intended to Take...

So, yesterday I took the ride I intended to take last week. It's turned stormy and cold here, and yesterday was the preview of it. It was just on the edge of cold, and they sky was that steely version of a clear sky in fall. It's like the impending cold bleeds the color out. Today it stormed, and the sidewalks were full of brightly colored leaves. Maybe it's a water color, all the paint running toward the ground as the water comes down.

Anyway, I slept late, then spent the morning working up a group of songs for a new music mix around the mood I was getting from this one song by The Mountain Goats, called So Desperate. It's this really beautiful, sad sort of song. You can hear it here. But this was before the ride.

I finished amassing the list of songs without mixing them, and it was already the mid afternoon, so I got my new bike and left the building. It was lovely out and there were lots of people walking in the park at the entrance to the canyon. Soon I reached the entrance to the upper canyon, the part to which I've never been, and I was expecting more of the same. There wasn't nearly as much foot traffic on the road, but there were several bikers that passed me. I wasn't going very fast.

About three miles up the canyon I passed what looked like a water treatment plant, and the road narrowed and became less evenly paved. There were bits where the ground got marshy on the north side and water ran across the path, turning the dead leaves into a ground up sop. There was a stream running on the south side of the path. This path made sharp turns sometimes, and curiously steep jogs. It seemed like the engineers who plotted it didn't want to mess with the nature much. It fit, because not long after that the deciduous trees gave way to tall pines and the air became cooler and far more aromatic.

Among these pines I saw the creek far below to the right, moss covered boulders that are more brightly and darkly colored than the ground around them. These were nice little vistas, opening and closing as I went along. I kept thinking that I should tell the film teachers at school about this place. They'd be great locations that might give the kids films a bit more depth.

The top of the canyon is full of picnic areas established by and dedicated to Rotarians. There are big plaques in each one, and a couple of big gear monuments, then at the very top is this great pavilion with a very sharply pitched roof, covered in pine shakes. It looks vaguely swiss, and the trusses must have been in trouble because it was warped in a very picturesque but dangerous looking way. It was really fantastic.

I've been thinking I'd get rid of the drop bars on my bike and replace them with a homemade pair of bullhorns, but I might have to reconsider after riding down the canyon. I got in the drops and kind of let it go, speeding down the narrow pavement in a way that surely would have frightened anyone going up, (as the people passing me on the way down had frightened me a couple times), but it was late in the afternoon and there wasn't anyone still on the way up. The bike was really quite stable at speed, really a joy to ride. It was exhilarating, but I was careful not to let it get away from me. I realized early on that the brakes need to be tightened up even a little more. On the other hand, they're great brakes; far smoother than on my mountain bike.

From the upper canyon I went up to the east side into the avenues, as I did last week, then on down to my building. The sun was setting, around six, as I came out of the canyon, and it was twilight as I walked my bike up the steps to the building. It was night when I stepped out soon after to go get some dinner. Writing this post I realize that it was a singular kind of evening, as today is the end of daylight savings. I guess every evening is singular. This was just one of the ones that let you know it. It was a beautiful day.

Just Another Manic UEA...

Last weekend was UEA and I think I went a little manic. I did a whole lot of stuff, and bought a whole lot of stuff, and in the end, although I did a whole lot of stuff and bought a whole lot of stuff I really didn't do or buy much of anything. I didn't spend more than about a hundred and fifty bucks, and I hardly left my apartment. In any case, it wasn't a really great weekend.

I think the one thing that I am pleased about that did come from it was that I finally bought a road bike. It's a late '70's to early '80's Bianchi Sport SS steel frame with suntour components. I've been looking for a bike since the beginning of the summer, starting with new bikes, being blown away by the prices, scanning craigslist and KSL Classifieds hourly and finding nothing, resigning myself to spending a thousand bucks on a new Surly bike, then going back to the classifieds. I figured out from calling immediately when I saw something I liked that bikes were going in the first fifteen minutes they went up all summer. But last weekend I was the first caller.

I went out and looked at the bike, and the girl seemed to have misrepresented its condition in the ad. I couldn't even take it for a test ride because tires were flat and the chain was off the rear derailleur and rusted. Also, the back tire was so out of true that I thought it might have been in an accident and bent. It looked pretty rough, and I was frankly a little miffed that the girl didn't tell me this before I spent $10 in gas to drive out to Murry for a test ride.

She advertised it at $100 dollars, but I told her that I didn't know if I could resurrect the drivetrain. She said to make an offer so I said $70, then she countered to $80. After thinking a moment and realizing that even if I did have to put a new drivetrain I probably wouldn't find a deal this good again for another year, so I took it. Then she wouldn't take a check, which pissed me off more. But I went and found a branch of my credit union and came back and bought it.

As the day went on and I made a few stops on the way back home I kept looking at it and feeling better and better about my purchase. The cloth bar tape was moth eaten, the cassette and chain were rusty, the decals were peeling, and the gum sidewalls on the tires were dried out, but the bike had been stored in a storage unit from what looked like soon after it was bought. Then, when I got it home and looked more closely I saw something that made me feel like I hadn't gotten such a deal after all.

On the top of the topbar partially obscured by the rear brake cable was a pretty significantly sized dent. That really brought me back down. I wasn't sure then if the bike was worth anything at all. The plan all along had been to salvage what I could of the components, but losses were ok because the frame looked to be in such good shape.

But researching on the web I found that dents in steel frames don't seem to be such a big deal as in aluminum frames or more significantly carbon. Actually I guess carbon just cracks, but anyway, I think it will be ok.

Anyway, I spent most of last evening and this morning working on it, then I rode up City Creek Canyon then up the east road to A St. It was really beautiful with the leaves in the elevation of the valley changing, and the bike rode fairly nicely. I got home and made some minor adjustments and it was even better. I'm planning some fairly significant changes for it, but all in all I'm pretty happy with it. I feel like I got a deal again, and I like the bike.

Self Actualization...

I was just reading a few articles on The Economist. I read the new stuff on the web version about every day, and I came across this kind of random article on Maslow and the Hierarchy of Need. In it Maslow is quoted as saying, "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualisation."

I started thinking that maybe the reason I find life so unsatisfying is a deficit of self-actualization. I guess its not a new idea. I've been a fan of the Hierarchy for a while, but this bit is new I think. I don't see myself as anything, so there can be no actualization.

I went through this weird period for a few years when I was younger where I became a few things:

• I was a writer, and I wrote. I wrote a few short stories I liked, several journals I thought were full of meaningful stuff, and finally a book. People read what I wrote and I got reactions; mostly good. I felt like my writing made me significant.
• I was a friend, and (there's no verb for this; maybe friended?)... Anyway, I was the confidant of a lot of people, and I felt like my friendship served them good stead. I felt like I made their lives better.
• I was a boyfriend, and I loved. For better or worse (probably usually worse) I loved. My relationship made me feel worthy (for a while).

Anyway, I don't really have any of these anymore and for whatever reason I haven't developed any new roles for myself. In a wierd way, most of the time I don't feel like any of these roles would mean anything anyway.

I read this short story by Jose Donoso yesterday called Paseo. It's told from the point of view of a child remembering childhood at home with a father, two uncles and a spinster aunt. They lead this painstakingly carful life together, the intent of which is never to inconvenience each other. The narrator says at one point that that was the concept of love he inherited, that it was never to incovenience another. I'd never seen that sentiment on paper, and I was struck first by how wrong it was, (although the story never gives any resolution on the subject) and second, how I feel that way myself. Probably my biggest ambition in relationships with the people I love is never to inconvenience them.

I guess this has been what I've gone with recently. Oh well, it made sense in my head for a minute.

Feces From the Heavens...

I spent a large chunk of yesterday afternoon cleaning my upstairs neighbor's feces from the many surfaces in my bathroom.

About nine months ago I came home to find a strange rusty looking stain running down my bathroom wall and into my medicine cabinet. The pipes in my building are old and rusty and I thought that it might just be a bit of a leak. I threw away everything in the cabinet, complained to my landlord, and after he'd come and looked embarrassed and assured me it wasn't waste water I ignored it.

A couple of months ago, after the upstairs neighbors left their kitchen sink on, overflowing and flooding down through my kitchen cabinets (they've done this twice more, once damaging my living room ceiling) I started looking up, and realized that there was a leak in my bathroom ceiling that was becoming occasionally bedewed. Eventually it began to drip occasionally and I complained to my landlord. He didn't do anything, but then I caught him one day showing the apartment across the way to some prospective renters, and I took him in to show him the problem. By this time it had begun to drip when the neighbors flushed their toilet. I thought it was a leaky feed pipe because the water seemed to be clear, but I didn't want to deal with it anyway. He said he'd come in and fix it.

The next day he came and ripped out my ceiling to the lathe, but didn't do anything else, and didn't leave me a note explaining what was going on. So, rather than having a drip of clear water when the neighbors flushed I had a small stream of sediment filled dirty water. Unpleasantly, once or twice over the next week I was using the bathroom when the neighbors upstairs flushed, and the water came down on me. I hate confrontation. I'm terribly passive aggressive, but this was it for me. I sent a letter along with my rent check saying that if he didn't fix all the stuff wrong with the apartment I was going to start looking for another place.

The next day he showed up with the plumber (which he'd been promising for three months to fix the bathtub). I came home from work at 5:30 to find them still working. There was a big hole over my toilet and bits of crap (literally), mortar, and drying toilet paper all over everything. They said that the waste water pipe had just rotted away, and was emptying into the ceiling when the neighbors flushed.

When they knocked off at 6:30 they had finished the pipe, but not the bathtub. I asked them about it and they said that they were going to have to come back in and tear out all the tile to fix it. They made a cursory vacuuming with a shop vac in the bathroom before they left, which got the big pieces of mortar, but left everything else.

So yesterday I stripped (I didn't want to get any on my clothes even though I know that it'd wash out) and cleaned with a big bucket of bleach and a scrub brush. There's still a big hole in the ceiling and the cold water knob on the bathtub is still a rusted broken mess, but at least there's no more feces.

Someone even came in and tried to fix the ceiling in the living room. Of course they did it by tearing chunks of the paper off and patching it (incompletely, so there are bare spots) with joint compound. It means I have big three-toned splotches that look worse than the sagging cracked paper did before, but I guess he should get partial credit for trying.

I'm still thinking about moving. I don't want to because I just moved into a new ward, and I'm settling in, and it's just a pain to pack up and deal with all the crap you accumulate. But I might just have to suck it up and do it. It might be less trouble than staying.

A Haiku to My Students...

We've been having orientation meetings for the last three days (since Wednesday). Last night was Back to School Night. I never went to a Back to School Night when I was a kid and I don't think that we did one last year. We didn't really know what to do. Mostly parents kind of milled around and whenever they showed up in our rooms we gave them a short verbal version of our syllabus. It was a little weird, but ok.

I'm in a new room on the south end of the building. I talked to the boss at the end of last year about moving into one of the big rooms with the windows, and he said ok, but then he forgot when he hired a new social studies teacher, and gave it to him. Matt moved into the other big window room, so they gave me his old room. It actually works out ok. I'm not averse to it, but it presents me with a problem. There are a couple of bulletin boards. I haven't got a clue what to put on them. I don't really know what I'm going to put on my other walls either, but I've kind of felt like I should do something. I spent almost all of last year with bare walls. Only at the end did I start putting students work up on them to cover their nakedness.

Maybe I'll take some of my supply money and buy a couple of posters. I do have the enormous poster of Shakespeare in a half-tone that Matt bequeathed me.

Anyway, we finished our meetings at noon today and went to Golden Coral. We all ate a few plates of fried foods then came back to get stuff ready for Monday. I have composed a haiku to commemorate the occasion:

Metal-studded glares
Mohawks brushing the ceiling
The children return...