Desultory Thoughts

I’ve been poking around at the yard work ever since the snow melted off the lawn the first time.  But since then (probably February) snow has found its way onto the ground several times since, the latest being just two days ago on April 6.

I use Scott’s Annual Program [scotts.com] for my lawn and the first application should go on in early Spring, March through April.  It should normally be applied when temperatures are generally above 60 and on a day that’s dry after the lawn has been mowed.  I’m running out of days to apply it, so I may just do it today before the forecasted three or four days of rain that is ahead of us.

It’s been especially wet this year.  I wondered how much I should water my lawn (not that I’m worried about it at all right now) and found that if I use the 1/2 inch rule (make sure your lawn receives 1/2 inch per week) I’ll save a lot of money and water.  You can download a very imformative PDF customized for your Utah area by visiting conservewater.utah.gov.  Hopefully I’ll be able to follow the guidelines and save a lot of water.  Last year when we moved in we had to water a lot to revitalize our dead lawn.  Our water bill was pretty big as a result.  But we probably wasted a lot of water, too.  I found out that if your water is running onto the sidewalk then you need to split up the watering into smaller increments.  That’s good to know and it makes sence.  Sometimes I just have to read it on a website first to believe it.

Other things I need to do is to remove two dead trees in my yard.  One is in the front yard and was dead when we got here.  It turns out the neighbor kids had their way with it when the house was for sale and vacant.  It was reported that they took a hatchet or machete to it “for fun”.

I’m glad that they at least didn’t do what another neighbor kid did to a vacant house directly behind our house.  He decided it would be fun to lob rocks through three windows in the back of the house.  Heather saw him do it and called the police to report the property damage.  A week later the kid and his whole family moved out, much to the delight of the entire neighborhood.  Apparently that was only one of many incidents of hellionism that he had committed.

Now we have two ugly vacant houses behind us.  We need some big 6″ privacy bushes planted all along the back of our fence to conceal the eyesores.  (Add that to the list!  But I’m not doing that today.)

Heather was reading the Tooele Transcript Bulletin tonight and pointed out some interesting facts about an article entitled “Does Your Family Eat Together? That Could Say Alot About You”.

We’ve been eating together as a family nearly on a nightly basis ever since we got into our home just over 7 months ago. I’ve really enjoyed it and I’m glad Heather enjoys cooking now. (She didn’t used to.)

Of course, we have two small children, so that makes it much easier to do. I’m sure it will become more and more difficult as our children grow into teenagers. But it will be something that I hope we continue, because based on the article several good things come of it, according to studies.
For example:

• Children who eat frequently with their families tend to do better in school.
• Children tend to be happier with their present life and their prospects for the future.
• Teens who regularly eat meals with their families are less likely to get in fights, think about suicide, smoke, drink, do drugs and they’ll have better academic performance.

I’ve noticed that I look forward to being home with my family more now that I have dinner time to look forward to. I’ve always been a very social eater. It’s good to sit down with my family and bond with them over a hearty lasagna or a spicy chili. (Heather makes a mild batch for the kids. What a good mom!)

I enjoy eating lunch with my friends. I actually don’t take a lunch unless I’m going to eat with somebody. Eating socially might actually be considered a bad habit in my case. I’m contantly finding people that will go to lunch with me. Luckily my friend Clint joins me quite often. He works where I work, so that makes it even more convenient.

Today we ate lunch with at one of my favorite lunch joints, The Five Star Restaurant [visitsaltlake.com]. It’s really good and pretty dang cheap for the amount of food you get. It’s mixed Thai/Chinese food. The people there are very friendly and I wish more waitresses/waiters were as good as these are. The only thing about The Five Star is that you have to get there before noon (we usually go at around 11:15 or so) because the lunch rush is kind of crazy. But even if you go during the rush, the service is always awesome.

We first went to the restaurant because of the $9.99 all-you-can-eat crab on Tuesday and Thursdays. It’s not too bad, although every once in a while a plate of cold crab will come your way. I’m not sure how that happens, but cold and water-logged crab isn’t too good. But due to the great service, the low price and the majority of the plates containing wonderful, seculant, hot crab…it’s well worth it!

After 21 posts you would think that I would’ve mentioned my wife by now! Her name is Heather and she’s absolutely awesome! That’s why I married her almost 9 years ago. We’ll have our 9th anniversary in March.

Come to think of it, I mentioned my wife in a previous post entitled “Advertising Clutter”, the the post dealt more with her magazine than it did her. But she was my inspiration for that post, and don’t forget it!

She’s not only just a great wife, she’s a wonderful mom to our two beautiful children. I love her a lot. She was able to quit her job at LDS Hospital earlier this year and I’m reallyglad that she’s able to be a full-time Mom. I’m not only glad that she’s able to, I’m glad she WANTS to. There are some women that are able to stay home (in fact, sometimes it’s economically a wash that they go to work after paying the babysitter, paying for gas, insurance and car payment on a second car, paying more taxes because of the higher tax bracket, etc) but would rather go out and have a career. Of course, there are situations where it is necessary and I don’t speak of these situations. Several people at my work do it because they have to; usually single moms.

In the last seven months I haven’t seen too much by the way of nasty storms, although there have been some stronger winds than I’m used to. Last night what I’ve been waiting for finally came.

We got clobbered with more than a foot of snow! I nearly didn’t make it out of our neighborhood. The further north I drove, the better it got. When I got to Salt Lake where I work, there was nothing. The difference, as described in a Tooele Transcript Bulletin article, was not lake effect. The storm that rolled through just decided to linger over our fine city of Tooele. We’re supposed to be getting some more snow tomorrow night and into Saturday. How exciting!

The kids had fun in the snow today. They made snow angels, waded through the deep stuff and slid down the driveway on sleds. It’s the most snow Griffin or Sami have ever played in. They had fun playing with their friend, Logan. They also “helped” shovel the driveway, but the true heroes of shoveling were the Barths (our fine neighbors to the west of us) with their monster snow blower! They saved us all a lot of work.

I should note, however, that when the snowplows came by, they covered the sidewalk and the driveway again, and Heather (my awesome wife) did second clean-up.  And if you’ve ever shoveled the snowplow crud, you know it’s extra heavy.  So good job, Heather!

My wife and I were watching the Jazz [utahjazz.com] game together (who are on fire, by the way…although we’ll have to see because right now they’re down by 10 in the fourth quarter) and I was distracted by her ripping pages out of a magazine.

It turns out that she received Better Homes & Garden [bhg.com] in the mail today, and she was frustrated by the amount of ads she was having to delve through just in order to read the magazine. She wanted to see what would be left of the magazine if she got rid of the ads.

She started ripping out just the pages that had ads on the front and back. She found 25 pages that were pure ads, no magazine content whatsoever. She then started ripping out pages with ads on them and she found 60 pages. What was she left with? A mere 19 pages that didn’t have any ads at all!

This is just one example of the commercial world we live in. You can’t go anywhere without being exposed to it, whether in a magazine, TV, movies or even a basketball game. In fact, the Delta Center touts a brand new digital marquee that circles the entire upper deck. At first it was fascinating to see content swirl around seamlessly between connected marquee segments, but then it just got distracting. My wife felt the same way about the magazine.

I find myself ignoring it more and more and so do most people I talk to. Whether it’s TIVO that allows you to quickly forward through the commercials or reserved seating theatres that allow you to come in right at the start of the movie instead of sitting through all the commercials, people are getting fed up. But it doesn’t seem to deter the advertising agencies; which means that it must work! Will it ever stop?

A 21 year old college student decided to take advantage of the advertising craze and started a home page [milliondollarhomepage.com] made up entirely of ads. He sold the space at $1 per pixel, so the bigger the ad, the more it cost. He recently sold his last 1000 pixels for $38,100 on eBay! Pretty amazing. That’s actually pretty cheap as compared with the cost of advertisement on the upcoming Super Bowl. There is even a site [superbowl-ads.com] that’s dedicated to the Super Bowl commercials and they’ll even tell you how effective they were.

I’ll have to admit…just the other day I went out a bought a swiffer duster because I was impressed with how well the policeman in the commercial was dusting with it. I guess I’m a part of the problem!