Jensen on http://connect2utah.com/fresh-living-beauty

Fall Hair Color Trends Wednesday, November, 9 2011 @ 1:17 PM

Here

PinkJens

Pikachu! Jupiter Thunder Power!

Tour de Saint George

A couple of weeks ago Stuart Porter asked me to consider doing the Tour de Saint George. He was signed up for the full century. I checked into it and decided I could probably do the metric century. It had more climbing than I like (otherwise, I might have done the 100 mile route). But, it looked like it wouldn't be too bad. Besides, it gave me a goal to work for late in the season, to keep me riding.

We took the whole family down to Saint George last weekend to do this ride. It was a little cramped with Stuart and Kristin and Cody there too. But, they left fairly soon after the ride. So, Saturday night it was just us.

Cody was doing the 36 mile route. We decided to ride our bikes down to the start in the middle of town so we wouldn't have to deal with parking. We had timing chips. But, they only timed us individually as we crossed the finish line. I had wanted to keep my options open. So, I registered for the full century but just did the metric. So, for now on the results page of the website they have me finishing quite fast in the full century. I've let them know they should put me in the other category.

So, I finished 4^th out of 16 in my age group and  12^th out of 94 overall. Which I feel pretty good about since I don't like climbing. And although I only stopped at one of the feed stations, and only briefly, I did have problems with a slow leak that I stopped three times to put air in and then finally replaced the tube 73 miles into the ride.

Stuart was quite frustrated because he wanted to do well and he got off course a couple of times. This added to his overall time. He probably would have easily come in 1^st in our age group without his problems.
-Todd Lillywhite

Salvages

Tentative Rough Cover by Jens

New Mailbox

I put in our mailbox when we moved in 20 years ago. It was a simple aluminum box on a 4x4 wood post. On 3 Oct I came home from work to this.

We went from the ugliest, cheapest, scuzziest mailbox in the neighborhood to the nicest. Our neighbor updated our mailbox(es) and doesn't want me to pay for it. We will figure out something to do for them. He is bigwig in State politics for Dem party. Has been working on Obama campaign lately. And even though he is also a Ute fan, I could bring myself to vote for him. He is the nicest guy.

Lane truly is our Asian child

Rememberance

I was driving Ailsa to school and heard that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Soon after that I was at the dentist and saw footage of the second attack (while I was in the dentist chair.) at one point the news coverage cut back to the live footage and I could only see one tower. Eventually they confirmed that it had collapsed. When I finally got to work we were fully in the throes of the day. It seemed to me that we should all go home, if only for the reason that we wouldn't be getting much work done and it would be easier to keep track of all of the news. Lenore and I stayed up quite late watching the coverage. I was astounding to consider the possible amount of lost lives (at sometimes estimated to be upwards of 30,000, as I recall.) Thank goodness it wasn't that high.

Each LDS ward was instructed to have a memorial type service. I believe ours was on Sunday 16 September, because that is the date I assigned to the file containing my remarks for the service.

They can be found here.

Labor Day

I had a funny thing happen at Yesterday's Labor Day family pool party. I got in the pool and climbed on an air mattress to relax. The mattress was a little slipperier than normal and it took me a little while and some concentration to get on and situated. I had my ear bud in so I could listen to music. I had a previously opened bottle of soda that I had put in the freezer to cool down and forgotten about. It had frozen solid and was now partially re-thawed. I'm not sure but, I guess freezing soda does something to the carbonation because when I tried to open the drink, the gas in it wanted to expand a lot and wouldn't stop. I tried a couple of abortive attempts to open the bottle and let the steam off slowly, then I just pulled off the top and let it do its thing. After all I was in a pool. It wasn't overflowing a lot. But, I still didn't want to make a mess and lose half of the drink. In all of this I guess I was moving around a little too much for my precarious purchase on the mattress and I slipped off. I went all the way under the water. But, I managed to save the drink, holding it dry and aloft triumphantly with one hand. I was concerned about my earphone which had now gone through a complete, albeit very brief, submersion. I quickly turned it off and shook as much water off/out of it as I could and left it just for a short while. Within a half hour I checked it and turned it on and it was still working. For a while the volume control seemed to be ineffective. But, it works just fine now. Dodged a little bullet on that one.