Corporate America

Maybe making teeth isn't so bad

Today I had an interview with a dental supply company, business has been really slow over the last few months and so I though I would just test the waters of employment. It was like diving into a 5 gallon bucket of ice. cold and shallow. I guess after being self employed for the last 4 years there isn't much of a sycophant left in this old dog. New tricks sound sound like more head aches. Hum maybe making teeth isn't that boring?
For mutual we took the young men out to the army base and got a tour of the helicopter hanger. It was like my mostest ultimate dream, hellfire missiles and 30mm machine guns (600 rounds per minute). I was blown away by all the cool gadgetry and massive fire power. We got to stand next to two Apache helicopters as they landed and taxied to park and we even got to look through a real set of night vision goggles! The pilots was like "don't drop those they cost about 6000 dollars".
So here I am jaw dropped like a kid in a candy store with golden ticket and I hear one of the kids say "this isn't as cool as Halo", and another kid says (they just happen to be brothers) "Ya I have already seen this stuff before" and lets out a big sigh of lets go already. Well I told those boys "quit sleep walking and look around at life, honestly there is more out there than Halo". Well as you can imagine I got the look that only a 14 year old can give that says " you really are old aren't you". If that's what it means to be old well then bring it on.
I was very impressed by the people that are part of our military and the job they do, and I stand beside them, I ain't no loyal subject to the crown.

OK after ignoring my blog for the last few months I am ready to post again. The massive vortex called life has continued to swirl like the black hole of death. That is an exaggeration but it has been a couple crazy months. We moved out of the monster house and it is for sale $435K any takers?
We have finally heard the clarion call of the get out of debt council and we are moving forward as fast as we possibly can. I sold the H3 and that reduced the monthly out flow by about $700 a month. Gas prices have dropped like crazy and that was a big chunk of what we were spending. We now own our cars and only have our houses and one credit card that still are not paid off. I feel some comfort in knowing that there are only those things left, but they are the big things and I am afraid that unless we can sell the monster house it is going to be a long road to financial freedom.
I received a new calling in the ward I am now a counselor in the young men's presidency. Looks like lots of camping and lessons to teach are in the future. Yeh!
Farmer Joe would be proud of my latest acquisition. 1993 Toyota Land cruiser FJ80 paid cash $1850
And its in sweet condition. Miles are 251,000. I am happy as a tornado in a trailer park.
I took the kids out to the desert on Saturday and we dug for Opal. We found one pretty good spot and came back with some pretty big chunks. Opal is a mineraloid gel that is deposited at moderately low temperature. It is transported by water to the surface by hot springs through cracks and fissures in the rock substrate. In our area it is common to find opal deposited in basalt. (Lava flows). The gem contains from %5 to 20% water and after dug out of the ground if not stabilized can crack at room temperature. The gem quality opal has lots of flashes of "fire" blues reds yellows greens and oranges in a mostly transparent rock. But the stone can range from completely white and opaque to black. Fire opal is the most rare and desired. The stones we found were mostly white with some blue and a few had some fire. We didn't find anything of gem quality but in the area we dug people have pulled out some very nice opal.
We left early and drove out to the desert south of Boise and started digging about 10:30am. I took Aisling and Brenna and It was a frosty morning with clear skies and no wind. As soon as the sun hit our dig it warmed right up and was quite pleasant. Although the girls stayed in their coats I was in my shirt sleeves pretty quick, nice for a December morning.
We drove over some pretty rough terrain and the Fj80 did great. I am tickled pink with that truck.
By 1pm the kids were yelling from the truck "Dad I am hungry and you said we would go 10 hours ago!"
So it was happy meals on the way home and back to show Challis our finds.
I had a ton of fun and expect to head out there again soon to search for that elusive treasure.
This might be the beginning of an exciting rock hounding career.
Last night I made English muffins, They turned out ok and I got a pretty good raise in my dough, but I am not completely satisfied witht he recipe. If anyone has a good recipe they have personally made and had a good result I would be very interested.

Rock Stars

Here are some picture of the Rock Stars

The hurricane comes home to the range

OK the person who first said "when it rains it pours" must not have been through a hurricane. I think they missed out on the gale force winds and the lightening and thunder. Its probably not good to start blogging by wining, but I don't care. So here is the first little cloud burst of the day, I got to work and realizing there was a mountain of things in front of me I dug in and started shoveling the s*@% ( that's short for "stuff")...(honestly). Then I got one of those great phone calls saying Mr. Grisham you have insufficient funds in your bank account and your overdrawn and need to come down to the bank and put money in your account or we will charge you a hundred million dollars in late fees, thank you for banking with us :) Here came the real torrent! So I left my mountain of "stuff" and went down to fix the issue with my account and low and behold there was something else wrong on my account, the equity line we are using to fund the remodel of the monster house has been changed without notice. Now instead of having $145,000 credit limit they cut our loan $45,000 !!! wow would you look at that that is $100,000 less than we were approved for. I didn't know that they could just offer you a loan with a certain approval and then change their minds after the loan was in affect. So here I am sitting in the bank with Miss smiley banker choking on the fact that her establishment just royally screwed me. I have thousands of dollars on credit cards from house renovation costs waiting to be paid off by the now gone equity line. She was a really good actor and seemed more upset and than I was, and I didn't even have to show her how pissed I really was. There was no yelling, throwing of chairs or even dirty looks. But I tell you what I will never bank with Washington Mutual or City Bank for the rest of my life. Those people can rot in hell. What a load of "stuff" :)

To my good buddy Farmer Joe

The other day Farmer Joe called me. It was great to hear from him it has been a long time and alot of miles. He asked me why I hadnt been keepin up the blog, so joe this one is for you.
I was able to take Friday off and spend it with the family, It was a great day and we had lots of fun. Aisling and Brenna are taking swim lessons at the community pool and I was able to take them to their lessons. Aisling is able to swim half way across the pool with her face in the water and not freak out. I was pretty impressed. (looks like ol' dad might have to learn to really learn how to swim now). Brenna now can put her face under water and splash around about 5 feet to her teacher, and she is really getting good at floating on her back by herself. They really had a good time, they have lessons for the next few days and then the season is over. Its hard to believe that summer is wrapping up and we are headed into fall.
Speaking of fall Elk season starts on the 31st of this month so I went out and shot my bow today, good thing I have a couple weeks to practice it wasnt pretty. Looks like i will shoot again tomorrow.