Weekend at Bear Lake

JB invited Mom and the Centerville Plowmans (and also me! yay!) to spend the weekend up at her family's cabin in Laketown, on the shores of beautiful Bear Lake in northern Utah. And so, away we went for a few enjoyable days, also passing through a few booming metropolises (metropoli?) in Idaho and Wyoming in our travels.

The weather up there was several degrees cooler than it is currently in Davis County. In other words, it was quite nice.

Of course, you can't go up to Bear Lake without stopping by LaBeau's for raspberry shakes. And who are we to buck the consensus on such an important issue?

They were delicious. Also, it's my understanding that there was some sort of college football game played Saturday that involved two of our local teams. The colors of both teams were well represented among our motley crew. I guess there was a winner and a loser, but we couldn't tell because we had no access to the game on TV or on the radio.

Oh well. There will be other games with other teams in the future. All told, we had a very nice weekend and then lived to tell the tale. And, fortunately, a large dragon did not emerge from the mountains and come down to Laketown to lay waste to the place. It appears movies and TV have lied to me yet again.

Danny's Second Birthday Party

At August family dinner two Sundays ago, we celebrated my nephew Danny's second birthday:

They grow up far too fast, huh?

Among the many gifts given, a big hit (at least for the birthday boy and his two-year-old cousin Kate) was this tunnel:

We also broke out the karaoke. Kate entertained us all with a rendition of the song "Belle" from this year's live-action remake of Disney's Beauty and the Beast:

Family, good food, and karaoke made for a great time indeed.

Muggsy Gets a Makeover

As I previously mentioned here on Paco Nation, I got rear-ended in traffic about a month ago. Ergo, my car, Muggsy, had to be repaired. Initially, the estimate was a little more than a $1,000 price tag for said repairs. But when the good folks at the body shop took off Muggsy's bumper, they found this:

. . . which pushed the repair to more than $2,800.

Fortunately, I had this sweet ride, a Mazda 3 (with Tennessee license plates!) from the rental place for eight days while Muggsy was in the shop:

It was a nice set of wheels. But I'm glad to have my car back now, good as new.

As for the whiplash, I'm still getting good chiropractic care. I think my neck is a keeper.

"9 to 5"

My sister-in-law Jana has been knocking it out of the park in CenterPoint Legacy Theatre's production of 9 to 5 over the last month. Tonight, in fact, is closing night. The other important Jana in my life and I went to see her perform last week, and we had a wonderful time.

I don't know at this point if there are any tickets still available for tonight's closing show, but if there are, and you haven't been yet, make sure you go and see it! K? You might also come back to CPLT for some improv on some Friday night cough soon if that doesn't cough quench your theater-going wants and desires.

The Great American Solar Eclipse of 2017

The Great American Solar Eclipse of 2017 was everything it was cracked up to be. I heard and read all about the hype for the months and weeks leading up to last Monday, August 21, and since then I've seen and heard numerous accounts of the event from people who traveled up to Idaho or Wyoming or other places to witness it from the path of totality. From what I've learned, I would definitely go out of my way to travel a good distance to see the next one from its path of totality so I can see things for myself.

Some of these accounts have even compared it all to a spiritual experience, and it's hard to see it any other way. Mother Nature can put on quite an amazing show if we stop, look, and listen to the majesty that surrounds us everywhere.

Anyhow, my experience with the eclipse (this time) was this: I put on my Clark Planetarium-approved sunglasses (yay, six eyes!) over my regular glasses and watched the eclipse from a patio chair in the backyard. Though I was not a witness in the path of totality, it was nevertheless a beautiful sight:

(No, the sky didn't turn this dark here; the background is black because the photo was taken from under the retina-protecting safety glasses.)

A photo can't really capture it. But it was beautiful. Here in North Salt Lake, the sky at 11 a.m. darkened to the point it normally would look at about 7:00 or 7:30 p.m. at this time of year. It was a bit surreal. I think there's really something to all of this astronomy stuff.

The Incas, whose descendants I lived among and served in Peru, worshipped the Sun. They also had a lot of weird traditions and sacrificed human beings, but they were onto something in their adoration of that celestial body that provides us all with light, heat, photosynthesis, and countless other wonders. Today, Peru's unit of currency (you'll thank me when/if this is ever on "Jeopardy!") is the sol, which is Spanish for "Sun."

For me, it all points to our Creator. Like Alma testifying before Korihor, it makes me want to proclaim:

"All things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator" (Alma 30:44).

With this eclipse, I feel like He basically dropped the mic.

Pioneer Day 2017, Part 2

My previous post on this year's Pioneer Day festivities was about stuff that actually occurred Sunday, July 23, which was also July's family dinner night.

On Monday, the 24th, I got the day off work and got to go along for a boys'-day-out lunch with Ben, Christian, and Graham at Sizzler, where we had a jolly good time together.

In the evening, JB and I made it over to the Heads' for our annual unofficial Improvables troupe fireworks show, where we saw many very bright and very loud things go boom. Somehow, baby Parker slept through most everything:

Fortunately, we escaped nearly dry just before a major cloudburst. And lived to tell the tale.

Pioneer Day 2017, Part 1

We had a blast (get it? fireworks?) celebrating Pioneer Day about a month ago. Fortunately, no fingers or toes were lost amid the fun.

I played a little bit of soccer with Kate in the backyard:

Graham's spider sense was tingling:

. . . but it turned out to be some very enthusiastic neighbors setting off some very loud fireworks of their own before it got dark.

Later, Graham and Jake, both cousins and buddies, enjoyed the fireworks show, provided by my more pyromaniacally inclined relatives:

And everything was great.