Harvesting Mangos

The LDS Salt Lake Temple is pretty amazing.  40 years to build, 210 feet (120 cubits) tall, 9 feet thick walls of hand hewn granite.   Care to guess the difference between these two photos?   Same wall, same night, one is backwards:

I’m guessing you’ve guessed it.   The first one is upside down, taken by looking into a reflecting pool.

This is what the Utah state capital would look like after being buried by 100 feet of ash after the Yellowstone super volcano erupts. 

And this is what a biker would look like if he stopped to watch the super volcano erupt: 

And this is what Helen would look like if we went out for a fun ski trip with Marie, one of the residents:

And this is what I would look like if I was being chased by an angry turtle on a snowmobile:

And this is what Helen would look like if I coaxed here up the trail for a sunset hike:

We enjoyed fun New Years visits from both Aya

and Noah.

  Here Helen is instructing children on how to harvest garlic:

This is Aya teaching Noah how to harvest a Mango:

And here how to harvest an mp3 file:

And here Aya is harvesting knowledge from a school book:

And here they are both harvesting Chess men:

Which Helen did not find very tasty:

We took our first trip to Park City:

where we passed on the opportunity to buy $10,000 wolf fur coats or $1,000 cowboy boots.

Finally, I also had the opportunity to eat two exotic foods.   The first was this boxelder bug, who is wintering with his clan in our house: 

The second was this hand crafted cinnamon sugar snowball:

I decided to save the bug as a treat for our next visitor.   Anyone up for a visit?

Bruce

Buddha’s Hand in Uppercase and Lowercase

The bizarre plant of the month is called Buddha’s Hand:

Also know as fingered citron, it looks like a lemon that met a creative chief with amazing carving skills.  But reality is stranger, it actually grows this way.

They couldn’t fix my camera, so they gave me a new one to replace it!   Coolpix S8200.   This guy modeled for me on our carpet so I could test out the macro focus:

We had a great Thanksgiving visit with Mom and Dad:

We touristed Antelope Island, an Island in the Great Salt Lake that is semi-famous for one of the few places where Bison were not exterminated by hoards of white men with big guns in the 1800s.  So they called it Antelope Island.  Maybe Bison are like Antelope.  Except bigger.  And blacker.  And less jumpier.

We also had a great visit with the Tim, Sue, and Abby.  Tim plays a mean game of ping pong.  Checked out the frightened yellow ping pong ball in this shot … I think it pee-ed its pants in fear of the upcoming hit (you can see a left a trail of yellow to the left of it):

And Abbey has the rare innate ability to hula-hoop in either direction … took me a lot of practice to be able to do that:

We were all surprised to see that Abbey had a growth spurt and is now as tall as 6’ 2”Tim!  Maybe it was the hula-hooping.

We visited the new Natural History museum.  That guy about to eat Dad is a ancient sloth bear:

And here Mom and Sue are planning a rare gem heist:

Last weekend we went to the Annual Epilepsy conference, this time in Baltimore.   This is taken from an skyscraper observation deck, looking down on the historic USS Constellation.   Those tents in the corner are from “Occupy Baltimore” … I wonder what the 1800’s ship’s crew would have thought of the tent city protest.

They had a science museum with this cool 10 foot globe magically suspended in air with various movies displayed on it:

This was a 200+ tower that made ‘drop shot’ for guns by dropping molten lead from the top into water at the bottom.  Was the tallest structure in the US for 20 years:

In this museum I learned that the term UpperCase and LowerCase come from they way they stored the moveable types used in early printing presses … the big types were in the upper case, the smaller ones were in the lower case.  True story.  I think our tour guide invented it (that part probably not true, but maybe his Dad did):

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the piano.   I took out the keyboard assembly to count all the parts need to make a piano.   Helen was terrified.    

I got up to about 10,000, about 8000 in the key assembly alone, then decided to count the number of lights we can see at night in the Salt Lake City valley instead.   Seemed easier, but I’m still counting.

B

15 Minute Snowman

2 unrelated mystery photos this week.    This first one is NOT an electron microscope photo of flower pollen (I don’t have an electron microscope … yet):

The challenge on this photo is not what is in the middle of it, but rather how it was composed:

My camera is in the shop again (the 2 year $30 extended warrantee on pocket cameras is highly recommended), so only a few iphone photos this month.     We had our first snowstorm last weekend.   I constructed this 8 foot snowman in 15 minutes, likely a new world time record!  (for our backyard anyway):

Speaking of records, I broke last summer’s no shower/bath record.  This year, using our handy pool and hot tub, I got through 5 months, May –> Sept.    This hair was washed once in the last 6.5 months (our trip to Boulder last month):

Not too slimy (is wet, not dirty), but was a bit long.   Helen fixed that:

For those of you still pondering that second mystery photo and have not cheated by looking at the bottom of the post, here is a second clue (this is a ‘before’ photo):

I thought I had escorted all the mice out of our house (5 of them), but recently found this guy trapped in our food cabinet, trying to knaw his way out.  The food was on the upper shelves, a mouse's worst nightmare, trapped in a box inches away from nirvana:

A spider in our garage DID achieve nirvana … he trapped this poor guy, giving him enough food for at least a couple of big spider Thanksgivings dinners:

That first mystery photo was another exotic vegetable that Helen foraged.   Some sort of cauliflower: 

That second photo is much more exciting.   I bought myself an early xmas present … we have a new baby in the house!

Technically, at 6’ 1”, this is a parlor or boudoir grand piano, as Baby Grands are < 5.5’, but we like calling him Baby. 

I’ve been monitoring ebay, craigslist, and local showrooms for a few months, looking for bargains on used pianos, but finally decided on a new entry level brand, Story & Clark at $7.5k. 

Pretty pricy, but could have done much worse.  New brand names start at $30k and a 6’ Steinway costs $60k.   Kind of glad I’m not good enough to fully appreciate the difference.

Bugs

In this month’s mystery photo, you get to guess the purpose of this mini devils tower (end of post answer):

We celebrated Rosh Hashanah a few weeks ago, the Jewish New Year, with two other couples.  There was a lot of good food, even after our ovens ate much of it in impressive smoke belching displays (we need to learn how to use oven timers).  I managed to launch that cooked fish on the left,  off the oven, over the counter, and onto a chair, somehow landing right side up:

To further demonstrate my occasional crazy behavior, here I am  dialed into three work conference calls at the same time.   I do it for the technological challenge, not for any productive reason, as I’m not able to converse with any one of those calls, and when I try, I often un-mute the wrong one and everyone else joins me in being very confused:

I’ve been having fun touring Salt Lake on my bike, seeing what interesting things pop up.   Here is a monument to the short lived Pony Express.  For $5 (>$100 today) you could send a 0.5 oz letter, which would be carried by a < 125lb rider at 15 mph, changing horses every 15 miles, and changing riders every 10 hours, day an night, crossing the country in 8 days.  

And here is a Matterhorn replica found in the Swiss section of a very pretty and flower full Peace Garden:

Not far from there was another Pyramid, used by a group that does ‘Modern Mummification’.   Human prices start at $70k, but you can do your pet and have him live in your living room forever for $20k:

 

Last weekend we drove to Bolder to attend Noah’s Master’s concert … he did good:

We brought Irena a sampling of roses from her backyard (she and Boris have been in the UK and NH for a few months), which is flowering wonderfully:

We met up with one of Helen’s friends for a quick hike up the famous Bolder Flatirons:

Yesterday I went on a hike up the trail near here.  Even red-green colorblind me could see beautiful colors in the changing trees:

It snowed last weekend, so the mountains have prettied up:

My goal was to climb Black Mountain, which is somewhere along this ridge on the left:

I overshot it (apparently it is not marked) and hiked almost to the other end where I met up with another crazy hiker who had also underestimated his hike (supposed to be 4 hours, we ended up at 9 hours). We teamed up, keeping each other company for the long hike back. Fortunately, he had found a flashlight someone had lost … came in pretty handy as we didn’t make it back until 2 hours after sunset.

I’m goanna close with some bug photos.   Zach, close your eyes as you will not like this first one, my first tarantula:

These guys were guarding the entrance to what I imagined to be the New York City for wasps:

This guy I had never met until yesterday.   He is called a Jerusalem Cricket, which is really weird as he is not a cricket and he is not found in Jerusalem.   He is big (2-3”) and scary looking, but relatively harmless (he can bite, but no venom): 

And finally, some more photos from my new favorite bug.  Not only can they pray, but they pose well:

And they enjoy a good sunset, like we do:

Bruce

… almost forgot, the Devils Tower mystery photo.   It is a bike jump, although I think I’d call it a bike funeral home.   Those dirt bikers are insane!