Solar Eclipse

I must be totally isolated from the world.  I knew nothing about the solar eclipse happening until Brynn said something about it.  She wanted to head down to southern Utah to see it. Lucky me, it didn't happen until the evening so I could swing teaching primary and going.  I say, "Me and I"  because Houston couldn't come. :(  I blame that on the summer semester of school.  Anywho, Brynn, Justin, and I all headed down to Brian Head Ski Resort at around 1 in the afternoon.  We made it there at about 5.  We only had to pay $8 to ride the lift up to watch it from the top of the mountain.  Not a bad deal, I thought.  We got up there about 30 minutes before the moon was to start covering the sun.  Once it started we all watched, and I took pictures. :) 

 


The hard part about watching the sun or filming it.  You obviously can't stare right at it.  Lucky for Brynn and Justin, they had solar glasses up there.  I brought Houston's dad's welding goggles.  As for the camera, you can't just film the sun either.  It is way too bright and will ruin the sensors in it.  For cool people, they buy a solar filter for the camera. I, on the other hand, waited until the last minute and wasn't able to get one.  BUT, I rigged up my own.  Remember those welding goggles I mentioned I used... I used it as my camera filter too.

My AWESOME goggles!

I took pictures all through out.  They are not the best.  Come to find out, filming the sun is A LOT harder than it looks.  There's none of that point and shot crap.  You have to put it on manual and change the f/stop, ISO, and such to get the shot at least somewhat decent. It didn't help that I don't have a tripod so the movement didn't help.  (Note to self: GET A TRIPOD!!)  Anyway, here they are...  At least it's proof I was there. :P

The Welding Goggles make the light green.  I thought it looked pretty cool.

YAY!  They're okay pictures.  I did the best I could.  :P  After it was all said and done was packed up our stuff thinking we would be quick to get out.  Well, everyone else had the same idea.  It didn't help that the lift is not meant to take people down so they can only put, up to three people, on every fifth chair.  There were LOTS of people.  As we waited for our turn I took this shot...

When it was our turn... Finally... we about died... literally.  We had a bit of a mishap getting onto the lift. Justin dropped one of the chairs RIGHT as the chair was to us, Brynn stepped closer to me to give him room which in turn made it possible for only one butt cheek to find the seat.  So, Justin and I are scrambling to get on.  Thankfully they stopped over the catch net, so if we did fall, we didn't go rolling down the mountain.  Once Justin was on, Brynn turns to me, still hanging on for dear life to see if I made it up.  LOL! I had to tell her to scoot over because there was really no room to pull myself on.  Neither Justin or I fell, and once we gave the okay to the guy running the lift, everyone up top clapped... "I like to thank the academy..."  No.... not really.  That was super embarrassing! 

Then all the way down we laughed about it, which didn't help Brynn who was is desperate need of a restroom.  Which, as it always does, made us laugh even harder.  Once down, we got to start the LONG trek home.  When we got passed Scipio, for some reason, the freeway went to a crawl, so we had to take some back road to Nephi.  Thank goodness for back roads.  We were all ready to be home in bed.

What an adventure!  LOL! It was really fun!  I'm glad I got to see it. I do wish Houston could've made it.  At least I have some pictures for him to see.

The Food Drive

Every year the Post Office does a food drive.  As a carrier (At least at my office) this constitutes us one day passing out plastic bags to everyone.  (This is a lot more difficult than it seems.)  It also makes me feel all weird thinking people will be mad to find a waded up plastic bag in their mail box. Lol! Two, Passing out little flyers to remind everyone about it. Then, we get to pick everyone's donations up.

I did this last year, and it was crazy. But, I can honestly say, this year was even worse.  I was doing a different route than my regular one.  Mike (the regular carrier for the route I was doing) didn't mention that his route is one of the best donators at our office... 

A little background, my regular route has around 770 families on it.  I had lots last year when I collected.  Mike's route has only 550 something families.  He got TONS this year!  I was talking to Angie and she asked me to take some pictures of my plunder before I arrived at the first drop off point, which for me was at 1:30.  I was about 2/3's of the way through the route.  These are the pictures...

This is from my point of view in the front.  Yon can see that plastic tub with the blue stickers on it, yes..?  That tub is on top of a whole other layer of tubs underneath.  The tubs are about a foot and a half deep. 

This is from the back of the truck.  You can see the tubs a bit better here.  We counted how many tubs I had.  It was around  20-25.  It was hard to count because there was another carrier with tubs there too, and they were all set on the ground next to each other.

I can't get over how much food I was carrying around!  As my dad would say, "I was shootin' coons."  by the time I made the drop off.  Lol! This could probably sustain a family of 4 for maybe... a year. Depending on how much they eat of course. 

Some carriers get really upset with the food drive because you have to deliver the mail while you do this.  Lucky for me, I didn't have much mail that day so my mail was never buried underneath anything.  I had one the the city carriers ask me before I left if it bothered me to pick all this up.  I said, "No, is it supposed to..?"  I think of it two ways.  One, I get a day of extreme exercise, without really trying.  And two, I try to remember all the people that it will help.  Don't get me wrong, sometimes I get frustrated with it and wish I wasn't doing it, but really try to remember those two points above. 

The reason I even took the pictures was because Angie was telling me about how crappy the food drive is up there.  No fault of the people donating.  For some reason their office didn't get enough bags to pass out to everyone, so only a very few people got any.  When I talked to her, she was pretty close to done and only had about 10 bags, not even full mind you.  She wanted to see my plunder. 

We May Not Have Any 2 Legged Kids, But We Have a Four Legged One

My four legged darling!  She is such a sweetheart.  I made a post last year about her having surgery to remove a tumor on her backside.  Well.... it came back. :/  Then she got some other bumps too.  That's the Boxer in her for sure.  We took little Hanna in to her teeth cleaned and brought Maggie in later that day to have her bumps looked at.

We set up the appointment and had the return bump, a new one on her hip, and a "Skin Tag" removed on her front leg.  On top of that, her teeth cleaned.

I took her in this morning and was supposed to come pick her up later today.  They call you when she is ready to be picked up.  I figured around 4.  That came and went and no call...  Finally at about 6:15 I called and the vet explained that they had a dog hit by a car come in and it was a very crazy day.  I was glad it was that and not that she had a bad reaction or something.

When we got over there to pick her up, the family that owned the hit dog was in the waiting room talking to a nurse about what would need to be done with their dog.  From what I gathered, the dog dislocated it's hip and was in shock.  The nurse explained that it was highly recommended that the dog stay at the office to receive fluids for the shock and do blood tests to make sure there were no internal injuries.  It wasn't cheap for all that, but I was so shocked to hear the owners trying to convince the nurse to just give the dog a local anesthetic and just push the hip into place.  The nurse explained that it couldn't happen that way, that the dog would need to be put out completely.  So, the owners asked if they could give a local anesthetic and they would take the dog home and bring it back in the morning...   What is wrong with these people!?!  The dog is in shock the could die at home!!

Trust me, that stuff is not cheap, but I still feel that you should do the best thing for your pet.  With that being said, Maggie's surgery wasn't cheap.  It set us back over $700.  But I would do it all again to make sure she is happy and healthy.  Sometimes I think people don't realize that a pet comes with expenses.  Especially when you want him/her to live a long an happy life.

I got a picture today (May 8)

Lucky you, I got a picture of Maggie's stitches for you to see. :D  These are 2 of the 3 cuts.  The other in on her front leg, you can't see.

 It looks bad but she's acting just like normal already.  It just looks horrible.  Frankenstein Dog!!