Halloween

It's that time of year again! I LOVE Halloween. Unfortunately with the big move I haven't invested as much as I usually do, and pumpkins are expensive on this side of the States, so I think I'll just have to reminisce this year.

Ancient Family History

So the last two weeks I've been scanning family pictures that I borrowed from my Aunt Bobbie. Most of them used to belong to Ivy Crosby, since they all have her handwriting on the back. I've shared a few gems that I have scanned so far.

Betty Jo Crosby 

George S Crosby using divining rod 1917 (sorry for the rotation issue)

Main street of Lovell, WY 1917

Rodney age 1

Well those are some I thought were really neat. I have tons of them I can't fit on this blog. I'm thinking about starting a web-site for it all.

Family History

One of my favorite hobbies is to do family history research. So far my focus has been on collecting family pictures and making e-copies that can be available to everyone. I started collecting pictures about a year and a half ago. I don't mean to brag, but I probably have more family pictures that are unique to my collection than anyone else in the family (except maybe Uncle Robert and Aunt Shawna). I love to look back through the lives of my progenitors because it tells me more about them than I could probably ever get out of them by talking to them.

This last weekend I spent my Saturday up in Bountiful, UT with grandma and grandpa and karen scanning their pictures. Boy I sure did find some real treasures. Not only did I find pictures of my own family that my mom and dad didn't have, but Grandpa showed me a box he'd never opened (nor had grandma, at least not that she could remember) that contained Hazel Harmon's most precious keepsakes. Inside we found Grandma's high school diploma's, Owen M Harmon's school records and priesthood ordination certificates, and even Grandma's drivers license from CA back in the day (it's really neat, it has her finger print on it). If anyone wants some family pictures, let me know. Below I thought I'd share some of my favorites from this last weekend that I found.

Emily Anderton. This is a classic face she makes, I want to know who taught her how to make it...

Dale Harmon's LDS Seminary graduation certificate. 1937.

Cloyde Wood Anderton. He told me this is his High School graduation photo.

Mom, Dad, and Emily. I believe this was taken in their home up at the UofU.

Karen and David Anderton. I love this one...

David and William. This was in front of our house in CO. Turbo!!!

David with Emily and William. Sorry dad, you look really tired...

The Ski Trip

I convinced Nicole to come skiing with me yesterday. We went to Alta for their daily free ski from 3pm to close at 5pm. We rented our skis from BYU. It hasn't snowed very much this season thus far. Consequently the guy renting me my skis was trying to convince me that because the snow wasn't powdery I was more likely to break the skis and I should pay for the insurance. It amazes me sometimes that the skiers in Utah don't realize that the snow in Utah is unique, and that snow in other places is usually hard and icy.

We had a nice drive up Little Cottonwood Canyon. There isn't a whole lot of snow up there but the ski runs were well groomed. The weather was warm, which was good since we didn't have real ski goggles.

The end of the run we went on, after Nicole got used to her ski legs.

A picture of the Albion Base, Nicole practiced skiing along the straight run.

I was pretty rusty on my skiing skills, I almost did the splits after a few minutes (and I can't normally do the splits). This was Nicole's first time skiing, she caught on pretty quick, though she tells me she prefers snowboarding over skiing. We had fun, especially watching all the little kids learning how to ski with their parents. Most of them are pretty fearless and you can watch them go down a hill bravely only to wipe out. I was impressed by the parents who were teaching their kids to ski while skiing backwards in front of them to help them keep balanced. It was a really nice day.

Switchfoot Concert

Yesterday Nicole took me to my first rock concert (excluding seeing TSO in Austin, that was technically FHE) where a venue in Salt Lake City was hosting several popular bands. We went to see Switchfoot and Anberlin, two of our favorite bands.

I've never been to a real rock concert. I really enjoyed the music and how well the musicians performed. It was the first time I've ever seen real rock stars acting like rock stars on a stage making a bunch of fans go crazy.

Switchfoot's music is awesome A: because it's rock music, B: They don't just scream the whole time, C: Their lyrics are meaningful and usually have to do with charities they've worked for or experiences that inspired them, D: They're sincere people, they really love their music and fans, not seeking the sleezy things they could seek that come with being rock stars. They really are in it for the good they can do with their music.

Being in the audience was interesting...we got there an hour early almost and there was already a dense ball of people right in front of the stage. When I say dense, I mean like 2 people per square foot almost. Nicole and I tried to stand on a curb to see over the crowd but tall people came and stood literally an inch in front of us. Most of the time all I could see was the back of some dude's head.

The concert was outdoors, changing the atmosphere a bit from what you might normally expect of a rock concert. But that didn't stop people from doing silly things. Up close to the stage people like to shove, push, and try to work their way to the front. You have to stand your ground well. People also like to crowd surf and throw things. You have to keep an eye out or someone will land on top of you. Nicole and I laughed as people tried to crowd surf up to the stage but were yanked down by security guards.

The music was loud! It was so loud I couldn't hear anything for 2 minutes after they stopped playing. I could have told the stranger in front of me my deepest darkest secrets during a song and they wouldn't have been able to hear me say anything. 

Watching the crowd at the venue was entertaining. There were all kinds of people, from old geezers who still like to rock to young middle school kids with their older siblings. There were LDS kids, high school students, and even some pimps with their ho's. Budweiser was being sold all over the place. Almost every corner of the venue had some drunk people passed out with medics and friends trying to revive them. Why do people drink beer?

Overall the music was excellent. It was like listening to Beethoven's 9nth only the volume was turned up to the "jet engine" amplitude and people were aloud to jump up and down and scream and sing along. I really loved it and would go again to hear Switchfoot anytime.

Seattle Weather on the Wasatch

This weekend Nicole agreed to let me go for a hike! So I went to hike the highest peak

around that I've been meaning to get up for a few years, Provo Peak. Provo Peak is at

an elevation of 11,068 ft. It was a beautiful day, the weather reminded me of my Seattle

days; soft wispy clouds and blue skies.

The hike to the top itself is relatively easy and anyone can do it in about 2 hrs. I however was unable to drive to the trail head (the road requires a tougher vehicle than the Saturn). So I decided to borrow Nicole's Bike (a.k.a. Rancor) and ride about 10 miles (both ways) from where I parked the Saturn to the trail head. The bike ride involved about 1500 ft of elevation gain (both ways). By the time I reached the trail head I was already mostly exhausted. Somehow I made it though, the view was totally worth it! When I came home Nicole made me a delicious dinner! She's the greatest!

Ram, Roosters, Dinosaurs

Ram:

I don't have enough ram. It bothers me. And by ram I mean computer memory. And by not enough I mean that I literally get messages from my computer. "INSUFFICIENT MEMORY!!!!!!!111!!!1!!#!!#$!!!!" I think my poor laptop is having self-esteem issues. "I can't vectorize that image! It is way too awesome for me to compute!" *computer brain explodes* Basically I have NEW COMPUTER LUST really badly. I know exactly which model I want, and every two days I go to the Dell website and build it and stare at it and drool.

Larp Tarp, you've been my friend for the past 3.5 years. In fact, I've had you almost as long as I've been employed at the Creamery. You have put up with hours of roommate abuse, two trips to Houston, working way too hard to open iTunes and giving me 10 FPS when I play StarCraft 2 on the lowest possible graphics settings (which is frustrating but THANK YOU for running it despite your terrible piece of junk integrated graphics card). I love you. But your warranty expires in August.

Roosters:

I've started designing t-shirts for Threadless.com, a t-shirt company where artists submit their work and the community rates the designs. If your design gets chosen to be printed, you get $2000 and a $500 gift card for the site.

I am not an artist. It's amazing how much you can fake art in a program like photoshop. I probably won't win even if I submit 100 designs. In fact I will probably get discouraged really soon and give up *attitude problem*

Oh, about the rooster...Rosie the Rooster (RIP) has made his way onto a t-shirt design. It is missing something. I think I will put newspaper text on top of his feathers. Gotta appeal to the hipsters.

I have lots of ideas but I lack the skills to put probably half of them into production (ewok in full-combat armor, an illustration of Orion and Taurus killing each other, and then when you turn out the lights you will see the glow-in-the-dark constellation of them, some ideas involving the use of UV ink, etc...) so until I learn how to do art I'm a bit of a sitting duck.

When (if) my lame cat design gets approved, I will post the link. Don't feel obligated to vote if you think it's junk.

Dinosaurs:

I learned that one of my best friends in high school wrote a book called "Love in the time of Dinosaurs" and it's supposed to be this wacky mix of kung fu and dinosaurs and other awesome things.

So I bought it. Really excited to read it.