Steve Rossi

08/31/05

So I'm on a team called the "Stingers", our mascot is a bee. We're making a banner for our hall this week and we asked the kids for ideas for a team motto. Got some good ones. So good that we wrote up a note for the principal to get his opinion on which one would be the best one to use. Here's what the note said :

Rob,
......Our kids came up with team mottos and we can't decide which one to pick. These are the top ones, please help us pick the best one?

1. "You can go buzz yourself"

2. "Our stinger is bigger than your stinger"

3. "We'll teach you about the birds and the bees©" (yes, this one came with a copyright,
........................................................................................even though the kid didn't put his/her
........................................................................................ name to it)

Please advise, The Stingers.

And you wonder why I keep teaching........

08/30/05

Two days down, 178 to go. Actually, it's been a really great couple of days, although exhausting. I've got a pretty good bunch of kids, 3rd and 4th are a bit talkative sometimes, but nothing that isn't manageable. We have a pretty extensive after school program, and it seems I volunteered to teach a cooking class after school. They handed out a form asking what you would be willing to do after school and I checked 'bowling' because I thought it would be fun, and saw 'cooking' on there and decided that would be fun too. Well, guess what there's more interest in? Yup, cooking. Either that or there was someone else who checked 'bowling' and I was the only one that choose 'cooking'. Oh well, it's gonna be fun. I just have to come up with 16 recipes that can be made in less than an hour, are relatively cheap, somewhat nutritious and that the kids will like. Easy, huh? Anyhoo, things there are going great. Now, since it's almost 8:40, I think I'll go pass out from exhaustion.........

08/25/05

<<< Bonehead award of the month. This is what they painted on part of the parking lot at my Chevron. Can you guess what it's supposed to say?

Tired. Sooooo tired. It's that wonderful work week before the kids show up. The body is not ready for waking up at 5:30 in the morning. Today I'm quietly working in my room, (with no windows), when all of a sudden I hear Gibb scream down the hall "Rossi, it's raining." I throw on my shoes and start running down the hall, take a quick left in the main hall, scream past the office and out the front doors to see it pouring inside the convertible. Got my butt nice and wet putting up the roof. Otherwise, it's been a great week. I'm working with a bunch of great teachers, we've been having a blast this week. Gibb and I did get to go out to Brockbank and visit with the old staff, I am going to miss that group a lot. (Looked for you there Lisa (the friend) but I guess you're still not going to be back for another week.)

Anyhoo, gotta go get some sleep.......

08/22/05

Message from Alex that he wanted passed on:

I just wanted to say to everyone who helped with the Feragusto booth, both Mom and I very much appreciate your efforts. It meant so much to us that everyone pitched in and helped us bake the cookies, suffer the cat calls of Shauna Thomas, set up the night before, bring everything to the fair, work all day, play Bocce, run, help and judge the Biscotti contest and break down after it was all over. It was even more gratifying to see how we worked as a family. We have a wonderful family and everyone gave more of themselves than I could have dreamed.

I resisted making special mention of anyone's efforts because particularly Danny and Steve gave a lot of time and lent a lot of expertise that made the whole thing possible, but with your forgiveness and the understanding that I could have gone on about everyone, I would like to thank my daughter Lynda for everything she did from putting together the flyers, cards, banner and stickers to making the gift baskets to being the spokesperson, to working all day at the booth and the Biscotti contest. Without Lynda's influence this would not have gone off and for that her Mom and I are eternally grateful. I'm sure you will all agree that she made a better looking spokesperson than the alternative, me.

It is really hard to tell you all how much everyone's help meant to Marijke and I. It isn't so much the fact that we all put a business on the map in two weeks, and we can be proud of that, but the thing that will stay with me was the love you all showed for the family. That time together meant more to me than most anything I have done.

Well, before we get too sentimental I think I have to clean the truck so I will sign off. I just want to say that I can't wait until the next time we can be together.

Love Dad

First day of school today, for the teachers at least. It was a lot of fun, my new principal is a crazy, funny guy. Every year he starts the fish going around, there's about 5 of them for different things. I got the first one, which happened to be Nemo, for "Making my Day". He told the faculty that I was getting it for all the times over the summer I dropped by and made him laugh, and for driving "a car that would make Greg Brady proud." Now I get to hold on to it until the next faculty meeting, when I get to "pass it forward" to someone who made my day during the time in between meetings. Kind of a cool idea. I think I'm going to really like it here, even though I do miss a lot of the people back at Brockbank. It was kind of sad when our meetings were over and I got to my classroom, set up Outlook to get my e-mails and found out I'm still on the Brockbank mailing list. The messages I got (sent to everyone) made me realize that I made some good friends in the 4 years I was there. On the other hand, I am looking forward to the friends I'm going to be making at Granite Park. Overall, it was a great day.

08/21/05 Encore

I love my family. This week has been hectic, last night was probably the first time I got more than 4 hours of sleep in a row. But it was a great week. We made a lot of biscotti, we were on TV and we ran a booth at Ferragosto. Yesterday was the culmination of all the work we put in over the last week, being a part of the Italian Festival in Salt Lake. We got there around 9:30 to set up the booth. It went pretty smoothly, until the electrical problems. Power, no power, power, no power, power, then the coffee machine was all messed up - because of the power going on and off. Although the day was a business success, it would have been better if we had coffee for the people in the morning. Oh well, live and learn. The rest of the day went great, people loved the biscotti and were giving Alex and Marijke compliments left and right. An old Italian man, hard of hearing with his sight going, was so impressed with the biscotti that he wants to hand down an old family recipe (for something other than biscotti) to Marijke, and he's even willing to show her how to make it. We learned something important at the biscotti eating contest, you really need more than one person handing out the biscotti. The winner beat second place by less than 1 biscotti, probably because time was up before the second place guy could get more biscotti. Fortunately he was a really nice guy and didn't make a stink about it, and Alex even offered to send him a coupon to equal the first place prize. Other than that, it was great. First place (I think his name was Greg) ate almost 9 biscotti in 1½ minutes, second place (Vincenzo) made it through 8 and 3rd place ate about 7. There were about 300-400 people watching it and Marijke said she could hear the cheering at the booth almost a block away. Two doors down from us they were selling some really great Meatball Sandwiches, we even got into a trade with them for coffee and biscotti. They were having a really good time. They brought a whole bunch of wine and even some whiskey. Danny at one point asked them "Did you guys just want to have a party and decided you might as well sell meatball subs while doing it?" They just laughed. (Yes, they were sharing more than just their subs with us). Right next to us there was the Mediterranian Market, and when introduced to one of the ladies there, who had an uncommon name in Utah, I asked if she was related to anyone who went to Churchill. She said that yes, but they were too young for me to have gone to school with them there. When I explained that I taught there for 8 years, she named off a few of her neices and nephews, and lo and behold, one of them was a student of mine there. Then the coffee guy came to replace the messed up coffee machine, he introduced himself and I asked if he knew someone named "Karel McDonough". He asked "Spelled K-A-R-E-L?" (It's pronounced like Carol). I said yeah, and he said "Well, I spent 9 months in her belly". Small world stories at the Ferragosto.

Anyways, we sold a little over half the biscotti we had (some 600), but even better we raised a lot of interest in the product. We had a blast and made some great contacts, personal and business. Lynda did an incredible job of arranging things (Fox 13, Ferragosto and the biscotti eating contest). Alex and Marijke did a great job of baking all those biscotti, and without giving up any of their quality. The rest of the family, everyone who was able to, pitched in and helped in whatever way was best for the project. Well, it was one of the hardest weeks of my life, and one of the best. I love my family. And to see the pictures, just

08/21/05

Well, we survived Ferragosto, and although it was one of the longest and hardest days in a long time, it was also one of the best. I had a lot of fun, I'm exausted right now so I'll write about it more tomorrow (if I wake up before Monday), but I just wanted to get the pictures on here for everyone to see. So

for them.

08/20/05

Here's the clip from the Biscotti Eating Contest on Fox 13. It's not of the greatest quality, considering I had to video the clip on my camera from a DVD playing on my laptop. I tried it off the TV and the desktop, but it really sucked. The screen on the laptop worked a lot better, I think because it's a different kind of screen (LCD?). Anyhoo, here's the Biscotti Eating Contest (4mb Windows Media) :

08/19/05

Yesterday I met Walter. For those of you who don't watch Fox 13 morning news, Walter is Shauna Thomas' dog, one of the morning newscasters, and she often talks about him on the air. Well, yesterday morning I was down at Caputo's at 6 am for the Rossi Italian Bakery spot on Fox 13. I thought it was on channel 2, but when Shauna Thomas (I watch Fox 13 every morning before school) showed up I knew I had set the VCR to tape the wrong channel. Oh well, Danny got it right, and Alex ended up buying a tape from some company specializing in this kind of thing. So, it's 6 am and I'm the only one there. Suspecting that I had the wrong place I called Alex to make sure. Well, I had the right place, just everyone else was late. After a half hour of waiting I decided that I needed to change my will. I'm going to have them roll my body in an hour after the services start, my one last chance to finally make them wait for me. Anyways, everyone else shows just in time, to wait an hour and a half for our spot. And we couldn't even set up early because Shauna Thomas prefers to only worry about one segment at a time. Finally our time comes up and we go over what is going to happen, where we made the mistake of estimating the time it would take us to eat our biscotti at only 30 seconds. The segment starts, (did I forget to mention that Alex springs the spokesperson role on Lynda at the last moment?), Lynda explains the biscotti eating contest and that Alex, Danny & I are going to do a demonstration. We're introduced and then Shauna has Lynda do a countdown and we start pigging out. I really don't remember what Lynda and Shauna were chatting about during this time, I was too busy concentrating on eating my biscotti. what I do remember is that when it took considerably longer than the predicted 30 seconds (I was proclaimed winner after 1½ minutes and only half my biscotti) Shauna starts calling the three of us wimps on live TV. (I got home to a message on my phone from an old student that said "Hey Rossi, I saw Shauna Thomas calling you a wimp on TV"). Then when she proclaimed me the winner she sticks the microphone in my face and asks "What was your name again?" and through a mouth full of biscotti I sorta get out "Oh, sure" and "Steve". We hung around for the rest of the morning looking at the Ferrari, Vespas and making contacts in the Italian community for the bakery. I was exausted, but it was a blast. Of course there are pictures that go along with the experience, to see them

And to boot, Ginger, one of the organizers of Ferragosto, forgot to bring her camera, so I became the unofficial photographer for Ferragosto for this event.

08/18/05

Above : The hills
Aug 2005.

Left : The way they usually look this time
of year.

It's the middle of August and the hills are still alive with the sights of green. Usually by this time of the year, these hills are completely brown, not a lick of green. Occassionally they're broken up with the colors red and orange, blurred by the smoke from the fires. Not this year. The really bad fire year they predicted didn't pan out. A really wet spring produced a bumper crop of wildfire fuel, but the wet summer has kept it too live to burn. There were the two lightning strikes up at and by our property that I talked about earlier, in normal years they would have devestated the area, but this year they never took hold. The point is it's been an incredibly wet year, many times I've asked "When did we move to Oregon?" and this morning it's raining as I write this. In the words of the late Gov. Scott Matheson (spring of '83) "This is a heck of a way to run a desert."

08/16/05

Got pulled over in Sandy last night. (Worked at a Chevron down there). No, I wasn't speeding, and I sure wasn't driving drunk. I got pulled over because the truck has only one headlight working. I was driving down 106th So and he pulled in behind me around 11th East. Drove behind me for a while, then pulled in behind the car next to me. Waited until State Street to get back behind me and turn on his lights. Anyway, I have to get it fixed within the next 14 days so I don't pay any fine. Danny already played with it, checked the fuse, changed the bulb and those aren't the problems. Probably has something to do with the patches on the wiring that someone did before I got the truck. I'm gonna have to check it.

I was told they were going to be tearing down the old Chevron at 2:00 am this morning, so I planned to be there to photo the event. Well, on the way home at 1:00 am, they already had it down. They were still doing some cleanup, so I grabbed the camera and got what pictures I could. To see them,

And finally : More on the fad names discussion:

I remember all of the Lisas at Clayton Jr. High. I was there too. I wonder if Lisa, the friend, was one of the 11 Lisas in my PE class. It was a mess. Eventually, my friends got so tired of my not answering to Lisa they gave me a nickname that I answered to. It wasn’t a flowery name so in the Hallowed Halls of Clayton Jr. High and East High my friends would yell this unpleasant name down the hall to get my attention. It got the teacher’s attention, too. I also have a relative with my same name. My husband has a niece named Lisa. She was 11 years old when we got married. She does not have to deal with Lisa as a fad name because most Lisas are between 35 and 43 now. My niece is in her early 20s. I do not have a middle name so the family calls me Lisa Rossi and they call her Lisa Michelle (her middle name). I also agree with Lisa, the friend, about the super unusual names. I have worked with teenagers and find they don’t like those names any more than the teenagers with fad names. One of the other difficult things with names is when you take a normal name and give it a unique spelling, like spelling Lisa Leecea. People don’t know what to do with that. Give your kids a break. I like the idea of using the fad name from the generation before, so now name your kids Jennifer or Lisa or Justin or Michael. In 10 years use the names Ashley, or Brooke, or Amber.

08/15/05

Worked my last night at the old Chevron. Tomorrow morning (tue) at 2:00 am MDT they're buldozing it to the ground. For the pictures I took of our last day,

08/13/05

More on the water/names discussion, from another person named Lisa :

With reguard to your sister's comment about the use of fad names, I would like to add my full and complete endorsement to the issue. When I attended Clayton Junior High many and many a year ago (but not, as Poe would have it, in a kingdom by the sea), I had 13 friends named Lisa. To this day, I do not turn when someone shouts the name in a crowd, as I just assume it's not me. I have only one brother, and he married a woman my age. Her name is Lisa, her maiden name (she has no middle name) begins with the same letter as my middle name, and, as she (per tradition) took our family name upon marriage, we have nearly identical names. Sure, we joke about it, but I was stunned when, 19 years ago, she gave her daughter the name Ashley. Surely my sister-in-law had learned from a lifetime of a faddish name! But no, she had not, and now my niece deals with the same problems her mother and aunt have had for a lifetime. But, as school teacher, I also caution against using names that are so odd that no one can remember them or that they are laughable. I've had students named after remote Greek islands with names I couldn't pronounce for months (the parents had no Greek heritage) and kids with nauseatingly cute names that are darling on an infant but cause embarrassment to an 8th grader. Somewhere, there is a happy medium of names that are not faddish but are easy to say and remember. Future parents, please be aware of what you're doing to your kids. Have a look at the internet for lists of the most popular names -- and then avoid all those in the top 20 if you want the child not to have a lifetime of signing things as I must: Lisa, the friend, not the sister.

P.S. Two drops of Clorox is all that's needed for a 2 litre bottle of water. This from one of those Mormons with lots of water stored in the basement.
Lisa (the friend, not the sister)

08/12/05

Steve,

There is a logical reason for an expiration date on water. It does go stale. The bottlers cannot guarantee freshness indefinitely. If left long enough, even bottled water, could even go bad. That is when the few tiny microorganisms go bad and start taking over the entire bottle of water. In theory, this is possible but with sealed, purified, bottled water I don’t know that it could happen. Just talk to your Y2K savvy, Oregon Granola Heads, or Mormon Pantry Owners. All of them will tell you that there is a limit to holding water in containers. There is an answer. There are pills that you can drop into your water that has been sitting too long and it will re-cleanse the water. The pills are made for 5 gallon jugs, so I don’t know what you should do about your 20 oz bottles at Granite Park.

Lisa…the sister, not the friend.

If you do put this on the web please include an added note: Parents, please do be weary of naming your children a super cool fad name…it sticks with them their whole life and every where they go they run into having to identify themselves by more than just their name.

Well, ok, so maybe there is a reason for expiration dates on water, but the real question is : what's the story behind that last comment? Bet it's a good one.

08/11/05

Can someone tell me why purified water has an expiration date on it? Granted it's two years from now, and I have no idea how long the water has been hanging around Granite Park, but from what I understand water doesn't go bad. And if it's sealed air tight, does it even get stale? These are questiions that have been plagueing me for, well, hours.

You know how annoyed I get at people talking on the phone while driving? If you don't, just drive around town with me some time. It annoys the hell out of me, I even wrote a letter to the Tribune about it. Anyways, today took the cake. I'm driving up 2100 So, right around 10th East, and this kid about 16 or so almost cuts right in front of me, talking on a cell phone. While riding his skateboard down 2100 So. Guess he was having some power meeting with the other skateboarders. "Hey dude, so like the R&D on the Kipspanner project is like totally over budget, and that takeover of Hikoland Industries was gnarly dude. And that TG&M stock is like totally bogus, dude we gotta dump it like now." I don't know, but it was a pretty amusing sight seeing a kid on a skateboard riding down 2100 So talking on a cell phone. Ahhh, life is funny.

Finally, if you haven't checked out the pictures from our last trip to the land, here's a link to one I really love. http://www.srossi.net/0605/BOB080805/BackofBeyondAugust2005/DSCF1271.html. You know I take a lot of pictures, but it's worth it when I see one of them that just comes out great. That's the nice thing about digital photography, it's relatively cheap to take as many as you want, and if you just take enough you're bound to get a few really good ones.

08/10/05

Just heard on the news that a semi carrying 35,000 pounds of explosives rolled and exploded on SR 6, up Spanish Fork Canyon (see map on left). They haven't mentioned casualties yet, but the road is going to be closed for a while because it left a crater 30 feet deep and 70 feet wide. With that in mind, my guess is that is isn't going to be pretty. It woulda been worse if it had happened Friday around this time (5 or 6 pm) because that's a pretty well traveled weekend vacation road.

Relevant info from the Salt Lake Trib article:

"Six people were injured in the accident, one critically"

"The R&R Co. truck left the Ensign-Bickford Company chemical plant at 1:10 p.m. and was headed to Oklahoma. The explosion occurred about 45 minutes later. The crater left by the explosion is 70 feet wide and 30 feet deep."

Salt Lake Tribune article link :
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_2931194

08/09/05

Got this in an e-mail titled : Rossi Family East, from Amy Rossi :

Hi Steve,

We Rossis back East had our reunion on Saturday. It was a great day, beautiful weather, wonderful facility, and lots of Rossis! We are seeing a great number of the next generation these days! Our cousin, Denis Filipetti, has been working on a family tree and produced a document that is pretty comprehensive. He had them available at the reunion and I wondered if you Rossis in Utah knew about it and if you would like a copy. You can download it off the web at http://home.comcast.net/~denisf/Rossi.pdf.

Hope you are all doing well in Utah - give my best to all!

Amy

08/08/05

Went up to the land again, this time Dan, Rae, Josh, Dylan, Marijke and Madison joined Alex and me. As usual, it was a blast. We left earlier than we had planned today, a big storm moved in around noon. There was thunder in the distance, but it wasn't yet raining, so Alex&Madison and Danny went out for a ride on the 4-wheelers. They were about 10 minutes out when there was a huge BANG. Lightning strike just over the hill. They were back in a flash, decided driving through fields on big huge metal lightning rods wasn't a good idea. We didn't realize how close the lightning hit until we started to smell the fire. That's when we decided to pack up and get down to Route 40, Alex and I got on the 4-wheelers to go find out where the fire was while everyone else took the cars down to the highway. We couldn't get to it, but we did find out where it was, watched it to see if it was going to do anything dangerous, but it pretty much stayed in a small area. Then it started to rain, so we headed down to pack the 4-wheelers on the trailer, in the rain. While Alex loaded the 4-wheelers Danny and I took my truck up to check on the fire, which was completely out. Well, if you want to see the pictures from the weekend, just

08/06/05

Got this joke from Lisa (the sister) today :

Q : How many ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) kids does it take to change a lightbulb?
***Pause***
A: Uh, who want's to go for a bike ride?

Which reminded me of this joke :

Knock, Knock
Who'se there?
Control Freak
***Short pause***
Now, you're supposed to say 'Control Freak Who?'.

08/05/05

Alex and I went up to the land yesterday, came home today. He borrowed a couple of 4-wheelers from a friend and we did some exploring of the area. We rode them up past the signal towers and down the other side. The road was little hairy, but not bad at all on the ATV's. We decided that we wouldn't want to take a truck that way, but where it would be hard for a truck is was easy for the 4-wheelers. The next day (today) we went around another way - past the hippie compound. Got all the way to the Strawberry River, even stuck our little toes into it. Decide that way would be better for a truck, if I decided to follow Danny and Alex when we go up again later this week. Anyway, other than getting a face full of dust (riding second place sucks) we also decided that we needed to remember to bring goggles next time. We had a blast anyways. If you want to see the pictures, and some older ones (Now new and improved with captions.)

08/04/05

This Rossi Italian Bakery & Ferragosto thing is getting bigger every day. Started out that A & M were planning on having a booth at the Ferragosto, that was it. Well, then Lynda got her hands on things and next thing knew we were entered in the Bocci tournament, official Bakery team. Well, that wasn't enough. Lynda arranged for us to get the stage for a while to stage a Bakery Biscotti Eating contest. And in a moment I was vacationing from reality I decided to volunteer to MC the contest. And everyone agreed. Now, you might think that's enough, but the latest is even better. Somebody from Ferragosto got in touch with someone from Channel 2 news and then someone got in touch with Alex and then Alex and I talked and now at 5:30 am on the Channel 2 news on the 18th of August Alex and I, and hopefully Danny, are going to be on the news, talking about the Rossi Italian Bakery Biscotti eating contest at Ferragosto. And having our own Biscotti eating contest. Too much fun.

08/03/05

Had the first official Rossi Italian Bakery Ferragosto meeting. To see what we agreed on (if I got it all right) just

If I got anything wrong or forgot something, just let me know and I'll fix it.

08/02/05 Encore

Well, the day ended up much better than it started. They started ripping up the street around noon, and other than when they are actually working they are allowing local traffic, which means I can make it home. I called the e-mail place, their 'customer service' number sends you straight to voice mail, leave a message and we'll get back to you, uh, whenever. But I did leave a message and although they never got back to me they must have found my payment because the e-mail is back up and running. So even though the day started out sucky, it ended up ok.

08/02/05

My day sucked by 9 am. Hopefully it can only get better. Hopefully. First I get a call from Alex letting me know that there is something wrong with the e-mail. Anyone that has purchased anything over the internet knows that they usually deal with credit cards. Well, I've retired all of mine and had to find an alternative way to pay for the e-mail service. So, after several back-and-forth e-mails they gave me an address to send a money order to, and on the 20th of July I did just that. Well, seems that they either don't have it yet, or it's sitting on someone's desk somewhere waiting for someone to figure out what to do with it. Thanks a lot guys. I called the toll-free customer service number and got sent to voice mail. They'll call me back, someday.
Then I look out the window to see the progress on 1300 East. It's supposed to be closed down while they tear it up and re pave it. At least that's what I've been told and why I gave Dan & Rae the convertible for the week and am parking the truck around the corner. Lo and behold there's traffic out there. Which means they haven't started tearing it up, which means they'll probably be working on it into next week and I've been parking around the corner for nothing. Good morning, Vietnam.
Anyways, the good news, about the e-mail at least, is that as long as I get this cleared up in the next 30 days you won't lose any of your e-mails. I logged into my account and it said that all incoming e-mail will still be delivered to your boxes, you just can't get it until this is all cleared up. Which I hope to get taken care of in the next couple of days. My apologies for any inconvience.

And if you want to see some pictures of my new classroom, just

08/01/05