Telling it like it is

For the uninitiated, I have the peculiar knack of being witness to many, many car accidents. This is the twelfth one I've given a witness statement to the police about in the last 3 or 4 years. This time, it's the intersection of 700E and 600S. I was on 600S facing east, waiting to turn North on to 700E. The lights went green and as we pulled away, I noticed a Gold Camry to my left blowing through the red lights. I braked sharply and he shot across the front of me. The guy to my right was slightly ahead of me in the junction and the Camry nailed him at full tilt. This photo is taken after the police arrived. It's looking south on 700E - the direction the gold Camry was coming from. We were crossing this junction from the right, in this picture. The Camry driver was, naturally, on his cellphone as he blew through the red light.

Phew. That's that over with for another year. We managed to wrangle our kitty into a new pet carrier this morning and get her to the vet for her annual shots. She's run off round the back of the garage now we're home - same as usual, but at least she's up to date. The vet said she looked extremely healthy which is good news.

To Whom It May Concern. Do you really think that we don't know what "divine strake" means? "Holy weapon to level the sand". The mere fact that you can't even come up with a clever name to disguise the true reason for this test shows the lack of fortitude of your character. You are attempting to deceive those of us who live in Utah about the supposed safety of the Divine Strake test. You are either deluded or woefully undereducated if you believe for one second that the radioactive topsoil and subsurface soil in the Nevada test site pose no threat when aerosolled into the air. The fact that you are lying to all the states that will be affected by Divine Strake is reason enough not to trust you. You should be ashamed of yourselves although I understand that having no conscience, you could care less what happens. I don't understand how people like you can sleep at night. You people don't even deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of us. Divine St

Not that I didn't know this already - it's one of the reasons we left, but shock, horror, an official report today has confirmed what 1 in 5 people in England already knew - it's a dire place to live. The European Crime and Safety Survey (EU ICS) is the most comprehensive analysis of crime, security and safety ever conducted in the European Union. It has concluded that the UK is the most burgled country in the Union, it has the highest levels of assault crime, highest levels of hate crime, a higher-than-average risk of theft from cars and the highest level of pickpocketing and personal theft. You know things are going wrong when England has a worse crime record than Estonia.... 21% of Brits have been a victim of crime. That's 1 in 5. To see how the rest of the country doesn't work, you might want to read my thoughts on the matter.

We DVR'd the SuperBowl yesterday and skipped through it. As far as I can tell, the best part of the entire broadcast was the half-time show where Prince did his thing in the rain. Apart from that, the few times we stumbled into actual gameplay they seemed to be brawling more than playing. Some of the commercials were good though. The commercial breaks were, for the most part, longer than the bits of game. It took us 7 'skip forward' button presses to get through a bit of the game and 9 button presses to skip the commercials. Not sure who won, but it doesn't really matter. The whole thing is of no consequence - it's just a game. Should be called American Rugby - turns out that's where it came from, not football.

12,530 vertical feet today. I've finally managed to conquer the top of the Apex lift as well as doing Sunshine Bowl twice today. I opened up two more runs too, cutting across the top of the roundhouse and joining Grumble half way down. The skiing was amazing. For most of the top of the mountain, we were all skiing in the clouds. On the top of the Eagle Express lift you could see the wind whipping the snow off the ridgeline and the clouds in the bowl below. It was incredible.