El WikiBocha

I made a Wikipedia entry for my dad, and in less than a minute it was deleted. I guess they didn't think he's important enough!!


The entry reads "Megan's father in law." I guess it's funnier in Spanish...

Spring Break 2008

We went to Moab for Spring Break. We stayed in Green River, a tiny little town 40 miles away from Moab that was almost deserted; half the stores were closed, but not just closed: they looked abandoned!

Anyway, on Tuesday we went biking. The trail was very hard, lots of hills; the downhill parts were really fun, and some were so steep that they were pretty scary. The uphills were so hard that we had to walk most of them. The complete trail was 10 miles, but we had to go back after 3, so we did almost 6.

This week they have the East of Utah Jeep Safari, so there were tons of Jeeps in town, with the drivers showing their baby's might. Not their might, because all they had to do was push a pedal and steer. But it was fun anyway.

A little cemetary we say on the way there:
Biking (this is my first time editing a video, so I'm sorry if it's kinda crappy):

The Colorado River
And, best of all... Helper! A little town which took us like five minutes to drive through. There's no much in that town (we saw a toothless cowboy, though), but we found this butt-kicking giant dude who looks like a miner John Henry

Bedroom Floor 1

We had a really ugly carpet in the bedroom, and underneat it we discovered a really nice hardwood floor. It's not ready to use; it's stained and quite dirty, so we just got rid of the ugly carpet and left it ready to work on during the summer, when we have more than a few days off.

Carpet:
I can't believe the ammount of dirt we found under the carpet.
Floor:
Once we sand it and stain it, it's going to look great

Bush Drunk While Giving Speech?

I'm not too crazy about linking videos from YouTube, but this is awesome.

Fabooloos Teacher

The guy who wrote the Leven Thumps series came to my school and talked to the kids for an hour or so. His presentation was nice, quite entertaining. Still on the nerdy side ("If I write another series it would be something about dragons!"), but nice.

The guy was kind enough to stay after school and sign a few books for the kids and some of the teachers who were hoping to make a nice investment that would add up something to their retirement plans (yours included). All the other teachers asked him to "make it to Phil," or "Shelly," so I asked him to sign it to "Mr. Saine." I thought it would be fun, but that made him feel like he had to say something about the fact that I was a teacher and not just a Phil or a Shelly, so he stops for a second and asks "How do you spell fabulous?" To tell you the truth, the guy caught me by surprise. It was noisy, I was thinking of my kids who were by themselves back in the classroom, so I spaced out. "Well, here you go," said the guy, finally. I really didn't check the book for the next couple of days, until today, when I decided to take it out of the coffee table and put it away in my bookshelf (sometimes I do stuff like that. I help a lot around the house :]), and actually read the autograph, and this is what I saw:


The sad thing is that this guy got rich by writing. Writing. But he can't spell fabulous.

In days like this I feel like crying...

Someone Was Way Too Cool to Go to School

In Which My Zen Gets Stolen

I decided to get myself a little Zen. It's smaller than an iPod classic, and it has less memory, but it has a slot for SD Cards, so the memory is expansible. It also has a built in recorder, which is pretty handy for school. I actually liked it very much, and I used it a lot for school projects the short time I had it. Within the week of having bought it, it was stolen.

It was at school. After sixth period I have my prep. hour, which is kind of a free hour that teachers have, by contract, to prepare for the next day, and mine happens to be at the end of the day, which I find very convenient. Anyway, before doing my planning I went to gather my things, my cell, my keys, my bag, and found that my Zen was gone.

I didn't really know what to do, and I felt stupid going to the vice principal with my little complaint, but I did anyway. "Someone stole my MP3 player. What do you recommend I do?" I asked her. She was all surprised, and asked me to fill in a report. I told her that I noted the thing was gone between fifth and sixth period, but I wasn't sure when, so she called all the kids from my fifth and sixth period classes to the office. Some looked very worried (mostly the good ones). The rest were happy they didn't have to be in class and didn't seem to care. The police officer on campus then called them one by one, searched them, and questioned them. It was kind of sad to see some of the kids who never get in any kind of trouble get searched, but some other were used to it. Many of them came to me after talking to the police officer and said "Mr. Saine, I'm innocent!!!.

The secretary found that one of the kids had something in his pockets, and asked him what it was. "It's cat food," he replied. "Cat food? Why do you have cat food in your pocket for?" asked the other kid that was being searched at the moment. "My cat comes and puts it one by one in my pocket. Okay?" The secretary thinks that the kid eats the stuff. Many of these kids don't even have much to eat at home, which is heartbreaking.

One of the kids came and said "It was Jake! I saw him, it was Jake!" "Why didn't you tell me before, then?" I asked. "Well, I wasn't sure, but he went behind your desk, grabbed the thing, and turned around pretending to put it back. I wasn't sure if he did or not. That's why." The truth is that I had seen Jake wondering around the classroom when he should have been working with his group, and I had to ask him several times to go back. Thing is, he didn't come to the office when they called him, so I went to get him in his classroom, which is the band room. When I walked in, the teacher was raising her hands, and the whole band got to play a very loud and discordant note before I entered and said "excuse me. Is Jake here?" "No," replied the band teacher, "he left when they called him to the office." He left alright. The vice principal, the police officer and I took different wings of the school to try and find him, but he was gone. In the way, one of my students from another class runs to me and asks "Mr. Saine, is chicken meat?" "What?" "Chicken. Is it meat?" "Yes, it's a kind of meat," after which she turns to another student and yells "Seeee? I told you!!!!!"

I went back to the office and the police officer decided to go to Jake's house, and one of the advisors was asked to try to find him in the streets. The whole thing was extremely sad, because I like Jake, and I thing that he is a really good kid, he just got tempted and did something stupid, which is going to get him in a lot of trouble. "What would you guys get into so much trouble for something like this?" I asked one of the students who were waiting to be searched. "Because we are poor, and we don't have anything." Of course, that's not a reasonable excuse, but to a 13 year old's mind that makes a lot of sense.

Now I guess I will have to wait until Monday to find out what happened.

Absolute Nightmare (It'll Never End!!!)

On Sunday we had to go to Salt Lake City, and the roads in Ogden were absolutely awful. We had to shovel our way out of our house (as we do every morning, and then we have to shovel our way in during the evening), and as soon as we entered Salt Lake County, the snow magically disappeared. I mean, there was nothing! While we are completely covered in this white crap!!

I took this today on my way back home, after the sun had been shining for hours:

At the school parking lot



At Meg's school's parking lot

Our mail box. You can see where the mailman had to step to leave our mail

Our ex-sidewalk



Update: Some pics taken around town

An ice covered column at church

A cool icecicle by the Wisebird Bookery

I've seen a few of these snow formation on roofs around town, and I still can't figure out what causes them.

People don't roll up snowmen up here. They carve them out of the piled up snow.

President Hinckey Died

We will remember president Hinckley as one of the most amazing persons that lived in this earth during our times. We will most definitively miss him.

Jonatan and Matias' Birthday Party

We had an awesome party last night in one of Jonatan's friend's future restaurant, and it was a lot of fun. We had asado and empanadas (couldn't be anything else!), a huge cake, and a lot of dancing.

Megan and I did ok with the dancing, but there was this one couple who kicked butt


Jonatan and Brea were pretty good too, especially with the ranchera (my brother's going Mexican!)


Brea with the proud suegro:



We came home pretty late, so I was really happy that I don't have to get up at 5:00 am to go to church anymore. That was tough, and pretty taxing on our party hard live style. I missed sitting at Barnes and Noble playing Scrabble until they kicked us out at closing time...