Mike's flickr photo gallery

Winter Shack, originally uploaded by mothslayer.

If you're into it, I am posting more pictures than you will see here over at flickr. This is so that you don't have to wade through ten macro shots of ice crystals and bugs just to see one of Heidi and the boys. I've added a link on the sidebar.
Hopefully this will ease the pain.

Also, if you happen to have a flickr account, maybe we could be friends...

Heidi's Freshly-Cut Hairs

The haircut is also a source of previously untapped energy as Heidi scored in our soccer match. Eat your heart out Samson.

Over the Shoulder

Halloween and Beyond

Things are flying along. It seems that Halloween AND Thanksgiving have come and gone since I last posted anything. Hopefully the next few pictastic posts will help to compensate.

Ian gives it a 'thumbs up'

Yo La Tengo Plays Salt Lake City

Heidi and I went to a very cool show last night. The band is Yo La Tengo and they are brilliant.

Click here to read more about the experience on Boast.

Jon was there too.

Ride On! Revisited - pics from August

Here's a bit of wisdom that entered my mind as I was soaring through the air, my bike looming beneath my suspended body (thanks to laws of gravity, soon to be not-so-suspended): if bicycles were made of foam rubber, it wouldn't hurt as much when we crashed and landed on them.


I won't go into detail, but will only say that this did NOT happen while I was rocketing down the rocky trail or skirting a cliff outcropping, or doing anything really daring and cool.

Click here to see the gory, exploitative close-up.

South Fork and the Devil's Kitchen

South Fork up Provo Canyon

The pics of us at South Fork were taken last weekend. The fall colors were still pretty but many of the leaves had fallen since the week before. The pictures taken at Devil's Kitchen are a few weeks old.

Devil's Kitchen on the Nebo Loop
Ian (above), Marcus (below)

Cascade Springs

For Labor Day we took a drive to Cascade Springs to wander the lovely boardwalks and see the changing fall colors in the mountains.

Marcus is the happy guy and Ian is the bored one

Two of them

In case there was any doubt...

Ian on the left and Marcus with the cheeser

Pardon the gaping maw

The End of Summer

Ian doing his 'hello ladies' pose

So, September...
Everything has been going well. Mike has been busy at work and Heidi has been busy with the little guys. Marcus and Ian are pretty much moving around now (it's kind of a combination between flopping around and rolling), which is loads of fun. They jabber, blow rasberries, grab at anything within reach, and kick each other in the head now too. Plenty of fun - unless you're Ian waking up to a dozen wicked drop-kicks to the face in the middle of the night. Then it's pretty much no fun.
Kicks in the face = no fun.

Marcus: 'Grrr, Aaarrrrgh!'

Happy Guys

Ian having a good old time in the Mega Saucer.














Marcus has decided it's more fun to use the plug sideways...

Lately

Hey all.
Sorry for the looooong delay in updates...
Here's the News:
Mike got another job at the Orem Library (you could call it a promotion I guess) as a permanent Staff Assistant Librarian, and is benefitted - yippee! Heidi is now on the enrichment comittee at church and Marcus and Ian are flopping all over the place, kicking each other in the face while jabbering and blowing rasberries as they watch the World Cup. Meanwhile, Mike's brother, Jon, just returned from his mission in Germany and is often spotted wandering around with a rather dazed expression on his face. So much, so fast! How do we contain ourselves you ask?
One word:
LotsofVeronicaMars

Peace.

Slayage Conference in Georgia

Last weekend I went to Georgia to give a paper at an academic conference focusing on the works of Joss Whedon, creator of such brilliant worlds as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Serenity, as well as the comics The Astonishing X-Men and Fray. It was loads of fun and I'm detailing many of the panel sessions that I attended on my film blog, Boast, if you care to read about any of it.

My first experience in the deep south was also one that was quite interesting. It's basically a jungle down there. A jungle in another world, full of creepy bugs, deadly snakes, alligators, suffocating heat, and rednecks... not that there's anything wrong with those things - except the rednecks, of course. I think I can say, though, that there is nothing quite like fried chicken from some little hole -in-the-wall diner in the middle of Georgia. Savannah was lovely as well.

I'll post more later, with pics.

Blessing Day

Here are a couple of pictures from last month. The lower picture is of Marcus.

Tag Team

Marcus is the one who is looking around and smiling, Ian is the one who is sucking on his hands and body-slamming his brother... little thugs. Let's just say that it's from Mommy that they get this - she's always beating me up. The way Ian is looking in the first one, you'd think we hid monsters under their bed... actually, that's not such a bad idea.

Buggy Buddies

There is no level of excitement that compares with buggy rides. They are even starting to stay awake for the entire ride.

Ride On! part III

For the past few weeks we've had a fair bit of rain and storms (ocasional snow/hail). Not to be deterred by a little moisture, I managed to hit the hills once again during a three-hour break from this dour weather.

This particular ride that I went on (we'll just call it the Water Tower Ride) is about thirteen miles round trip with a vertical gain that tops 1000ft and my fastest time being just over an hour. I started out not really knowing whether I would go the complete distance or not - spring conditioning is a real drag. I ask you to remember the bit about days and days of continuously rainy/snowy weather.

So I get to the top of the climb (about six miles in) and it looks something like a swamp. However, I take a little look around (elevation = 5600 ft, so you can see the entire valley from up there on a clear day) and notice that the tiny break in the clouds seems to be following me up the canyon. This bit of reassurance, fueled by Massive Attack's 'Radiation Ruling the Nation' pumping through my earphones, meant that there was no turning back. (Massive Attack fan note: Had it been 'Backward Sucking', well, my day would have been a lot less muddy)

So I plunged into the mud-madness like a good sport. I made it about another mile in and my chain derailed from all the mud that was packed in my hubs, bottom-bracket, and tires. I managed to 'wash' the vital parts of my bike off in one of the larger puddles on the trail so I could carry on. This is one of the few times that having SPD pedals works to your extreme disadvantage since the old shoes are caked full of mud and won't snap back in without some real work. When I finally made the hair-raising decent (back down the 1000ft, only this time on a bit of single track that is about six inches wide in places and covered with loose rocks and skirts a nice cliff) and came out on the Jordan River Parkway Trail, I looked like a real mud-baby. The total trip time ended up being about three hours of mud-heaven including repairs, picture taking, climatic observation, and general marvelling.

Fortunately, there weren't any wrecks, and it was so thick that I couldn't really get going fast enough to flip it all over my back. Unfortunately, it took me two days to clean my bike and I had to rebuild my front hub and will need to rebuild my bottom-bracket - which I didn't realize until it seized up on me in the middle of another ride a few days later. The things we do for fun...

Hooray! (for something off-screen)

Whatever is behind me is way more interesting. Possibly mommy.















In this side-by-side shot you can tell them apart (Ian: left, Marcus: right). At other times though... not so much.

Smiley Guy in the Chair

Marcus

Ride On! Part II

With the weather warming up, it’s that time of year when Mike heads to the hills to crash his bike. Unfortunately, out of the three rides taken so far this season, he's only managed to crash once [sighs of regret]. We apologize for posting a picture of a hairy leg, but until Heidi starts to log some crashes, you’ll just have to deal. Note the line and symmetry of the perforations that the front sprocket made on his leg. Due to the intervention of a chain-link fence, there was no heavy bleeding and will most likely be no long-term scarring (to the disappointment of the Soul Riders of our youth).