Fort Baiffet

"May I have his dinner?"

Our fridge died in July. It’s ok, please don’t mourn for it. I learned from Kermit in the Muppet Christmas Carol that, “Life is made up of meetings and partings. That is the way of it. I’m sure that we shall never forget Tiny Tim, or this first parting that there was among us.” And yes, I looked it up, that is not how it reads in the original Dickensian text. (What, are you surprised I have a Charles Dickens book in my house? I promise, that’s the only one, everything else he wrote was the same crappy story over and over again. “Pip, how ‘ere you, Pip?”)

Luke, Mom, and Dad hanging out in a box - you might say, "stuck in a box" if you liked mimes. You might be (are) lame if you like mimes.

Anyway, our fridge which had been with us since the beginning of our marriage had passed on (Brenda notes that we haven’t had it since we got married.  I guess I wasn’t as attached to it as I thought.) To paraphrase a wiser man than I, it was definitely deceased. Demised. Passed on. Ceased to be. It expired and went to meet its maker. It was a stiff. Bereft of life. It rests in peace. It is now pushing up the daisies. It’s rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. It is an ex-fridge.

Luke makes good use of the box. What do you expect? He's only 9 months old, he's not turning it into a transmogrifier yet.

There was a small amount of consolation in this dire time. Fridges come in boxes. Big boxes. A large box would afford Luke and myself a new play area. If I were clever, you might accuse me of unplugging the fridge to make Brenda think it was dead just so I could get a new play toy/area. (You would, of course, be wrong, for as we all know, I am not clever.)

That bright, silver lining was blotted out later that night when we received our fridge. It did not come in a box. It came in . . . well, basically, it had styrofoam on the corners and came in thick plastic wrap (which is neither a fun, nor a safe toy for Luke, although I probably could have handled the danger.)

How cheerful was I, however, when before we left on our Michigan Trip that a frozen Marie Calendar pie (razzleberry I believe) in the door of the freezer in the garage was discovered melted and leaking all over the inside. We were headed to Michigan the next week, and decided that we did not wish to return to a garage full of stinky, rotted beef. Remember the beef post? So, we went and purchased a new upright freezer. When they wheeled it out of the back, a chill ran through my body! At last, a freezer size box. It’s been sitting in our basement ever since (the box, the freezer is in the garage.) I reinforced it with duct tape and some supports from inside the box in hopes of getting it to stand up unsupported. Sadly, it doesn’t. I suppose there’s a reason I teach history and not engineering.

Luke and his cousins up the street also make great use of the box. Ok, not really, they've only all ever been in it when they posed for this picture. However, Melanie was nice enough to come take these pictures for us, so I wanted to say something nice in this caption.

Anyway, I scribbled Fort Baiffett on the side in magic marker (Baiffett = Bailey’s and the Moffetts, our friends up the street) and it become a permanent fixture of the house . . . until it gets wet, ripped, or stolen.

"Pining for the fjords?"

Thanks Mel! Here’s her take on Fort Baiffett, by the way.

Meeting a student in the “real” world

I have a humorous story to tell. Please do not take this the wrong way – I am not trying to complain about a student – that’s something I try hard to studiously avoid. Not because it wouldn’t be fun, more because I’m afraid it might be a little too fun and I might start doing it quite frequently. It’s possible that the more frequently I did it, the less I would like my job. I like liking my job, I think it makes it much easier and more fun, so I have no desire to change that. So, I’m not whining here – stick with me until the end and I promise we’ll get to the funny, ok?

I’m a pretty easy-going guy and can get most kids to at least pretend to pay attention in my class. I try very hard to keep it light and peppy – it’s very much tailored to seventh graders. I can only imagine what a group of, say, high school seniors would act like if I used some of my bad jokes on them, but the seventh graders love them. Sorry, my bad, most seventh graders love them, or at least appreciate me trying to interject a little entertainment into class. There have been two exceptions though – two kids that no matter how hard I tried, how many different things I attempted, no matter what, had no desire to be happy in my class. Funny enough, I had them both the same year.

No, they’re not related or anything. And I’m not pumping myself up as some kind of super teacher or anything. First off, we have great kids at my school. Secondly, I’ve sent plenty of kids to the office for various things in my day. For example, one of my favorite students ever shot another in the eyes with cleaner in my room and I had to send her to the office once. The other day our current Student Body President told me that I had sent him to the office in seventh grade (I have no recollection of this) for talking too much when he was a seventh grader. Generally though, after the kids make it to the office, they return a little more contrite and I can work with them.

Not so with one student I will only identify as “Student X.” She was not at all interested in my class (or school in general.) I tried various ways of getting her to pay attention. I even let her go on and on once about how she was a member of both the Bloods and the Crips (I know I’m not an expert of gang-lore, but I’m pretty sure that’s not very common) in hopes of winning her over. She wouldn’t have any of that. Student X was more interested in talking (loudly), ignoring me, disrupting class, and occasional swearing. I will admit that part of me was relieved when the school year ended because I wouldn’t have to teacher her anymore.

Fast forward a year. Guess who Bren and I met as we walked into Wal-Mart one day? You guessed it – Student X. She was standing there with her family. Being the generally polite person I am I said hello, though I wasn’t on planning on lingering and having an extended conversation. The strangest thing happened – despite the fact that nothing I (or as far as I could tell, the school administration) did at school fazed her in the least bit, she was genuinely scared of me in public. Literally. She didn’t say a word to me, but walked behind her mother and cowered behind her – no exaggeration on my part. I somehow contained my laughter until we were out of earshot, but it was just surreal. It’s quite amazing what a difference the setting of an encounter can change things.

I haven’t seen her since. I do, however, have her sister in my class and she is a polite young lady. I take it as a small reminder that siblings are not always alike, which, considering I have four siblings, is probably a good thing for my mom.

One Ron is plenty.

The Exxon Valdez of our basement

In the nearly six years that we have lived in our house, we have had a lot of fun “projects” to deal with. There was the crazy lady driving through our fence at 1:00 in the morning just after we moved in. Then we had the freak accident of the bathroom faucet blowing off during the day and flooding the entire basement, what a joy that was. Then of course, the two consecutive springs we spent trying to patch holes in the basement walls because we had water leaking in from outside. As if the flood wasn’t enough. Well, we have just finished reclaiming the basement from our latest disaster, the great oil spill of ’08.

About three weeks ago, we purchased a five gallon bottle of vegetable oil to put in our storage. We have a small bottle in the kitchen that I refill for regular use and leave the rest on the basement storage room. So, we brought home this huge bottle, I filled the kitchen bottle and Ron took the remaining 4.8 gallons (just an estimate on my part) to the basement. About a week later, I was in the storage room grabbing something for dinner when I stepped in a wet spot. I looked down trying to figure out what would have made the floor wet when I noticed the oil. The huge five gallon bottle was now only about 1/3 full. Apparently there had been a small hole somewhere in the side of the bottle and the oil had been slowly leaking out, all over the floor. As I walked out of the room and slid on the tile in the laundry room, I realized what a disaster I had. I figured that I wouldn’t let it be a huge ordeal so I grabbed the carpet cleaner and got to work. After the third empty tank of what looked like a disgusting vinaigrette dressing (the oil floating on the top) I realized that floor was still soaking in oil and that it didn’t look like carpet cleaning was the best answer.

So what did I do? I went to the internet for a solution. The funny thing is that most of the places where I found people were talking about getting vegetable oil out of carpet was on blogs. They usually had some cute story about a little baby that managed to get the lid off and they found the kid laughing in the middle of the oil. At one point I wished I had a better story like that. Anyway, there were two answers that were very common; one – to use shampoo on the area then suck it up with a cleaner, two – to sprinkle kitty litter over the area. Since I didn’t have any kitty litter I decided to try the shampoo. By this point I was into the second week of the oil spill and getting sick of trying to get stuff out of storage without tracking oil through the house. So I got out my shampoo and proceeded to scrub the floor. After spending about two hours sucking sudsy shampoo out of the carpet I thought I had it taken care of. However, after it dried, you guessed it, oil slick all over again. Apparently the shampoo hadn’t really worked. So I decided to go get some kitty litter.

By this point I had come to the conclusion that if the kitty litter didn’t work, we would be ripping out the carpet and starting over. So I grabbed a 25 pound bag of kitty litter and poured about half of it on my floor. As I looked at the pile on the floor I realized that I was making a huge mess and felt like singing “The Old Lady that Swallowed the Fly”. After about four hours, I could see the oil soaking into the kitty litter, a pretty promising sign at least. So I let it go for a day or two. Since it looked like the kitty litter was working, spent an entire week putting down the kitty litter, vacuuming up the oil soaked stuff, and spreading out clean litter.

Half way through week two of the ordeal, shortly after starting the kitty litter regimen, the case lot sale started at Maceys and Ron and I agreed that we needed to get some things for our food storage. So, Ron went and bought about 200 pounds of wheat, 40 pounds of lentils (a recommendation by an emergency preparedness expert), and four 5 gallon jugs for water. Ron was kind enough to do this so that I wouldn’t have to try and lift all of the heavy stuff in and out of the store. After he got done, I went and bought the canned stuff that we needed to replenish the storage. After being so proud of ourselves for trying to be on top of our storage, we realized that the storage room was in complete disarray and there was no where to put all of this stuff. So for the rest of the week, the kitchen was cluttered with cans of everything from beans to cream of chicken soup. The family room was holding the wheat, lentils, and water jugs (still empty, hoping that the emergency we were preparing for didn’t happen right away.) By that Saturday, I was so glad to finally have some time to try and finish cleaning the storage room so that we could get the house back in order, that I started vacuuming the floor at 6:00 am after Luke had woken up, eaten, and gone back to bed. So, I cleaned up the rest of the kitty litter on the floor, but put down a little more in the places that had been really bad to make sure that it was all soaked up. That afternoon I vacuumed up the rest of it and proceeded to carpet clean, one more time, to get all of the kitty litter out. As I was just about finished cleaning the floor, Ron came in and said that it would have been really great to have taken a picture of the room with the kitty litter all over for the blog then offered to put some out for me. We had a good laugh and then went back to work. I let the carpets dry and we decided to spend Monday night after our family home evening lesson putting everything in storage. So, Monday we ventured into the storage and were so relieved to touch the floor and not feel the slippery oil feeling. We spent the rest of the night putting everything away, but what a relief to be able to see the kitchen floor again. Although I didn’t get any pictures of the room in its various stages of cleaning, I did at least think to take a picture of the oil jug, sitting on a towel in the laundry room to avoid any more possible spills. So, as a word of advice, if any of you ever have a huge spill of vegetable oil, go straight for the kitty litter, it really is the best way to go.

Huskies Pull Together – A Short Film from FJH

Alright everyone.  Here’s the moment you’ve been anticipating for at least as long ago as you started reading this sentence.  I’m proud to present the world wide web premiere of the short film, Huskies Pull Together. (FYI, the Husky is our school mascot, I didn’t go out and just buy a Husky suit for fun.)

Yes, it’s cheesy, there’s no debating it.  It was written by myself and some of the officers (towards the end of our preparation time, I ended up penning some of it so we could get it done in time.)  I’m proud to say though that the husky pulling the sled idea was not mine – one of my officers came up with it.  The idea of me sleeping is an alteration of something I saw in an class-officer-produced video way back when I was in high school.  In a video that I remember very little (actually, nothing else) about, there was a great running gag.  Between shots of whatever that movie was about, it would cut to a shot of a crack member of the Box Elder High School custodial squad standing with a hose watering the lawn. Herp Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s version of “Spanish Flea” blasted in the background as the guy watered the lawn.  It was weird the first time, funny the second and flippin’ sweet after that.  Ah the, power of a running gag . . .

Interestingly, a lot of my music choices for the movie (I editted the movie and added the soundtrack at home in my spare time, time I could have spent losing money on a half-baked get-rich-quick scam) come from other movies.  Besides “Spanish Flea,” the Fox Fanfare is from many Fox movies (most notably the Star Wars six-ology, of course) the “I’m Just a Kid” song is from Cheaper by the Dozen, “Eye of the Tiger” is of course from one of the Rocky movies (IV?  The one when he fights the Russian?), the “Imperial March” is from that one movie whose name I can’t remember (Star Trek? Spaceballs?  I can’t seem to remember), and at the end that’s “Titan Spirit” from Remember the Titans.

Despite the cheesiness of the whole thing, it seemed to be very well received by the students (or maybe because of the cheesiness?)  During the assembly, it flashed “Say it one more time: HUSKIES PULL TOGETHER” on the screen at the end and the crowd joined in.  It was a pretty cool moment for me.  No tears or anything like that, but all the time I had put into the video felt vindicated.  I heard nothing but positive comments from teachers too, which is actually saying something since we are generally a vengeful lot who dislike anyone who disrupt the normal proceedings of our classes.  The message of the movie shines through the cheesiness anyway and that’s what I was really aiming for!

So, comments?  Suggestions?  Criticism?  Multi-million dollar movie contracts?  If you want to offer me a job, save your time – I’m too busy at FJH where the huskies pull together.

YouTube Woes – The Sequel that was Never Meant to Be! (Just like those Direct-to-DVD Disney animated sequels)

So, I totally was ready for a great blog post yesterday.  As some of you know (since I forced a fair few of you to watch the movie in its various states of completion), two weeks ago my Student Body Officers presented a 6 minute movie that we had created to present the theme that they had chosen for this year – “Huskies Pull Together.”  First off, it was amazing.  Secondly, the editing was great!

Yes, you guessed it, I edited it.  I’ve been meaning to put it up for general perusal of my family and friends (as well as the student body of Farmington Junior High), but to comply with district policy (motto: Bureaucracy is the bomb!) I had to remove all mention of the students names from the video (although, that’s one piece of bureaucracy I agree with-there’s a lot I don’t though.)  Well, since I’d spent at least ten hours editing it in the first place, (Bren and I decided that is a conservative estimate) you can imagine that I wasn’t eager to jump back in and start editing again.  So, I’ve let it fester a week or two.  Yesterday, I finally got the names all muted out, exported the movie . . . and guess what?  YouTube was down for site maintenance.  AGAIN.  Why?!?!?!  This just hardly seems fair – how do they know when I’m planning on posting a video?  Heck, I didn’t even know until last night.

Now, you’re probably thinking something like, “Well, Ron, why haven’t you just added it since?”  Well *Ron sheepishly admits* I left the laptop with the video on it at school.  So, here’s some cute pictures to distract you from my inability to get the video up STILL.

This picture is a little old obviously (Luke's head looks dangerously wobbly compared to today.) The other day the Moffetts gave us a CD of all the pictures they've been holding for ransom. We gave them back their stupid weed whacker, so they relented and passed us a bunch of pictures. Be prepared for lots of picture-y posts over the next few days.

Hopefully, I’ll remember to bring my school laptop home tomorrow and I’ll be able to add my magnificent acting skills to our blog. Until then, cheerio!

Bren’s first blog post!

Here goes, I have finally decided to post something to our blog so that Ron doesn’t have to do all of the work. Although, since he has such wit in his writing, I hope to not disappoint anyone that comes to see what amusing story he has for the day.

We are having so much fun with Luke and all of the new things he is doing, he just keeps us laughing. I am constantly amazed how he finds things that he shouldn’t have. Ron and I go along and think we have the house fairly baby proof and all of a sudden Luke can reach a couple inches higher. He did discover the toilet the other day so we have to make sure to keep the bathroom door closed. If not, as soon as we are not looking, you can hear him crawling as fast as possible down the hall. On Sunday while I was getting ready for church, Luke came in to the bathroom and since the toilet lid was closed, he decided to go for the toilet brush. As soon as I said no and moved it from him, it became a game and he was determined to win. So I ended up wedging it between the toilet and the sink so that he couldn’t get it out. Little did I know that he would learn a great lesson about leverage. When he couldn’t get the brush out, he reached behind to where a plunger was sitting and used the leverage to get both the plunger and the toilet brush out. Of course, as I frantically dropped my makeup to get everything away from him, he just sat and laughed because he knew he had won.

A couple of days ago I was working in the kitchen putting away some groceries and starting to make dinner. Luke, as usual, decided that he wanted to venture in to the kitchen to see what he could get into. Unfortunately for him, I was not loading the dishwasher so he couldn’t climb in there. However, he did manage to find a bag of hamburger helper boxes that he could play with. Since he is always trying to play with the video game controllers and the computer, I was very excited that for once he showed an interest in one of my hobbies, cooking. (Not that I don’t enjoy video games and the computer, but they are much more Ron’s forte than mine.) Now I just have to get him to channel his desire to hit the piano into a desire to play the piano and we will be set.

Although, a little while after playing in the kitchen, he did try to climb up on the computer chair and when I put him there, he went straight for the keyboard. I was glad the camera was right there because he was so cute.

Well there you have it, my first blog post.  Hopefully, I will be better about helping Ron post and keeping everyone updated about our family.

Luke sees Star Wars on the big screen!

Labor Day was a very nice day for the Baileys. Luke slept in, Mom slept in, and Dad, of course, decided to join in just to make them not feel guilty about how they were wasting away a purely fabulous day. We did have to catch up on our laundry since we had gone up to Bear Lake Friday night, but generally we just relaxed at home (which is something we don’t always get the chance to do and is very refreshing when it does happen.)

Many people were very surprised when I told them I had not yet seen Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It had been released on August 15, yet here it was two weeks later and I had still not seen it. I think there are three big reasons that combine together to explain why.

1. I’ve grown up a little. I know, this is hard to believe, and while I freely admit that this is the least likely of the three, it might be a teensy weensy part. Don’t be shocked, I still play video games, goof off a lot, make a lot of seventh-grade level jokes and most importantly I still love Star Wars, but seeing a movie on opening night isn’t as important as it used to be. Who’d have thunk?
2. I had just started back to school in preparation for a new year – which limits my weekday activities – and we’d had busy weekends. It’s amazing what a big chunk of time work takes out of your day. There really hadn’t been an opportunity to go see it.
3. Luke. Now, don’t misunderstand, I’m not blaming Luke for destroying my movie watching habits (although you could probably make that case if you wanted to.) I say Luke because I wanted to take Luke along to see it with me (it was optional for Brenda.) Up until about a year ago I thought Star Wars movies were done and over with. When I heard that it was coming out as a movie, my first thought was, “I have to take Rake to see it!” (it was before Luke was born so we didn’t know yet if he was a Luke or a Rachel.) I’m not sure how many more chances we’ll have to see Star Wars in a theater. While the build up to Clone Wars has been relatively muted compared to Episodes I, II, and III, I’m sure there were still plenty of rabid fanboys who went to see it on opening night and I didn’t want anyone yelling at me telling me to get my baby quiet – so we waited a little while to go see it.

However, as Labor Day dawned, the decision was made. We were going! I probably should have saved the ticket stub for Luke’s book of remembrance (which I don’t think we actually have.) We had lunch with our friends, Matt, Dawn, and their son Rodney. Then we headed out together to see the movie. On the way, I realized that though Luke spends a significant amount of time in his car seat, I don’t have many pictures of him in it, so for posterity’s sake, I snapped two pictures. I’m so glad I did, they turned out just awesome (it’s so convenient when he smiles!)

I saw two former students in the lobby at the movie theater which I thought was fun (it’s always fun to meet them out in the “real world.”) I had wrongly assumed that the theater would be fairly empty (this was after all, a two week old movie aimed mostly at kids.) I was wrong, it was actually pretty darn full, but we were lucky enough to find five seats together in the back (Luke sat on our laps, Rodney sat in his car seat in another chair.) I had hoped not to go all the way to the back because it would such a long walk if one of us had to take a baby out. Both babies did great though, and no one had to leave

As for the movie itself, I quite enjoyed it. It was fun and the lightsaber battles were especially cool. The interaction betweem Anakin and his new hot-headed Padawan Asoka was fun, but it also made me wonder why no one had ever bothered to mention her before. Maybe the lack of hype helped this movie – the other Prequels had all been hyped beyond their capacity to perform. I’m not sure why they got Samuel L. Jackson to be in the movie since they only gave him like three lines.  And I actually thought that rescuing Jabba the Hutt’s son, (nicknamed Stinky) was  pretty exciting, especially as Dooku kept trying to blame the whole thing on the Jedi.  The music, though not composed by John Williams (some guy named Kevin Kiner I’ve never heard of before did it) was really enjoyable, especially the different arrangement of the main Star Wars theme. I bought the soundtrack on iTunes because I liked it so much. Overall, I’d recommend the movie, especially to Star Wars fans (most of whom have probably already seen it.)

In case you haven’t heard, the movie was originally going to be the first three episodes of a new Clone Wars TV series, but I suppose George Lucas remembered that he hadn’t made a billion dollars in a few years so he decided to make it into a movie instead. One thing Clone Wars definitely did do was get me excited for the new TV series (it starts next month!) to continue the story.  Don’t worry George, I’ll be watching!

And who knows, maybe the bearded, flanneled one (George Lucas for those of you not in on the Star Wars lingo) will decide he needs another billion and release another movie someday for me to take Luke and Rack (Rachel or Jack) to go see!  Brenda, is of course, invited to join us.  🙂

This sizzling blade that can cut through ANYTHING . . . is nothing against the powers of Jedi Luke. The Force is strong with this one.

Reminiscing about Music and White and Nerdy Lego Style

One of the many things I enjoy in life is a good Weird Al song.  He has a penchant for taking a popular song, adding the mundaness (mundanaity?) of real life, and making me laugh.  Truth be told, when I was a young lad, I liked Weird Al a little to much.  For anyone who’s never made a mix tape – trust me – it took a lot longer than a mix CD.  A lot.  And I made a lot of Weird Al mix tapes.  There were my album copies and then my “favorites” tapes with just the best songs.  I remember when I put a new stereo in the van I drove when I was around 18.  The tape player could skip songs on tapes!  I remember thinking how super cool that was, until I realized how it did it.  The stereo would listen for blank spots in the music (you know, the pauses between songs) and it would go to the next pause.  Unfortunately, it rarely worked with my mix tapes because I had not left long enough blank space in between songs – but I still remember how cool it was.

Luckily, when I returned from my intercontinental “vacation” to a world where MP3’s were the norm and burning CDs was fast, easy, and much less time intensive than tapes, I had siblings to show me how it all worked.  I guess where I’m going with this it that those good old days of tapes were good.  I don’t want to go back, but they were fun at the time.

So, back to Weird Al.  Once, on a trip home from Salt lake with my mom and her mom, I asked (ever so politely I’m sure) if we could listen to Weird Al (I guess I carried tapes with me everywhere or something.)  Mom politely refused the offer.  I impolitely took it upon myself to entertain myself in the back seat and decided to sing the Weird Al songs the whole way home.  I’m lucky they didn’t just abandon me somewhere to make my way in the world far out of ear shot.

So, when I came across this video the other day, I thought it was awesome.  Some sort of stop motion project like this would be VERY cool (if time consuming) to attempt some day.

For anyone interested, you can see the original music video (with Donny Osmond cameo!) here.

The slightly less tedious Part 2 of the Peach Days Parade!

As I recall, we left off in the middle of the Peach Days parade with nerds in get-ups that, while extremely cool-looking, also looked extremely sweaty. Forget not being able to see anything in a stormtrooper helmet, imagine dehydration setting in by the time you reach Forest Street in the parade because you’ve sweated out 2 litres of water. (Ooo, European spelling, that makes me sophisticated.) Let’s pick up where we left off!

Another example of great (read: cheap) advertising at work. So, Gillies Funeral Chapel, simply because you own (or better yet, borrowed) a convertible and slapped a magnet on the side, that makes you qualified to take care of my loved ones if they join the choir invisible?

Really, was this supposed to impress me? If you want to see REAL funeral home advertising in action, check this out.

Don’t worry, his momentum kept him moving forward – he did not, as it would appear in this picture, slam face first into the side of the trampoline.

It’s not quite the Olympics, but for the back of a semi-truck in the parade of a small town festival, it’s not shabby at all. Do you think their insurance is insanely high for this event? By the way, we were towards the end of the parade route. Why didn’t that girl in the front warm up and stretch out earlier? Maybe she arrived late?

For those of you who didn’t know me in high school, first of all, I’m sorry. It was a real treat for everyone. Back on topic though, since some of you didn’t know me, I had a real rivalry going against some of the Madrigals. They’re the elite singers of Box Elder High School and generally (at least from my high school point of view) considered themselves above some (all) of us mere mortals.

Of course, all of that is in the past now and I’m sure the Madrigals who I went to school with have grown up to very nice people who I would probably quite enjoy hanging out with. However, I’m still doing quite well at my goal of never hearing the Madrigals sing again (the last time was Lindsie’s graduation, and I swear it shall be the final time!) Even though I’ve put all of that in the past, that doesn’t stop me from mentioning how stupid these current Madrigals looked in the parade.

Their sign says, “Out of this world” which I suppose means they dressed up like a bunch of morons and some of them painted themselves silver. When your parade production values are lower than Napoleon Dynamite’s, you know you look like a bunch of goons.

Not even Vice-President Cheney could mistake that Peach Queen for a deer in the forest!

I know I’ve seen “Uncle” Milty before (I’m glad he’s not really my uncle.) I know I have – he must have been in the parade for ages – but I’ve never noticed how . . . creepy he was before. Really, I’m getting the jibblies just looking at this picture. Why anyone would take advantage of this great offer to advertise with him is beyond me. Nothing brings the customers coming in like someone who gives the carnies a run for their money in the “I scare small children department.”

Here’s the back of Crazy “Uncle” Milty’s tractor train. I’m happy to say that no parent (sanity and common sense DOES still exist in this world) let their kid ride in Milty’s train – he was forced to recruit unwilling minions of the stuffed animal variety and strap them in to prevent even these inanimate objects from running away. Since Bren hates clowns, I think I will get her stamp of approval on this comment. By the way, what the heck is Crumps? A bakery? A factory? A house of ill repute? One more thing to investigae Milty about. . .

This is the Civic Improvement club float. Sadly, the first shot I took at a better angle didn’t turn out. Nothing says “civic improvement” like a giant beaver hovering above a couple of old, elderly, aged, mature, nice women on folding chairs.

I’m thinking that being the Arby’s mitt would be really hot. It is a pretty darn good costume though. Oh, maybe next year I should “borrow” the Husky Mascot suit from school and march in the parade! Maybe I could get in fights with other mascots. I bet I would win . . .

Finally, we end our parade reporting on another classic, annual entry. Square dancers – or are they cloggers? Perhaps more importantly, does it really matter?

Peach Days Parade 2008 – “A thing of beauty or something near unto it”

Steel yourselves, folks, this one is going to be fairly long! After a week of rest, thoughtful pondering, meditation, and Ding Dongs, I’ve finally compiled my pictures from the fabulous festival known throughout the civilized world as Peach Days. For any poor saps out there not in the know, Peach Days is Brigham City’s annual celebration of all things . . . peachy. I suppose. There are really not too many things that involve peaches – it’s just around the same time as the peach harvest. I mean, there are the peaches in the main display downtown made of fruit and veggies, you can get peach cobbler, and there are peaches on t-shirts all over the place, but it seems to be more about craft fairs (I prefer the term crap fair as I’ve mentioned before), creepy carnies, rickety rides, and perky parades.

Speaking of parades, that’s the main topic of today’s post. I have attended the parade each year since I moved to Brigham City right after Thanksgiving during my seventh grade year in school (except for the two years I got a reprieve due to the fact that I was so far away I could not be slapped for suggesting we not attend.) I’d like to consider myself fairly knowledgeable, but I guess that pales in comparison to some people. We’re going to go through my pictures shot by shot to make sure you understand the majesty, nay, the grandeur of the proceedings. Before we begin I want to make it clear that despite the fact that I sound bitter and angry about Peach Days and I am lashing out irrationally against innocent people who were just having a good time, I actually had more fun at Peach Days this year than other years in recent memory. I just like making fun of people, and for better or worse, I think I’m pretty good at it. Sorry in advance “Uncle” Milty!

Normally I’d focus on snarky comments about the parade – but I’m actually pretty darn impressed with this float. I’m not sure what the correlation is between pirates and Primary Childrens Medical Center (is that Michael Moore-esque commentary on our medical system?) Either way, I actually thought this was a really cool float.

It seems like there are so many of these trailers every year. I’ve always been amazed at how many dance studios Brigham City can support. Unless of course you’re an angry parent, in which case your child is guaranteed a life of super-stardom in the future! Please don’t firebomb my house! That’s some high-quality decoration on the side of that trailer too.

I suppose when 95.9 decided to enter a car in the parade they figured it would be cheap advertising. I’m sure they were right, it was cheap, but in my mind, it was also fairly ineffective. Convenient, isn’t it?

Nothing screams “we’re a quality business” liking strapping a pair of speakers to the top of your car.

That, my friends, is Mr. Felt , the Technology TLC teacher of Box Elder Junior High School (now middle school, but they can never make me call it that!) fame. I had all sorts of crazy things to say about him, but none are now springing to mind. Or maybe I’m just in too good of a mood to say the things I was thinking of before. Let’s just say, I’m not an adoring fan.

This isn’t the best photograph ever (there isn’t much oomph), but I just wanted to say that if I ever bought a motorcycle, the first thing I would do would be to join BACA. I know I probably don’t fit the profile, but bikers who go around making kids feel safe are just cool.

Intimidating the heck out of child abusers sounds fun too!

Notice that seat in the back of that Cushman? Is it the make-out machine? Does the driver just lounge around a lot?

Holy nerds Batman! I’m not sure if the child in the Ewok is just resting for a moment or is he/she is suffering from heat stroke. Hopefully that stormtrooper was attending to him.

Is he waving at *me*?

Now, I fully realize that me calling someone “overweight” is a good case of the pot calling the kettle black.  With that disclaimer out there, check out Darth Pudgy there. And the Imperial Officer who looks like the Emperor would be most displeased with his apparent lack of weight-loss.

“This is not the parade you’re looking for.”

And don’t you worry, the marching nerds are not the end of the pictures!  There’s much more to come, including clowns, giant beavers, and more cheap advertising.  My original plan was to get all of the photos up, but this is long enough for one day.  Expect the first ghost when the bell tolls one, and expect the rest of the Peach Days parade . . . soon!