Saturday, December 30, 2006

Creationism vs. Science at the Grand Canyon

This is disgusting:
Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

"In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. "It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is 'no comment.'"
Anyone is free to believe whatever they want, but using the federal government to publish and sell provable lies, as well as muzzle federal employees charged with educating the public is nothing short of utterly despicable.

Bush is on track to make himself the worst president in American history. His actions are almost enough to convince me to vote for Hillary.

Friday, December 29, 2006

Three Years Later and Still Going Strong

The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity are still rolling around on the surface after nearly three years and a combined driving distance of nearly 10.5 miles. The original mission was for 90 martian days.

No one is a bigger critic of NASA than I am, especially the space station and shuttle divisions. (An example of the pointless being enabled by the absurd if there ever was.) But there are still smart people being properly managed and accomplishing incredible things buried in the NASA bureaucracy.

Happenings and such

Hi Cyberworld --- we've missed you. Our server was completely dead since last Friday. It made my life kinda interesting for this week since I"m still working for my Michigan travel agency. I couldn't find a working WIFI anyplace to be able to connect remotely to the Michigan server. So, my Mom took pity on me and checked my emails for me on her computer. Plus, once a day I drove into Mayer to the public library to check things for my one hour time limit. Luckily I didn't have anything too important to do at work. I had one final called in this morning that I had to ask my inside gal to take care of the invoice for me since I couldn't sign on yet. Then after my cafe register duty for lunch, I came back to check things before heading to town again. It is finally working!!!! YEAH!!!!

Other happenings: Christmas time
We weren't able to make it home for Christmas this year. :-( I really missed the family time. Our big time out for Christmas Eve was going to dinner at a nice steak place and going to the theatre to see Happy Feet and Santa Claus 3. We had time to kill between the movies and walked around the complex some. We did finally find a REAL grocery store, it is called Fry's. Arcosanti was closed down from 1pm Christmas Eve until December 26th. This means nothing open to buy food (ie the cafe or bakery). We were able to take advantage of a couple things that happen here. First, Ron (landscaping manager) made breakfast in the cafe Christmas morning. Made to order -- omelets or burritos, french toast and bacon. It was a nice change to cereal, poptarts or bagels. Then Gin (bakery manager) had a potluck Christmas dinner at her place around 5pm. She likes turkey, so that was our main course. I really missed having ham and polish sausage!

I've been pulling more shifts in the cafe running the register since most of the help is gone. Nice pocket money. Ric is having a time in the maintenance department. The ?fun? they had yesterday was trying to unplug some toilets! One of the public men's toilet had a cell phone flushed down it!!! Ha! He still has his pool duties, even though him and another person are trying to talk the manager into draining it for awhile. (who wants to swim in 40-50 degree weather? the polar bear club is gone!)

The other big news I have is: I got a new job!!!! Beginning in January I will be working for AAA Arizona as a travel agent. I have 3 weeks of training (some in Phoenix) then go to part time until April. In April, I hope to be offered a full time position. It was interesting how this job came about. Ric and I were getting car insurance quotes one day and stopped into their office. As we were walking out, I asked the receptionist is they were hiring for travel agents. She said, they just hired somebody that was starting the next week. We walked out and I said "damn, my timing" I had picked up an application and the manager's name/number. I left her a message the next week -- about just moving in the area and my experience. I said I would drop off my resume later unless she wanted it right away. I then got a call two days after our workshop was done. She just had a part time person quit on Friday and wanted me to come in for an interview right away! WOW! I went in for the interview on a Friday and the job was offered to me on Tuesday. (pending my drug screening, reference check and criminal background check!) I was officially okayed this week --- everything checked out okay. God's timing is perfect. (Now, if I would trust Him to get the house sold.....)

Monday, December 18, 2006

You Suck!


DSC03007
Originally uploaded by rdfrost.
There is nothing quite so affirming as being told you suck in four languages. Written on toilet paper no less. Needles to say, my teemmate and I formed a very firm foundation for today's ping pong tournament. At least I assume that is what everyone meant when they kept telling us we were the basement.

Or was that "in the basement?"

Sunday, December 17, 2006

The Religion of Peace. Again.

Would someone please explain to me why I should have any respect for these "people"? Furthermore, can anyone explain why we let these animals into our country? Eating a pork chop should be mandatory for entering the U.S.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Some Free Time At Last

We are finally coming up for air, but only because we got out of making dinner tonight. We probably won't be working in the cafe anymore because Debbie has started working the register and I will start doing tours next week. The pay is a lot better and it is something I enjoy doing. It's sort of like teaching a class, which I love doing and really miss since losing my teaching job at the church.

We are done with our workshops. I am now a paid Arcosanti employee working 40 hours a week in maintenance. It's pretty brainless work, but that's what I really want at this point. There are several other jobs open that are a closer match to what I used to do, but I'm just not interested in sitting at a desk. At least not yet. I'm sure that at some point, assuming we stick around much past our one-year commitment, that I won't be able to crawl around under buildings and climb up and down ladders, but I'm no where near that point yet. Debbie is now working full-time as an outside travel agent for North Village Travel, plus working the odd shift cooking with me or running the cash register in the cafe. We have moved to our third temporary residence since being here. This one will be available until the next workshop comes in the first of February. It's not a bad place, but there is no heat as this part of the building is not finished. We didn't have heat in our last room either, but the difference there was that we got a lot of sun every day to heat up all the concrete. This room gets exactly no direct sunlight this time of year. Worse, because we are on the second story, the concrete floor is over a storage area that is unheated and not really all that wind-proof. That means that no matter what the temperature of the air in our room is, we are standing on a 40-degree concrete slab. We've got a couple small area rugs, which help a little, but not if you are in one place for any length of time. The worse place is the shower; bare feet in direct contact with wet, ice cold tile. Brrrrr.

It could be worse, of course. We could be stuck in Michigan plowing snow.

One side benefit of being on my feet all day is that I'm actually losing weight. I'm down to 233 pounds; lower than I've been in a decade. For the first time in a long, long time, the idea of being south of 200 seems realistic. I've been able to back off on my insulin a touch, but I haven't managed to get rid of any of my meds completely. That may not be possible even if I do get back down to 185 pounds, but I can certainly reduce what I'm taking. That will certainly help us out financially now that we have no health insurance. As things currently stand, every dime I make will go straight to Walgreen pharmacy.

On a completely different subject, I've sorted and cleaned up all our photos from 2005 and will start dumping them onto our Flickr account sometime soon. It may be as soon as tonight, if nothing else is going on. I don't think there is anything that we need to leave the room for other than dinner, so it's looking good that I can get several hundred photos on-line. One nice thing about our new room is that we have hard-wired network connections instead of wireless, meaning that our connections are more reliable, and that I can have both laptops connected to the internet at the same time. That way, one machine can just be dumping photos onto the internet, and the other one can be used for other stuff (like blogging). I was never able to get that working in our last room because of issues with my laptop, the shaky wireless connection, and the limited number of "slots" being shared by everyone else in the guest house.

Our Christmas cards and letters are out, so everyone should start getting those in the next couple days. They have our address here at Arcosanti, so everyone can send us lots of loot in the mail. Just joking; our space is so limited that anything we are sent would have to be stored in the back of the Durango anyway. But we have a nice, wide windowsill to set Christmas cards on, so please put us on your list. It's really the only Christmas we are having this year as we won't be able to get back to Michigan. This will be the first Christmas for both of us that we won't be with family. It's going to be a little strange. It is already strange as this place starts emptying out knowing that we will be one of the dozen or so people "stuck" here for Christmas day. One of the ladies here has everyone over for Christmas dinner, so we won't just be sitting in our room by ourselves, but it is going to be a very different Christmas for us.

Anyway, I need to try to get caught up with all the stuff I normally read on the internet. I haven't had much time to read blogs, news, or even Dilbert comics. More later if I find anything blog-able.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

And Even More Photos

More when it isn't 2am, but there are Grand Canyon photos and some pics from our workshop so far on Flickr.