Apr 3, 2009

March 28th thru April 2nd


Saturday the 29th was a nice day. Sun all day long with warm California winds, it made it all the way up to 49 degrees today! I did some grocery shopping and accidently bought a small bottle of tequila since the day felt like I was south of the border. Playing Mexican music inside the kitchen and outside the truck camper, I proceded to cook a Mexican stew while cleaning and doing some outside work on the truck. After 3 or 4 shots of tequila/lime and salt, my work on the truck slowed down significally. I brought out my two antiquated camper jacks from the garage (each one weighing 75 lbs) and proceded to slowly wench up the camper from the bed of the truck. Then I spent a very long time trying to figure out how the metal brackets I found would fit on the truck frame in order to hold the camper tightly onto the truck. Turns out that I would have to completely remove the camper from the truck in order to do this and while I was pondering a better way to achieve this it started pissing down snow, the temperature fell, and my friend Chuck came over, with his wife "Missy" and two dogs. The truck operation would have to wait.
Chuck was on his way to Redlodge, Montana, which is amazing since we just came back from there two months before, but as we know, Chuck loves the Rocky Mountains, and spends all his off work time touring them. I love the Rockies also, but feel I have enough of the Rockies in my own backyard, so feel little need to drive thousands of miles to see the same thing. The local "Wasatch Range" is just as beautiful to me as the Grand Tetons, only less commercial.
We partied all night and jammed out with Logan playing the Bass and/or keyboards, Chuck on indian flute, and I on guitar and vocals. We had fun.

Chuck and crew left promptly the next morning, Logan and I took it easy mainly sleeping the rest of the afternoon.


It snowed like hell all Saturday night and Sunday. Sunday was in the high 20's, which allowed it the snow to stick to the ground. Sunday night it snowed and the truck was stuck in the driveway, so I had to walk to work on Monday morning. Snowed Tuesday and Wednesday as well. This place has been quite the frickin "Winter Wonderland" lately. Damn, I thought it was Spring a couple weeks ago.
This is the week before our "Spring Break" up here and the students can't seem to keep there mind on school work. The ones that actually show up to class need some extra threatening in order to enable them to work on their jewelry.

Tuesday, I gathered nine of my student's best examples of high school jewelry projects, and had it all registered into the Brigham City High School Art show. I had a strong collection and kept my fingers crossed for success. Today I found out that ALL 9 PIECES WERE JURIED INTO THE SHOW! AND THAT 3 OF MY STUDENTS ACTUALLY PLACED! One of my students took First Place in three dimensional Art (Sculpture and Jewelry), and his other piece won "honorable mention". Another one of my students won "Honorable Mention" as well.
The Logan High School Art department as a whole had a really strong showing, easily kicking the ass's of the other schools involved. I am so proud of my kids.

Today, I found out that I was scheduled to return next year as an Art Teacher for this very fine school (although they cut 12 teaching positions due to the economy), it seems that our department is strong enough to make it through all the cuts!

I took the truck out this afternoon with the dog, paid all my bills, paid the temporary motorcycle loan, bought some more truck camping supplies like 5 gallon water bottles, kerosene lamps, propane, kerosene, ect.. and spent the rest of the evening hanging out in the Hell Bitch (my truck camper) with Freddy (my dog). We had a great time! Tomorrow we are going on a field trip to the Weber State College, to see the High School Art Exhibit there, in which a couple of my students have work on display in.

After tomorrow, I have a week off. Hopefully the weather will be kind enough to allow me to do some camping and dirtbike riding.