#6: Chainsaw technique learned

So I helped my uncle chop down a cherry tree yesterday. (George would be horrified.) So there goes ol' #6. At this rate, I'll be done in no time.

I thought of another item:

12. Learn how to turn wood on a lathe. (Then I can make bannister spindles and such truck.)

Chef Jeff

Jeff with the new chef's hat and improved apron he got for his birthday.

Put Me in the Zoo!

The weather was so nice today, we couldn't "bear" to stay at home. We spent the day at Hogle Zoo!

Happy Birthday to Me

Yesterday was a fantastic birthday, due to my wife Melanie. She's wonderful and, truth be told, I'd rather just talk about her.

However, my cousin-in-law, Brooke, came up with a great idea on her birthday, which wasn't too long ago. She decided that, over the course of the next year, she'd learn/do a new thing/skill/whatever for every year that she's been alive (in her case, twenty-eight). Thus, I think I'll try to come up with twenty-six things that I'll learn in this year of my life. Here they are:

1. Learn how to use a sewing machine
2. In conjunction with #1, learn how to tailor clothes (I'm terribly difficult to fit)
3. Guitar technique: "Sweep picking"
4. Learn Portuguese
5. Learn how to make a good confit
6. Learn how to use a chainsaw (I've done it in the past, but I'd be afraid to try on my own, now)
7. Climb Mount Olympus (the one in Salt Lake City, not Greece)
8. Learn how to build furniture with drawers
9. Learn how to grain-fill in porous woods
10. Read the entire Bible again (yes, even those Law of Moses parts in the Old Testament)
11. Learn how to use a pressure-cooker (and hopefully not blow up the house in the process)
12. Hmm...

Okay--I'll have to think of fifteen more at a later date. Anyway, that's a good start, I'd say.

A cute picture of my mom and dad who are living it up in Hawaii right now!

Outing at the Salt Lake City Cemetery

For FHE, Jeff and I went to the Salt Lake City Cemetery to find my Bradford relatives' gravestones. This was our second attempt at the task; our first outing was cut short by mountain standard time and by our tardiness (sorry Drew and Jess--the food afterward was great!)

I recall visiting the cemetery with my Carlson relatives in the late eighties before my grandpa died. I remember the place well, and explained it very simply to Jeff, "It's on a hill and there were lots of trees around." You'll notice that I was correct (observe the slight slope and the bush in the background), but we learned that this description could well be true of all 140,000 graves at the cemetery. It took a call to the cemetery office and two maps to locate the graves.

Being the resourceful person I am, I tidied up the graves with an ice scraper and had Jeff document the occassion. Since I'm not an expert on my family history (only on Jeff's family history), we took pictures of all the graves with matching surnames in the vicinity, just to be sure.

Above is the grave of my great grandparents, Rose and Hial Bradford.

After our family history jaunt, we decided to find some graves of famous people. We had no idea where to locate said graves, so we drove around and looked for all of the big markers figuring they must be someone of importance. It worked!! We saw the Hinkley family marker and the graves of David O. McKay, John Taylor, Heber J. Grant, J. Golden Kimball, and Joseph Fielding Smith to name a few. We also learned after awhile that many of the pioneer graves have a little square gold plaque that glitters in the setting sun. This further helped us in our quest.

Blurry pictures are cool

Perhaps it's due to my indie-rock background, hanging out in sweltering punk dives during my high school years, but I have a soft spot for artfully blurry photographs, which the aforementioned dives often use for décor. And, now that Mel and I have this ultra-high-definition digital camera, blurry photos are no problem at all. The key, though, is making sure that the pictures are just slightly blurry--and blurry in the right places--not a whirled mess.

Therefore, here are some of the better blurry pictures taken from my sister-in-law's wedding (and the activities pursuant thereto) on Saturday: