MANTIS

 

I have been taking an incredible amount of time working on may latest post entitled "Mehiko" and I'm still working on it, but this morning I thought of a slightly funny story and I got a hankerin' to share it with you.

 

This story will be known from this day forth on the records of this blog as

 

 

MANTIS

 

PART 1

 

As I'm sure you already know a Mantis or "praying Mantis" is a very scary looking insect that is found around here in the summer, they are very religious and can be seen praying no matter where they are found, however in spite of their constant praying I cannot recall ever seeing one in church. So if you assumed that this story is about a praying mantis then you are wrong, it's actually about three separate praying mantes, two of which end up dead.

 

This story begins about three years ago when was working on a job site in Draper, Utah. We were just about to finish up the job, all that was left to do was to throw all of the wood scraps in the garbage and sweep up. As I was trying to grab a large armful of scrap I felt a sudden and very painful pinch on my finger, this really freaked me out and as any other man would do I let out a yell, dropped the scraps and jumped back to nurse my wound.
After doing a thorough examination of my finger and finding no major physical trauma (just mental) I then preceded to try to find out what bit me. I carefully sifted around in the scrap pile for a while, being sure to avoid any other injury, when I came upon a praying mantis that had apparently been fatally injured when someone after being startled by it's very own bite dropped an armful of wood on it.

 

As you can possibly imagine this experience has been a matter of deep mental and emotional anguish. I can't even see a mantis without remembering the extreme pain I experienced for those few very long seconds of that day, and although the pain went away almost instantly, and there was no sort of scar or even a minor scratch, the skin had become slightly red for a minute or two and that, I will never overcome.

 

And just to clarify I believe that if I were to get in a fight with a mantis I would stand a fairly good chance of winning.

Now, out of all honesty I cannot say that my fear of the praying mantis came from this experience alone, it was simply compounded.  I do however feel completely justified in having this fear, after all, there are several characteristics of a mantis that are very scary. Here is a picture explaining the six key elements that make a praying mantis scary.

1.Tiny head with huge creepy looking eyes

2. Crazy long arms with pinchers and sharp spiky looking things on them

3. Another set of pinchers on their face, as if the ones on the arms isn't enough

4. Wings so they can fly at you and attack your face

5. long agile legs to run up your arm and attack your face

6. A curved body that looks like a deadly worm

 

 

PART 2

Now that you know my feelings about the praying mantis I will continue with the second part of the story. This happened on another job site in Lehi, it was a hot summer day and I was doing some work on the stairway of a house that leads to the basement. As I walked down the stairs I noticed a large tan colored mantis on the stairway, I have always been told that praying mantises are good and harmless to humans (yeah right) so I decided to spare this insects life.

 I knew that the stairway wouldn't be a safe place for the little guy so I decided that I would set it outside where it could go free and terrorize some other construction workers. Now as you know from my past experience and the upper photo (with included explanation) it could be very dangerous to pick up this bug with my hands so I found a board and herded the insect onto it. I was somehow able to get the mantis safely ("safely" meaning my safety) to the basement window before it was able to run up my arm to attack my face. I gently placed the board and insect in the window well and quickly closed the window so it couldn't fly back in (and attack). I felt really great to have saved this insects life, even though it probably would have attacked me if it were given the opportunity.

After an hour or so I decided to go back to the basement window to make sure the mantis was able to get away. As I approached the window I saw something truly awesome as you will see in the picture below.

 

 

This is what I saw when I opened the window. A large green praying mantis had the brown one in a submission hold and was eating the head of the mantis that I had so carefully rescued only an hour earlier.
It warms the heart!

THE END

 



Sanpete County Legends

MORONI 4th OF JULY PARADE 2012

As many of you may know Laura and I are from a county in Central Utah called Sanpete county, as described in the above illustration we have a Temple, snowflakes, a blue moon and a mountain called the big horseshoe.

This map shows a exact approximate location of Sanpete

Well every year we like to go to Moroni to take the kids to the parade. It's really fun because it isn't too long and they still throw candy, which is one of the best part of parades.

Moroni main street

Well last year (2011) like every year, we went to the parade as we have done for the past 10 years or so. The parade was just as good as it ever was with one difference, hardly any candy was thrown. It was actually quite pathetic, all the participants just threw small hand fulls of candy to large groups of kids. Can  you imagine 20 kids all running after 9 pieces of taffy? Needless to say most kids walked away with a very small baggie of candy.

After the parade Marc and I were talking about how little candy was actually thrown that year, suddenly the heavens were opened and Marc and I came up with an idea so good that it can only be described with one word....Legendary.

I told Marc that the next year we should enter the parade with the sole purpose of throwing candy and nothing more. We would somehow need to raise enough funds to buy a very large amount of candy, enough to fill the bed of my truck to be specific. We told Andy of our idea and he immediately started helping plan for this great event, Laura, Cole and Shamri also thought it was an awesome idea. We had plenty of help, and time to pull it off. With a full year of preparation we expected everything to go amazingly well.

Well, if any of you have ever been involved in something that has a seemingly infinite amount of time to prepare for, you probably know that it can also be easy to put it off till the end. This is exactly what happened. About one month before, we decided that it would be time to make preparations. We called everywhere to get pricing on the taffy and did the math to figure out how many pounds would be needed to fill the bed of my truck. Andy has a friend who has an account with Sweets taffy, and after much research we concluded that he could get us the best price. Andy ordered 2 cases just so we could see how much volume each one would take. Before the two cases arrived we started punching numbers and we figured out that it would cost nearly $2000 for the amount of candy we would need.

After finding out how much money it was going to cost each one of us must have concluded that it was not a realistic goal and all planning ceased. Nothing more was said about the parade until about one week before the 4th when Andy called me and said the two cases had arrived and wanted to know if we should try to return them or what we should do with them. We decided that we would beg everyone in the family for donations and just buy as much as we possibly could we were just worried about getting entered into the parade, and also if we could order that much candy on such a short notice.

Well, we were able to get a spot in the parade #24 to be exact, which incidentally turned out to be a lucky number because it got us one of the only shady parking spots while we waited to begin the parade caravan.

Marc was able to have some shirts made for us at the last minute, which he paid for and donated, good thing he works at Namify.

Andy took care of getting the candy ordered at a discount price and I was in charge of calling everyone and begging them to invest a large amount of money in something that has little return, and when I say "little return" what I really mean is; absolutely no return, unless you count the bag of candy each investor collected during the parade.  I will not name the amounts or people who donated but I would like to thank them in behalf of hundreds of Sanpete county children, and their dentists.

We were able to get all the candy the weekend before the 4th, This is 22 cases, we were able to buy a total of 26 cases which contain nine three pound bags of taffy. Each case weights 9x3 lbs, for a total of exactly 9x3x26 pounds.

Aiden and I even made a special box made out of a special type of material known as wood.

The night before the parade Laura and I spent about 2 hours opening each three pound bag of taffy into the cardboard boxes so we wouldn't have to do it the next day. Our basement smelled like a candy factory for days.

The morning of the 4th Laura and I woke up at 5:30 and emptied all 26 cases into the special wooden box. It wasn't as much candy as I had envisioned but it was still more than I had ever seen in a wood box, in the back of a black Dodge truck, that year.

All of the boxes after we finished.

 

Here we are patiently waiting to begin.

When we started in the parade we threw a few large hand fulls at some kids who were waiting at the top of the hill, they were too lazy to even pick up the candy, if picking up pieces of candy off the ground is to much work for a kid, he's in for a rough life. We were kind of concerned that that's how the rest of the parade would be......it wasn't.

Once we pulled into the main part of the parade where more people were we made it rain candy. Kids who were so used to fighting over a few pieces of candy were diving on top of the candy, they soon realised that diving was not necessary as we through so much candy everyone got their share.

Here is a group of teenagers that were crowding out the little kids, so we gave them more candy, at about 80 miles an hour right in the back.

Notice how in front of my truck there is no candy in the road and all the people are off the road, now notice behind my truck how many people are in the street gathering candy, also, notice how far back the people are still on the street, on both sides, because it took them so long to pick it all up. 

It was so awesome seeing the look on peoples faces as we threw more candy than all the other floats combined, they had never seen anything like it before, especially from an organization they had never even heard of. People were cheering, and taking pictures of us.

We felt kind of bad for the guy behind us who only had one case of candy to throw, I'm pretty sure that no one even noticed the next three floats after ours.

Now, when we got to our group...We freaking unloaded!!! Look at all the candy on the ground.

Taking a closer look at this picture. The red circles show the amount of candy that was air born in any given second during the entire parade. The red arrows indicate the approximate amount of candy that was on the ground at any given second during the whole parade.

I love taking pictures of people taking pictures of me.

Andy walked the whole way and made sure that the kids (and adults) who were unable to run in the road still got plenty of candy, including a girl in a wheelchair who was unable to pick up any candy, and several people who were sitting on their porches.

After the parade we still had a full case of candy left over so some of us walked back up the road and threw it to people, including an old man in a scooter. We received several encouraging words of gratitude for making the parade awesome, it was such an awesome feeling.

I think we were one of the highlights of the parade, what an awesome way to celebrate our country's independence.

Getting back to our family, and telling of our adventure. I think we all had perma-grin for the next few hours.

Showing off our shirts.

All of the participants

As long as we can afford it we will continue in this tradition, hopefully we'll be able to get some outside donations or sponsors.

Pet Peeve #2

It has been so long since I have updated my blog I wanted to do a quick posting in my pet peeve series.

Today's pet peeve will be called:

"Let me just read that for you"

Have you ever gone to the store in search of a product and upon searching for this specific product, have you ever found yourself comparing two similar products and wondering which one would better meet your needs? Of course you have.

Well when in this situation there are many things to consider before making a decision, like the products price, it's quality, warranty, and the specific services or tasks that this product is capable of performing. There are also several things that may be done to find out which of these products will better serve you. The first and most obvious thing to do is look at the products label or box cover, most of the time a products primary features will be listed right on the front. Now, if  after doing this you still need further knowledge, the next thing to do would be to actually look on the back of the box, this typically will give a deeper explanation of somethings key features, and from this point you can better compare the two items and base your decision on what you read. After reading everything on the box and you still can't figure which item is best for you the next step would be to wander around the store until you finally find a store employee who with much hesitation will come and hopefully explain the differences between the two products you are interested in buying.

Now, this is where the Pet Peeve comes in. So you are finally able to find someone to help you figure out what these two products do. The first thing this worker typically does is briefly explain what he knows about the products, which is usually less than what you know. When you continue to inquire about the products features the employee realises that he requires more knowledge to help you out. So what does he do? Of course, he picks up the box, reads what you just read minutes earlier,  and then explains to you what he just read. As if you weren't smart enough to have already done that. Don't you think I already read the box?? That's why I asked for your help! Duh! I understand if he doesn't know about this item, but either tell me you cant help, of find someone who can.

So, in short, this peeve is; When you ask a store employee for help and all he does is read the product description on the box to you as if you weren't smart enough to do that yourself.

PET PEEVES

Well once again I find my self starting another posting with the phrase "It's been a long time since my last post" and it really has however based on the amount of comments I got on the last post it really doesn't matter because no one reads it anyway. Nevertheless I will continue to type as if someone out there, either now or years in the future, will read this and be touched, or offended.

Despite the fact that I have not updated any of our family happenings I have decided to start a new "Series" of blog posts that will be known from this day fourth as......

PET PEEVES

Now for the few of you who know me, or have even just met me once, or perhaps just passed me in the street, know that I have many small, medium, large and extra large "Hang-Ups" I am admittedly a person who is easily annoyed, however what separates me from the rest of those who are also easily annoyed is that I am not constantly miserable due to these irritations. And I also feel fully justified in the fact that these annoyances are brought to light.

As I said this will be a "Series" of postings so each post will contain one or two subjects that I would like to focus on.

The first subject I would like to bring to your attention will be known as:

"That restaurant is no good"

There are several restaurants that serve a variety of foods, but the majority of restaurants specialize in one type of food. For example if you go to a Chinese restaurant you would probably expect to be served delicious Chinese food.  If you go to a steak house it would be safe to assume that flame broiled slabs of beef rib eye cooked to the perfect medium rare temperature would be the best thing to order. Now as we all know there must be an opposite in all things, so If you go to Lee Hung's gourmet Chinese restaurant and on the menu you notice that they serve hamburgers, it would be wise to conclude that the burgers served there are probably not the best burgers that you will ever have, and probably are not even very good. If you go to Greasy Bobs Steakhouse and order a Fettucini Alfredo from the menu you can most likely put money on the guess that it will not taste very good.

So...what is the point??? Well the point is: if you go to a restaurant, or cafe, and order ANYTHING other than their speciality items, then for goodness sakes don't expect to enjoy what you order, and don't you dare complain about what you got!!

In summary, the hidden pet peeve here is:

People who go to a restaurant that specializes in a certain type of food, order something completely opposite of the speciality items even if it's on the menu, and then have the nerve to complain about the food, and even go so far to tell others that that place is not good because they didn't like the grilled cheese they ordered at the Italian restaurant.


The End