What would you do with a week and a half of solitude?

My wife took the kids and drove to Tucson to visit her parents and brother who live there. The kids adore their cousins who live there and really like the grandparents. They don't much care for the environment there, the rocks-and-cactus lanscaping it turns out is not as appealing to play on as plush grass and shade trees.

Anyway, I had a week and a half on my own and what did I do with all that peace and quiet? Let's start with my diet: cookies and milk, Apollo Burgers, squeeze cheese on crackers, Ovaltine, and frozen corn-dogs, in that order of quantities consumed. Then what did I do when I wasn't cramming my gullet with high-fat low nutrition legos-and-wood-chips style food (that's another story)? Mostly I worked on my new boat:
Despite being in relatively pristine condition, I have a certain penchant for things being perfect. So I went around the whole boat replacing screws whose heads had been marred or stripped, fixing things that can't be seen unless you are tucked way down in the engine compartment with them, and repairing minor blemishes and scratches in the vinyl.

I also spent an entire Saturday digging (by hand) a 30 foot drainage trench in my yard, installing a french drain system (complete with rocks and drain tube socks), filling it back and replacing the sod (it now looks as though nothing had happened). Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the process, since the camera went to Tucson.

After all that, I realy needed to shoot some guns. So I bought a clay pigeon thrower that can be actuated by one's foot (this eliminated the need to round up a shooting companion, now I could shoot and throw the targets all by myself!), and headed for Lehi in search of someplace where a rural minded city kid could indulge in wanton shooting of whatever was handy (in this case it was the box of quail clay targets). My Benelli 12Ga performed beatifully, as usual, shooting when I tell it to, not shooting when I don't tell it to, and best of all, shooting at exactly what I point it at. I went through about 10 targets without a single hit before I realized that the first rule of baseball also applies: KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BALL! Then I went from uselessly blasting 3 rounds into space while the smug orange disc spins effortlessly away in one piece, to obliterating the target every time, usually with just 1 round, of the remaining targets in the box (total 48), I think I missed only 3. Then I pulled out the .22 rifle and just pelted a bunch of clay targets left over by somebody else in the sage bushes. I really wished I had more guns to shoot at that time.

Having run out of targets and guns to shoot and having been pleased at having hit so many of my targets, I went home to loaf about and watch The Fellowship of the Ring. My intention was to watch all 3 of the series, but people kept calling and coming over, so I only had time to watch the first one.

I also had a couple of fights with the cat, he seemed to think that without everybody else around, I was in charge of giving him his daily ration of affection and petting, which he begged for constantly, from the time I woke up until I left for work (and probably while I was gone too), and when I came home to when I cornered the yowling little freak and tossed him outside. That happened the first few days, then he got the idea and when he saw me coming toward him with that murderous look in my eyes, he would just run over to the door and wait for me to open it. We got along fine after that.

I also had a fight with the refrigerator, I seemed to have the mistaken impression that when you open a fridge, you should be able to find food inside, my wife always does after all. The same thing happened with the pantry...after the cookies ran out, the pantry refused to yield up her bounty and I got very grumpy. I mentally shouted at the pantry and left to go get some Indian food.

I am confused...can someone explain to me how Utahn and Federal Anti-Illegal Immigration Laws and President Hinckley's urging that no man who issues disparaging remarks about persons of another race is a disciple of Christ? Fox 13 news last night seems to have made the connection naturally, but I don't see it. Sure, the existence of anti-immigration laws can allow the unscrupulous an opportunity to voice their true un-christian like thoughts about another culture which ultimately they do not know enough about. Nevertheless, the anti-immigration legislation itself is not a disparaging discrimination against any culture or race, it is a law to protect our security and economy from unlawful invasion by people who by their very manner of entry into our country have indicated that they believe themselves exempt from certain requirements of the law. This is true whether the immigrant is coming from China, Mexico, Denmark, or Great Britain. Culture and race are irrelevant, the point this legislation makes is that people who enter the country as criminals, are in fact criminals and the law has a provision for how to handle that offense, just as it does any other criminal offense.