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We got a little excited about growing our own peppers this year.  I picked out some really nice looking Anaheim and Serrano peppers that I figured would make some good salsa.  We planned two 20 ft rows of peppers. That should be enough right? But we didn’t plant any bell peppers.  I don’t know why, that’s what we buy the most of at the grocery store.  Usually we get that pack of red, orange, and yellow peppers from Costco and it lasts us a week.  I guess we like peppers.

Cari really likes them. She has taken to just munching on fresh bell peppers as a snack.  She especially likes the sweet red ones. When she found out that we hadn’t planted any in the garden she was really sad.  But she was determined she would solve this problem by herself.  She took the one last red pepper from the fridge, cut it open, took all the seeds, and put them in a paper bag to dry out.  I think she got about 100-200 seeds from that single pepper.

Our garden peppers were already sprouting and some even had good leaves growing. It was late June when Cari told us that she wanted to plant her peppers in the garden with the others.  We didn’t want to break her heart by telling her that it was too late. The other peppers had a good 4 or 5 weeks head start and she probably wouldn’t get any peppers before the first frost, if they even sprouted at all.  So we humored her and tried to prepare her for the fact that her peppers just weren’t going to grow.

Because we figured hardly any would sprout and partly because we were tired of digging holes to plant things we planted about 20 seeds in each hole. Nothing happened.  For weeks she would run to the pepper rows and check for her sprouts.  Each time she would come away with the same heart-broken look of disappointment. Then something crazy happened.  They came up. All of them.  In a matter of days we had many many dozens of pepper sprouts crowding each other.  So we thinned them out. Another week later we thinned them again. I think we thinned them out a total of 4 times.

Now we have as many bell pepper plants as we have other peppers.  We have been harvesting our other peppers for about 3 weeks but hadn’t seen any flowers or tiny peppers yet on the bell peppers. Until last week.

Cari and I were at the farm harvesting a couple baskets of tomatoes and Cari was asking me “How come Mommy was so excited over her first tomato? We have TONS!” I tried to explain the excitement ones feels when they first start to see the fruits of their labors.  She didn’t get it.  Then we walked past the peppers and there it was.  The first pepper.  Cari was so excited she started screaming and jumping up and down.  And she finally got it.  She understood why Mommy was so excited over the first tomato.

And I am amazed.  Seeds from one pepper we bought at Costco.  Now it looks like we’ll have bell peppers to last us the whole fall and first few weeks of winter. Not to mention all the salsa and spaghetti sauce we’re canning.  I think we’ll even have plenty to dry in those cool bunches and just hang up for fun.

Moral of the story:  You can count the seeds in a pepper (if you’re patient) but you can’t count the peppers in a seed. Never underestimate the hopes and desires of your children.

So I started Cycling.  I’ve wanted to do it for quite sometime.  This summer I made the goal to get started and not more than 2 weeks later MonaVie announces that we’ll be putting together a team for the ULCER this year.  I figured, “Hey, this is a heck of a way to kick it off” and I signed up.  The ULCER is next week and I’ve been trying to get prepared.  This weekend I rode a 58 miler.  It just about killed me.  So I figure I need to step it up a notch if I’m going to finish all 105 miles of this weekends race.

So I’m biking to work a couple times this week.  This is what this morning looked like.  How can you not love that?

Just getting to slow down just a little and enjoy the sunrise is worth it alone.  Not to mention the getting into shape and being healthy.

See you out on the road.

This is not my house, but it's close.

If you recall way back in Oct of 2007 we decided to sell our condo and not buy a house.  I remember how hard that decision was. I didn’t want to be “a renter”.  But I had enough good sources telling me that buying a home in 2007 was a bad idea.  It’s easy now to look back and say “duh, 2007 was almost as bad as 2008 for buying a home”.  But at the time not buying a home because of bad timing was like telling people the sky was falling, anyone who had a stable job desire could qualify for a loan for just about any amount they wanted and move in to a brand new home in a matter of days.

Anyway, now I have this stigma that follows me around.  Some people get it but most don’t.  They still see this big “renter” sign on my forehead and just assign all those stereotypical things that we’ve been taught go along with “renter”.

When we moved in my wife was so excited to be in the new neighborhood.  She made a huge batch of cookies and took plates to all our new neighbors.  Most of the had seen the “for rent” sign out in front but they didn’t say anything, they just smiled and took the cookies.  One neighbor was rude enough that when my wife introduced herself the first thing she responded with was “Aren’t you guys renting?”  As if renters can’t bring their neighbors cookies.  It’s been almost 4 years and that neighbor still won’t talk to us or even look us in the eye.  Since then when a new neighbor moves in and starts talking with us about home owner issues it always comes up and half the time we get the “Ooooooooooh… You’re ‘renting’.” and the subject gets changed.  The other half of the time we get to tell our reasons and they look at us like “Man, I wish I had been that smart”.

So I was wondering about it the other day.  4 years worth of rent, that’s a lot of money.  Was it really the right decision?

Math time.

What I’ve paid – 48 months times $1200 = $57,600

What my neighbor has paid – 48 months times $2521 = $121,008

Right there that’s some pretty decent savings… But wait, there’s more.

What do I own for my $57K – Nothing

Where does my neighbor stand with his $121K paid?  Principal paid – $15,809. Balance on home – $304,191. Home value – $219,000

Wow, that’s worse than I was expecting.  No wonder so many of our neighbors have lost their homes.

But there’s still one thing.  Freedom.

I can move any time I want.  My neighbor? He’s stuck there until his value comes up about $80K or until he decides to walk away from it and ruin his credit.

I guess that’s worth having this “renter” stigma that follows me around.  That’s a small price compared to what I could have paid in order to have that “homeowner” stigma.

So my stake has a big farm.  Actually the church owns a really big chunk of Saratoga Springs and it’s all farmland.  But they have this small strip of it that’s probably about 10 acres or so that they set aside for the wards.  Each ward is in charge of what they do with their lots.  Our ward this year just announced that anyone that needs extra garden space can sign up and get some garden space down at the stake farm.

We like fresh produce as much as the next family so naturally we signed up.  Turns out that only 4 families from our ward signed up and we ended up with a whole section to share with one other family.  Each section is 40ft by 160ft.  That’s bigger than the grass that I mow at home.

So far we have spent about 20 hours planning and digging and planting and watering and we’re almost a quarter of the way done getting it all planted.  And I’m sore.

But there’s something about farming (gardening) that just feels right.  I don’t know if it’s because I live almost 70% of my waking hours in front of a computer screen but standing in the middle of a field watching the sun go down as I dig neat little rows in the dirt is really an amazing experience.

Zemanta thinks this post is about how awesome my Kia Sephia is in rally races.

So about 6 months ago I got the Kia registered again and decided I needed to know what was the absolute best gas mileage I could get with it.  So I made a list of hyper-mile techniques that I would try and those I wouldn’t.  Each tank of gas I add one to my driving habits and monitor the mileage.  Last tank I finally crossed the 40 MPG mark and I figure that since it was so hard to reach I probably wouldn’t reach it again.  Well I filled up this morning and hit 41.3 MPG.

So after my fill-up this morning I started wondering what my mileage would be if I didn’t care. You know, if I just drove like everyone else.  So this tank of gas will be a little different.  No more shifting below 2500 RPM, no more coasting as much as possible, no more easing off the line at green lights, and no more turning off the car at the Chick-Fil-A drive-thru.  And man the ride to work was fun. I had forgotten what it’s like to feel some sideways Gs.  So please if you see me driving like I am preparing for a rally race just keep in mind, it’s in the name of science and it’s just for this tank. That means a maximum of 294 more miles.

UPDATE:  That was fun. And now it’s over. But something weird happened in my week of just driving however I felt like. (Which came out oddly like a rally race. Wow, didn’t see that coming.) My car is rated at 32 MPG and for this test tank of gas I still managed to pull 36.13 MPG out of it.  Maybe there’s something broken that just needs to be broken.

Bill gates posted a really interesting picture to Twitter today.  http://twitpic.com/4cc7up.  Take a look at that picture.  Here’s the richest man in the world (depending on how his stocks are valued compared to Warren Buffet and the Walton kids. And that guy in Mexico) and he’s just sitting on the ground with a bunch of people who have probably never heard of him.  I wonder if they have any concept of just how much money this man and his wife control.

I wonder how often this happens to me.  I know some rather successful people here in Utah and have bumped into them in public on occasion.  Usually I’m with people who don’t know who we just bumped into and they don’t ever really grasp it.  I remember bumping into Ray Noorda back in the day and had I not already know him I would of thought he had less money than me.  He was a real down to earth guy.

But then I think there’s the time when I was a waiter at the Olive Garden. There were two LDS people on the staff and we were both working in the same section that day.  In walks newly ordained Apostle Jeffery R Holland and his family.  She picked up his table and was acting quite calm and collected about the whole thing.  So I had to stop and ask her “Do you know who you are waiting on?”  She didn’t.

And that got me wondering, who else has crossed my path that I should have recognized and didn’t.

So how can I know who I should know but don’t?

At one point or another we have all sat next to that guy in the diner that we haven’t ever seen before but somehow ended up talking with him for half an hour.  I imagine he has met quite a few people over the years who he already knew but didn’t recognize.  And I imagine it works out pretty good for his networking.

What if you or I were to try that?  You know, just sit down and start talking with people. Introduce yourself, talk about the other person, ask some good questions to understand what that person does, explore things you have in common.  I bet that more times than not you end up with a good contact to put in your rolodex.  And I bet that on occasions you even meet someone who you already know, know of, or want to get to know better.

Of course this is all just speculation.  Only one way to find out.