Red Hats

When I was in Vegas, the Red Hat Society was having a convention!

Lake Mead

I took this photo flying in to Vegas. Fred and I jet skied there in April of 2002.

You can't see it but on the very right hand edge is Hoover Dam.

Eskimo Treats

I know its winter and maybe too cold to think of frozen confections but we really don't care!
The Yogurt Stop is so cute. Its on the corner by our house and has all sorts of fun things to sprinkle on their 8 flavors of frozen yogurt like Fruity Pebbles, Capn Crunch, candy bars, cookies and fresh fruit. Very tempting.

In the summer there are shaved ice kiosks in almost every grocery parking lot. We'd never seen this in Illinois. Someone told us they are snowcone kiosks but that's not really true. The snowcones we're used to had hard icy balls with your usual choice of grape, cherry and maybe lime syrup and a paper cup. Not Snowies! Soft as snow, 50+ flavors available, and for 25 cents more you can have half n half poured over it. Very decadent. I stopped eating these after the first summer, just too many calories. But if you are here over the summer you just have to try one!

Earthquake

At 7:16 this morning there was an 6.3 earthquake across the border in Wells Nevada. Many, many people were calling in to the Salt Lake news stations saying they felt it right here in the valley. I don't talk much about this for fear of causing a panic amongst my kinfolk, but we live about 2 miles from the fault line running at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. There hasn't been an earthquake here in hundreds of years but the scientists all agree it will happen some day. It could be soon or it could be in hundreds of years. For multiple reasons, the Mormons who settled this area, urge their members to store up food and water and other supplies that would get them through a disaster. So in our neighborhood and throughout the valley there are distaster preparedness classes, organized block captains and multiple business who offer different types of kits and supplies to get you through an event. I'm sure Californians have this same type of preparedness but being a midwesterner, I'm more attuned to the possibility of tornado destruction; this is all sort of foreign to me.


When we first moved here, I had a couple conversatios with neighbors about all this. I started storing up water and some food supplies. Fred kinda thought I was silly but a few weeks ago one of our neighbors came by and asked Fred if he would be willing to volunteer as the organizer of the Emergency Preparedness block captains in our neighborhood. I had to laugh because that was the last job I thought Fred would be interested in. I also had to laugh this morning; our neighbors, most of whom don't have pets (they have too many kids to have time for pets!), asked if we would call them right away if our dogs ever started acting funny. Supposedly animals can sense a quake coming and will pace, act nervous, pant, drool, cry etc. Uh, well, my two failed the test as early alert systems this morning. Both were snoozing away at 7:16.

This map shows the multiple earthquakes going on everyday in the west, most of them very small. But that big blue block, that's this morning's!

Gotta Moose, Gotta Moose, Can you do the Fandango?

We were in Millcreek Canyon cross country skiing last weekend when we spotted this guy. See him? I didn't either at first. Just to the left of this view were a dozen people and dogs who had congregated. I asked one woman what everyone was looking at. She nodded her head in this guy's direction and said, 'uh, the moose'. OH! Wow. We put Story on leash because we knew she wouldn't leave it alone. Since he's apparently a youngster, there's a good chance the mama would be close by and they aren't very nice if you get too close to their babies.

He was just a leanin' on the truck.

Cute, huh? Click on the picture to see larger.

You can see how much snow we've had lately.