Longest Time

Well I realized last night that I hadn't written for a while.

I put my two weeks in at The Old Spaghetti Factory, so my last day will be on Wednesday. I am happy to have my nights back again. Working during the night is rough especially when my wife works the days so we didn't ever see each other. Now we will be able to see each other every night except those that I have scouts. Speaking of scouts that is going well. We have planned out most of our trip to Lake Powell and are preparing as much as we can for being so far ahead. This next Tuesday we are going shooting down at the Lee Kay shooting range to see how well these little goofs can shoot. I remember the first time that I ever went down to the Lee Kay range, it was for Hunter's Safety, and Ron took me down in his Fiat. He had only been home from his mission for a week or so. It was kind of fun but I didn't do very, well that's what I remember most.
So, Lauren said that for the most part I can type fairly well. However, she said that I have quite a few mistakes like run on sentences and things like that. I don't know how I can get better besides becoming an English major like she did. So, if you don't like my punctuation then tell me where I screwed up and I'll try Harder.
I am slowly becoming the king landscape and tree man around Western Gardens. The other day there was a lady that came in looking for a tree and Melissa was out where I was and I started talking to the lady and after I answered all of the lady's questions and she lift Melissa came up to me and said that she was impressed with all that I was able to tell this lady. That made quite proud and more confident in my abilities. So now my reputation has jumped a bit from "Dumb High School Dork" to "Dumb College Dork." Hopefully one day I will be elevated to just "College Dork," that is my goal.
My services as a landscape artist are starting to be tested and tried as my services have been employed to design and landscape a yard. This will be the first yard, besides my own, that I will have full responsibility for. I am going to take pictures throughout the project and use them for showing people that I am not just a moron, and that I know a little bit about the whole thing. Thanks to my dad and the guy down at the sprinkler wholesale store, sprinkling systems are starting to become a lot easier for me. I think that with that knowledge and the knowledge from the books I have read I should be OK.
Today I was down at the Student Center trying to find out how to start a club at SLCC, and I have found all of the resources I need to start one. Now all I need is five students and a faculty member to head this new "Bonsai Club at SLCC" I know that name sounds funny but that's all I could come up with at such short notice. This club will be a SLCC chapter of the already established Bonsai Club of Utah. My involvement will be a lot more along the lines of what I want to see happen with the club and go in a direction that I think would be more helpful. The people who head up the Utah club are all in their own little tight knit group of friends that all studied under Ben Skillary, the original Bonsai Ben. Any attempt to violate their circle of trust is not met very nicely. So unless you are brought into the group by a long time member then you are treated like an outcast and an outsider, even if you know a bit more than some of the other people. Then they all come to you when they need someone to go and sit at their little functions and answer questions. Kind of irritating but such as life.
My yard is coming along, I am at a standstill however. I called the Water District of Kearns and talked to the head Honcho dude about code and what not. He told me that in order to meet code that will be state wide in two years, MANDATORY AND FINE ABLE, I need to install an RPZ valve. A 200 dollar valve that prevents irrigation water from getting into your culinary water lines. The sprinklers with the valves already on them wont work apparently. I am a bit bummed out about the whole thing but hey if my yard looks awesome and is done right the first time with the right parts then I guess I don't have to worry to much about the whole thing. I would hate to have to do it with the wrong parts and then do it again in 5 years.
Well life goes on and I keep trucking along so live well and BE FAMOUS.

Tons of Yard Now.

Well today I was in the yard all day. At the beginning of the week my intentions were to cut down the Elm trees in the back yard on Monday and then on Wednesday I was going to plan the Sprinkling system then on Friday I was going to put that punk in the ground. Well Monday I did manage to get one and a half of the trees cut down. Then on Wednesday I can't remember what I did, that happens a bit I will lose time in my life and not remember a thing. Thursday night my old man came over and helped me plan a bit of sprinkling system. The more I read and talked to my dad the more I realized that no matter how much I wanted this to be a two day job there is no way on this green earth that one person, with as little knowledge as I had, could accomplish that task.



After my dad helped me plan out a bit and the more that I thought it all out I went to the good ol' Home Depot, Lowes staff is more knowlegdable sometimes but they are also more explensive. After about 5 minutes of walking around in the plumbing I finally found someone that knew quite a but about the whole sprinkler thing, having done 5 yards himself he says. Well I picked at his brain and got ideas and knowledge and prices and more ideas and more knowledge and realized that unless this is all I did for a couple days, it was going to take me about a week to get everything all planned out and measured and dug out and hooked up and running corectly.



During this process I am going to be landscaping my front yard as well so it is a bit more involved than sticking a tube in the ground and the fact that there has never been an automatic sprinkling system or a system that is connected to the main line, I have to connect everything from the main water line all the way to the sprinklers and everything in between. I spent an hour at Home Depot and got some manuals and things and wrote some information down and then went over to Walgreen's for some graph paper and a compass and ruler. This project needed to be quite a bit more thought out than my attempt at a covered parking, which my dad, two brothers and I did in a day planning and everything. That was interesting to say the least.



Today I started in the wannabe flower bed in the front yard digging it all up pulling out all the bricks and rocks and two massive stumps and then finding the original line and pulling up about 20 feet of that. I leveled out the ground pulled out all the horrible Irises that were allowed to grow for so long that they looked more like a weed rather than a semi decent flower. I checked my yard and took note of all of the different kinds of weeds that have accumlulated there, which problably make about 60-70 percent of the yard cover. Hopefully by next week I will have all of my plans drawn out and sprinklers planned and then I can start the process of slapping this system together.



Although this is all pretty extensive work and sometimes labor intensive, I find it very relaxing and mind easing. The yard puts me at peace and I feel safer and more relaxed then any other place that I have ever been in a long time. I don't lose track of time I don't forget where I am or what I am doing. It really makes me feel like the world is a decent place, as opposed to the rest of the time I am wondering around feeling like something aweful is about to happen and there is nothing that I can do to stop it, not a good feeling to have.
Lauren comes home from Moab with her mom tomorrow and I am really excited to see her. She has kept in touch with text messages and let me know that she is doing ok and having fun but, she misses me and that's good because I miss her quite a bit as well. Hopefully things with my yard will bloom this year and then I can focus on other areas of the house like the back yard and cleaning that all up or maybe an east fence, it looks like poop and in the back yard there are two fences running side by side, my neighbors chain link fence and my wood slat fence. It leaves a two foot gap between the fences and cutting our yard down and is just a mess.
So this year my landscaping abiblities will be tested with the formation of my yard, there will be pictures so that the transformation will be documented. When I am finished I will have one of the nicer yards on the street if everthing turns out as nice as it looks in my mind, and we know how those kinds of things work just perfectly out to what we think of. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

WORK WORK WORK!!!!!!!!

Well today I worked all day and it wasn't all that bad. They've hired a new bloke, Karston, he's 21 and waiting for his background check to pass so then he can go back to working as a cook at a retirement home. Melissa, my manager, is looking to me more and more for help. Her go to man, Jake, he is going on a mission the end of March. She is almost as neurotic and obsessive as I am. She has taken to giving me the more important thinking jobs and has started to give the more labor intensive jobs to Karston. Of course, I help him however she is kind of putting me in charge of things. I like being the one who does the thinking and is able to make things happen.
We got all of these stone garden fixtures in last week and I spent the day unpacking and putting together the fountains and statues. Melissa was quite happy with how I arranged everything. Then she gave me permission to arrange the Asian section. My idea was to put all of the Asian Decor over by the Koi ponds. She liked the idea and said that tomorrow they would put all of the stone over there and let me arrange it all when I come back on Thursday. I am hoping that I can help them to see that there is a need for a Bonsai section along with the Asian Decorations. The more I look around the store the more I find that they have a few of the tools and a lot of the soils and amenities that are used or sought after.
The Venturers are slowly planning out some of the activities that they want to do for the rest of the summer. We are getting the Lake Powell trip all thrown together and all planned out and they seem to be excited and we talked a bit about a fundraiser. The boys have seemed to stick around the idea of tree care and maintenance. They liked the idea of cutting down trees, I don't know how fun the clean up will be but I guess we will jump that hurdle when we get to it.

TIMBER!!!!!!!!!!

Well today I spent the day outside cutting down the ugliest tree in the entire world, well actually it was a spawn of a bigger tree so I guess that would make a spawn of the ugliest tree in the world. The tree is on the property line of my neighbor and ours. I told them last year that i was going to cut it down so in the fall I went over there with a drill and a 10 inch drill bit and some killzall. I drilled a few holes in the tree and then today I chopped that punk down. With the help of my Old Man's tree cutting utensils, chainsaw and axes, I was able to cut down 1 and 1/2 Chinese Elms that stood over 50 foot. It was quite fun. If you would have been there to see me you all probably would have been sick with the thought of me killing myself with all of the stupid things that I was doing. Swinging the chainsaw through the branches like a mad man. After I was all done cutting it down the neighbor kid had come home from school and so I paid him ten bucks to help me clean up all the branches.
I kept some of the bigger branches intact so that I could attempt to make some patio furniture with them. I went and talked to my neighbor after I got home from my couples PTSD clinic, and let him know what I was planning on doing with the other tree and that I wasn't going to put up the fence until I was ready to build a whole new fence, after I take out the hindrances on the fence line it should be a breeze.
Even though I spent the whole day doing hard labor it was refreshing to know that I was actually accomplishing something on the house to make it more along the lines of the ideas i have for it. My next goal is the front yard and the sprinkling system. I have read quite a few books on the whole thing and so I am confident in my abilities in being able to accomplish the task. I only have to wait for the Blue Stake people to come out and mark out all of the utilities so that I don't go chopping through anything that I'm not supposed to be chopping.
I have some pretty grand ideas for this little house of ours. Hopefully my body continues to work with me and allow me to work on all of my ideas. After the trees are cut down there shouldn't be too many other things that are quite so labor intensive, until I start on the garage. My neighbor also told me that he wants to lop down the Satan Tree that all these little spawnlings have come from. That will be a treat let me tell you. This monster of a tree is about 6 feet in diameter at the base. That is going to be awesome, but after i have that tree cut then I will have a table top and some chair seats for my patio furniture. Completely weather proof and durable for anything.
Moving from an apartment to a house has had some real eye openers for me. The fact that whenever something would break in the apartment you would have to go and tell the management that it was broken and then would have to get the lazy duffers that are supposed to be fixing these things to come over and fix it. That could be a lengthy process. One time imparticular I remember that it took those goofballs about 3 days to come and fix the light fixture that all they had to do was replace the plastic cover.
In a house it is all up to me to fix things so it only takes as long for the problem to get fixed as it does for me to get fed up with the problem and haul out to the good ol' Home Depot or Lowe's to get the parts I need and fix whatever it is that needs fixing. I am lucky that I have a dad like mine that knows how to take care of most of the things that I have problems with and can't figure out by myself. I would like to believe that I am Superman and can do anything without the help of anyone and that there are no limits to the things that I can do. There is some truth to that but sometimes even Superman needs a little help from The Justice League.
I am starting to really take off in the yard, finding out that any yard work puts me at ease. Even if it is cutting down a giant of a tree. Being able to make things into the visions that I have and be the cause of those visions coming true is really exhilarating. If everyone in the world could find something that makes them feel at ease no matter the circumstances and figure out a way to get paid for that. The world would be a lot happier of a place.

Ha Ha I'm keeping it going!!!!!!!!

John Steinbeck eat your heart out. I told my parents that I started a blog and because of my inability to even write letters when I was in Iraq or on my mission, my dad chuckled and said, "That won't last." Well very true that I have struggled in my days to keep a record of anything. Even on my mission when on Sunday mornings an hour was set aside for the writing of journals I still failed to do so more than a handful of times. I like to think of myself not as a lazy person but rather, not having the words to express my life and feelings. Well, whatever the reasons I have had in the past for not writing I haven't seemed to run into a big problem yet with this.
Lauren's dad spent the last few days with us, and let me say that it was not nearly as bad as I had originally thought it was going to be. I spent Friday going a bit obsessive over our spare bedroom, taking 3 hours to place some footlockers with some quilts covering them so they look more like a shelf rather than footlockers. Then I had to go out a buy some shutters for the room because, and this is what my mind saw, the room looked more like an old world hut with a leather flap in the window to keep the wind out. So, after making myself sick over the whole ordeal we managed to get the room done and then make some ice cream in time for the our ward's ice cream social, being put on by the Young Women & Young Men.
This was my very first attempt at ice cream making. My dad has made ice cream for 20 some odd years and I recently, after having my dad poke fun at the fact that I didn't own an ice cream maker, bought one from the D.I. I then proceeded to make some flavors that I thought might be really good. The first flavor I came up with was Lime Margarita, I bought some margarita base from work and mixed that with cream and some sugar. It turned out really really good. It wasn't to tart, well for a margarita. It was really creamy and I thought that I had really done well with it.
The second ice cream idea came from my dad. He told me to do a cheese cake and then put out some raspberries for the topping. He did give me a couple of tips on how to make ice cream however, I failed to ask the specifics on how to make a GOOD ice cream. I whipped the cream cheese with some sugar and then added the cream. Some where in my adding the sugar and the cream something went horribly wrong, the cream separated into the lipid molecules and the sugars adhered to the cream and cheese molecules making a very very BUTTERY tasting ice cream. The fats all stuck together in big globs and the rest was a milky goo, and all together you got a buttery ice cream that was very interesting. I ate two bowls mixed with raspberries and then laughed at those that didn't like it. In my mind it wasn't very good either, but I made it so I had to stand by it.
The last kind I made was peach. I bought fresh peaches from Smith's, that was expensive 3 bucks a pound. Again, not knowing how and the little secrets you learn from years of practice with making ice cream.I didn't peal the peaches, I put them in at the begining and the all sunk to the bottom. All in all I think that I did pretty good for not knowing what I was doing. I did win three awards from the guest judges, our stake presidency and their wives. The Margarita got the, "I can't get enough" award, the Cheese cake got the "Did you buy it from the store" award, i think they were poking fun at me, and the Peach got the "Creamiest" award. I think that they just had to give an award to EVERYONE that made something. I had a fun time making the ice cream and I think that I will make a habit of making ice cream. Watch out old man I'm gonna make an ice cream that even you won't be able to touch.
Well the rest of the weekend came and went fairly uneventful. I went shooting Saturday morning with my little brother Jaren, J Dawg is what he like to be called, and Skyler, a kid that I work with at the Old Spaghetti Factory. I kind of sighted in my 7mm Mag. at least now you can see the shot on the target. The two boys didn't seem to like the 7 though I think it was a little too painful to really be lots of fun. Then we went down to the 50 yard range where we shot my Russian 9mm x 18mm Makarov. I love that gun, and apparently so did J Dawg and Skyler. We also took out my targeting .22 caliber rifle. That's a neat little gun. One of the most accurate guns I have ever shot.
After about 3 hours we were done, and almost out of ammunition. I worked that night while Mike and Lauren went to her nieces birthday party. From what I heard it was a bit over the TOP. Then we slept in a bit and went to church, Lauren had sharing time. Then after church it was time for Mike to go home. Not too bad of a weekend. We finished the night off over at Lauren's mom's house for dinner. Zach, Hilary and Cassidy were there along with Eric and Heather and Ella. Eric and Heather aren't in town a whole ton so we take all the opportunities we can to get together.
This week is going to be very fun. It is my Spring Break and so I have lots of things planned. Hopefully I can get everything finished. I will post pictures of everything that I can accomplish, if the weather agrees with me.

FUN FUN FUN

So this is the second day that I have managed to keep this going. I really wonder how long I am going to be able to keep the fire going. Well this week has been kind of boring, not a whole lot going on in my life at this p[articular moment. Last night, Tuesday, we took the scouts to the swimming pool to get the swim check passed off, so we can go to Lake Powell later this year. When we were getting ready to leave a Boy Scout came up to me, because they have put me in charge, and who are they you ask, THEY are the all powerful presence that keep the world turning. THEY are responsible for making all of the most important descisions in life that make the world make even less sense than it already does. THEY are in charge of putting plans into files and leaving them somewhere and losing them so that little peons, like me, have to return and come up with whole new plans.

Anyhow they have put me in charge of the Venturing Scouts. So, a Boy Scout came up to me and asked if he could go with us to the pool so that he could work on his swimming merit badge, seeing as how he has already passed off his lifetime fitness requirements that the other Boy Scouts were doing. I said, "Sure why not. That sounds like a good idea." So we all piled into the two cars of the other two leaders, there are supposed to be six in attendance, but again THEY have left it up to me to carry this scouting program. So, the two other leaders load up their cars and low and behold, one lone scout still remains and me as well. I, however, have ridden my motorcycle so I only have room for one more person other than myself.

After putting on the extra helmet that I had strapped to the back of the bike, we went, and i got to listen to, "Don't go to fast, slow down, don't tip over, this is cold, it's too loud." the whole way there. When we got to the pool we all went in and the other two leaders and I waited for about 5 minutes for the boys to get all changed and come to the pool. We had a total of 5 boys in attendance and out of those 5, two were not Venturing age. Out of the remaining three however, only two passed off their swim checks, and not because they tried and couldn't do it, but because they didn't want to do it right now. They wanted to wait until a later date to pass it off. It never ceases to amaze me at how, when everything is placed in front of some people and they don't even really have to think about the choices to make, they still seem to goof up and not get things done in a timely manner and make things difficult for the rest of us who would like to live fairly simple lives.
Sweet so my computer shut down last night while I was typing and I thought that I lost all of what I had typed, however this thing saves it so that I didn't have to type the whole thing again. Well I think that for the most part I was finished anyway.

First Day

Well I have never been any good at writing anything ever in my life. When I went into the Army I wasn't very good at writing letters and then when I went on my mission I was even worse, if that is possible. When I went to Iraq it would be days before anyone even knew where I was or what I was doing. I came home and all my family knew was that I was hurt while in Iraq. Then they heard I was in Germany. Then they got a call from me while I was hopping flights across the U.S. trying to get back to Washington. Well needless to say I don't do very well with the whole writing, I have never even kept a consistent journal. This will probably go the way of all my other endeavors, short-lived and boring. However, we will give it a try to see what may come out of this. If nothing else at least I will learn to type a lot better than I do right now.
First, I should allow myself to, uh, introduce myself. I am Ben Hubert. I am 26 years old living in Utah, with my wife, whom I have known for 21 years now. I will will also tell a brief history, at least a little bit that I didn't cover in my introduction. I was born and raised in Utah. I have spent most of life in Utah. However, over the last ten years i have spent more time out of Utah than I have in it. At age 17, I enlisted in the service of the great Army of the United States. After a brief stint of training in Oklahoma, I returned to finish out my high school senior year. Then after graduation I was shipped to Missouri where they taught me how to not die while driving a truck. Very, very, exhilarating, I would recommend this to anyone who is bored of their own life. After completing my training I then took a leave of absence from the service to a service of another kind. This time my service would be to the Lord and to the blessed people of New Jersey, a wonderful state full of rich beautiful heritage and, uh, smokestacks, I guess.
I served my time in New Jersey even against many forces compelling me to other loftier goals of the flesh. When I returned home I was able to spend a few months at home while trying to readjust to normal civilian life. Although I never really got the chance to change from the military to the civilian world before going to New Jersey, but i was going to try. Before I could do much transitioning of anything I was then called to serve in the Great War of the Middle East, my dramatic attempt to make it sound AWESOME. I served for 6 months in Iraq from April of 03' to September of 03' whereupon I tore up my shoulder and was sent back to the states to recuperate. I then spent the next year and couple months in physical rehabilitation, which reminded me a lot of some of the torture methods used in the Middle East. Ha Ha.
After all of my time healing back to 60% of what I once was the Army thanked me for my service by releasing me with no chance of reenlisting. So thank you so very much for leaving me half a person with no chance of returning to the really the only thing I had ever really done. I moved to Idaho to be with my wife whom I had married in January of 04' and then lived with for three months before she returned to Idaho to finish her schooling. So we lived in Idaho, Rexburg that nice little town in Idaho, after she graduated we moved back to Utah. She got a job as a substitute teacher, which pays you just over minimum wage, IF, you have a college degree. I worked as a waiter at a restaurant, while waiting for Lauren to decide if she wanted to stay here or go to Las Vegas to get a job. We decided to stay in Utah so we moved out to the west side of the valley and have stayed here. Lauren now teaches 8th grade English and I am currently going to school at SLCC, yea for me, and working two jobs. I keep a job as a waiter because I like people, and I landed my, almost, dream job. I am working at Western Gardens on 41st south and 40th west. I have gained a live of plants from somewhere. I like the feeling of helping something so delicate as a seedling growing into something as awesome and powerful as a Giant Redwood.
I have many lofty goals and delusions of grandeur for what I want in life and I think that even though I need to let some of these things go, like becoming Superman or being able to name my first born Kal-El. I am studying a Biology degree and hopefully one day will be able to complete and then apply to Medical School and be able to continue on with my learnings. But, my dream would be to be granted an apprenticeship as a Bonsai Learner to one of the great Masters in Japan. Then I would live the rest of my life in a tiny forest of giant trees.
Hopefully this has given you the reader some insight as to who I am and how I think. Let's see how long I can keep this going.