Chase and Jenn

It's been a while

2012-01-26T12:54:00.001-08:00

I guess a lot has happened since September, and I'm sure there are more than a few people that only find out how we're doing out here by reading this blog.

For Christmas, we took some money (Thanks Grandma!) and took the whole family out to dinner and for a ride on the Riverwalk tour. It was a nice evening. We went to Chris Madrid's which is Jenn's new favorite burger, and mine after the ones I cook, and maybe Nic's Grill in OKC (someday I'm going back, it's almost worth the 7 hour drive by itself) This is a good picture of Cam enjoying his massive burger. He finished the whole thing, I guess he takes after me.

We then went downtown and walked around the riverwalk for a while looking for a short line to get onto a tourboat. Unfortunately, the Alamo Bowl was the next day, and Baylor and Washington University players, band members and fans were all down there clogging the place up. We finally found a docking station that only had a half hour wait to get on, and we stood there enjoying each other's company. The boat ride was fine, the kids liked it, and the sights and smells from all the tree lights and restaurants were amazing.

Earlier this month we finally were able to put some fruit trees on our property. 2 Cherries, a Peach, and a Fig. The cherries are a low frost tree which are fairly new so we're kind of guinea pigging them out here in this Climate. They're the same trees my parents are trying to grow in Apple Valley. It would be awesome if they would produce a decent harvest each year. Jennifer has never had fresh figs before so now she's only a few years away from her first taste. She wanted an apple or a pear tree, but I stuck to my guns about figs. I remember the fig tree that Grandma and Granddad Black had in Fullerton. I remember figs being very very good, but I suppose I also had sentimental reasons for wanting a fig tree. I really hope they all grow and provide us with some fun memories down the road.

We've put in some blackberries, and we're going to start some grapes soon. We'll figure out what else we want to plant as time goes on.

We are doing well out here. Could be better, but can't complain. We miss having family nearby but I guess we should have seen that one coming.

Pizza

2011-09-26T16:31:00.000-07:00

I've been too lazy to try making a good pizza crust from scratch. It always seemed like too much work for a payoff that might not be so good. Last night I was looking for pasta recipes online at foodnetwork.com and saw a little story about making your own pizza dough.

Emeril Lagasse had a highly rated dough recipe, so I tried it out. I had to add a bit more flour than he had before it wasn't sticking to my hands. I let it rise for about 30 minutes, stuck it in the fridge for 15 minutes, and then twirled it out. It stuck to itself on my last twirl, so I ended up just having to roll it out into a misshapen roundish mess. I added some italian seasoning to some canned spaghetti sauce, and topped it with cheese, pepperoni, fresh basil from the garden, onions, and red and yellow peppers.

It smelled amazing cooking in the oven. I was really setting myself up for a huge letdown. It came out of the oven looking like this:

It tasted amazing. The basil was a nice touch. The crust was crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside. I also loved how the uncovered crust poofed up just like in a pizzeria but that the rest of the crust was thin. The kids were coming home just as it came out of the oven, and they loved it too. I had enough dough left over for another, so I made a second pizza.

I can't wait to make more, and hopefully someday with sauce made from our own garden. I'll never look at lower tier pizza chains the same way again.

Addie the Musical Genius

2011-09-05T18:20:00.000-07:00

Today, I was sitting around staring off into space with my mind a complete blank when Addie came to me and asked if I wanted to hear her song. I figured it was some lyrics or something that she would sing, so I started asking her if it was called I'm a Cucumber, and I started singing it. She said no, and led me to the keyboard that I just brought home from my Grandma Black.

She put a drum beat on, and started playing a song. All the notes seemed to go together well enough, there wasn't just key pounding, she seems to have thought it through. Anyways, she finished, and played it again, identical to the first time. I got the camera out and taped it for her. Here's the world premier of Addie's song "Untitled"

Sea World

2011-07-25T19:12:00.000-07:00

Today, I surprised Cam and Addie with a trip to Sea World. Jenn's parents were kind enough to pay for a trip to Sea World back in June when they visited, and paying for one day gives you a season pass, so it was free except for the parking and the gas to get there. Jenn stayed home with Bailey who was too chicken to go on roller coasters, Emery who is too small to go on anything good, and Joelle who is a little sick. I told them to be up in the morning to go shopping. As we pulled away from the house, I let them in on where we were going, and they got excited.

We got there about a half hour before the park opened. We speedwalked to our first rollercoaster of the day, The Steel Eel.

We went on it twice pretty quickly before all the other people showed up and clogged up the line.

We decided to try one of the water rides next, but that part of the park wasn't open for another half hour, so we went to the penguin exhibit. It was cool, but it's amazing how many penguins they cram into such a small habitat.

We went on the Rio Loco as soon as the clock struck 11. We got there well in advance of anyone else, so we were allowed to ride twice in a row without even getting back in line. Everyone got wet.

We went on the water flume ride, which was a long wait, made a big splash, didn't really get anyone wet, and wasn't worth the wait. We went on Rio Loco one more time and the kids decided they had had enough walking around, so we left.

On the way out, we posed with a Shamu statue, I guess Cam was pretty pissed off.

All Moved Out

2011-05-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

Today we turned in our keys to the mouse poop house. We've still got boxes all over the place at our new house, but no more hauling stuff around until we get our stuff out of storage from Utah.

The kids are all excited to be in their own rooms. So far, the surprise of surprises is that Addie is keeping her room the cleanest.

I think it's funny that we have this huge yard to run around in now, and Cam still insists on making jet noises and running around in the living room.

We love our house, it's got some personality. We hope it will be a great place to live for years to come, and we thank everyone who had any hand at all in helping us get here.

Home Sweet Home

2011-04-28T16:20:00.001-07:00

We did our final walkthrough on our house tonight, we're closing tomorrow morning. All the kids got to see the house from the inside and they all picked their rooms. One of the previous owners of the home was there taking care of a few things and she seemed pretty nice. She said she was happy to see their house going to another large family, they had 4 girls and a boy as well. We're hoping to start moving things in this weekend, and probably move in permanently on Monday.

Below are some links to an accident I responded to last night. In the video, I am the one who squatted down to lift the stretcher wheels up off the ground when we were loading it into the ambulance. Then I stand up. It's so exciting :)

http://www.ksat.com/video/27700450/index.html

http://www.ksat.com/news/27700495/detail.html

Update

2011-03-20T15:38:00.000-07:00

We were invited after our last offer to send in a new offer that the sellers could accept. We offered 182,500 for the house on 2 acres. The next door neighbors are buying the rest of the land since they're working the land already anyways.

We have to have a surveyor come out and redraw the land, and we're hoping that goes fast. We'd like to be moving at the end of April. But more time here at the mouse poop house means more time to save money and less time of driving the kids 10 miles to school each day.

The news

2011-03-17T18:58:00.000-07:00

One of the cool things about working in a big city is that a lot of the major fires and traffic accidents that we see make the news. I've already seen the back of my head on TV (I'm one of the taller guys on most calls, and I've got distinguishing orange probie stickers on my helmet) The other night we made a fire at an abandoned home that was fully involved when we got there and ended up being a total loss. My friend happened to be working on the ladder truck at the same station where I was on the engine, and he ended up getting on the news as they were cleaning up the mess and waiting for arson (we were put back in service, so I never saw the news crews). We were 2nd in to that fire, but since it was decided that we were going defensive from the start, I got to pull one of our preconnects and actually help put out the fire.

We're hoping to have found our home, a 6 bedroom home out in the country. It's an older home that is going to require some work, but it's nice and appears to be clean. The people selling it are asking a bit much for it, and they aren't budging much on the price, but we think we may have found a compromise. The property that is for sale is a 1.5 acre lot with the home on it, and 4.7 acres of excess land that's currently being rented out for farming. They wanted 215,000 and we offered 180. They said they would sell us the land that the home is on only for that price, but we'd like to get some land to grow some fruit trees and a big garden. We're trying to get them to redraw the property lines and give us 2 acres, and sell the other 4.25 acres to someone else. Here's hoping it works out, there aren't a whole lot of 6 bedroom houses for sale in that area, but we want to make sure we're getting a fair deal. When we hear anything we'll post it.

Oh My Gosh I Almost Stepped On It!!!

2011-01-17T11:48:00.000-08:00

Saturday we were leaving the house and getting the kids in the car. It was raining outside and we were taking the kids to the library to reward some good behavior. Jenn started carrying Joelle over to her side of the car, and then she screamed the title of this post. I was puzzled for a moment, but quickly figured out what must have happened.

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This is the first snake I'd seen since we've been at this house. I think it looks pretty cool, and all the kids concurred, even Emery. It just sat there, staring at us. We left it alone and went to the library. Jenn is just going to have to get over being afraid of snakes, I'm sure it won't be the last time she sees one.

Back on the information superhighway... in a Pinto

2011-01-14T19:37:00.000-08:00

Blogspot only lets me post 5 pictures with them, so I made a gif out of some pictures that our class historian took. It's pretty cool, and it ends up being a lot better than 5 stupid pictures on top of each other.

You should see me doing an emergency bailout. Lucky for me, there weren't pictures of when one of my SCBA straps got caught in one of the grooves of the ladder beams, and I got stuck up there for a while. This bailout went pretty smooth.

Jenn and the kids moved down with me on Christmas day. Our rental home still doesn't have cable internet hooked up as of today. We've had 5 visits from Time Warner trying to get our home hooked up, and each time they send someone who is incapable of hooking up our home, even though every time I schedule an appointment, I let them know of all the issues we've had and that they need to send someone who is qualified and able to do the specific work that we need. Our home is right near the edge of Time Warner's service area. I believe the line runs out about 500 yards past our house. It's been verified that service is available, it's just inconvenient for them to install it. I finally gave up and am now on Virgin Mobile 3G broadband. I don't know if you can call something that connects you at 100kbps broadband, but it's a connection, and I guess it's all we're going to be able to get.

I graduate from the fire academy in 3 weeks. I'm nervous and excited to get started. It's going to be weird starting a new routine, and losing contact with most of the friends I've made in the past 5 months. We're doing live fire at the academy next week, and after that, it's just studying for the city and state tests, and administrative work. After 5 months of training, I can't believe they're just going to throw us all out there after a 20 minute date with the burn building. I'm praying for good officers when I get out into the field, because I'm pretty sure I'll be lost for a while.

I'm hoping to finally get to post a bit more, now that I do have some form of internet access.

Little Tiny Field Mice and Texas Sized Cockroaches

2010-12-18T20:52:00.000-08:00

So, I was finally able to move out of my one bedroom apartment in San Antonio out to a 3 bedroom home on 3 acres out in Seguin. When I viewed the house for the first time, I saw a mouse run from one of the bedrooms into the kitchen. I don't know how long the house has been vacant, but I figured that a house in the country is probably going to have some pest control issues, and that I could handle it.

The first night I was out here, I was awoken at 3 am by what sounded like scratching on the floor in the kitchen. I didn't feel like getting up to investigate, and when I finally got up, I didn't really notice anything out of the ordinary. I set some mousetraps since I knew I had at least one mouse.

When I got home, I noticed that the peanut butter I had put on the traps had all been licked off without springing the traps. I also noticed a trail of pretzel crumbs coming out of a previously unopened bag of buffalo chicken flavored pretzel bits which I was looking forward to eating. I had a few bags of chips, 2 store brand knock off chips, and the pretzels I really wanted to try, and the I guess the mouse had the same tastes. I wasn't happy.

That night I had a friend of mine over watching Burn Notice dvds, and he saw a mouse running along the floorboards in my living room. We cornered it eventually, and I smooshed it with a roll of paper towels.

Anyways, I started looking for other signs, and I moved the microwave and toaster off my counter to look around. There, behind the toaster oven was a gigantic cockroach, he was looking at me, his face was big enough to have an expression that said "Yo, where did you sweep all those crumbs that were here earlier?" I informed him that he was not a welcome guest in my home, crushed him, and staked him out in my yard as a warning for other pests who want to encroach on my space.

This morning, I went to Home Depot to buy mousetraps and a few other items I need to get ready for Jenn and the kids getting here. I bought some of those ultrasonic pest thingamajigs, a few more mousetraps, and one where mice walk into the box, but can't get out, as well as some roach traps.

I set my traps and went out on a run, went to check out of my old apartment by cleaning and turning in keys, and out with a few friends, and came back. More peanut butter had been licked off the other style of traps I had bought, maybe field mice don't weigh enough to trip them. I looked at the little box trap, and didn't see anything, so I picked it up, and lo and behold, there was a mouse in it, hiding under the trap door.

I brought it close to the ultrasonic thingy to see if it would react to whatever sound that thing claims to put out. I think it's a crock, the mouse didn't do a thing when I plugged it in right next to it.

Well, there's one adventure for this week.

In other news, at the academy we got to put out a car fire, and a liquid fuel fire. When they lit the fuel pit, it started up really quick, and a giant plume of black smoke started blowing out towards the highway. It was amazing how fast the heat radiated out to where I was standing, and equally amazing how fast it dissipated when the fog streams went up. It made for a really cool day of class.

Rescue Week

2010-11-19T19:41:00.000-08:00

This week at the academy, our technical rescue teams have come to teach us some basic rescue and extrication techniques. It's been a great week with the exception of the 6 hour lecture kicking it off. Our training evolutions have been really fun, and our rescue team instructors have been really cool and helpful.

So far, we've done some repelling down the side of our tower in harnesses we tied out of webbing (praying my knots hold up), torn up cars with spreaders and cutters, dove headfirst off balconies onto ladders and pivoted to feet down while 10 feet off the ground and slid down the beams to simulate an emergency bailout, simulated an elevator shaft rescue using handcuff knots, practiced the Denver drill, which is more or less a really crappy confined space rescue (only crappy because the tall guy usually ends up getting a face full of the victim's butt, and crappier if you get called to be the biggest unconscious victim of the day and you get slammed around against the walls, hung up by the helmet on the windowsill, and ultimately dropped), and so on and so forth. We also practiced disentangling ourselves, lowering occupied baskets down ladders, and carrying down firefighters down ladders. Next week we'll be doing more searches and a lot of crawling.

Eventually our class historian is going to post the pictures he's been taking. Luckily, he's been in my group all week, so I hope to be able to post a few pictures of me diving off the balcony onto our ladder, or hanging off of it sideways trying to turn around to slide down. After just a little bit of practice, we got my 'company' of 4 cadets down the ladder in 15 seconds, even with getting hung up a little on the protruding beams of the ladder (normally you don't have to worry about that, because the tip of the ladder would be slightly below the windowsill).

This week went by fairly quickly, which is good, because I'm really looking forward to spending some time with family next weekend. I haven't seen my 4 oldest kids since August and I bet I miss them more than they miss me. I can't wait to talk to them in person.

Also, we're in the process of applying for a rental home out in Seguin, a Spanish Fork sized town about half an hour outside San Antonio. It's only a 3 bedroom house, but the 3rd bedroom is a huge loft on the 2nd floor that we can probably separate into 3 or 4 separate rooms with dividers. The house sits in a quiet neighborhood on about 5 acres of land, and it's very reasonably priced for the size. We could sure use any prayers thrown our way so that we can get approved and move in.

Hiking, Donuts, and BBQ

2010-11-12T16:46:00.000-08:00

We got Veteran's Day off from the academy. It was a little weird getting a Thursday off in the middle of a week, but the day off was well appreciated. I'd like to say thanks to all the veterans out there, not because we got the day off, but because of your contributions and sacrifices for our country.

A few of us cadets drove up to Georgetown to go hiking at Lake Georgetown. On the way, we passed through Round Rock, so we stopped at Round Rock Donuts as seen on Man V Food. A friend and I shared a Texas Sized glazed donut. It wasn't bad, but I was expecting better. There wasn't a whole lot of orange flavor in the donut or the glaze. I also had an eclaire, which was pretty tasty.

The lake wasn't too far, but it was just a place to walk really, nothing incredibly scenic. We hiked part of the way around the lake and were out for about 3 and a half hours walking, and maybe 10 minutes skipping rocks.

On the way back from hiking, we detoured over into Driftwood and went to The Salt Lick. It was good, just as good as it was the first time I went. I wish I hadn't eaten the donuts, could have squeezed in more brisket and ribs.

My wife, the angel

2010-11-07T18:50:00.001-08:00

Yes, Jenn had a rough day at church today. Yes, she's been pretty frustrated trying to be both a mom and a dad to 5 kids. I still know she's an angel, and now I have proof. This is a still that I got from her webcam while we were chatting, you can see the pillar of light surrounding her.

I love you Jenn. This specific trial will be over soon enough, but I'm sure I'll find new ways to make you just as angry and upset as you were today :) You'll always be my angel, even without the cool artificial lighting effects.

Air show

2010-11-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

Today there was an air show at Lackland AFB, not too far from the fire academy. There had been jets practicing for the past few days while we were out playing with hand and power tools practicing forcible entry. I think they were using our tower as a landmark for because they'd loop around it and head back to the base a lot. The stars of the show were the F-16 Thunderbirds, which are the Air Force's show team. They did some really cool stuff that my pictures and video didn't do justice to.

Anyways, we were given permission to go to the academy and sit in the bleachers and watch the show. We were also given permission to bring our families, but on short notice I couldn't get Jenn to drive out here :)

The kids would have loved it, the planes got close enough that you could actually see the pilots as they flew over us upside down. It's a free show, maybe they'll be able to join me at the airfield next year.

I wonder what might have happened to my car

2010-11-02T04:14:00.000-07:00

Last night around 11 a pretty crazy hailstorm happened.

It was loud, the video doesn't do justice to the sound of the hailstones hitting my front door and my glass sliding door. I was just hoping I didn't end up with cracked glass.

I grabbed the camera and took the above video until the battery ran out. Then I charged it up for a few minutes to have enough juice to take a few pictures of the stones on my front landing.

Gigantic Burrito

2010-10-26T18:33:00.000-07:00

There is a burrito chain down here called Freebirds. Their biggest burrito is called the Super Monster. I guess it's about a foot long, and probably about 5 inches thick. Here's a picture as I was starting it.

It was really good. Steak, guacamole, pico de gallo, cheese, rice, black beans, red onions, cilantro, and hot sauce. I powered through half of it just because it tasted so good. It started tasting less good after my body started telling me to stop eating. By the end, it was really salty, and my stomach was pissed and hoarse from screaming at me. I did finish it in one sitting, which sort of amazed some of my classmates. (I say sort of, because some of them already watched me plow through 3 slices of pizza at Big Lou's).

I'd definitely eat there again, just not the same quantity.

Big Lou's

2010-10-15T13:58:00.000-07:00

Today was our National Registry EMT-B test. A few of us in the class thought it would be fun to go to Big Lou's (as seen on Man V. Food) for a hopefully celebratory lunch. I took my test at about 9:30 this morning, and finished in about an hour. I didn't feel great about it, but knowing that the majority of students pass it on the first try, I liked my chances. A lot of the questions were pretty vague, and I was narrowing the multiple choice question format down to the last 2 options without a clear winner more often than I would have liked.

I got home and got on the NREMT website, refreshed my page a few times, and left for Big Lou's without knowing if I had passed. This is what we ordered.

We had invited a few more than just 5 to try to take down the biggest pizza they made, but we made a valiant effort on it, coming up just short. The pizza was very good, at least the first slice was. It became less and less appealing the more I ate. I ate 3 slices, tops by about a half slice. If the other guys had pulled their weight, I might have been able to eat a little more to polish it off, but we ended up about 3 slices short. It was all pretty fun.

As we were leaving, one of the guys checked his phone and saw that he had passed the exam. I borrowed an iphone and found that I had as well, and it's a good thing, because bad news could have caused some explosive vomiting, which would have probably been frowned upon. It's one more hurdle cleared on my way to a great job.

Time Flies

2010-10-14T03:21:00.000-07:00

I just spent the fastest week of my life with Jenn and Joelle. It was over way too soon.

I just got back from dropping them off at the airport, and shortly I'll be needing to get ready for work. It seems like just half an hour ago, I was in the cell phone waiting parking lot at the airport, listening to my new Guster CD, anxiously waiting for Jenn to call me, telling me she was ready. We got to do some fun things in the little free time I had, but it was really nice just to have someone to come home to, and someone to talk to.

I miss you already Jenn. If you weren't so awesome, maybe our week would have slowed down a bit.

Why I stick with Geico

2010-10-01T18:11:00.000-07:00

The gecko makes housecalls! If I ever have a claim, I know he'll be here for me :)

I was on the phone taking care of some errands when I looked over and saw a lizard on my balcony screen door. I remembered Dad's lizard picture from his computer and it reminded me of that. So I grabbed the camera and tried to get a good picture. I think they turned out pretty detailed. Thanks to Dad for sending me his camera!

I went out for a run tonight after having taken 3 days off due to ambulance ride-alongs and hospital clinical work. I finished 1.5 miles in 9:45, which is pretty darned amazing considering where I was last year, or even 3 months ago. It's 25 seconds faster than my best time so far. I continued running up to 3 miles in 21:40. I'm getting closer to sniffing times that I might have been able to run in high school. I'm building endurance for faster runs pretty quickly, as I've changed from running lots of mileage to focusing on speed at shorter distances. Dropping 10 pounds since the academy has started has surely helped. Now when I run, I feel like I'm actually running rather than just jogging, pushing rather than just falling forward. I also saw 2 bucks on my run today. One of them scared me, it was right at the start of my run and I was focusing on keeping up a good pace rather than my surroundings. I guess I snuck up on him too, because he startled and leaped off the trail into the bushes as I passed.

Moving the bald guy down the screen

2010-09-25T19:26:00.001-07:00

Nothing interesting has happened over the past 2 weeks, at least nothing that I should be writing about. My hair has grown back in a bit, and luckily, it all came back, at least everything I had before. So to get my bald pictures off the top of the screen, I'll fill you in on all the mundane things that are happening.

We started clinical work on Friday. I went out with one of our paramedic companies. We ran on 6 calls, and got to meet some interesting people. I had a good time. Some of the other cadets had much more interesting calls than I had. I'm going to be in a hospital ER on Tuesday, and 2 more days of Ambulances on Wednesday and Thursday.

I ran 5 miles today. Inspired by not wanting to lose to Brie (5 in 42 minutes), I ran them in 41:47. I think she beats me though because of the difference in altitude, but I bet she didn't suck a mosquito down her windpipe during mile 3. I finished my 1.5 mile run in 10:20, then continued running 3.5 miles at about a 9:00 mile pace. I've got the benefit of much longer legs, so Brie, I bow to your level of health.

I'm doing much better on pullups now, before and after my run I did a set of 12. 2 months ago I could only do 5 or maybe 6 in a row.

When I was fitted for my uniforms, the guy asked me what size belt I needed, I told him 38. He gave me a 40, I guess because I would be using the middle holes rather than the end ones of the 38. I've now shrunk to the point that the last notch of the 40 isn't quite tight enough, and have borrowed a 38 from a cadet that went down from a 38 to a 36. I figure I'm down about 3 inches, and I still have some more of that spare tire that needs to come off.

Fruit has been really cheap here lately. I just picked up a bunch of nectarines for 60 cents a pound, and some peaches for 35. Bananas have been 25 cents a pound here for a month. I'll probably freeze whatever peaches and nectarines I don't eat when they ripen.

Hairless

2010-09-12T16:53:00.001-07:00

I posted a few pictures to my facebook page and realized that not everyone would be able to see it.

As a part of grooming standards at the academy here, I have to keep my hair clipped to less than 3/8" all around. I've got my own electric hair clippers which I use bi-weekly to cut it down to 1/8". 1/8" is nearly bald, and my head shape isn't as weird as it was when I was growing up, either that, or I am far less self conscious. Anyways, I've been toying with the idea of shaving my head completely bald for the past few weeks.

Today I did it. I had nothing better to do, kind of like the time on my mission that I was stuck inside for a while during a period where they didn't want us outside tracting and I shaved my legs (ladies, I have no idea how you put up with that, my pants stuck to my legs for days. It drove me nuts.)

I don't think it looks half bad. I'm not afraid of looking like this again if I end up becoming more follicly challenged. It feels super weird though to touch up there and feel sandpaper.

I know... I'm kind of a slob.

2010-09-06T12:27:00.001-07:00

I took some pictures of my apartment. I didn't clean it up on purpose to prove a point. It looks like blogspot cut off the right half of them, so if you want to get the full picture just click on them and they'll take you to photobucket.

This is my kitchen. On the left side, you can see my dishwasher up against the wall. It's about half the size of a normal dishwasher. It's not really worth running, but seeing as how I bought the soap for it, I'm going to use it until I'm out of soap. Then I'll probably just use it as a place to put clean dishes after washing them by hand. I bought a broom that I haven't used yet. I have a nice pan that is just like the one that came heavily recommended to mom by some random lady at Costco. It's currently dirty, I wash it when I need to use it. It does not go in the dishwasher. The far left is my stinky fridge. It smelled of death when I moved in, and it's gone down a few levels to merely puke. Well, at least maybe it doesn't smell so bad, maybe I'm just getting used to it. I think the vinegar and the baking soda have helped somewhat.

Here is my box collection room. I'm afraid to throw away decent sized boxes because I'll need them in 8 months when I leave here. The powerade bottle (partially filled with water) next to the shoepolish and rag is my boot shining station. A little water, a little kiwi polish and a lot of buffing get my shoes reasonably shiny.

This is my front door. In the corner I have a big box that I keep filling with trash. I'll get around to emptying it eventually. There isn't anything rancid in there, it's mostly plastic. This is also the area where I dump everything I'm carrying when I get home from work. My gym bag and towel are on the floor there, and I do not want to inhale any fumes from that in my bedroom when I'm sleeping.

Next 2 pictures are my "home office/dining room" I have space to put a bowl or a plate of food in front of my keyboard. The chair is the only place I have here to sit down other than on the floor.

This is my bedroom. That is an 8 dollar inflatable mattress from Walmart on the floor. It's actually not too uncomfortable, and it holds air good enough that I only need to put a few puffs into it every few nights or so. I blew it up with my lungs on my first night here, when it was 100 degrees in here at 11 pm. That sucked. Lightheaded and burning up.

Last is the bathroom. I looked at 5 or 6 different apartments before coming to this one. This wasn't even on my list, I just saw it as I was leaving a different nearby apartment. This is the only one I found with a washer and dryer already in the room. It has been a life saver! I do at least 1 load every day, usually 2. If I was doing this at a laundry room, even one on site, I would have shelled out a fortune so far, not to mention spending hours and hours away from my apartment keeping an eye on my laundry. It washes larger loads than you would think just from looking at it.

I'm doing pretty well. Today is Labor Day, and we didn't have any school. I went out and ran at one of the city parks that has running trails. 4.15 miles in 34 minutes. I ran through my mile and a half in 10:35 today which is putting me on track to come close to my goal of 9 flat before the academy is over. I have lost a considerable amount of weight, and I'm pretty sure it's going to continue when we start having to do PT in bunker gear. That reminds me, looking at the FD website, they show some of the cadets wearing bunker gear. They have first initial and last name across the bottom of the coat. I'm going to be A FOX. That ought to be worth a few laughs at my expense, even if I am a handsome man.

I just want to say that having to take care of myself has opened my eyes a little more. I already knew I was married to the greatest woman I ever could have hoped for, but she takes care of me, which is a big job in and of itself, and she keeps 5 kids mostly clean and usually out of trouble. I don't know where or what I'd be without her. She doesn't give herself a whole lot of credit, but she is really one amazing person, and I am the luckiest guy in the world to have her in my life. I am counting down the days until Thanksgiving, and I am excited to be able to provide a life for her that she has always deserved. I love you Jenn, you're awesome!

Not much to say

2010-08-23T15:33:00.000-07:00

I'm not really supposed to post much about my new job, so I won't. I'll just say that I am getting along quite nicely, and I'm happy I came.

It's been rough being away from family, and I've been without internet for over a week until today. I'm really looking forward to video chatting with Jenn and the kids as soon as Jenn thinks about answering her phone.

I've been eating pretty healthy and I've lost quite a bit of weight.

I moved into my new apartment on my 11th anniversary, 8-14. Last year on 8-14 I was here in San Antonio taking the written test. I've missed my last 2 anniversaries, which means number 12 had better be pretty darned cool.

Anyways, I'm doing ok, and I might not be updating this much, since all I really do is work, and I can't blog about it. I'm on a strict diet, which means that eating at some of the cooler bbq places is kind of out of the question for a while.

The Journey

2010-08-10T22:39:00.001-07:00

I'm now in San Antonio, Texas. I've got a few days to prepare for the start of the fire academy on August 16.

On Saturday, the seven of us and Molly went to go see my Grandma in San Jacinto before I left California for good. We had a good time, the kids got more than too many stuffed animals, and we got chased by a pack of ducks.

These ducks were hoping for a handout and came right up to our golfcart. We went around their pond and they swam across to cut us off, still hoping for food. It was pretty hilarious watching them sprint-waddle up to us.

On Monday morning, I set out on a 2 day drive from Apple Valley to San Antonio. It's a total of 21 hours in a car. It was really really hard to leave, and it took a few hours for my red puffy eyes to get back to normal. I'm really going to miss my family, and my only hope in taking this job for now is that it will be worth the time I am spending away from them. I love all my kids and I love my lovely Jenn.

I drove through Lucerne Valley to Yucca Valley on the 18, and then down to Palm Springs on the 62. The rest of the trip was on I-10. Once I got across the Arizona state line I noticed that there were tons of highway patrol out. This wasn't meant to be a quick trip. The highways were pretty heavily patrolled until I made it to Texas.

In Tempe, I stopped at Chompie's, a New York style Deli that was featured on Man V. Food a few weeks ago. They had the big challenge that Adam ended up failing on the show, which is 12 Jewish Sliders in 30 minutes or less. A Jewish Slider is a delicious mini sandwich with a potato pancake, brisket, and jack cheese. I ordered 3 of them and downed them in 5 minutes. I think I might try for the T-Shirt and free meal next time I'm in the area as long as there are plenty of people there cheering me on. I don't think gorging myself all alone would be very fun. If I had driven through there on a Tuesday after 4pm I could have had all I could eat sliders and actually seen if 12 would be possible. Oh well.

I stopped by Grandma and Granddad Black's house in Mesa after I ate lunch. We had a nice chat, and I had a nice couch to sit on to give me a break from the car. Thanks for opening your home to me, I appreciated the break and the conversation. I hope I'll get to see you in November.

I drove to Tucson and stopped at El Guero Canelo, another Man V. Food restaurant. I had a Sonoran Style Hot Dog, which is a hot dog wrapped in bacon, and smothered with beans, mayo, jalapeño sauce, mustard, onions and tomatos. There is a lot of love in that soft bun for $2.39. I'm glad I made the small detour, it was probably the best hot dog I've ever had (by that I mean the best way I've ever eaten a run of the mill "Farmer John" style wiener, obviously kosher all beef franks or brats are better tasting sausages, imagine what a Sonoran style brat would be like...).

Normally I would have taken pictures of my famous food, but Jenn kept my camera in California. I guess I'll just have to go back :)

I stayed in Las Cruces on Monday night, woke up somewhat early and began driving the last 9 hours to San Antonio. As I drove through El Paso, the Mexican border was so close in one spot that I could see over the river border into Ciudad Juarez, and there was a hill covered in shacks. It's amazing how different life must be across the street.

There weren't any more foodie places to eat on the border towns along I-10. I was surprised with the scenery of West Texas. I guess the western part of the state up until about San Antonio is known as Hill Country. It was pretty. The hills were rolling, giving variety to the road, and the sky was vibrant blue with a multitude of puffy white clouds. I remembered that I do have a camera on my phone, but I don't have the capability as of yet to get the pictures off of it and on to my computer, plus, it's 1.3 megapixels and probably really blurry.

I got to my hotel at about 6:30 and now I'm here. I guess I'll write more when I have more to say.

Here's a crappy cell phone picture of the view from my car.

Mavericks Game

2010-07-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

Last night, Grant treated Emery, Cam, Addie, Bailey, Molly, Ceri and I to a Mavericks game on Ebmeyer Charter Munchie Monday. Nachos, hamburgers and small sodas were a buck each. I think I won the most food downed award with 4 orders of nachos, 3 burgers and 3 drinks. Cam had 3 burgers and a nachos, Bailey had 2 nachos and 2 burgers, Addie ate 2 nachos and a burger. Emery picked at some nachos, but finished a whole burger.

The game was a blowout. It was 16-3 66ers in the 5th inning. We left in the 7th inning when the score was 16-8. The game ended up a 17-11 loss for the Mavs. It was still a fun game though. They played stupid songs for the 66ers when they came to bat, one guy had "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" which was pretty funny. They had a promotion where one of the 66ers had to strike out in order for the fans to get $1 beer. The kids got to run across the outfield chasing Wooly Bully in the middle of the 5th inning. After the run, Bailey, Addie and Cam all got him to sign their hands. Emery was mortified whenever the mascot was around. Emery had a great time when Wooly Bully wasn't around, and shook her stuff to the music in between innings.

Brad Ebmeyer was there, and I was talking to him while putting stuff on burgers and nachos. I lost track of which nachos were mine and ended up putting jalapeños on his nachos as well, which he no longer wanted. I'm sorry Brad :)

We all had a pretty good time, I hadn't been to a kooky single A game for probably 15 years.

Kids Books

2010-05-21T20:21:00.000-07:00

We're going through a bunch of stuff getting ready to move. Jenn found these old coloring books that we let the kids color in at church. She said that she didn't order these books specifically, that they came in a large cheap package deal. The bookstore must have been dying to get rid of them.

I tried to describe them before posting the pictures, but my words won't do them justice.

Balding kids, bearded kids, mustachioed kids, and kids in jail. It's amazing these books couldn't sell on their own. I don't think you need to turn Paul into a child to get kids to color him in. If you're going to turn biblical prophets and apostles into kids, at least don't make them mutants.

Adventures in Census Taking

2010-05-14T20:06:00.000-07:00

I've had the chance to meet quite a few people in the last few weeks. Most have been very cooperative, a few have been a bit paranoid about how the information would be used, but until today, I hadn't run into the scum of the earth.

Last week at about 1:30pm, I was knocking doors, and saw a man loading a car out in front of a house that was on my list. I told him who I was, and asked him if he had a moment to answer a few questions. He told me "Not now, come back tomorrow, but earlier" I asked if noon would work for him, and he told me 1:00. I went back the next day right at 1:00 and no one was there.

I finally made it through my area today, and I started going back through all the houses that didn't answer their doors the first time around. As I was walking down the other side of the street, I recognized that man from a week ago, and called out to him. I apologized that I had missed him the previous week, and asked him if he had a moment to help me fill out my form. He got annoyed, told me that he had already filled it out, and what he wanted to do was show me the form that he had already filled in but forgot to mail. I explained that if the mailed form doesn't make it in on time, I am required to fill out a form with them. He started yelling that that was not what he and I had agreed to do, and that I needed to get the hell out of there. He said a few more choice words, told me that I had better leave, insulted me as I walked to my car, and demanded that I come back to him to take a flyer I had left at his door. When I continued walking to my car, he screamed at me, crumbled up my paper, and threw it in my direction. I just kind of laughed to myself in my car as I drove away. I don't know what would cause someone to blow up over something as trivial as the census, maybe a census worker ran over his dog.

Anyways, I'll have to get his information from a neighbor, at least the number of people who live there. I have a feeling he's there alone.

Cam the Baserunner

2010-04-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

I won free tickets to a Bees game when I joined a March Madness bracket group started by one of the local sports radio stations. Cam and I went on Saturday night.

The game was pretty boring, and the Bees lost 6-2. After the game, the promotion for the night was letting the kids run around on the field, which I thought would be pretty cool.

We got to go down on the field, and they let each of the kids take off running from home around all the bases.

I took video of most of it, but I wanted to get a nice picture of Cam when he was getting close. He was running so fast that he blurred it.

Walk it off

2010-04-15T15:51:00.000-07:00

Addie came home today with bandages on both of her knees. They didn't look too good, the bandages looked like they had been soaked through with something. She was hobbling around really slow. Jenn didn't pay really close attention to what had happened, and really with good reason because Addie is a huge baby and has no pain threshold whatsoever.

Both of the older girls had activity days today, it's close enough to walk. A couple of neighbor girls came over and wanted Bailey and Addie to walk with them. They were running a little late, so Jenn started to threaten Addie with trouble if she didn't move her butt with the rest of the girls. "I swear Addie, if you make the rest of the girls 20 minutes late to activity days you're in trouble" and "It won't hurt if you don't think about it" They set off somewhat briskly, and Addie was already lagging behind. Jenn was yelling out the front door "ADDISON, YOU'VE GOT TO BEND YOUR KNEES, YOU CAN'T WALK THAT WAY!!! WALK NORMAL!!!" I asked Jenn if she had even looked at Addie's knees and she said no. I said they looked pretty banged up to me. Then I went downstairs.

A few minutes later, Addie came back home, alone, and crying. Jenn finally looked at her legs, which were pretty chewed up. Apparently, today at school Addie was running to try to get first in line on the monkey bars, and she tripped and fell on the concrete, skinning her knees something fierce. She went to the office, where they put some bandages on her, and told her to call home. They let Addie use the office phone, but since she doesn't use the phone much, she didn't know what to do when Jenn's voice mail picked up. Then rather than try to contact us themselves, they sent Addie back to class where she probably suffered through the day. Her left knee isn't too bad, looks like a rug burn, but the right knee has lost a few layers of skin and looks really painful. We slathered it with antibiotic, and let her watch cartoons.

Jenn feels bad now, but I think it's funny. I wouldn't ever think about using the word heartless to describe my wife, so the thought of her screaming menacingly at her hobbled daughter as she struggles to keep up with her healthy sister and friends strikes me as humorous. Now Jenn has set a precedent for how I can treat the kids' injuries. Rub some dirt in it and walk it off you big baby.

Storytime with Emery

2010-04-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

This morning, I got out of bed and heard Emery telling a story to Cameron on the couch upstairs. I laid down and listened too. I asked her if she wouldn't mind telling the story to the camera, and she said she would. She froze up when I turned on the camera, but when I put it down on the table and laid back down she eventually got back into it.

This is Emery retelling Goldilocks and the Three Bears as told to her by Cameron. He probably heard it it school or something, because Goldilocks isn't on my rotation of bedtime stories.

Gooey Cinnamon Rolls

2010-03-21T16:08:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time, Costco sold a box of 6 cinnamon rolls that were just drenched in frosting. I've never been too fond of sweet foods (I mean, I'll eat them, I'll eat ANYTHING), but I had a soft spot for those cinnamon rolls, with the cream cheese frosting that made your eyes roll back into your head.

They stopped making them years ago, probably because they don't go through your digestive system, they just clog it up. After a while, I forgot that they ever existed.

When I went to San Antonio in January and brought home the giant cinnamon roll, I remembered the lovely Costco ones, and lamented that they weren't available anymore. The giant cinnamon roll was ok, but it's popular for it's size more than for it's quality. The Costco rolls are what sweet food must be like in Heaven.

A few weeks ago I was buying diapers, baby formula, and milk at the Orem Costco. I noticed a circular tin of 9 cinnamon rolls that looked somewhat familiar. I passed on them to go and do the rest of my shopping. When I was waiting in line to checkout, an employee walked by announcing a new bakery item, gooey cinnamon rolls, and he was holding a few tins that had just come out of the oven and were still warm. I figured I was destined to take them home.

They were amazing. Just as good as I remembered them. Maybe even better.

If you're lucky, they're at a Costco near you.

Baby Joelle Celina

2010-02-26T15:47:00.000-08:00

Jennifer was induced this morning. She had an epidural that didn't work too well, and had a rough go of it, but she did a good job and delivered a healthy 9 pound 9 ounce baby about 2 hours into labor.

We had narrowed down to a few names that Jennifer had picked (I had and utilized veto power quite often). She liked Joelle, and we talked to my mom about family names we could use for the middle name. Celina is my great great grandmother on my dad's side.

I've taken a few pictures. I probably won't see Jenn or Joelle until Sunday, because the rest of the kids are still a little under the weather.

The Amazing Shopko Clearance Rack

2010-02-07T19:44:00.000-08:00

When we moved in to Jenn's parents' basement in April, we weren't planning on being here this long. I misjudged the amount of time it takes to get through government hiring processes, as well as my ability to find work to fill in the gap. I only brought 3 pairs of exercise shorts with me, which I mostly used as pajamas.

Any clothes I wear during my workouts now are unusable until they can be washed. They have stink lines radiating from them after an hour of sweating in them. I had been looking for a good deal on some shorts in the newspaper and I hadn't seen much.

Shopko finally had a sale on some generic brand shorts that were normally 12 bucks. They were selling for 7.50. We decided to go check it out. I found 4 nice pairs, and walked around the store with Bailey and Emery while Jenn tried on clothes. I had PLENTY of time, let me tell you. You shouldn't go clothes shopping with an immensely pregnant woman unless you're a pillar of patience, and lucky for all of us I am :). I decided to go look at the clearance rack before heading over to the register to pay for our clothes. I found shorts on clearance for 2.99 and 4.99. I got 6 pairs for less than the original 4 I had picked out. The shorts on clearance were nicer than the ones that were on sale too. I guess they had been discontinued or something (the newer ones appear to have been made from shinier fabric, that was the only difference). Anyways, I cleaned them out of their XXL and XL shorts. I'm feeling good.

Now I can work out 8 times a week and not run out of shorts, and not repulse the people on the treadmills next to me at the gym or faint from my own foul smell. I don't remember ever sweating as much during high school or collegiate athletics. Getting old stinks, literally.

A Pleasant Month

2010-01-31T22:19:00.000-08:00

Yes, I just wrote about how much I hated Budget Rent a Car, but really I can't complain much about the past month. Other than deciding never to do business with them again, it really hasn't affected my overall mood very much.

On Fast Sunday this month, in Elder's Quorum, we talked about new year's resolutions, and habits and things we should all be doing. We went through a pretty long list, and discussed ways that made each of those habits easier to do or more effective when we did them. I don't remember much of anything that was on the list, because one thing stuck out to me more than anything. I hadn't been studying my scriptures much at all. This wasn't a habit that I lost recently, I don't think I've consistently read my scriptures for a prolonged period of time since my mission. I think I almost finished the Book of Mormon when President Hinckley challenged us to a few years ago, but that was about it.

I read my scriptures pretty faithfully during seminary, and then my freshman year of college. I had some amazing experiences with it too, to the point where there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Book of Mormon is true. I've been coasting on that testimony for quite some time, not really feeling the need to do any further studying. I know that prophets have said they learn something new every time they read it, I just never really saw much benefit the few times I halfheartedly attempted to restart my habit in the last 10 years.

Another issue I've had so far is not seeing immediate blessings. I've had the blessing (or curse) of recognizing most blessings as they came immediately to me for good works that I had done, or good decisions I had made. I wasn't used to waiting things out. Sure, I had my moments where I was pretty impatient waiting for things to happen, but for the most part, I was able to tie financial blessings to specific decisions or good works that I had done. Up until a year ago, I always felt pretty secure that God was looking out for me.

I've spent the past year or so since losing my job suffering through various levels of depression. The moment I lost my job, I vowed to remain upbeat, but as time wore on, and job prospects weren't materializing, those positive feelings went away. I've said a few things in the presence of my wife and kids that I regret now because I was angry. Angry that I had to go through what I was going through. Angry that I wasn't being rewarded for the parts of the gospel that I diligently followed. I recognized where those feelings were coming from, but there were days and weeks that I didn't feel like fighting those feelings off.

Anyways, I started reading my Book of Mormon on January 4, I've missed one day, and I made up double the next day. I started out the first few days reading in the middle of the day, and then spending some time with the Joseph Smith Papers book that I got from the Beebes for Christmas (so far a good book if anyone is interested). Then I spent a few days barely getting my reading in right before bed, which didn't work out as well so I made more of an effort to get my reading done while I was still awake and alert. I took my scriptures with me to Texas and I read them every day I was there.

Now that I've read a few weeks, I've started making other changes to my lifestyle. I'm trying to get to bed earlier. I started working out so I can be in good shape for whatever academy I end up at. I'm getting healthier and stronger (still haven't lost any weight though :( ) and I'm sure that's contributing to my overall positive feeling, but I feel that it's safe to say that my scripture habits are the main reason.

I've probably read 1 Nephi a million times (I always started there any time I tried to restart my habit) I know the story very well. I knew that Nephi and Lehi went through all sorts of trials to get to the Promised Land. I was never able to liken their story unto myself because I don't think I was ever in any sort of similar situation. Now having been unemployed and waiting for blessings for the past year, and watching the trials that my wife and kids have had to face, and feeling helpless to fix things for them, it's been really easy to put myself into the scriptures, and I've had some really nice insights into it. I never knew what to think when Lehi murmured because Nephi's bow broke. For crying out loud, he was a prophet, he had seen visions, what was the matter with him? It's not like the Lord is going to let you go hungry. It turns out, he got a little impatient, and probably a little hungry. Here he was, doing everything he was asked to do, and their only source of food was broken, not to mention he's got two idiot sons who refuse to get a clue even when angelic visitors rebuke them for being stupid all the time. Looking back, I bet Lehi was a bit ashamed that he didn't hold out hope for heavenly help, but at the time, he was probably thinking 'come on, as if this isn't hard enough already'.

Nephi did just about everything right, and still suffered immensely at the hands of his idiot brothers. The Lord allowed him to be bound, injured, humiliated, and none of it was ever brought about by his own doing.

The thing is, eventually, things worked out well for them. They made it to the Promised Land, they received warnings to flee when it became unsafe for them, and they were blessed as promised when they followed the commandments. It just took them some time to get into a situation where those promised blessings could be honored. It required a lot of patience, long suffering and perseverance to arrive at the point in time where The Lord could make good on His promises. I am not right now in the position where I can realize all the blessings that have been promised to me. My kids are going through a tough time, but they aren't hungry or cold. Living with my in-laws is not ideal, but I am thankful that they are putting up with us. I still don't know what is going to happen (which is a bad thing, I once got really ticked off at Jennifer for surprising me with hockey tickets, she didn't tell me what we were doing til we got to the arena [it was a great present once I knew what I was doing, I just really hate hate hate surprises]) but I feel like I'm getting closer to being gainfully employed.

We are excited about all of our prospects, and I can see the hand of The Lord in the trials that I have faced over the past few years (my last job kind of sucked too) If nothing pans out this summer, I hope I can continue pressing forward knowing that eventually this specific trial will be over. I don't look forward to starting another major trial, but I have faith that I'll be able to meet it head on. I just hope it's not so bad that it has me longing for the days I was unemployed.

I don't use this blog often to express myself this way, but I thought I should today. I'm thankful that I was prompted to begin studying the scriptures again. I'm thankful that I have them, and I'm thankful that I know they're true. I'm thankful for excellent examples that were set for me when I was growing up. I'm thankful for everyone who has helped us out during this difficult time, it would have been impossible to get through this otherwise.

Now I really should be getting to bed, it's past my self imposed bedtime, and Jennifer just looked at me like I'm some sort of hypocrite for being up this late.

Budget Rent a Car Sucks

2010-01-28T12:56:00.000-08:00

First, let me say that I am an idiot, and I could have avoided this situation altogether by paying closer attention.

I rented a car from Budget in Houston when I went there for my firefighter job stuff. I was running on fumes when I got there (I took an early flight, and I was up late packing) I got to the rental counter, and informed the clerk that I had a reservation. She started getting things together, and asked if I wanted to purchase additional insurance coverages. I clearly stated no, that I did not need or want any of the coverages, and that I just needed the car. She printed up my contract, circled a few places for me to initial and sign, and started to explain it to me. When it came time to initial for optional coverages, she told me to initial there to declare that I had declined additional coverages, so I initialed. That isn't what was on the contract. I ended up paying 209 dollars for that little flub, because the clerk decided to try to sneak on additional coverage and hope I wouldn't notice.

When I noticed that I had an extra charge on my credit card, I called them up and asked them what it was for. I explained my situation, what I had verbally told the clerk at the desk, and asked them if there was anything they could do. I was hoping they'd do the right thing, but they decided to take my money instead. There isn't anything I can do legally to fight this since I was enough of a dunderhead to take their clerk's word that the contract was what I had asked for. I thought about disputing it on my credit card, but thought better of it when I found out they could send me to collections even if I won a decision with my credit card.

Dealing with their poor customer service has been a nightmare too, their agents are combative and rude.

Anyways, it's probably a good idea to read thoroughly any contract you sign, even if the line behind you is long and people are getting pissed off waiting. It's also a good idea to not do business with unethical companies like Budget.

Well done Budget, you legally stole 209 dollars from me. I guess I'll be looking elsewhere to rent a moving truck to Texas or Oklahoma this summer.

Almost Home

2010-01-19T22:52:00.001-08:00

I'm finally flying back to Utah tomorrow. I'm stopping in downtown San Antonio to buy a giant cinnamon roll (bigger than my head), and driving back to Houston to fly home. It's a 3 hour drive, with hurricane evacuation lanes the whole way (it's just the shoulder, you're not allowed to drive on it unless there is a hurricane, it was still a little creepy seeing the signs though, just like the tsunami signs on the Oregon Coast.)

While I was in San Antonio, I met Grant, Sam and Kyliena for lunch at The Salt Lick outside of Austin. It was really really good. If I end up getting the job here, anyone helping us move will be treated to lunch there. The brisket was good, and the ribs were awesome. The cole slaw wasn't slathered in ranch dressing or miracle whip, it was dressed with vinegar, sesame seeds, and a little salt. Kyliena has really pretty light blue eyes, and when she occasionally got over her shyness she was a neat little kid (eating onions, offering me all her leftovers, and dropping all of Grant's straws on the ground). Sam was very nice to let us eat at an all you can eat BBQ place even though she isn't a huge fan of large quantities of beef. If you guys are reading this, thanks for making the drive down, it was awesome to see you.

I passed the San Antonio CPAT this morning. I took a Behavioral Analysis test this afternoon, got fingerprinted, and got started on my background paperwork. Their academy starts on June 14. Once my paperwork gets in, it'll take a few weeks to do my background, and I should have a conditional offer about a month later. Since I ranked so high, I'm guaranteed a spot in the June academy as long as I get the conditional offer. I'm pretty excited that 5 months from now I should have a few offers on the table.

Update

2010-01-16T22:45:00.000-08:00

I've passed everything here in Houston. As of now I am waiting for them to pull a complete background on me. There shouldn't be anything in there that would disqualify me for a job, which means that come June, I should at least have an offer.

It was cold and windy on Friday morning, which is somewhat out of the ordinary for Houston. The CPAT wasn't difficult, each event was done on it's own, not all in order. The only thing that people probably ever fail on is the mile and a half run. I ran with a class of out of state applicants, and I guess everyone took the necessary precautions to pass the test. Our slowest finisher was around 12:10, a full minute ahead of the cutoff. I finished in 11:12, which is pretty decent for my level of fitness, but nowhere near where I expect to be after having another 6 months to a year to improve. I don't think I'm capable of getting back into high school cross country shape, but I bet I can get my mile and a half under 10 minutes. That will end up being my goal.

I ended up joining 24 Hour Fitness in Provo. They had a decent deal for a month to month membership. At the very most, I might have to pay for one month that I wouldn't use, but it's worth it to have somewhere to exercise. Even when I was running outside during the summer, as soon as I finished my 20-30 minute run, I'd go in and shower. Now after I finish my runs, I still do other cardio like the stair machine or the elliptical. I also have weights, which have really helped me get my pushup counts up. I'm hoping that eventually I'll start to lose some weight. I'm trying to drink lots of water every day, and cut down on my portion sizes at meals, but after 2 weeks of pretty solid workouts, I was stuck at 235 pounds.

I'm going to church tomorrow in Katy, which is probably where we'll move if I get hired in Houston. After that, I'm driving to San Antonio. I'm going to see Grant and Sam for lunch in Austin on Monday, and I've got the CPAT there on Tuesday.

I'm looking forward to seeing Jenn and the kids again on Wednesday night. I always miss them more than I think I'm going to.

Off to Texas

2010-01-12T22:23:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow morning I am flying to Houston. I've got an interview with HFD on the 14th, the CPAT, fingerprinting, and a polygraph on the 15th.

I'm staying in town that weekend, and I'm going to find a church to go to so I can ask where a good place to live is.

After church on Sunday, I'm going to drive to San Antonio, where I have a CPAT on Tuesday.

Jenn has twisted my arm so that I'll pick up one of the monster 3.5 pound cinnamon rolls as seen on Man V Food and bring it home with me. I also might hit up the all you can eat BBQ place up near Austin from the same show.

I'll be back home next Wednesday.

Running

2010-01-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

I stopped feeling the effects of strep after the 4th day of taking my antibiotics. I signed up for a 14 day free trial gym membership at 24 hour fitness in Provo on the 29th. I've been trying to push myself to make sure that I'm not on the edge of failing my CPATs when I go to Texas this month. The San Antonio test should be pretty easy, it's the same test I took in Oklahoma, but the Houston test includes a mile and a half run in under 13 minutes.

14 years ago that would have been a joke of a test, but now it's slightly more imposing, especially after being laid up for a week with strep. I pushed myself through a lot of cardio last week hoping to get ready, and it wasn't looking too promising. I kept getting tired on the treadmill, and I couldn't run for long periods of time even at slower jogging paces. Instead of running slow and steady, I'd pump up the speed for a quarter or half mile, and then walk for a few minutes.

Today the weather outside is sunny and cold. The roads are pretty clear in the center, but the sidewalks and curbs are all iced over. I decided to go for a run outside to see where I was. I did a mile in 7:50 which would have left me over 5 minutes to run another half mile. I wasn't really that tired either, and probably would have kept up the pace to the finish. I stopped because my thumbs were freezing and my nose was running.

I'm confident that I'll have no problems completing the test now. The weather in Houston is supposed to be in the 50s next week, and moving down to sea level from mile high conditions can't hurt either.

I'm feeling better about my employment situation right now. I'm hoping that quitting a part time job won't push me out of consideration for some of the fire jobs I've applied for, and I don't think it will.

Oh Crap

2009-12-28T16:33:00.000-08:00

I'm recovering from a week long bout with Strep Throat. It's the second time this year that I've had it (it's been miserable) after never having it the previous 32 years of my life. This illness has been inopportune for a number of reasons.

Last time I had strep, it took me about a month to work back up to where I was in my workouts. With my upcoming fitness tests, I can't afford to be out of commission that long.

I don't know where I picked it up this time, but I started feeling the effects of it in California on our mini vacation. Dad made an amazing smelling (and tasting) pork shoulder on our last day there, and I was too out of it to eat more than a scrap or two.

The next day I had to drive back to Utah. Jennifer and I were supposed to work on Saturday, so staying an extra day wasn't really an option. I couldn't drug myself as heavily while behind the wheel, and about 4 hours in I really started feeling the effects of strep bacteria running rampant on my throat and tonsils. We made it back to Spanish Fork and Jenn dropped me off at an urgent care office so I could hurry up and get on antibiotics.

I spent the 25th in bed trying not to breathe or swallow too much. I didn't get to see any of the kids open their presents. I had to call my route regular and ask her to cover my Saturday, she didn't seem too enthused about having to work the day after a holiday, and I don't really blame her, but there was no way I could have gotten around town delivering mail in the cold for 6 hours that day. She told me she would cover it, but that she had also decided to take the rest of the next week off. I thought I might be healed by then, but I would have preferred to have more time to get completely well.

Friday and Saturday were the bad days, and yesterday it started feeling better.

I went to work this morning. There were a ton of stupid magazines that I needed to get sorted out for my route. Experienced carriers usually take 2-3 hours of prep work before they can leave on their routes. I was in there for 6 hours this morning, and left for what would probably be 6-7 hours on the road. I still only get paid for 8 hours. When I left, the main roads were clear, with snowbanks built up on the shoulders, making quick delivery impossible. I nearly got stuck a few times. Once, after pulling up close to a mailbox to deliver, I pulled forward over a gigantic block of ice that I didn't see, and ended up putting a really big dent under the door of the van.

I had been out for about 4 hours and only was able to deliver about a third of my route. I started to think about the rest of the week, and how I wasn't getting any healthier sitting out in the cold, and how I've got to fly to Texas in 2 weeks to take one challenging CPAT and another that isn't a cakewalk. I also thought about how much damage and wear and tear I'd done to the van, and how the vehicle allowance I was receiving wasn't coming close to covering it.

I ended up quitting the post office today. It wasn't a bad job really, I enjoyed doing it. My boss said my timing to start was bad and that he understood my decision. If I had started in the spring, I could have learned a few routes and warranted buying a vehicle with right hand drive and 4x4 in time for winter. Since I was only guaranteed 22 hours a month, purchasing a vehicle would mean that I was only making enough to pay for the car that I delivered mail in once a week.

So my already crappy unemployment situation has somehow gotten worse with no end in sight. I really don't know what I'm going to do.

Dinky Vacation

2009-12-21T23:24:00.000-08:00

Since we are very uncertain how far away we will be living next Christmas, we decided to take a short trip to California this year. We're spending 4 days with my mom and dad, and then driving back up so I can deliver the mail on Saturday (should be delightful with all the late packages and After Christmas Sale ads.

I still haven't heard back from Oklahoma City about how my interview went. I was told that they were still undecided if they would be able to budget for new positions. I'm hoping that no news is good news, because if I hadn't done well enough to be considered for a job, it would have been easy to tell me even if they were waiting on budgetary decisions to be made. I'm not holding my breath though, but I'd be happy to work and live there.

I am forging on in the Houston FD hiring process now. I was called 2 weeks ago about getting travel plans there in the middle of January. I'll be taking my fitness test, getting interviewed, fingerprinted and polygraphed. A few days later I will be taking the San Antonio fitness test, which is great because it saves me another plane trip and forces me to spend a few days in the area checking things out. I intend to go to church in Houston and ask the people there where I should be looking to live.

Anyways, thats about it for me. I'll post news whenever it happens.

How it went

2009-11-18T19:24:00.000-08:00

I'm in the Denver airport right now waiting another hour for my plane to Salt Lake.

The Oklahoma City interview went ok I guess. There was a pretty strict time limit on the panels, and I forgot to mention a few important things, like that I'm fluent in Spanish. I also may have said a thing or 2 that I'll probably regret when final scoring comes out, it really depends on what mood the panel was in when I was with them. Some of my hardest worked for goals have to do with running track, and since I ran at BYU and they happened to ruin the Sooners' season this year, I couldn't not mention it. I think it went over well, but you never know. They're not even sure they're going to have positions approved for next year, but as soon as they know they'll notify who is continuing on with the process. I think there were about 80 people total that were interviewed, and I heard they only want to hire 10. I'm not sure my chances are very good, but it would be an amazing place to live if it works out.

San Antonio looks pretty promising after showing up for the orientation. As long as I don't fail during the process, I should get offered a job for the June academy, if I don't already have a job before then. They made it sound like scoring high enough on the test was the hard part of the process. Their academy looks fairly intense as well, it would probably be fun.

Oh, the bacon on the burgers at Nic's is amazing. I hope I didn't go there for the last time.

Heaven?

2009-11-16T18:28:00.000-08:00

I am now back in Oklahoma City for my interview tomorrow. I got in this afternoon and sat around the airport for a little over an hour because I didn't want to have my rental car for more than 48 hours. I didn't eat anything all day, not really by choice but by necessity. I slept as late as I could this morning, and only made it to the airport about 45 minutes before my flight took off. Since I knew in advance that I was going to be hanging around the OKC airport for a few hours, I didn't buy any food at my stop in Denver either.

The plane I flew to OKC in was a little tiny dual propeller plane. They didn't have room for carry-on luggage in the cabin, and they asked us to check larger bags at the gate. Normally when you gate check your bags, you get them immediately upon de-boarding the plane. Instead, they sent them all to a carousel, which meant that I had to leave the terminal where all the restaurants are, and wait for my car outside at the baggage claim. I wasn't too happy about that.

Anyways, I got my car, and finally left to go get something to eat. I stopped at the same BBQ place that I had eaten at last time, hoping to try something else on the menu. It turns out they were having their Monday Night Buffet. All the ribs, brisket, pork, beans, potato salad, coleslaw, hotlinks, and soda I could eat/drink. It was awesome. I went a little overboard with the brisket and pork before I realized that there was fresh apple cobbler and peach cobbler for dessert. I painstakingly cleaned my plate of the BBQ, and got a small serving of each cobbler. I figured that since I was already stuffed, I wouldn't be too impressed with the cobblers. I was wrong, they were awesome and I wish I would have eaten a lot less meat and a lot more cobbler. I'm in my hotel room right now wondering if I'll ever want to eat again. Boy there are some good restaurants out here.

After my interview tomorrow, I'll be driving to San Antonio in my Chevy Cobalt rental for a CPAT orientation on Wednesday. It's a 7 hour drive. When that is over, I'll immediately get back in the car to drive back to the OKC airport and hope I make my 7:30 pm flight.

The food makes the hectic schedule worth it. Totally.

Eat at Nic's

2009-11-05T20:12:00.000-08:00

We watched an episode of Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives during one of our visits to California. One of the restaurants was in Oklahoma City, a little burger shack that might be able to squeeze 15 people inside. It looked really good. I was hoping to get to go during one of my trips. The last time I went to Oklahoma City, I was just getting over strep throat and a greasy burger wasn't sounding too appetizing.

I did my physical agility test today. When I was done, I drove straight over to Nic's. It was around 11:30 when I showed up, and there were people waiting in line outside to get in.

It didn't take long to get in, and I asked for the fried chicken special. They were out. There were a few people inside that were eating it, I must have just missed it. I got a cheeseburger instead.

There were just 2 guys behind the counter. One cooking, and one taking orders, bussing tables, and refilling drinks. I learned the hard way that if you order bacon on your burger, you've got to tell the guy making the burger as well as the one taking the order. The bacon looked so good, but since they were so busy trying to keep up, I didn't want to bug them to get my order right. I'm way too polite sometimes, I'm sure it wouldn't have been that big of a deal. I've been kicking myself all day now, thinking about 2 strips of thick bacon that I left sitting on the grill.

Conversation with Emery

2009-11-04T08:49:00.001-08:00

Me: What are you doing?
Emery: I guess I pooping.
Me: You're pooping?
Emery: Yes I pooping. You change me?
Me: I don't want to change you. I don't like poop.
Emery: Yes you do.

It now smells in here. I guess I'm going to change a diaper. It doesn't mean I like it though.

A Cute Bunch of Grapes

2009-11-01T17:10:00.000-08:00

Jenn tells me I'm in charge of putting up the videos.

Emery was pretty cute in her purple grape outfit. She really didn't want to put it on, but as soon as we told her she was going to get a lot of candy she halfheartedly went along with it. After she found out how easy it was to get candy, she got really excited going from door to door.

We all had a really good time.

Happenings

2009-10-20T18:56:00.000-07:00

I finally was able to see what my testing schedule for San Antonio is going to be like. I set up an appointment for my CPAT (fitness test) orientation for Nov 18, the day after I will be interviewing in Oklahoma City. I'll be driving a rental car from Oklahoma City to San Antonio on the 17th, and then driving back on the 18th after orientation to catch a late flight and return the car. It's going to cost me slightly less than taking 2 separate trips out there, but I'll save a lot of time which is nice.

I also will be allowed to waive my practice session in San Antonio, so I won't have to take an unnecessary trip out there in December. I'll fly back out in January for the actual test, unless I am either hired on with Oklahoma City or the Border Patrol by then. I was really worried that I was going to have to make 3 separate trips out there for a job that I wouldn't be able to take if I was already hired somewhere else. I'm happy that lately for once, something is turning out somewhat in my favor.

I am doing my carrier training for the Post Office this week. It's been kind of boring, but it looks like it will be a decent job once I finally get to do it. It's really too bad that they only hire part time substitutes for 8 hours a week. The instructor of my class is telling us that there probably won't be too many openings for the next 20 years or so because now whenever someone quits a route or retires, they'll split it up and give it to existing full time carriers rather than let one of the substitutes take it over to become a full time employee. I don't know if that's just what is happening at his office, or if that's how things are going to be everywhere for a while. Right now, I'm just glad that I don't really have to count on it, and that I have other options.

I've looked into what it is going to take for me to finish my bachelors degree. I'm going to be taking advantage of the General Studies Bachelors at BYU. I looked at my transcripts and found that I am only 16 credits short of a degree with an emphasis in management. It may not mean much, but it will at least be a piece of paper I can hang on my wall, and maybe open up a few more opportunities for me down the road. I'm hoping to get my paperwork filled out soon, so I can possibly finish my degree by next Christmas, maybe a little later if I'm in some sort of work related academy for a few months. I've given up playing the golf video game that I was wasting so much time on, and I'm more than ready to ditch all the stupid facebook games. I think I should be able to knock my required classes out quickly.

Job News

2009-10-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

I received notification that I passed everything in the Border Patrol hiring process, and that I am now on the hiring list. Everyone that makes the list is guaranteed an offer eventually, so I shouldn't be jobless forever. From what I understand, a lot of the applicants are waiting 4-5 months now from the time they are notified that they pass until they are actually offered a job. They usually offer 2 locations for you to pick from, so we should be able to get a somewhat family friendly duty station. There are a few places that we probably won't be able to accept just due to the lack of amenities for a large family.

This is nice, because it leaves me time to see if I can get on with Oklahoma City Fire. It also gives me time to learn a few routes at the Post Office, and maybe pick up a few extra days a week.

Sunday Afternoon Session

2009-10-04T17:33:00.000-07:00

Jenn's dad had a few unclaimed tickets for today's afternoon session. Rather than let them go to waste, I took Bailey up there so she could go to a session once without the distractions of her brother and sisters.

We got there about 45 minutes early, found a seat, and waited.

It was nice to not be pressed for time, we weren't hurried, and we took in what was happening around us. About 20 minutes before the session started, it was announced to everyone that there was no picture taking or recording allowed. Immediately, flash bulbs started going off all over the center, and Bailey asked why people continued to take pictures even after we were asked not to. I told her that a lot of people don't think that the rules apply to them, and that I hope she never turns out that way.

The session started with such an amazing choir performance, "O Divine Redeemer" that I had tears welling up in my eyes. It is amazing how well the Tabernacle Choir sounds in person, and when everyone around you is quietly listening with you. It really brought the spirit into the conference center.

I loved all of the talks, and to be honest, it was the first time in a very long time that I felt like I got something out of church attendance. It was nice to not have to deal with hyper and/or noisy children.

At the end of the meeting, there was still a large number of people heading for the exit during the final hymn. This time, I just felt sad for them. I didn't want the session to end, and here people were climbing over each other to get away from feeling the spirit. Bailey asked why people left, and I told her that some people apparently don't respect our church leaders. I told her that it showed disrespect towards Heavenly Father and Jesus, and the prophet and apostles. I asked if saving a few minutes in traffic was worth the disrespect shown, and she was smart enough to say no.

We took our time walking back to the parking lot, looked at the cool art exhibit they had, and took the long way around the conference center to look at the trees lining the building exterior. When we got to the car and waiting for 5 stories of parking lot structure to start moving beneath us, she told me that she was glad she came. I'm glad she did too.

If you've never attended a session of conference before, it's a good idea to try to make it at least once, if anything just to listen to the choir in person. If you go when it's raining outside, there aren't many antis outside showing you posters and yelling at you that you're going to hell. I guess our souls aren't worth saving if it's wet out.

Baseball discussions with kids

2009-10-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

Jennifer made me post this so she would have something to read at work tonight.

The Dodgers are playing the Rockies tonight, hopefully to clinch the NL West. Living in Utah, I don't get to watch a whole lot of Dodger games, usually only when they play the Rockies, because that's what comes in over FSN Rocky Mountains. It was nice to be able to catch a game that actually means something, and I was hoping that they wouldn't choke away another game tonight.

Anyways, since Jennifer is working tonight, I had all 4 kids watching the game with me. Whenever I'm watching any sports at all, the kids (mostly Cam) ask me who I want to win, and then decide to root for whatever team I want. Sometimes, when I'm watching a college football game between teams I don't care about, I'll try to see how they pick, the girls usually pick based on uniforms or mascots, and Cam picks whoever is winning (I hope that doesn't mean I'm raising a Yankee fan) I filled them in about the history of my sports fandom, and that the Dodgers are the only team I still like from my childhood. I haven't been able to stand the Lakers since Kobe came to town, and I hate the idea of liking anything that the retards who run Hollywood are into, but I digress.

Cam asked me who I wanted to win, the white team or the black team, and I said the white team. He asked who they were called, and I said they were the Dodgers, and to look at their hats and don't they look just like mine. He asked who the black team was, and I told them they were the Rockies. What a silly name. During a commercial break, they showed a promo that had one of the Rockies having a staredown with their mascot, who is a triceratops. Cam asked why the black team master (mascot) was a dinosaur and not a rock. I can only assume that if there is a connection that there have been dinosaur bones discovered somewhere in Colorado. He reminded me about going to the Bees games in Salt Lake, and I told him that I had been to the stadium that was on the TV, and that it is a nice place to watch a game. He then told me that he had never been to a baseball game, and that I needed to take him to one for a Daddy/Cam day, I reminded him that he had just told me that he remembered going to Bees games. Back to the game on the TV, one of the Dodger coaches got tossed for arguing balls and strikes. I told the kids what an umpire was for, and Cam asked why the Rockies' master umpire wasn't a rock. He then forgot who was playing and asked me for the team names again, and who was winning (still tied) Every time they threw a new pitch, he'd ask if someone was winning. I'll work on his baseball knowledge next year I guess, or maybe during the playoffs.

We bought a tee and some soft cover baseballs when we lived in Lehi. Cam is pretty coordinated hitting them with the bat off the tee. He's also pretty good at anticipating where balls that I throw are going to end up. I'm hoping that by the time he's 8, we can afford to let him play some baseball.

At the risk of offending the Negative Thought Police..

2009-10-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

...who has been paying very close attention to my family lately, I thought I'd relate a little disappointment from the morning session of general conference.

I was excited to go be in the same building as our prophet today. It was overall a pretty decent experience. What really floored me though were the numerous hosts of people who got up and left during the closing hymn. I mean, I'm not one to leave meetings early anyways unless my kids are really misbehaving, but to ditch general conference in order to avoid traffic while President Monson is looking out over the audience, wow. Some people had an easy escape, they were sitting on the edge of their rows, but there were others sitting near the middle that had to plow over everyone sitting between them and the exit just so they could get a head start out the door. Maybe there were that many incontinent people there that could only hold on til the end of the talks, but I seriously doubt it. Really, if it's that important that you avoid traffic, watch it from home or at your stake center.

Bailey and I are going to the afternoon session tomorrow. I hope there aren't as many inconsiderate jerks there tomorrow, but if there are, at least I'll be able to teach Bailey how not to act.

If you want to call me out for what I have written here, make sure you're someone who's opinion I actually respect first.

Post Office

2009-10-02T16:28:00.001-07:00

I finally have a start date with the Post Office. I start training on October 19.

The day before going in to fill out my paperwork, I got a call from HR, saying that there was a problem with my application. There was some sort of mixup between them and the agency that did my drug test. It was noted on my application that I had either not shown up, or that I had refused to give all the samples required of me.

I called the agency up and asked what the problem was. They didn't know, and they told me they'd call me back. They didn't.

Then next morning, I had to leave early to get to Salt Lake to fill out the paperwork. I was already on the road at 8 am when I called up the Post Office HR to ask if my problem had been cleared up. It hadn't been, and they told me not to come in, that I could take another drug test later, and start at a later date. I told them I was already on my way, since I lived far away, and that I'd like to come in and hope that things get resolved. By the time I got there 45 minutes later, everything had been worked out.

In other news, we went on a hike/drive on Monday afternoon up Payson Canyon. I posted some pictures on my facebook account. The leaves were really pretty.

Jenn and I are going to conference tomorrow morning. It may be the last time that we live close enough to be able to attend.

Letter Carrier

2009-09-11T15:01:00.001-07:00

I just received notice that I am going to be delivering mail in Payson. I'm the Saturday substitute for one of the rural routes there. Eventually I'll be able to sub for 2 more routes as I memorize them. It will be part time for quite some time, but there is potential for it to grow into a very nice job someday.

I'm hoping that with this part time job, that it will be easier for me to find other part time work.

When I get more information about it, I'll share it.

Dilemma

2009-09-02T17:33:00.000-07:00

I've got a little dilemma. I applied for and was offered a temporary job doing data entry for the next 14 days non stop. The pay isn't great, but it is work, and it will stretch out my unemployment for a few additional weeks since I won't need to make a claim.

I felt about as good as I could about the offer (I had just sat in a computer lab for 3 hours, suffering while the Hep B shot I got yesterday took control of immune system. I was looking forward to a few weeks of work, and then I checked my phone.

Oklahoma City had called while I was in trying to get a job, and left me a message that I needed to be there in September 8 for a CPAT orientation. One of the requirements for the first job was a need to attend work 14 days straight.

Anyways, I'll be calling the fire department tomorrow morning and getting as much information as I can to make a good decision. Oklahoma City is one of the 2 firefighting jobs that I really wanted, the pay is good, the cost of living is very low, and there is a housing development a few blocks away from the Temple that is very very affordable.

Please keep me in your prayers.

Grrrrrrrr Pennsylvania Turnpike, Grrrrrr McDonald's

2009-08-28T19:28:00.000-07:00

I've spent the greater part of the last 3 days confined to very cramped quarters. Monica and I drove from Utah to Rhode Island so she could start her studies at URI. We left on Tuesday night and drove through Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa and into Illinois. We stayed at a KOA cabin for the night, and then drove through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island. It was a lot of time crammed into a car. It was made much easier by splitting the driving duties and watching The Simpsons and House while I wasn't driving.

There was one thing that I didn't want to do on the road trip. We tried to eat at the same time as we got gas. On some of the toll roads, they had gas stations/eateries that you didn't have to exit the toll road to go to. We were getting desperate for gas, and the restaurants at the travel center were McDonald's and Dairy Queen. I loathe McDonald's. We figured it was safe to eat at Dairy Queen, and we really needed the gas, so we stopped. It turned out that the Dairy Queen was pretty much desserts only. I had to buy a McDonald's burger, which ended up making me feel sick. I didn't think I could hate McDonald's any more than I already did, but they failed me when they were my only option. If I never eat another McDonald's burger it will be too soon.

There was one thing I absolutely wanted to do on this trip, get a cheesesteak in Philadelphia. The fastest route to Rhode Island didn't go through Philadelphia, but it only added an hour to our driving time, and we had plenty of time to get to Providence, so we decided to alter the route a bit so I could go to Philly and get a cheesesteak. I even called Geno's up and made sure they wouldn't be closed when we got there (guy on the phone sounded irritated that I would even ask, he was like "We're NEVER closed"). We started veering a bit south towards Philly as we got to eastern Ohio. The Indiana and Ohio toll roads cost us about 9 or 10 bucks a piece. We got to Pennsylvania on the 76, which takes you through Pittsburgh and Philly, and when we got our toll ticket, we saw that it was going to cost us 30 bucks to get there. Adding 30 bucks to the cost of the trip didn't seem like something we wanted to do. We checked the GPS for how long it would take to get there avoiding the toll road and it would have added 4 or 5 hours to the trip. So we got off the toll road, and drove through backwoods Pennsylvania on one lane roads to get back to the 80. By the time we got back to the normal route, the only restaurant open that we could eat at was Denny's. The drop off from an authentic philly cheesesteak to moons over my hammy makes me want to cry.

I don't want to drive anywhere for a very long time.

What is wrong with this picture?

2009-08-03T18:46:00.001-07:00

I had to run to 3 college campuses today to get transcripts for all the college courses that I have taken over the years. We took the whole family along, and ended up going on a scenic drive through Provo Canyon. After leaving the canyon, we went to a pretty cool park in Pleasant Grove. I took some pictures and videos.

After posting this, I noticed that the pictures will look much better if you click on them.

Grrrrrr

2009-07-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

I had planned to take the Federal Air Marshal exam on August 6 in Anaheim, since I was going to be in California anyways for CHP testing. There were no exam sites in Utah, and the closest site to Spanish Fork was in Las Vegas. I was notified through email that I needed to take the exam as soon as possible, so I called up their HR line and gave them my reason for scheduling my exam 3 weeks out. I was told that it would be ok for me to wait. About a week later I received a call that all applicants who wished to be considered for open positions under this announcement needed to be done testing by the end of July.

I considered dropping out of the process, but ended up scheduling my test for Monday at 11:30 am in Las Vegas. Monday morning I woke up at 5:30, took a shower and got out on the road at 6am. The drive down was long and uneventful, and I got to the test site at about 11:00 am Vegas time. I started the test, and finished it with time to spare. I drove back home, and got back around 6:30 pm.

This test was accessible by internet. I could have taken the test in the basement here if I had a proctor. It was a little frustrating to have to spend that much time and money to take a test 6 hours away that should have been accessible much closer. It's not like a whole lot of training went in to making sure the proctor knew how to administer the test.

I think I did pretty well. I'm glad I made the trip at least, it's nice to keep as many options available as possible.

I also got my results for the Houston Fire Department exam. I scored 100. There were 770 people who took the test, and my 100 ranked me 73rd. There were 72 ex military guys who scored at least a 96 and got bumped ahead of me with their 5 points of veteran preference points. I was lucky that the raffle number I picked was near the top of the order, because I was the top non-military rank in the entire exam. It appears that I will be back in Houston to go to Orientation and run my PAT in October, which is great because it shouldn't be too hot and muggy while I'm out killing myself on their course. I'll also have an extra month of training in before I have to run it. I am fairly certain that with my rank, there will be enough people ahead of me that drop out of the running that I will have a spot in the January academy as long as I don't flunk out of the rest of the process. Some of those poor suckers are going to have to run their test in the middle of the September heat. There are supposed to be 60 spots in the academy.

I've bumped my running up to 3 miles at a time now. Yesterday I finished in 26:45, which still isn't great but it's getting easier. I'm doing my runs in the mid to late afternoons when it's super hot outside, hoping to at least train in worse conditions than I will be testing in. I'm hoping to push my runs to 4 miles at a time soon.

Too Much on My Plate

2009-07-18T17:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted. Jenn has taken over posting the more kid centric stuff because apparently I wasn't doing a good enough job. There really hasn't been any groundbreaking news on the job front either. The next month or 2 should be fairly busy for me.

I will be in California for most of August. I test with the Federal Air Marshals on August 6, and then with the CHP on August 8. I fly to San Antonio to test for their fire department on August 14, which also happens to be our 10th anniversary. I had been planning on saving money over the last year for a fun trip to celebrate it, and now we're going to be spending it apart :(. I've got fitness testing with the CHP on the 22nd, provided I do well enough on the written test, and then fitness testing in Houston on the 27th or 28th. September 12 and 13 I will be in Oregon testing for their State Troopers. I should be receiving word from Oklahoma City about that time if I will be allowed to continue in their hiring process after scoring a 93 on their written test.

I've continued running and working out. Today I ran 3 miles in near 100 degree heat. I ran my best 2 mile time last week at 16:08, which is good enough to qualify for even the toughest of the fitness tests. Its very nice to be training at high altitude, considering anywhere I'll be testing will be probably 4000 feet closer to sea level than I am now. The only thing that working out hasn't done for me yet is weight loss. I hope I can shed a few pounds soon, it would be so nice to not have to lug around 240 pounds on long runs. I haven't been measuring my food or anything, but I have made a conscious effort to not eat large (for me anyways) helpings at meals, and I've cut out most junk foods. Maybe when I work up to running an hour at a time the weight will start dripping off.

Mesquite

2009-06-25T10:02:00.001-07:00

We needed to pick up Bailey from California this week. Ceri and Mark were kind enough to drive her up halfway, and Jenn's parent's were kind enough to get us a few nights at a "resort" in Mesquite for a mini vacation. We had a pretty fun time.

The day before we left, I went out and ran a mile in a thunderstorm in 7:37, which is my best time so far by about 30 seconds. I felt really good for about a half mile, and then hung on for the second half. I could probably go out today and run about 2 minutes slower because I ate a lot of things that I shouldn't have and I didn't exercise at all. I had planned on utilizing the fitness room at the resort, but it belonged to the Oasis casino, which has been closed. There was no fitness room available for us, and I really didn't feel like running around the parking lot in 100 degree weather. It was even hot at night.

On Monday, Mark and I went golfing at the Palmer Course at the Oasis Golf Club. I don't think it was affiliated with the casino that shared the same name, because it was super nice. It was named the Palmer course because it was designed by Arnold Palmer (much easier to type his name than to say it, if I'm not deliberate saying his name, it comes out Alnerd Parmler). Note to self: Courses designed by major tournament champions are probably not suitable for your skill range. We were awed by the beauty of the course for the first few holes, and then amazed at how stupid hard it was. We spent most of the afternoon losing balls.

We went swimming at the little pool that the Oasis "resort" kept open for us, and Bailey and Addie both took great strides in becoming competent swimmers, even dog paddling alone through the deepend. Jenn, Mark, Ceri and I stayed up late each night playing games, which was a lot of fun. It was nice to play some games with some grownups. We hope they had a good time with us.

I'm pretty sure Jenn is going to be posting the swimming pictures on her blog, so I'll just post a few golf ones.

This course had some very narrow fairways. We spent some time hitting into the dirt mounds on both sides.

Just in case you can't tell, right after the tee box, it drops into a ravine for the next 100 yard or so and then there is the green, and then more bushes and desert.

Another of those elevated tees with the narrow fairways below. I think I'd like to come back and play here again after I'm rich and I've had a few years of practice to get better.

Just stupid hard.

This looks nice enough. The tee for this hole was on the other side of that hill. The approach to this green is blind. There were several blind approaches on this course. I hit a few nice shots that I couldn't find because they landed where I couldn't see them. It was pretty frustrating. We had a good time anyways.

Working Out

2009-06-18T14:17:00.001-07:00

One of the requirements to graduate from the Border Patrol academy is to be able to run a mile and a half in 13:00. Directly following the run, you need to be able to run through an obstacle course in a certain amount of time, so you can't be completely dead after the run. Back in the old days, a mile and a half would be a drop in the bucket. I got my 3 mile time under 18 minutes in high school, and I ran a mile in less than 5 minutes in college.

I started running again 3 weeks ago. My first run was a mile and a half, just to see how fast I could run it. I did 13:07 and I was pooped. I was also pretty sore the next day. I've been running either a mile or 2 almost everyday now for 3 weeks. I've made hardly any improvement on my time. I have noticed though that I am not getting sore anymore, so I am seeing some minuscule results. I ran 2 miles this afternoon, clocked the first at 8:15, and finished mile 2 at 17:30. My goal was 18 minutes, so I'm happy about that, but it's pretty sad for someone of my athletic background to have to be setting such crappy goals. I'm kind of ticked off that I let myself go for 11 years.

I've also been doing push ups every day, in sets of 15 or 20. I just do them whenever I feel like it, or remember to. I've done anywhere from 20-90 push ups a day.

The Houston Fire Dept. also requires a 13 minute 1.5 mile run. The Oregon State Trooper test requires a 2 mile run, time is dependent upon age and height. I'll be bumping up my daily mileage soon, now that my body is becoming more accustomed to running. My goal is to someday catch up to Brie. :)

Border Patrol

2009-05-29T12:02:00.000-07:00

I went to my Border Patrol Oral Board today. It was out past the Salt Lake airport at a hotel. I had to be there at 7:45 am.

There were 6 of us that were needing an interview. They went in alphabetical order so I went third. Each interview took about an hour. So after sitting in the lobby for 2 hours, talking to the other applicants, I got called up into the room.

I answered their questions as thoroughly as I could without any real law enforcement knowledge, and left the room feeling really stupid. I totally blew it. They finally called me back in and told me that I had done really well, and that they liked my thought processes, and that I had passed. I thanked them for their time and for the job that they did, and went on my way.

The three agents that were on my board were all normal agents from the Tuscon sector. I have to say that I was very impressed with them, and I'm excited that I'll have a good career with the Border Patrol if most agents are half as decent as they were.

Bees game

2009-05-12T21:05:00.000-07:00

We all went to the Bees game tonight with our free radio won tickets. We got to see a lot of scoring, the game ended up 15-7 Bees. Lots of home runs, lots of hits.

Jenn and I didn't get to see much of the game, as Emery lost interest in sitting still after the 2nd inning or so. We stayed till the 7th inning stretch though, and the Bee came up into our section. Emery was really excited at first, but really freaked out when we tried to get a picture with him. We finally got a picture with all the kids and Jenn. I think a few of the kids were more excited about giving him a high five than the actual watching of the game.

The promotion tonight was free kids meals, so at least the kids got to eat something. In the 6th inning Jenn and I got really hungry, so we split a cheesesteak sandwich that was really good.

Anyways, we had a fun time, and we regret that we can't do stuff like that more often due to the financial situation we're in.

Good Times

2009-05-07T20:20:00.001-07:00

I sent off my border patrol paperwork on Tuesday. I received it about a week late because it had to be rerouted to the Beebe's house due to our change of address. The paperwork was time sensitive, and needed to be in Minneapolis by May 11. I rushed through it and got it sent out as quickly as I could. I took it to the Post Office, paid the postage on the return envelope that they had sent me, and paid the bit extra for delivery confirmation. It was supposed to be there today. I tracked it, and it says it was missent. I called the border patrol people who serve applicants with last names that start with F, and asked for an extension. I now have until the 15th. I hope that they actually know where my paperwork is, and that it's not just lost.

Today, I was listening to the sports talk radio station that I usually listen to, and they had a contest on called "Are they or aren't they" which they do everyday at 2:30. There is always a topic, usually one that has to do with whatever happened during the day, like "Teams the Jazz have lost to in a round 1 series" They give you an answer, and you say yes or know. I usually get out to my car after class as it's going on, but today they were a little late getting started. I called, and got in immediately. Today's topic was Major or Minor leaguers who got suspended for drug use while on a roster. I was second in line to get a crack at it, they keep going til they get a winner. It takes 3 right answers to win. The first guy bombed right away, so I got my turn. I ended up winning. I got Miguel Tejada (I believe he is a user, but he never got suspended) said no. Then Darren Daulton, who played quite some time ago, before drug testing got serious, I said no again. Finally, they named some no-name guy I don't recall the name right now, but I remembered hearing that he had a suspension. I won 4 free Salt Lake Bees tickets. We'll go out and have a fun night at the ballpark next week. It's nice to have the kids excited about something again. The past few months have been really rough.

Border Patrol Exam Results

2009-05-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

I just got back the results from the Border Patrol Exam that I took 3 weeks ago. I scored a 98, which I guess is a pretty decent score. It looks like I might have the option to be able to work soon, which I will be very grateful for.

I only wish that I hadn't delayed testing for the Corvallis and Oregon City police tests. I might have already been through the interviews. But, if my interview had already happened, I'd be needing to take my fitness test about now, and I am in absolutely no shape for that right now with what feels like a pulled muscle in my right lower back. Maybe things will turn out right by accident.

I changed my preference from the southern border to the northern border near Washington. I've looked up a few forums so far and it looks like there is about a months wait between results coming out and oral board interview. I'll update everyone when I can.

Payson Canyon

2009-04-28T13:04:00.000-07:00

We tried to take an afternoon trip up Payson Canyon for FHE yesterday. We got up there and the roads were closed off. We walked around and took a few pictures. Addie was overly dramatic after getting a few stickers stuck in her shoe (which I removed thoroughly). She was limping and not putting any weight on her foot at all, and crying a river of tears. We had brought soda, and I told her she wasn't getting any if she didn't put a sock in it. She made a miraculous recovery.

House finally recorded

2009-04-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

So, it took forever, but our house finally sold. Since it took them an extra week or so, we had to go in and throw more money away, but at least it's over.

Lehi city decided to dig up our front yard last week, and it's still kind of a mess, but I guess it's not our problem anymore.

I'm still waiting to hear from Idaho Falls FD. I finished #1 after the written test, I passed the agility test with plenty of time to spare, and I thought I did just fine in the interview. My concern is that I will not have my EMT cert until June, and they made it clear in the application that current EMTs would have a significant advantage.

I just applied to take the test in Houston, and I'm going to be applying for Oklahoma City as well.

Moving on

2009-04-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

We just about got everything out of our house today. Tomorrow we will be picking up a few computer chairs and a desk.

We're all sad to have to leave. The house is looking its age, but it's super clean for probably the first time in 10 years (the people who lived in it before us were slobs {takes one to know one, and believe me, they were slobs} and we didn't have a chance to clean it up very good before moving in.) The swamp cooler is operational, which would have made this summer fairly bearable, and the front room is looking pretty snazzy with the addition of the new blinds I put up in the windows. We did get out of a summer's worth of weeds I guess.

I've been sick for the past week and a half which hasn't made moving an entire house very fun. All the kids had something over the past 3 weeks or so, and Emery was sick the entire time. She's still really fussy because she's not used to being well, but things are slowly getting better.

I took the border patrol test today, I'm sure I did just fine. I realized that I have forgotten more spanish than I retained, but I'm pretty sure that I scored high enough on it to prove that I had been fluent at one time. I heard that the EMTs on the border patrol make quite a bit of money from one of the guys who was at the test, so there's a nice possibility I guess. Supposedly, it takes about 9 months to go from the initial test until graduation from their academy. Some of the things they talked about that will be job responsibilities sounded like they'd be pretty fun.

I was also called today by the city of Roseburg, and they want me to interview for one of 3 open positions. They are interviewing 19 people. Those aren't particularly good odds, especially for someone who flunked out of an interview already, and didn't even get invited back for another after acing the written test, but we'll give it a go anyways. My interview is on the 30th of this month, and I'm hoping that I took some valuable lessons from failing my first interview.

Tomorrow I'm driving up to Idaho Falls to test for their fire department. I'm hoping to do well there, it's probably the best situation for our family, nice smaller community, temple very close by, and BYU Idaho within driving distance so Jennifer can finish school. We'd really like to find somewhere that we can settle down, and Idaho Falls seems to have everything we need.

I'm going to be calling up the electricians union here in Salt Lake and see if I can get an apprentice position. It would take a while, but making it to journeyman would probably be pretty lucrative.

Home selling blues

2009-04-02T21:37:00.000-07:00

Today on our way back from Jennifer's birthday dinner, we got a call from our agent telling us that the people who are buying our home don't have enough of a down payment to qualify for a mortgage, and that they are applying for a 3000 dollar grant so that they can still go through with it.

They've asked us for a 2 week extension, and it's not like we have much of a choice. We started emptying the house out on Saturday into a storage unit that we are renting. We've already gotten rid of Bailey and Addie's bunkbeds (sold on craigslist) and I just loaded the queen bed they were sharing into storage.

I guess we're putting the house back up, which means we're going to be spending lots of time keeping it clean, and who knows where we're going to hide all the boxes.

On the bright side, this gives me at least 2 more weeks to find a job that will be good enough that we can at least get by here and not have to move. The house is in much better condition now than it was the past 2 years, and it might be a pleasant summer with a working swamp cooler.

...

2009-03-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

I got back from Oregon last week where I passed the ORPAT (standardized fitness/obstacle course for Oregon police recruits). I then proceeded to bomb my interview. The interview experience was valuable I'm sure, but I wish I didn't have to have my first oral board in the town that I preferred to move to.

I passed the Oregon City written test, and I'm waiting to hear if I'm going to be invited for an interview. I asked the Corvallis PD to send my information to Roseburg, so I am waiting for an interview there as well.

Jenn and I got to talking about Idaho Falls for some reason, and I checked their website, and their fire department is hiring, or at least they're testing. I'm filling out an application for them.

Our house is pretty much sold. We're going to be moving out during the first week of April. We're kind of sad to leave, it's been a really nice place to live ever since the weirdo neighbors left. Also, with the few improvements we've made to the house, it's starting to look a lot nicer. All that's left to do is pack up and move our stuff into storage. I also need to go up and clean up the swamp cooler, and make sure it's in working order. That would be a lot easier if it would stop snowing already.

My Birthday

2009-03-05T21:04:00.000-08:00

OK, so it's not that big of a deal. I turned 32 today. I was just going to let it pass.

But Jenn just told me a story that she says I have to put on my blog. Here it is, from her mouth...

"So Addie says 'Mom, I'm worried about Dad'. 'What do you mean?' 'He only had 3 things today.' 'What are you talking about?' 'He had 1 present, a pie, and dinner with you. I got more for my birthday and I'm only 7.' Bailey chimes in 'Addie, don't worry, when you get older you don't do as much'" Jenn then proceeded to assure Addie that I did in fact have a good day. Addie was almost in tears during this exchange, I guess she really was worried that I had a crappy birthday.

We went to Tucanos for dinner. We used my free birthday dinner to help out with the cost. It wasn't bad, but I think I'm getting too old for all you can eat meat. Either that or I'm not old enough. I can't eat like I used to, but I'm too anxious to get my money's worth that I try to anyways. I've been burping up garlic sirloin all night.

In other news, supposedly we have an offer on the house. It's for quite a bit less than we were hoping for, but we've come to the realization that we probably aren't going to do much better. We're going to go to the temple on Saturday to mull it over, and we're all fasting as a family Saturday night to sunday at lunch so that I can find a good job, specifically one of the jobs in Oregon that I've applied for. I'm driving up next weekend to take a few tests.

We would appreciate any prayers flung our way, we could sure use them.

Happy Birthday Addison!

2009-02-21T21:00:00.000-08:00

Addie turned 7 today.

Mommy made her pancakes for breakfast. Daddy took her bowling, and then to Applebees for lunch and Hogi Yogi for dessert (we had coupons).

Mommy made a caterpillar cake made out of fresh bugs. It was a great day.

Enough of the depressing crap...

2009-02-17T12:37:00.001-08:00

Hasn't been much to report lately other than what I'd rather not be writing about.

So.....

Emery's been pretty funny lately.

In other news, I passed both tests I took for employment with UTA and with Proctor and Gamble. I'll update the blog when I find out exactly what that means.

More fallout from crappy last job

2009-02-10T18:13:00.000-08:00

This morning I received a call from the unemployment insurance people about some discrepancies between my application and what my employer said about me. I put that I was laid off, because I was told that all staffing service people lost their jobs at the same time as I have. Plus, I hadn't been given any unsatisfactory job evaluations before that jerk manager decided to let me go for not understanding that I was doing work that he was too stupid to recognize.

Apparently, they've told the unemployment people that I was fired for cause and that I shouldn't be able to collect unemployment. The agent who called me said that supposedly, I spent hours and hours on my cell phone at work, and that I spent way too long in the break room reading the newspaper. I'm still pretty mad now, but I was furious this morning. I rarely went to the breakroom except to eat lunch, and whenever I went I never spent my full allotted time there. I worked through my first scheduled break time almost every evening that I worked there, and usually didn't get around to resting until after lunch when things slowed down. The last few weeks I was there and there weren't a lot of maintenance calls coming in, I still didn't see much of the breakroom, I chose to sit in the maintenance shop so that I would be closer to the action should something break down. And as far as talking on my cellphone, I hardly ever used it. I didn't like to touch it with my dirty greasy hands.

They really don't have much of a case against me, since I was never disciplined while I was there they can't really have records of having ever warned me about job performance. It makes me mad that these people are all so dishonest. I guess I should be used to it by now. One of the guys in my EMT class today says that his employer is trying to do the same to him, and that he has a phone conference with his employer so that the unemployment people can decide. I don't really think my case will go that far, but I look forward to talking to some of those people.

I'm looking right now into going through the Utah Fire and Rescue Academy. My EMT will be done in May, I think I might be able to take a prerequisite class online this summer, which would leave me with 12 credits in the Fall Semester. Utah just passed a law that you don't have to have a year of EMT experience before going for a paramedic certification. So after I get done with the fire academy, I'll try getting my paramedic. I've been looking at some of the larger fire departments around here. The pay isn't great, but it's a livable wage.

They also offer an EMT Intermediate cert here, which I might take this summer along with the online class. With it I can probably get a job at one of the hospitals doing IVs and stuff in the ER. The job doesn't pay quite as much as I was making as a technician, but it's a decent wage, and it would probably look good on a fire application someday.

So staying in Utah is now at least one of the options we are seriously considering. I still think I'd rather move to Oregon and get lucky rather than stay in Utah and get lucky, but it might be in our best interests to stay. I just wish I knew.

The Fella Who Just Couldn't Wait...

2009-02-06T12:04:00.000-08:00

This was really funny. Good quality video too.

I've got an invitation to take a test for Proctor and Gamble, I won't be able to get to it til the 16th due to class.

Stuff and Things

2009-02-05T19:56:00.000-08:00

I interviewed at Sun Products yesterday, the people who make Sun laundry detergent, and lots of other store brands. I gave someone at their booth my resume at a job fair I went to right after I lost my job. I received a call from them on Tuesday, which I missed because I was asleep after trying but failing to take the kids to Denny's that morning for free grand slams (the line was out the door at 6 am, I made it up to them by cooking a huge breakfast of eggs, potatos, bacon and smoothies) I had class after I woke up, and didn't realize that I had a message until it was too late to call back. I called first thing in the morning yesterday, and told them that I would like the interview. They said they needed me right away, and that I was scheduled for an interview at 1:30.

I arrived 15 minutes early to fill out the application, and then I sat in the HR lady's office chatting with her about the job requirements, and making small talk until the maintenance manager arrived to take me to my interview. He was quite late, and the lady I was with called him up and asked if he was coming to get me. He replied that he was on lunch, and if I could wait. I said I could, so I continued to chat with her just about life in general. 25 minutes passed, and no one came to get me. She called again, and I was finally allowed to go into the manager's building for a test of my abilities and a more technical interview. I got there, I was taken into a back room, told that while I had some decent experience, they had interviewed someone earlier that morning that they wanted to place in the open position. He said I don't want to lead you on, but we're not going to hire you, so thank you for your time.

I don't see why he made me sit through his lunch just so he could humiliate me in person. It's not like I didn't have better things to do. Apparently, they are having a labor dispute there, and I didn't feel great about crossing a picket line to work there, so maybe it's all for the best, but I really didn't appreciate the lack of respect I was shown.

I've got a test tomorrow for a position as a Coach Technician for UTA Trax. I've got some applicable experience for this, since the light rail runs on similar technology as the material transport vehicles I worked on at IMFT. I think I would like the job, the pay is good, but I don't really have a great shot at getting the position. I know a lot of guys that check the UTA website looking for openings all the time, and there should be some good competition for this job.

I interviewed for a part time job with UPS today, and I am hoping for a callback tomorrow for a 2nd interview. It will make a good part time job to supplement whatever other income I'll have.

This next little thing is something I found on YouTube today. I really wish I could find more of it.

Back to High School

2009-02-03T16:40:00.000-08:00

I remember what it was like looking for a job in Apple Valley when I was in high school. There were a lot of kids looking for work, and not a lot of employment opportunities. I had to know someone to get the job at Little Caesars.

I feel like that's the job market I'm in now, except for that if I don't find something soon, I'll get kicked out of my house or something. Oh, I also have 5 other people depending on me. Boy is it ever fun.

I'm about 99% sure I don't want to do factory maintenance anymore. I've applied for jobs delivering pizza at Dominos, and for overnight stocking positions at Smith's and Albertsons. I've also applied for part time work with UPS. None of these jobs pay very well, and we're probably going to be looking to sell the house sooner rather than later, which is kind of scary in this real estate market. Any of these opportunities I am trying to take advantage of should work out well should I find work in fire or medicine. I realize that I'll probably have to take a job with lower pay than I was used to (the Portland job would be like winning the lottery) and I'm ok with that. We've cut out a lot of our unnecessary spending lately, and we're making more cuts out of necessity. I believe that even unemployed and stressing out of how I'm going to pay off some significant credit card debts, I'm still a happier person than I was a month or 2 ago. I've got some clarity now that at least my life isn't going to involve a job that I don't want to do anymore.

So, for anyone that reads this that is still deciding what they want to be when they grow up, use me as a cautionary tale. Don't study anything that you have no interest in, even if it represents a significant increase to your current pay. I felt trapped by a crappy job and career path when I made up my mind to start studying electronics, but I never really found any interest in it. Having a job just to pay the bills and from which I derived no enjoyment for the past 4 years has sucked, I can't imagine doing it for 40 or 50 years without enjoying anything that I do.

Job Interview

2009-01-26T14:13:00.000-08:00

I've got an interview on Thursday in South Jordan, which is luckily only about a 10 minute drive up north from home. It looks like a pretty promising employer, making dental hygiene products. I took a look at company benefits, and they look to be above average.

I'm probably also going to try to get a part time job with UPS as a package handler. It should be a good job, not so much for money, but it will get me in good shape, which I kind of need motivation to do.

Wish me luck. It really sucks to not have a job.

New Blog Title II

2009-01-18T16:58:00.000-08:00

So, I've changed my blog title again. Why would I change my blog title from the coolest name ever to some bland name you might ask?

I lost my job with US Synthetic today. At work on Friday, I was trying to partition a hard drive that I was given so I could back up some computers. The computer that I chose to do my task did not give me the permission to partition or format hard drives, so I needed to get to another one. Unfortunately, the other computers were being used. So I sat and waited for one of them to vacate.

Then, the manager who spent all day in crappy cost cutting meetings came by, and saw 3 of his electricians just sitting there (mind you, nothing was broken, there were no maintenance calls at the time) I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, he called my staffing service that night to let me go, and told them that I was screwing around.

I had kind of expected to be let go anyways, but I'm a little bit upset that it was for what was perceived as a disciplinary problem. I'm hoping to be set up with another position soon within my employment agency.

Aggravation

2009-01-11T17:09:00.001-08:00

So, my last post dealt with one of the not so fun games that Mark and Ceri (or MarkCeri as Cam used to say) introduced to us.

Aggravation is one of the cool games they brought with them. We played it quite a bit, it's fast paced, so good for people with really short attention spans like us.

When they left, they took their gameboard with them. Jenn and I looked online for one, I guess Milton Bradley makes a really lame commercial version of it that we didn't want to buy. The homemade wood versions were going anywhere from 60-120 dollars... just for a board with holes drilled in it.

So I took it upon myself to make one. I bought some nice looking plywood, a 7/16" boring drillbit and a protractor. Ours is a 6 player board. It turned out OK, I've got to fill in some of the splinter marks with some putty.

I cut it by hand with a miter saw while it was clamped to one of our kitchen stools. Sure, it wasn't a big or even a difficult project, but I learned a few things. I liked making it, I like the smell of sawdust, and I need some power tools :)

Chubby Bunny

2008-12-29T02:17:00.000-08:00

Ceri and Mark were visiting us during Christmas, and brought with them some games that were fun to play. Chubby Bunny was not one of the funner ones. Basically, you shove as many large marshmallows in your mouth as you can without gagging, and you have to attempt to say "Chubby Bunny" after each one. Usually, after the 4th or 5th marshmallow, it starts to get muffled and unintelligible, but everyone assumes you're saying Chubby Bunny if it comes out with 4 syllables, but whatever.

I don't even like marshmallows, man.

Final Score:
Chase -10
Ceri -8
Jenn -4
Bailey -4
Addie -3
Cam -3

Sledding

2008-12-24T13:21:00.000-08:00

We spent an hour sledding today at a park in American Fork.

Here's a few pictures and a video.

Snow Time!

2008-12-24T02:10:00.000-08:00

It's been snowing A LOT here the past few days. The roads were awful yesterday, and our street filled up with snow after being plowed. Luckily, the kids are on vacation from school, and they're all healthy and able to play outside. It's a miracle.

Jenn took some pictures while they were all out playing.

It's also really cool because we bought the kids a toboggan for Christmas. We might take them out today while the cousins are still here.

The Job, and what else is new

2008-12-23T04:39:00.000-08:00

I've been at US Synthetic for about a month and a half now. It's been quite a bit more difficult to learn than any other job I've had previously, because there is so much to learn.

I've learned a lot though, and I've enjoyed being kept busy replacing buttons and switches on control panels, replacing and wiring up motors, fixing leaks in the hydraulic systems. I've also figured out that a lot of this stuff is very applicable to things at home, like our stupid swamp cooler, that I should now be able to fix before next summer. I work with very good people, which I appreciate so much more than I would have 2 years ago.

I am very grateful for the chance I've had to start over at a good employer. The temp to permanent thing will continue to not be fun, but we at least got qualified for Utah State health care for the kids. I look forward to a permanent position, not only for the improved benefits, but for the laundry service they provide (I come home VERY dirty some days).

Last week, Jenn cooked some red snapper that stunk up the house. That night, Emery puked all over herself in bed, and her room smelled of rancid fishy vomit. No one else was showing any signs of being sick, and Emery was in a pretty good mood, so we didn't really think much of it except to try to rid the house of the strong fish odor.

2 days later, I got home from work, and Bailey wasn't feeling too well. She felt queasy, and Jenn gave her a bucket just in case. She was laying down in bed with the bucket in her hands, and started to cry that she was going to throw up. She proceeded to spew all over her bed and the floor, sparing the bucket of a horrible fate by holding it to her side. I got in there just as she started to throw up, and couldn't believe that she chose not to puke in the bucket she was holding. Jenn got up and started to clean things up, and I started to prepare the guest bed for her so she could sleep. Cleaning the puke was too much for Jenn, and she ran to the bathroom where she toiled for about an hour trying to barf. I got Bailey out of the bathtub, and into a warm bed downstairs with a gentle reminder that the bucket is for puke, not the carpet. I went and laid down in bed, and was serenaded by Jenn hoarking up whatever she happened to have eaten the day before. I started to feel not so good, and struggled for about a half hour to stay composed. Finally I succumbed to the urge to run to the bathroom where I unloaded about 2 pounds of potatos.

We were all sick for about 36-48 hours, and then Cam started throwing up. He at least had the wherewithal to use the bucket we gave him. Cam also was in a fairly good mood for most of the ordeal, not like Bailey, Jenn and I, who all wanted to die. Addie, who is normally the queen of the wayward illnesses, has been spared up to this point.

Anyways, had this happened a year ago, I probably would have been really depressed and wo is me. This time, I'm counting my blessings that Addie didn't come down with it. Sure, I guess you could say that maybe I'm just maturing or something, but I think it's because I'm finally not getting my will to live sucked out of me by my job and the crappy people who work there.

We're looking forward to hosting Ceri and Mark this week. Drive safe guys.

Emery the Musician

2008-12-13T18:46:00.000-08:00

Before I got the camera, Emery was singing along with her playing. After I put the camera away, she started to turn the pages to the sheet music. I just got a bunch of insane leg kicking, and some tempo changes that appear to be more than just coincidental.

Thanksgiving Play

2008-12-02T17:17:00.001-08:00

Bailey decided to entertain us on Thanksgiving with a play written and directed and directed herself. Addie and Cam played supporting roles. Not their best effort if you ask me.

I'm going to post a few more funny face pictures that I took on the train to Salt Lake.

Temple Square

2008-11-29T12:56:00.000-08:00

We decided to take the kids up to Temple Square on the day after Thanksgiving, the first day they do the Christmas lights. It sure was crowded.

We told the kids that we were taking them for a surprise about a week ago, but we didn't tell them where. We all piled into the van wearing wintery clothing, and headed to the Sandy Trax station. I pointed out the prison just past point of the mountain, and told them that was the surprise and that we were turning around. Cam yelled angrily "That was the dumbest surprise ever!"

We got to the train, and that made up for the teasing. We rode it all the way from Sandy to Temple Square, got off, and walked a block to the temple grounds. There were lots of pretty lights and statues. While we were walking through, some high school students doing a project asked if our kids would like to be on camera telling what they think Christmas is. Bailey was the only once brave enough to talk, but wouldn't speak up past a whisper. I was standing right next to her and couldn't hear her. If you see her around our house, you'd think she only had one volume, but apparently she can also be quiet when she needs to be loud.

We had a fun time, no one got lost, the trip was a success.

Back home a few days ago...

2008-11-20T17:31:00.000-08:00

Sorry Mom.

I got back on Monday.

I won my first round match, and then lost the second to the eventual champion. They did random seedings, and all of the better players were in my half of the bracket.

I'll get around to posting more pictures someday, but for now, I'm not going to. I had a fun time, but by the time it was over, I was really ready to go home and see Jenn and the kids.

Palace Tour

2008-11-15T04:51:00.000-08:00

We took a very small tour of Seoul today. It appears to be a very clean city for how large it is. It is actually quite pretty. It was really gloomy outside today, and it drizzled on us quite a few times today.

These pictures are from the Kyung-Bok Palace in Seoul. It is at the very edge of town, with mountains surrounding one side, and skyscrapers on the other. It was built centuries ago, but burned down during the Korean civil war. What is in it's place now is a replica.

There was also a museum very close by which we went inside. There wasn't as much to see there, but I did get to take a picture of myself under the sign.

Anyways, it's been a long day, and I am ready for bed.

I'm a Seoul Man

2008-11-14T13:40:00.000-08:00

It's kind of early in the morning here, and I'm wide awake.

There is a continental breakfast or something downstairs, but between the language barrier and not liking to be alone in public places, I'm waiting until later.

I tried to go up on the roof of my hotel to take some pictures, but the roof exit was classified as emergency use only. I did take some dark shots of the view from my room, but you can still see some reflections from the window.

The other picture is Lake Tahoe, which I flew over on my way to San Fransisco from Salt Lake. I was sitting on the wrong side of the plane to get a good picture of the Golden Gate bridge as we flew over it.

Today, the gaming people have set up some sort of tour for us. The competition is tomorrow. Maybe I'll stick on a few more pictures later tonight.

Call me Diamond Chase...

2008-11-11T03:47:00.000-08:00

So, I just got through with my first day at the new job. It looks like it's going to be pretty interesting and rewarding.

I met a friend there who I worked with at Micron about 7-8 years ago. He's been working at US Synthetic for about 2 years now, and he says its a great place to work. They've got good benefits (I'll find out in about 6 months I guess) and they pay well, both in wages and in bonuses. They've got a lot more control over how much they can sell their product for, unlike the commodity memory market.

So I'm trying to learn everything I can and be a good employee. I should be able to learn lots of valuable skills that will get me a good paycheck from them or somewhere else if it comes down to it, but after 1 day, I kind of hope it doesn't.

They subsidize the lunches for everyone there, I ate 2 big steak fajita tacos with fresh guacamole yesterday. It cost me 3 bucks. The plant is right across the street from the BlendTec factory. My employer bought one of their commercial smoothie makers, and set it up in the employee lounge. You put a cup in the machine, press a button for what flavor you want, and it spits out a freshly blended smoothie for free. The best way to get my loyalty is usually thought cheap or free food, so I think I'll be staying as long as I can :)

New Blog Title

2008-11-06T20:39:00.000-08:00

So....

Yes, it's a little stupid, but I had to outdo the last name.

I decided that since I just got tested with 23% bodyfat, I didn't want to be the sandwich eater. I want to get that number down to about 12-15%.

Since I'm in the diamond making business now, I figured that this was an appropriate, and chintzy name to use.

Snow, New Job, and Korea

2008-11-05T16:03:00.000-08:00

I got off work last night and was welcomed by a low grade blizzard. I was caught wearing shorts and a sweatshirt, and it was pretty cold while I scraped 2 inches of snow off my car and then waited for the heater to kick in. Cameron complained all morning that he wanted to go out and play in it, even though it was freezing outside at 7:30 am. Addie has been sick for about a week, she missed wearing her costume to school on Halloween, and the first major snowfall of the year. She is not doing a good job being sick, she's always running around the house, making her asthma worse. I don't know if anyone has seen the halloween picture this year. Jenn went all out on the costumes. If anyone asks, I was an occupied bed for halloween.

I will be starting a new job shortly, at US Synthetic in Orem. They compress stuff into diamond crystals, and then bond those crystals with drill bits and such. I'll be learning a lot more about industrial electricity, and making diamonds sounds like a much cooler job than making flash memory. My current employer decided to promote the worst and most hated technician supervisors to engineering positions within the department. Now they're complaining that no one gets along with them or respects what they are trying to do. We were recently told at a team member meeting by upper management that the company was seriously considering whether or not they should even be in business anymore given the current economic environment. So, crappy work environment working for morally bankrupt people + low pay + possible layoff in 1 year = Chase finds a better job. I'm really looking forward to expanding my job skills. There's not really that many things to do on semiconductor tools anymore besides swapping out stuff that doesn't work for stuff that does.

One last newsflash. I am being flown to Korea next week to play some video game golf. I will be playing against 11 other people for a chance at $5,000 , $3,000 , or $1,000. The airfare and accomodations are paid for. It should be pretty fun. I hadn't originally qualified to go, but was given a chance to go after those who did were unable to get passports in time.

So, you can see we've got quite a bit going on. I'm sure I'll have something to post about once I get home.

Nature pics from AF Canyon

2008-09-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

They only let me upload 5 pictures to the last post.

There are some pretty nifty places up AF Canyon.

AF Canyon

2008-09-28T19:14:00.000-07:00

Ever since we got home from California last weekend, I've been sick. It hasn't been too bad, but I've been pretty much out of it. We got home on Monday, and I worked Tuesday-Saturday nights. For those of you who don't know, I work 6:30 pm to 6:30 am. Every morning when I got home, I'd drug myself up with Nyquil so I could sleep, I'd wake up 7 or 8 hours later, and get ready to go to work again. I haven't been able to spend much time with anyone this week.

I slept through church today (I want to get healthy, and I don't think it's right to go to church and get other people sick). I'm not quite 100% yet, but I'm getting there. It was a nice day out, so we decided to go for a drive up AF Canyon. I don't remember too much about it except for that Timp Cave is up there. I think that's as far as we've ever gotten.

Anyways, there's some cool stuff up there. We're thinking about driving up there again next Sunday after conference, when there is a little more daylight. Here's some pictures.

Trip to California

2008-09-23T00:32:00.000-07:00

We just got back from a very short trip to California. As some of you may know, I play (am addicted) to a (stupid) computer golf game. This game is normally played on the internet, but Saturday, there was a live tournament in Los Angeles, that led to a World Final in Korea in November. I had to place at least 3rd in this tournament to get the free plane tickets to Korea for a chance at winning $5,000.

I was pretty certain that my chances of advancing were pretty much non-existant, but with a few lucky breaks, I could have made it. I just happened to get put into a first round matchup with the guy who eventually won the whole thing. I only lost to him in the first round by a stroke, which was his stiffest competition all day.

Last year, I got a nice little digital camera as a consolation prize for not getting the trip to Korea. It takes nice pictures (you'll see some in this post when I get around to it). This year, the consolation prize was a new mouse..... a little bit of a dropoff in prizes if you ask me. It's a nice mouse, probably worth about 30 dollars brand new, and therefore, probably the best mouse I'll ever own. I stuck around for the prize auction and won another mouse, hooray! So, the total value of my prizes ended up being about 60-70 dollars, which I wouldn't have spent myself. I did however spend about 200 bucks on gas getting there from Utah.

It would have been a really stupid trip to take if it hadn't been for being able to take Jenn and the kids down for a visit. 4 months ago, we went on a vacation to St. George, and went to Bryce and Zions. Jennifer was bent on getting some family pictures taken next to some spiffy red rocks. It never happened. At one time, she mulled the idea of driving down there one afternoon for the specific purpose of taking a unique family picture. When I was invited to the golf thingy in LA, it represented a great opportunity to go take those pictures, and also visit with my mom and dad. So we all piled into the van wearing nice clothes, and drove 4 hours to St. George with a bunch of starving kids (can't have them messing up their clothes, right?) We took some ok pictures, but a lot of them have some very visible shadows. The idea was cool though. Some of the pictures turned out pretty decent, you wouldn't even be able to tell that the kids in the pictures were grumpy and whiny. (The kids were all excellent on the trip actually, and were sometimes able to go more than 15 minutes without asking for treats. On the trip home, we only had one potty break, which for an 8.5 hour trip is amazing)

We also had to make the trip, because apparently, Jenn has pictures of all our kids taking bath's in my parent's kitchen sink. Emery will soon be too large to do this, so we had to act fast.

All in all, I'm very glad we made the trip, even though I totally sucked at golf. I got some good tips from Dad about how to act and not to act during my fire interview, and some good information on passing the Agility test. I'm looking forward to getting it under my belt in October.

Emery Laughs!

2008-09-07T21:48:00.001-07:00

We got Emery to laugh for us on camera. I only had to act slightly like an idiot to get it recorded.

Regional Conference

2008-09-07T20:12:00.000-07:00

Today, we had a multi stake conference which involved all the stakes of Utah and Wasatch Counties. President Uchtdorf, President Packer, Elder Jensen of the Seventy, and President Monson's daughter, Sister Dibb spoke to us. The main conference was held at the Marriot Center, and was broadcast to stake centers throughout the region. There were 135 stakes and 400,000 members invited from what I could remember. I usually pride myself on my memory, especially with numbers, but I have a hard time remembering anything beyond who spoke.

It's true that I just switched to working night shifts, and even without sleep deprivation, I have a hard time staying awake at church. It was so noisy at our stake center that I couldn't even sleep. I've heard quieter crowds at sporting events. No one would bother taking their noisy kids or crying babies out of the chapel. It wasn't just kids though, there weren't just frequent bursts of noise, there was a steady hum of conversation. I wish all the people that treat conferences like social gatherings would just stay at home.

I am proud of our kids though, they stayed pretty quiet throughout the 2 hour meeting, and only occasionally contributed to the steady stream of noise that overwhelmed the speaker system. Sometimes I think we have horrible little monsters, but they are generally very good kids. I'm glad they proved themselves today. They stayed quiet with the ruckus that was going on directly in front of and behind them. They didn't complain about wanting to go home until the final speaker.

One funny thing. Sister Dibb has the same speaking style as President Monson. It's almost like she was doing an impression, her camera presence was a spot on knock off if that's what she was going for. I don't really remember much about her talk except for hot rolls and peach jam because of the aforementioned noise in the chapel.

Since speakers usually tell their jokes a little louder than their actual talks, we did share a few chuckles with the speakers. Sadly, that's about all we got out of it.

The start of something really really small...

2008-09-07T19:54:00.000-07:00

So, I've never been told to my face that my mom wants me to start a blog. I just sort of heard that through the grapevine (thanks Brie... I think)

HomestarJr is my nickname on numerous online forums and games. It's also a not so obscure reference from homestarrunner.com (just in case anyone outside my family ever reads this, I'm not really hoping to reach a broad audience). Somebody eat that sandwich is a line uttered by Homestar Runner at the end of "Where's the Cheat" after Marzipan becomes attached to and refuses to eat the veggie burger that was made for her. I thought that would be a good name for my blog, because if anyone ever asked me to eat a sandwich, I would oblige. I think everyone who knows me knows that.

We'll see how this works out. I don't really plan on updating this thing religiously, but you never know. I like to write, and if enough people laugh at the stuff I write that is supposed to be funny, I might just keep going.