Working at the DI

Another thing we did over the holidays was to volunteer to work at the West Jordan DI. We wanted to make it a family thing but everyone was busy except for JoAnn, Richie, and me. It's not bad work and goes pretty fast. Our job on this day was to put the price stickers on the "as is items" and put them on a cart. We would take them off of a shelve which is labeled with the amount the price should be. They are put there by someone on the other side of the shelve. I got to witness a manager and worker looking at items and debating their value. They did this to calibrate what shelve the worker put the item on.

The interesting thing is, the time it takes for donations to get out on the floor after you've dropped them off is probably 30 minutes or less, including clothes; no, they do not wash them.

PJ Asleep at Church

Last Sunday, PJ agreed to go to Sacrament Meeting with us if he could wear his regular clothes and bring his Spongebob and Patrick legos along with the Crabby Patty Car. He didn't last too long before he fell asleep. I think he was a little sick, if you look closely, his cheeks are reddish.

Dead Cottonwood Tree

When we moved to Bluffdale in 1990, one of the first things we did was plant a cottonwood tree in the front yard. In was hoping to see brilliant yellow foliage in the fall like the cottonwood trees along rivers and streams in back country Utah. However, the leaves never turned yellow; just brown. The tree did provide shade and a lot of leaves and twigs in the fall that had to be raked or mulched.

Anyway, in the spring of 2010, we noticed that the tree did not fully leaf out. Over the course of the summer, it just kept dying back. Since it had been trimmed by Rocky Mountain Power about 6 months previously, we wrote a letter to RMP asking them to come cut the tree and take it away. Although they denied responsibility, they did cut the tree down in October of 2010 but I had to haul it away. After cutting it up as best I could, I loaded my trailer 8 times with chunks and branches about 4-5 feet deep and hauled it to the dump. My left elbow has still not recovered.

And I still have the two-ton tree trunk in my front yard but I've made arrangements to get rid of it soon. More photos can be seen here.

Messiah Sing-In

I think I forgot to mention that this last Christmas season, I think it was the weekend after Thanksgiving, JoAnn and I went to the Messiah Sing-In at Symphony Hall. We bought tickets for Senta and Greg but they ended up having other plans. For the uninitiated, the Messiah music book is about 3/4 inches thick and weighs about 5 pounds. Luckily, it only takes about 1 ½ hours to sing it. I really developed an appreciation for the music and I now keep a copy in the stereo in my car and listen to it quite often.

PJ's Fifth Birthday

The first leg of PJ's fifth birthday began on January 22 at Jungle Jim's. It is amazing how much fun a five-year old can have at a place like this especially when his five-year old best friend, Trey, is with him. The second leg was on Sunday at our house when he got to open presents again. Unfortunately, the Lego toys his dad ordered him from Brick Trainshop have still not arrived. More pictures of the birthday boy can be found here.

Christmas 2010

One of the things we did as a family this Christmas past was to visit Temple Square on Christmas Eve. It was rather cold so we didn't stay all that long, but we had an enjoyable time. Unfortunately, at the time I couldn't find my camera so I didn't take any photos. Fortunately, Richie had his camera and took a lot of them. They can be found here.

Cotton Time of Year

I have a lot of trees in my yard. Along the west boundary, we planted hybrid poplars because they grow fast and provide shade. In the yard, we planted several "cottonless" cottonwood trees. However, after they got big and mature, the "cottonless" cottonwood trees started producing copious amounts of cotton as did the hybrid poplars. Needless to say, this time of year gets cottony around here. Luckily, there are many other trees in the neighborhood producing cotton so I don't feel like I'm the only one causing the problem. You will probably have to click on the photos to enlarge them so as to get the full view of the problem. As you can see, the Austrian Pine in the front yard is full of cotton. The white dots in the photo of the street and neighbors house aren't scratches, they are cotton seeds floating by, and PJ was trying to sweep the cotton away with his little American Flag.