A Dilemma of Ethics

My car has been afflicted with the automotive equivalent of gout.

But it still goes.

No warning lights appear on the instrument panel that would make anyone suspect anything is wrong.

It still runs reasonably smoothly--not so rough that one would suspect a problem.  (The occasional cloud of white smoke on startup is a bit alarming, though.)

My dad planted the bug in my ear yesterday that I might just trade it in for something newer.

How much trouble (if any) can I get into for trading it to a dealer and not saying anything?  Despite the title of my post today, the real quandary is not "is this right?" (it isn't, not really, not in the way we teach little kids about right and wrong--although I can find lots and lots of justification for pulling one over on a used-car dealership) but "can I be punished for this?"  Because I'm ethically opposed to being sued, or fined, or whatever may happen.  After all, there is proof out there that I knew the car needed a new engine in it.  All it would take is a phone call to the Toyota dealership to find that out.

On the other hand, I do have a mechanic who is interested in working on it, and can probably get a new engine, or all the necessary parts, at least, dropped in for half what the dealership wants, and then there are only about 10 payments left to make on it.

Hmmm........

Coffee + TrimSpa + Drama =

Elevated heart rate.

Dizziness.

Dehydration.

Not being hungry, which leads to not eating, which leads to headache and vague feelings of nausea.

Feelings of mild to moderate panic.

Inability to concentrate.

Talking very fast.

Inability to take a restful nap when given the opportunity.

Today I had a training for a new parent-notification system our school is piloting. When my administrator came in the week before the break to tell me about it, he said, "we're taking care of your sub." Of course, in retrospect I see that he meant "the district will be paying for your sub; it won't be coming out of your allotment of sick/personal days," but I thought he meant he would also be notifying Denise, the woman in charge of subs at our school, to enter my absence in the automated system.

We were carpooling to the training today, and it didn't begin until 8, so I was in my room working until the first bell rang at 7. When no one had shown up at my classroom yet, I went to see Denise to see what was the matter. She was probably not the happiest woman in the world when I told her what the matter was; she was already in the process of tracking down 3 first-hour subs for other people. I'm actually pretty resigned to the kind of mistakes that just mess things up for me, but I really, really hate making the kind of mistakes that put other people out or call attention to the fact that I did something dumb. I apologized profusely (probably too much so), and went back to my room to get the kiddos started on their posters. Finally, about 10 minutes before I had to leave, a teacher from down the hall came in to take over for me.

The training was interesting, if impractical for a non-administrator like me. The system the district is buying is amazing. Without gushing about it too much, if I was the principal of the school and I needed to send a series of recorded messages to students' parents, I would be doing a little dance right now because it is so easy. I am, however, just the English teacher of 160 students and will have no access or rights to the autodialler and therefore won't be able to use it, so the training was an interesting, interactive, hands-on waste of time (and drama). The day wasn't a total loss: I did make the internet call me on the telephone, so that was actually pretty cool.

When the training ended, I raced back across town to school so I could get there before my after-lunch class only to find out that after 3 class periods of other teachers covering my class on their preps, a sub had finally arrived just in time for my prep, just before lunch, so I might as well let him do something and get paid for it. That part actually turned out for the best, even though I just wound up feeling guilty, rather than relieved or pleasantly surprised, at my afternoon off, but tomorrow is the last day of the quarter and I have about 20 more research projects to grade. That was about when I realized I hadn't eaten anything but toast and stimulants for breakfast and needed to eat if I wasn't going to feel sick all afternoon.

Oh, and because I learned my lesson today, I've already put in for the three days I'll be out for even more training fun in two weeks. Nobody can say I don't have a learning curve!

Probably the least successful vacation-trip ever!

Oh, man, I knew my luck would run out sometime. We had intended to get out of town about 10 yesterday morning so we could climb in Veyo during the early afternoon, but T didn't even get up until almost 11 [I let him sleep out of guilt; he's been sleeping badly for the last week or so (and I have been re-watching The Office on Netflix whenever I have 20 minutes to myself)].

We got into St. George in time to catch a movie (Be Kind Rewind--not bad--this site ran a "sweded films" competition with some great entries), but decided it was to early to turn in yet, even though we had called the climbing park to get permission to open the gate and come in after hours to camp and climb early in the morning. Instead, we drove up through Zion to Mt. Caramel Junction, the one-horse burg where we found ourselves nearly stuck about this time last year, and got a motel room so we could have HBO and showers in the morning.

The motel had a great little pamphlet about touristy stuff in the area (go figure, right?), and we had been meaning to check out Best Friends Animal Sanctuary for some time, so we headed down the 89 a little ways. When we arrived, a tour group had just returned, but there wasn't going to be another one for an hour and a half and T didn't really want to wait that long because the tour itself is 90 minutes of touring the canyon and visiting some of the dog and cat buildings. T had found out about a ghost town west of Zion that he wanted to bike to later and didn't think we'd have time if we spent 3 hours at the sanctuary, and I've been feeling another cat coming on for a few weeks now so it was probably a smart move on his part.

Instead, we dinked around the gift shop for a half hour, then walked down by the horse/burro area and to the pig pens. You know what? Horses kind of give me the willies. They are just too big and after reading one too many fantasy novels I am convinced one of them will kick or bite me in the face. But the pen full of shaggy burros and floppy-eared goats was wonderfully entertaining.

On the way back up to Zion, a very nice Mormon man showed us around a little cave his parents bought in 1950 and turned into a bar/dance hall. Now it's a museum with dinosaur footprints and petrified dinosaur poo (among other things, of course).

And that, unexpectedly, was the height of excitement for the day. N was very, very tired when we arrived in Zion with every intention of riding the bus to the top of the canyon and biking back down, so we settled for a short nap followed by early dinner (Utah time) or late lunch (Nevada time) in Springdale. The ghost town was supposed to be a few miles past town, and at only a 6-mile round trip, we thought we could leave N to continue his nap in the van while we biked in, took some pictures, and biked back out. The turnoff was not marked as well as we'd thought (or at all?), so we missed it and figured "oh well."

It wasn't that much farther back to St. George and the Veyo resort, but it was just after 6 local time, and T doesn't stop for the night any earlier than 11, but there wasn't enough daylight left to get on and off the rocks....so we came home. With the intention of being at Red Rocks early tomorrow, but still. We just needed something to eat up some time, and driving home to sleep in our own beds sounded pretty nice.

Which leaves the bikes still untouched on the back of the van, and the climbing gear in a bucket with last year's dirt still on it.

We should have at least gone on the animal tour.

I'm going open-source!

Which explains why I'm typing this post from T's computer, not mine. I was about ready to throw my stupid laptop from the window of a moving car after it got stuck--twice--during startup (among many other, more grievous issues), but since we're a bit short of the requisite $$ for the iBook I really want, T decided to install Linux on my machine. Linux has even more cache than Mac, so I figured it must be a good idea, plus I will feel so cool saying "Yeah, I'm a Linux user." I'd even start up conversations with strangers so I could drop that line in, all casual.

Except T is something of a tinkerer when it comes to computers. "Just do it, then fix it if it doesn't work--you'll learn more that way" could be his personal motto. Think of my laptop as a test batch of pancakes....and whoops, the griddle isn't quite hot enough yet.

Hmmm.....

So my statcounter says I had 74 visitors last Tuesday, with a larger-than-usual smattering of folks trickling in just before and after. Unfortunately, I can't tell where they are coming in from because there's not anyone linking in from somewhere else.

It's more like someone is emailing a link to all their friends.

All their 14- to 18-year-old friends who go to their high school, says the paranoid part of my brain.

I sort of figured having, you know, my actual name in my url was one day going to make things awkward. So anyway, I hope everyone found the place okay, and never goes back to some of my earlier posts where I link to myself because I'm not going back and manually changing a bunch of dumb hyperlinks. Sorry.

Anyway, T and I are going to pick up the new adoptee-dog tonight. I will put up some pics and possible names very soon!

A Possible Error in Judgement (hard to believe, I know)

Say you were taking a trip to Las Vegas and wanted to plan some fun outdoor activities. A day on the lake, say, or a long walk at the Wetlands. (Yes, we have one of those. No, it is not at a casino.) Or maybe you want to have an outdoor wedding reception next spring. A pool party, perhaps. Fourth-of-July fireworks. An egg drop contest. Perhaps it is your dream to retire, buy a condo here, and celebrate your golden anniversary at the communal barbecue pit by roasting a whole pig.

Go ahead. Set the date. The nice thing about Las Vegas weather is that all of these things are pretty much a safe bet. I can say, with more than 98% certainty, that my golden anniversary barbecue on August 4th, 2051, will be hot and sunny. So mark your calendars now. Bring your bathing suits. I'll supply the wine coolers and sunscreen.

Inclement weather just isn't a concern here. (Unless by "inclement" you mean 120 degrees.) After a while, you just take it for granted that things will turn out OK. Like when it's 3 a.m. on Sunday and you're hungry for creme brulee--it's just not a problem.

So when we woke up late this morning and decided to walk the dogs, weather didn't really factor into our decision. Even though it was overcast. And thundering.

We got almost all the way to the coffee shop on Water Street before deciding to turn back, just in case. Within half a block it started raining pretty hard, accompanied by more thunder and lightening.

Before you shake your head and think "I could have told you that was going to happen," just hear me out. This is the desert. Any given part of the valley receives, statistically, about 2 to 3 inches of rain a year, but that's just an average. I think we've managed maybe an inch since this time last year, and that's counting the snowfall in January. Also, we're in the middle of our first monsoon season in years, which doesn't mean anything except it's overcast, less hot, and more humid than usual. In theory, it sometimes rains, but almost always somewhere else, and not usually enough to do anything except bead up the dirt a little bit. So the clouds and thunder were more of a novelty than an actual indication of weather conditions, since it's been this way for almost two weeks now.

Seriously. Rain is just another one of those "it-won't-happen-to-me" scenarios, like getting carjacked or being on reality TV.

It does remind me, however, that being cavalier about the weather is another of those things I won't be able to do quite so easily when I live somewhere else. Somewhere without 24-hour grocery stores and restaurants with creme brulee in the middle of the night. Somewhere I may actually have to have backup clothing (or, at the very least, an umbrella) in case the weather changes suddenly. And, somewhere, God forbid, one day I may even have to learn how to drive safely on snow.

Speaking of errors in judgement I have made lately, my new breadknife Tyson brought back from Switzerland is very sharp. And typing is difficult with one's finger all taped up.

Another Kayaking (mis)Adventure!

I know this will shock and startle many of you, but it comes to my attention lately that, for someone who often obsesses about the details of things in her head, I do not always make the most well-informed decisions.

Example: Yesterday I wanted to go kayaking at Nelson's Landing, about 40 miles south of here, sort of on the way to Laughlin. It felt too hot to even think about leaving the house until about 7 p.m., when I finally grabbed my keys and ran out the door. I made it as far as the dry lake bed on the 95 before I realized the sun had already slipped behind the mountains and there was no way I was going to make it to the water in time.

Today I learned my lesson on that point, at least. I left a little after 5, and everything was looking OK. Until I hit the turnoff to Nelson and realized my fuel light had come on.

Whatever, I thought, as I forged on ahead. I should be fine. I can almost drive across town and back with the fuel light on (one of the benefits of a nearly-30-mile commute is feeling comfortable with the needle below the bottom of the gauge!), and I was feeling heady and a little reckless and didn't want to turn back a second day in a row.

I drove all the way down, and the beach was the most crowded I have ever seen it. I managed to find a parking spot more than a quarter-mile from the water, but I just couldn't get up the desire to take the boat down and hump it all the way through all the gravel, just to paddle around in the middle of some family's barbecue. Seriously, people practically stand in ankle-deep water and grill burgers and shit there. It's actually not very pleasant or relaxing at all.

Besides, I couldn't quite relax because, in the back of my mind, I knew I didn't have enough gas to get back home.

I made it to the town of Nelson, where approximately 7 people live, and there was not a gas station or anything, naturally, so I pulled up next to a guy in a truck and did my best cute-pink-haired-girl-with-car-problem routine. The guy, whose name was Roland, his dad, Ron, and his uncle, Mark, dug through a shed, a garage, and the entire property, and came up with about a quart of diesel. They sent me down to the mine down the road to see if they had any gas, but no one was there.

When I got back up to town, they tried to siphon gas from a truck, had no luck, then tried siphoning it off the carburetor. I had no idea you could even do that, and apparently it didn't really work all that well, because about the time they got enough to slosh around in the bottom of the gas can, the truck's battery went dead.

At about this time, a man, a woman, and their son pulled up with a busted tire, also looking for help. Not having a spare, there was really nothing to do for them but call a tow company to come get them.

Finally, Mark called someone he knew down the street and found about 3 gallons of gas to put in my car. We sat around on the porch for about 5 more minutes, watching the little cottontails under the manzanitas, sharing breakdown stories, then I left. All the cash I had on me was a single, lonely dollar bill, so they made me promise to "pay it forward" and maybe come out for a visit next time.

Then I went to my friend Bill's house and blew up dry ice bombs to celebrate.

So, anybody who needs a favor, it's my turn.

I can do it in the park...

and I can do it in the dark!

By "it," of course, I mean kayaking. By myself.

So my plan was to get to Willow Beach, about 15 miles south of Hoover Dam at about sunset (which, you'll notice from the above photo, that I missed by a good half hour), paddle upriver until the sun set and the moon came out, then turn around and paddle back by moonlight.

I put the boat in, and paddled lazily across the water, more like a narrow lake than an actual river, watching the hundreds of bats swirl and dive above the water. A few bright stars and airplanes started to become visible over the cliffs. It seemed like an evening made for being on the water.

What I failed to take into account is the fact that, particularly on a river in a canyon, there is a pretty severe gap between the sun dropping over the horizon and the moon rising high enough to be of any help. It's also very dark during that time; too dark, in fact, to see the shore well enough to park and wait.

I kept paddling upriver, and upriver, and upriver, looking over my shoulder with increasing agitation for the bright yellow rim of the moon, and all the while it just got darker and darker and spookier and spookier outside. Remembering the motor boats that tear up and down the river, I tried to stick to the shoreline, but it eventually got so dark that submerged trees seemed to jump out in front of me, and, given the way the sound of the locusts, ducks, and whatever else was out there carried over the glassy water, I figured I'd have ample warning of an approaching engine to get out of the way.

I still couldn't rest easy. I tried to calm myself by imagining worst-case scenarios. This sounds like it would work, because I'm a strong swimmer, my boat is sturdy plastic, and it doesn't seem likely to get lost or attacked out in the middle of a river, so the list of reasonable worst-casers doesn't seem like it would be that bad.

But oh! my imagination works better than just about any other part of me. I imagined hungry man-eating water tigers, floating dead bodies that were, in reality, zombies, and a parallel universe in which the moon was never coming out. I imagined Deliverance-style wildmen lying in wait along the banks (in reality, much to steep for anything but bighorns, and only bighorn-navigable in places). I started counting strokes, telling myself that I could turn around and check for the moon after 100 strokes, then 100 more. After 300, I got too creeped-out to count any further.

After about an hour in which the moon stubbornly failed to appear, I turned back downriver. The darkness in this direction felt a little less ominous, probably because it was, at least, familiar. Going with the current this time, I made it back to the marina fairly quickly. My pants and shirt, which I had stuffed behind my seat, were soaked, but my camera was miraculously dry. I balanced my boat on the roof rack, and got it tied down in just a few minutes, using the light from the restroom windows to see. When I got back into the car, I was surprised to see that it was after 10, and I had been on the river for almost two hours.

Now I am tired, and smell like a lake. I need a shower, a bowl of cereal, and to crawl into bed with a cranky gray cat.

I rescind my last post.

I just returned from the movie theatre, where I enjoyed another lovely afternoon all by myself watching Michael Moore's new film, Sicko. I agree with many of the reviews I read in that it seems like Moore has gotten away from a more journalistic style, but I think its effect was (or could be, or won't be, depending on your particular political bent) dramatic.

I am inches away from getting those packing boxes ready.

It would be so easy. Tyson's already in Switzerland, working. I could just eBay everything and come, too.

If Switzerland shared France's healthcare system, I would be there in a minute.

But, returning to Planet Earth, where I am in debt, have no passport, have 2 dogs, 2 cats, a bunny, a gecko, a tortoise, a turtle, and a snake to think about, not to mention an impending teenager, almost 3 more years on my lease, and no real concept of how one secures a job abroad, let alone completes permanent-residence status paperwork....and I begin to understand how the only people who can really afford the luxury of up and moving somewhere else are, well, people who can afford it, and people in their early 20s with no money, nothing to keep them in place, and without the sense to know any better.

Well, cheers to them. Maybe the rest of us can work on changing what we've got here.

And my that, I mean looking for jobs in Canada.

Aaahhhhhhhh

I went to this yoga class tonight at a different gym than I usually go to. My initial impression was that the instructor said things too fast. It's supposed to be, like, relaxing and calming and everything, and she was going through naming the asanas and everything with this very normal voice. Imagine the difference between, say, a hypnotist encouraging you to just breathe, relax, etc., and then his receptionist telling you your copay is $20. She was the receptionist.

The second problem I had was that I was inadvertently wearing the wrong pants. I had worn my ultra-light (and ultra-threadbare!) cropped pants all day, and they're usually fine for a cardio or weights workout, but when it came to poses like the crescent lunge (above), I couldn't get all the way into the stretch because I became too worried about splitting a seam. As entertaining as that might have been for everyone else involved, it wouldn't have been all that relaxing for me.

But about halfway into class, we started doing pigeon. Normally, I can lay all the way flat over my ankle, but with the non-stretchy pants, it was all I could do to get my hip all the way down. Then the instructor showed us this variation:

After that, I got more interested in just watching her twist herself all around than in trying not to split my pants. Doesn't it seem like everyone should be able to touch the bottom of their foot to the top of their head?

When we finally got to savasana, or the final relaxation part where you just lay on the floor in what is alternately called corpse pose or laying-down mountain pose, I realized why there were so many guys in the class (I've never been in a class with more than 2 or 3): the instructor walked around and gave four-minute massages to our faces, necks, and the backs of our heads. You could opt out, of course, and I heard several people rolling up their mats and leaving during this time, but I stayed. It was unreal. I had no idea that was exactly what I needed to close my practice. The whole process took almost half an hour, and afterward it was interesting noting who had stayed to be massaged: all the guys, and about half of us girls.

Anyway, I am off to bed very shortly. I think I am relaxed to the point of collapse.

Ow, ow, ow

I haven't had skinned knees like this since I was a kid. That's not really a picture of my knees, but anyhow.

I started going to an Aikido class at the rec center twice a week. On Tuesday, we did this knee-walking thing that gave me some fairly small patches of rugburn right on my kneecaps. No big deal. Some Neosporin, and everything was OK.

Until last night. I was wearing these white sweatpants to train in, and after the initial knee-walking part, I happened to look down at my pants, and they had all these brown splotches at the knees. Sure enough, I had ripped up my knees again enough to bleed through my pants. Ow.

But I did fix the backward-rolling issues I was having on Tuesday, and I learned my first throw. Now if some would-be attacker grabs my wrist, then stands really still to let me think about what I'm doing, I can step behind him, twist his arm down behind his head, and pull him to the ground. Provided he doesn't try to resist, or have a gun or anything like that.

Elaine, I think I may have changed my mind...

Having read Stephen Pressman's engaging Gates of Fire, I watched 300 and couldn't help but make unfavorable comparisons (although I have no doubt the pictures in the original graphic novel are pretty). However, PZ may have changed my mind on this issue.

Apparently, what I saw as mindless, over-hyped doggerel, was actually a complex parody of the creation/evolution debate. I actually get a little thrill picturing PZ in tight spandexy underwear and a cape hidden beneath his white lab coat. Tammy and Elaine, maybe we can find some pictures like that and put them on our blogs.

In which I am not, obviously, "stuck in Paradise"

...unless you are referring to the township of Paradise, where it is about 50 degrees warmer than when we left Summit County two days ago.

Thanks to Ed's friend Terry, who did exactly the ghetto-style yank-and-bend job on the front of our van that I kept telling Tyson was all we would need to get back on the road, we made it to Keystone on Monday. We kicked around some, took in a couple of movies--300 (crappy, with apologies to Elaine) and Shooter (Marky Mark makes such a great reluctant badass ["oh, man, I totally didn't want to blow up your compound in the woods with an assortment of homemade explosive devices, then take out an entire helicopter by shooting up a propane tank, but the imported Libyan commandos kind of made me do it"])--and generally behaved like ski bums for half a week. I can now make it down a green run in wide S-shaped traverses, repeating "fall line, fall line, bigtoelittletoebigtoelittletoe" to carve a pretty good string of parallel turns. It snowed on us on Thursday while we were attempting to crash a barbecue lunch at Nico's office, so that was both fun and interesting. I can't say I get too excited about snow once it's on the ground, but I can't resist the light, feathery feeling of snowflakes on my face. (No, Tyson, this does not give you permission to wing a snowball at my head. That is so not what I meant.)

But now we are back, with all the realities of home now crushing down upon us--grocery lists, lesson plans, endless piles of laundry, a bathroom inexplicably full of muddy cat prints. At least Tyson had the grace to clean the house on his half-day of early vacation on Friday.

Stranded in ParadiseorThe Kindness of Strangers

So it's Spring Break (finally). We spent all day and all night Friday frantically cleaning the house so it would be under control when we got back, then yesterday we threw skis, climbing gear, and a suitcase into the van and left for Utah.

The plan was this: lunch at Irmita's in St. George, then camping just outside Escalante and getting up early to hike and fish on the way to Calf Creek Falls. We stopped in St. George to catch a movie (Blades of Glory--good mindless fun surrounded by mindless Mormon teeny-boppers), then headed east through Zion and towards Bryce Canyon. I crawled back to the bed a little after 9, then was awakened by T yelling "fuck!" then being thrown forward off the bed and onto the floor.

T had come up over a hill and met up with a huge buck, just standing in the road like a moron. When he told me what had happened, I, of course, was picturing the bloody, mangled corpse of a deer jammed up into the front of the car, perhaps dangling in chunks from the grille, and it took a few moments before I was brave enough to go survey the damage.

One headlight was out. The grille had been shattered, and something, car part or deer part, was stuck in the fan, resulting in a loud thwapthwapthwapthwap from the engine.

A white van pulled over to help within about three minutes of the accident. The driver, an older woman who had been on the road since 3a.m., offered to drive or escort us to town. While she was offering her assistance, her husband stumbled out of the passenger door and threw up onto the side of the road. They, apparently, were having some of their own problems.

We made it to Mt. Caramel Junction, less of an actual town than an assortment of 2 gas stations and a hotel, at top speeds of 20 mph, that thwapthwapthwapthwapthwap sound drumming in our ears. Naturally, everything was closed except the hotel lobby. The night guy gave us the name of a guy with a garage in the next town who might or might not work on Sundays, as well as directions to his house.

This morning, we decided to forgo the cold cereal breakfast we'd bought earlier and do a real meal at the hotel. T had his computer out and was searching for mechanics in and around the area, or, at the very least, a tow company to get us back to St. George or Cedar City, when a guy named Ed from the golf shop showed up. He offered to call a couple of people he knew and see what he could find. He made us mochas from the espresso cart and, in the end, called his own mechanic to come down and take a look at the van. "While you're waiting," he said, "there's a black Samurai in the lot with the keys still in it. Take it down the road a ways until you see a cave. While my guy is working on your car, at least you'll have something to do." He even offered to run our credit cards at the hotel so we could pay the guy, since all the cash we have is probably not enough.

All in all, it is probably the nicest thing that has ever happened to me. If we ever make it out of Mt. Caramel Junction, we'll have Ed to thank for it.