How can I, being from Utah, stick of for this?

so... after an entire summer of trying to explain how great Utah is (ok, its not that great, but we aren't hicks) this story comes to post:


HOOPER, Utah - A farmer has erected a fence in his backyard made of three old cars sticking up in the air to send a message to new neighbors that he can do whatever he wants on his farm. "This is just a fun way for me to say, 'Hey boys, I'm still here,'" said Rhett Davis. "This is my redneck Stonehenge."

Davis came up with the idea after neighbors who recently moved into homes next to his hayfield complained about his farm.
"The people who bought the homes say, 'Well, we love looking into your yard and seeing the horses and the cattle, but we don't like the flies, and we don't like the mosquitoes,' and when I cut my field to bale it, they say, 'We don't like the dust in the air,' " Davis said.
Davis said he offered to pay half the cost of a fence between his property and the others and to build it. He said his neighbors declined the offer, saying it would block their view.
Neighbors declined to comment to the Standard-Examiner of Ogden.
Davis said after the neighbors declined his offer, he used a backhoe to dig three large holes on the edge of his property, then took three cars that had competed in demolition derbies and planted them nose-first into the ground.
He said the cars were planted out of humor rather than spite. He said it's important that new residents moving into the area realize that Hooper remains a farming community.
The area has grown recently with new residents who desire a country atmosphere but don't want the smells and noises of farm life, Davis said.
"I respect that they're here and spent a lot on their homes, but on the other hand, give me a little bit, too. I've been here since I was 7 years old," he said.
Davis said he doesn't intend to keep the cars up permanently.

Ok I have never even heard of Hooper, Utah, but still when it makes Yahoo news and whatnot it makes it hard on my part...... Ok, I really have to go and finish cleaning

So... yeah I haven't added

Let Gumbo loose with a camera and this is what happens in the end....
Welcome, Welcome
So yeah,,,,
Take that!!

So I haven't added in a while... not to worry its on my laptop I just haven't switched it to here yet... I will and change dates accordingly, but I have some pictures

Home and Back Again, Back again home.

Home and back again, back again home
June 6, 2008


So being the genius that I am, I went home yesterday to Camerons graduation (4 1/2 flight at 8:55, getting in to SLC at 11:40) not going to lie the flight was uber long and I slept most of the way, which is grand!

Nothing exciting happened in the airport, except that we picked up Laura who is on my staff and I had to go through security and go on my flight. When I got to the SLC we went and got my dad and brother and went to Cafe Rio, which I don't understand the huge hype about it (Barbacoa is better, just for those who care) and went home to mom freaking out about what to wear, first of all I live at camp, I DON'T have any clothes at home and so after digging in my closet I ended up with my maternity shirt (I don't know where it came from, but clearly a maternity shirt) and a black shirt underneath that, not looking too shabby for being at camp for nearly 3 weeks.

Drove the Durago to my grandmothers and took her to the E-Center and it was like a maze to get a wheel chair through it, but me being of mad skills accomplished it. The topic of said Graduation was a Mark Twain quote and this girl talked about how to fail greatly, basically fail and fail great... which I found really inspiring for a high school graduation that no one is paying attention too. . .

Ended up leaving after Cameron crossed the stage, me and grandma couldn't sit still much longer so I ended up taking her to Sonic where I got an Ocean Water, it wasn't as fabulous as it was made out to be, but I wont complain. The ice cream was rather tasteless.... I took grandma home and went home where I was in photo's for the xmas card and what not. From there I took a nap, oh yeah....I didn't get to watch any X-files :( . . . it was on my list of to-do junk but it didn't happen. From there went to work

aww work.. I wasn't even in the building for five minutes and I got tackled into the pool... I hadn't even changed yet. Whatever, might as well get wet.

Mark missed me the most, my elbow will prove it. ok that sounded bad... SHUT UP MARK!! but I slammed my elbow when he tackled me into the pool...2 times... I had to tell the story of the night before when we got 'evacuated' because of the tornado that was spotted by camp Coles Trip about an hour away from here and we were in the basement for over an hour waiting it out, it was really cool...but a ton of water everywhere and we know how I feel about that.

Finally got to bed about 2:45 and had to wake up at 7:30 for a shower and head to the airport. I love standing in line behind someone who has never gone through Security before... because they HOLD everything up and you have to hold their hand (those metal detectors read your mind, I'm sure of it) and I slept on the way to Denver (oh I bought 'Escape' by Carolyn Jessop, ex polygamist) and waited in Denver for awhile then flew to Baltimore where this guy was practically sitting on me the whole 2 hours and 47 minutes (The pilots were impressed enough to announce that while parading around like clowns) and ended up waiting like 2 hours for Gumbo, no worries I had a book to read.

Got back to camp where there was like a million new people! Holy Geez it was crazy and they were pointing and whose who and I think I only got half of it.... I will try better tomorrow... It was dark at they out number me...

Oh bottom of the pool, not impressed much!! it was gross! Leaves and dirt all over the place and I put Kirby in and hopefully he'll do his job and clean it out. CROSS FINGERS! but it won't get the deep end and from the dark I couldn't tell how bad that was. But good news ph 7.6 and cl 1.5 it held its self without me!!

I think they were playing in there because boxes where moved and so was the filter.... I'm going to be pissed if someone did, cross fingers right there.... and here I am now, waiting for History.

I have to go..
Adieu

Yeah, Yeah

June 4th, 2008
Nothing of importance happened in the last two days. . . (Man famous last words)

We added two more to our staff, Coastie and Enzee joined us this morning at the crack of dawn Goof walking in and was like surprise, this is Laurel and our PM and AD live here. We did lifeguard training and I was hooked to the back board and Gumbo/Cheetah was pulling me out and I like dropped 3 feet and was still hooked to the backboard. It was proof enough that I need VELCRO STRAPS!! I about died...

We had another storm and everyone was freaking out, 'its the big one' and I had to roll floss for like 3 hours and i got one in a major knot and I was like umm this sucks and I cut it. Don't tell cheetah... I got to explain the season finales of House and Bones to Coastie and Enzee :) Happy times.... I miss Zack....

Thats it,
So long, farewell

Inspections, Yellow Dye and Chlorine

Inspections, Yellow Dye and Chlorine

June 2, 2008

So I had to wake up to Bob walking to his office, first slamming the door behind him and then hacking up a lung and 7 in the morning first off, and I didn’t have to be to the office until near 8:30 for inspections. I woke up and got dressed, which sucked because moving moves everything right? So I had no idea where anything was. I hiked my way to the office where I ended up waking everyone up when I made breakfast and basically sat around til 9:00 when Denise (Jen’s Boss) came in. We hauled in boxes for her and waited until 9:08 when the pool inspector to come, she looked nice but intimidating nice… and that combination isn’t always the best. Well we stood around waiting for her to write all the paper work and then she opened the filter (good thing I cleaned those out, right?) And she injected this iodine looking stuff into the pool where the filter shot out this yellow dye and it looked like a highlighter exploded in the pool it was that yellow. The lady came over to me and said that I just had to shock it in order for it to go away. So of course I did as I was told, I need to add conditioner to the pool which is like 3 ounces for every 10,000 pounds, or whatever.

Then we went to the Dining Hall and moved things from the rooms to the dining room and set up the salad bar. I officially have a new appreciation for people who have to put shelves in. In general. We had to install the shelves in the warmer which was hell, just because you had to bend at funny angles and fight with them to go in. Everyone sort of left us and we wandered back to the office when Patty came back and she had these huge a’ tables and she handed me the keys to her Durango to move it, I was like are you crazy?

So I started to put them together and was like screw this and walked away.

Started lifeguard training yesterday and I had to do my lectures, Cheetah and Gumbo found things amusing especially when I was going over legal considerations and I use the ‘I have AIDS’ speech and they were rolling on the floor and I was like I use that one all the time and they don’t believe me. Gumbo was like you were like you were uber serious, I was like I tell that all the time, I promise.

We had a meeting to discuss our jobs and so mine is

As the aquatics director, My job includes the following duties:

Attend all admin meetings at night

Rotate on a weekly basis with other admin for rounds and taps

Conduct a daily meeting with the Aquatic Staff

Conduct a daily stamina routine

Conduct an in-service once a week

Directly or appoint someone to record levels at the pool daily

Assist with night medications daily

Working with the CD (GOOF) PM (Cheetah) ULA (Gumbo) on the weekly schedule

Keep all aquatic paperwork up to date and filed

What the heck? My job keeps changing everyday…. The only similarity is the Aquatic Stuff part

Uh? Title.... right

Uh, Title? Right. June 1,2008

So woke up yesterday awfully late. It was almost 10:30, so it was off to a great start. Started off with a chemical set of 7.8 and .75 . . .My chlorine is going to need a talking to or something. I did read on the bottle that I’m supposed to add conditioner at 1-3 PPM and I will start in lieu of wasting all the Cal Hypo that I have. (I am going to have to get more eventually, but I want to hold it off as long as I can… yeah right.) I think it’s supposed to be at 3 ounces for every 10,000 gallons of water or something, I’ll have to look again.

We ended up having to go to Bob’s house, he’s the caretaker, because we were in search of Zip ties for the beds in Holly 1 and 2. He ended up asking if we had explored the areas and we were like yeah, we went to Point Lookout, St. Mary’s City, and we couldn’t find Calvert Cliffs. He was like oh they are over here yada, yada, yada… I just thought what the heck, do I have a sign on me that says ‘Hey, I’m from Maryland’? I mean someone gave me the wrong sign, because clearly not from MD. He also talked about the tornado that ripped through here, I guess the damage was pretty extensive and lost a lot of shrubbery. He also painted the trail markers that Gumbo put up from yellow to red, he was just being nice. We finally left and ran to get bug nets and set them all up in the Holly’s. Comes to find out we put them all on backwards and had to start ALL over again, that took us at least an hour.

Cheetah and I went back to the office and ate lunch at which we parted ways so I could go vacuum the pool for inspection. My pH climbed up to 8. I mean Honestly? So I ended up putting pH decreaser into the pool and it only went down a tad, and while I was cleaning the shower house I accidently pulled the pool fill instead of the hose and was like Oh, sweet. I let it run for about 30 minutes and sure enough dropped my pH to 7.4. The angels rejoice on high right? I’ve concluded after the second time I vacuumed, I’m never complaining about it again at the fitness center. My vacuum only has one nozzle on it so it doesn’t suck as much as it should (You know what I mean) I moved my stand from the deep end to next to the ladder because it’s closer to the transition point and I’m waiting for the other stand, they said its around here somewhere and yet to know where it is. I got sunburned, I honestly put on sunscreen!!!

We were told to dress nice for dinner and so we went and took a shower in Laurel (oh p.s. we moved in) which is like a Lowes display shower. Used the flat iron to straighten my hair and of course my hair is still frizzy as all hell. Got in the van and we added 2 more to our party Boca and Amazon. Amazon is the business manager and Boca is the programming/lifeguard. We ended up in Annapolis (the capitol, for all those history buffs) and where I wanted to go to college and ended up at The Melting Pot. A fondue restaurant.

Our waitress name was Chelsea and she obviously wanted to sit with us. She asked what brought us here and we said the food, she asked us where we were from and she didn’t give us a chance to answer she said for the Navy boys? I said yes. Then she waited for us to answer and I said Salt Lake and everyone else said Missouri and she was like you guys came to the Annapolis Melting pot when your.. . no we are working out here. She was trying to give us her life story, she’s in love with the manager and bought him a shirt that she threw some sauce at him and got it dirty, now he is wearing a purple shirt, he didn’t look half bad in I might say.

I got this spinach and mushroom salad with red dressing it was amazing!!! Then for the main course I got the ‘French Quarter’ which was like gumbo style meat that you dip in the fryer and it was pretty good, I had shrimp, steak, sausage and chicken and it was really good J. Dessert was amazing!! We had chocolate and peanut butter, with fruit (some cantaloupe would have been nice) marshmallows dipped in oreos/graham crackers, rice crispies and cheesecake, heaven in a dish.

That was pretty much my day in a nut shell… I need to go to bed we have a huge inspection starting tomorrow… wish me luck

Saturday Already?

Saturday all ready? May 31, 2008

Alright, it’s been over 18 hours and my chemicals have been the same! Yay!!!

Went down to the pond today and discovered that a 8 inch long piece of wood came off the dock on the right side and while I was on the dock there was a crash and a bang, when I turned around to see that two canoes had fallen off the top rack of the little shelf that was built for me. This was how my canoe area was set up.

The two top canoes got blown off the rack and landed in between the three canoes, which is crazy because the second one had to be lifted over the division bar. I went over and flipped them over so if it was to rain it wouldn’t collect water. (Good idea since it is raining right now) and so they were upside down right now. I walked around the pond on a cute little trail that went all the way around, and I was surprised to see a fork in the road that met up on the other side of Promise.

It was just complicated enough for Brownies or whatnot and a quiet easy trail for older girls. It has three bridges, I was a huge fan.

Kotke

I should post a map of camp:

Small Map…

Not drawn to

scale,

Not drawn to scale but pretty much the same set up. I could’ve come up with such better names for units. Sure. Fine. Whatever.

My pH is going to drop more and that somewhat makes me more happy! I would love for it to go down to 7.2 ish.... but that’s asking too much. Oh I was supposed to tell you about the weather, I have been officially sanctioned to look at the weather every day, so I thought I would get in the habit and comes to find out that the National Weather Service has issued a severe weather warning for like every county in the state (we are in Charles County FYI), uhh good to know right? Well I forwarded it to Goof and then 20 minutes later I got one for a Tornado warning, Holy freaking sweet!! Forwarded it to goof and I went in search of Cheetah, just in case we had to move into the tornado shelter in the dining hall we would be together. We walked back to the office, in retrospect I guess it wasn’t a good idea because of the lightning going all over. . . . whatever, the rain was amazing and it was up and down and the trees were swaying in the wind, talk about crazy because they look like toothpicks. That lasted like an hour or so and there was some hail ( like five pieces) and thunder/lightning all over the place… exciting….

I went to check my chemicals after the storm ended and supposedly fresh water is supposed to drop the pH… yeah right it was still at 7.6 and .75 and so my chlorine is going back down…jerk!!! There is mud everywhere and its I’m not much of a fan of it… makes things slippery.

I now am living in Laurel, because we had to move the younger girls to Holly 1 and 2 and Deer Crossing, so I’m going to be awakened if there’s a problem... Yay! Not really. So basically I live in a room with a curtain because of the office we share with Bob the caretaker. We do have a comfy chair and carpet, a large kitchen and what not. I’m now roomies with Cheetah and pretty secluded, except for sick children knocking on my door, what am I to do? Take them to Cedar is what it is, then care for them.

We’ll find out as it happens. I’ve been working on pre camp junk and I’m pretty content with what I have now. I still need to work on Clean Communication and Gossiping, Super Nanny: Behavioral problems, rainy day activities… each with another person. I did do the ones coming to the pool/waterfront, but I did that like three months ago. I really need to shave my legs, just fyi… I also need to vacuum the damn pool, I’ve been holding off…but the wind blew a ton of small leaves and large leaves into it, also need to scrub the beach with the brush, dirt collects very VERY easily. Oh Pool. Yeah the fountain that should’ve been like 5 feet… yeah its lucky to get a foot out of it, so not really a good idea and I can’t complain because I didn’t pay for it.

Hum. I don’t have much to write today because we didn’t really do much. I want to go find my PFD’s but again no one has keys for anything, nothing at all.