For the Fourth of July a bunch of folks wanted to get thier dogs out of town. it seems that the fireworks/gun shots don’t agree with the puppies. Our friend Adam has a house off the Columbia river in Washington. We spent the weekend reading comic books drinking beer and basicly living a fine country life.

All the photos are here.

Sorry this is blurry. It really was a good burger.

Maggie and Zoe

Bows and Arrows

There was this strange plan that was hatched over the winter. Anne’s mother wanted to buy us plane tickets to come to utah and pick up a pick up truck. then we were to drive the truck from Ogden, Utah to Portland, Oregon. The idea was that we use the truck to take Blitz to the dog park. It all seemed very win-win to me except for the owning a truck part. However I’m sure I would have learned to love it.

Then the plan changed. Now there was no truck and Anne and I were just going to Utah to see the sights go to rock shows and explore Ogden’s awesome bars scene (no really). It was very win-win-win. I learned tons of stuff. I learned about fry-sauce. Mormons put it on hamburgers. It is like thousand island dressing with out pickles. I learned that one of the most famous works of art in Utah is huge, in the middle of no where in the desert, and it’s been at the bottom of the Great Salt Lake for the last twenty years. Most importantly I met Anne’s high school friends and now Anne owes me big.

There are more photos on my Flickr account

Thes is Mim’s. A great burger joint and bar as near to the spiral jetty as any thing else.

Double cheese burger with fry sauce and fry’s made to order at Mim’s. Mim’s is a great little bar nearish to the spiral jetty. It is the closest bar to the Walmart distrubution center and the ballistic missle factory. It makes for a great mix of patrons.

This the Spiral Jetty. The history behind it is more than I’d like to type. Click over to Wikipedia here for the details.

Leto, Dr. Mike, and Balloon Guy back together after a long lonely winter.

This is Sarah. She is an artist who sculpts with metal. She also owns a plasma torch. I had no idea what a plasma torch was. Only that it is just the thing for cutting up stainless steel kegs for brewing kettles. I asked around and finally met Sarah. She was really nice and understanding about my lack of knowledge of metal working. She converted four kegs for Claire and I in return for some beer. More than we really need but who knows ? Oh and the plasma torch looks and acts just like something out of Star Wars. Some how by blowing compressed air through a electrical current it gets hot enough to cut through a keg like butter.

Anne and have been meaning to take some photos of our chickens for a while now. When we move to our new home the chickens also needed a new coop. The old one was OK if maybe a little shabby looking. Now I have some real tools. I found better wood in the new neighborhood’s trash and Ana left some old paint in classy colors in the basement. Throw in two garden gnomes and two dumpstered window boxes and you have a chicken mansion.

Claire went on this crazy bike tour across the southwest to Texas. While she was gone Brew Club kind of stagnated. I tried to work on other stuff like cooking, learning linux, stealing wifi, and eventually setting up my own home network. Despite Claire and I’s absence Thud finished the brew tower and boy is she a sight. He writes a little about at his blog and has some great photos. I have some here too at its different stages. All that is left to do is find the hundreds of hard to find, tedious, non-existent, or design and build it yourself parts. Then Claire and I will drink a gallon or two of our brew, take our rock and flathead screw driver and put it together. Watch out world (including the fire department, police, local hospitals, and federal authorities)!

It was terrible. Our evil landlady stole all our money. It was New years Eve. We couldn’t remember how we got some of the furniture up the two flights of stairs and therefore got the couch jammed in the corner on the way down.

It took three days, a trip to the dump, and lots of help from Lance and Claire.

In all though it was worth it. now we live Ana’s old house not far away. It is bigger, prettier, cheaper, and our new landlady isn’t an insane harpy.

So I was reflecting back on my life the other day. It seems that I have done some things and taken some pictures since February. Also looking forward to the far future I am planning on having some adventures worth writing about this summer. So to catch up I offer the following posts in no particular order.