(photos ®my mom)

13 years ago today, I was a child in the 8th grade, not very interested in geology.  That all changed at 4:30:56 AM on January 17, 1994.

My friend Shawn and his dad had just built a hockey net out of PVC, in which I would goaltend. It was gonna be great. We had the day off (MLK holiday) so we’d play street hockey all day. I woke up at about midnight after a bad dream, with a headache. In my dream, I was thrown from the top bunk of my bunk bed by an earthquake. I got out of bed, went to take some aspirin, and went back to sleep. My next memory was at 4:31 AM, when I was in the Mw 6.7 Northridge Earthquake. I grabbed my bed, hoping to not fly off. Well, my bed never tipped over, but I was still scared. I looked over at the clock to see what time it was, but the power was out, I assumed.

Little did I know that the dresser that my clock sat on was halfway across the room on threw floor. My mom called for my brother and I, at which point my brother ran to her room. Her door had been jammed but came open after some effort. We gathered ourselves together and went outside to see the damage.

At first, when we opened the front door, we saw that the porch was 2 feet above the base of the door, and we could not open the screen door to get out.

We went around to the side door, and saw the stairs were 2 feet apart from the door. We lived in a mobile home, and it had fallen off it’s stilts. My mom saw her best friend across the street. His house was on fire. We ran back into our house to get water to put it out, but it was too late. He ran back inside for some baby pictures before they were lost. As he did, someone stole his wallet out of his jacket that he left outside. My mom, brother, and I grabbed what little we could, got in the car, and drove away to the orange light of the fire.

Craig’s

Shaun’s


View from my house

This was the first of 61 other homes that burned, including Shawn’s. My two other friends in the neighborhood moved away in fear (one to Palmdale, right on the San Andreas).

My mom through the burnt hole in our house

A second fire that night also burned another house and partially burned our house.  It was not until April that we moved back in after months of bouncing around to my aunts and my mom’s friend’s, where I primarily used a sleeping pad for my bed.

Other damage around town:



The famous 5-14 interchange collapse, from the LA Times.  There wound up being 51 dead, 9,000+ injured, and $44 billion in damage, thrid only to Katrina and Andrew for cost.



CSUN parking structure collapse



The highest death toll was here, as this 3 story apartment building was turned into 2 as the first floor was obliterated.  Over a dozen dead here.

Today is the 13th year since then, so I reflect on that day, along with the months that followed, which truly changed me into the man I am today. I look back on that time in awe, in sadness, and in a strange sense of thanks. Though we ran away that day, it made me stronger. I changed that day. I was just a boy, but I became a man.

Also, our story won the Think Blue contest and we got to meet Mike Piazza and UCLA superstar Eric Karros.  Sweet.

A lot of memories from that time, and a lot of me was created through that.   It’s just a part of who I am.


On a completely unrelated note, I heard the best story ever on Radio from Hell on X96.  If you like forced catfights, crossbows, trampolines, and lesbians, read this.

Below is an email I sent to my old teacher at Sylmar about my first full week teaching. Read if interested.

So, I thought I’d let you know about how the start of my student teaching is going. Please pass this on to any and all interested parties.

It’s hard! This 3-day weekend was much appreciated. I think this has been the most tired I have ever felt. For an insomniac like myself, 6:30 Am wake up every day gets old quick. I was not expecting my feet to be hurting so much. I picked up some better insoles, but there is only so much they can do for 4 hours of standing.

I am teaching 4 integrated eighth grade science classes for Mr. Bancroft at Clayton Middle School (http://clayton.slc.k12.ut.us/). I have set up a class website at www.mattaffolter.com, though I don’t think anyone is using it. Tomorrow, we will cover Igneous rocks with a lab where they will look at some real rocks from my collection or other collections I have scrounged up.

There are many things I did not expect, and I certainly learn a lot every day. First off, I tried to do as much hands-on lab work or activities as I could, figuring they would enjoy that much more than a boring lecture. But, they complained, saying we do too much labs. They like the lectures because, as they so adequately put, “we don’t have to do anything.” I have now come to understand that they will complain about anything and everything, so I should just take each complaint with a grain of salt.

My classes learn and act very differently. My full ESL class (in which I have ~7 different native languages, it’s hard to know exactly) is not my hardest. My 3rd period is the hardest, because they are very slow and very rowdy. The do things seemingly twice as slowly as 6th, so when I get to 6th, I tend to end early, unfortunately. My ESL is actually very fun, because the kids are very energetic and don’t show the cynicism of most other students.

The biggest surprise is how thankless the job is. If I work really hard on a lesson, and we do some really cool and interesting things, they give me an ‘eh,’ as if I slapped something together at the last minute. In fact, the most liked lesson was a mineral growth lab (where they saw salt and other crystals grow under a microscope), which was thrown together at the last minute. I expected to excite people, bu ti see little evidence of that. My biggest compliment that I have received was my site teacher telling me that some of the non-participatory students have been actively working for the first time. I guess that’s good.

So, in short, I’m not sure how cut out I am for this. I get really frustrated by the time I must spend on discipline, and perhaps this is a sign that the JC/CC scene is better for me. (On a side, I got offered a part time teaching job at SLCC but had to turn it down). I guess this is why I did this, to test it out. It is, after all, only the first week and a half, and I’ll get through this and I’ll have a lot to go on to make my decision.

I think the worst thing is still the education classes. If I had to take one more class to get a degree or to teach, I’m not sure if I’d be able to stand it. Easily, it has provided me with the three WORST classes I have ever had to endure. Just as an example, I had a really spiteful teacher last semester. Even though her syllabus specifically stated that you got “an A or an F,” she gave me a B- because I refused to attend the last class and see other group’s present their book reports (why we had to do book reports in a class on curriculum and assessment is also a big question). There is only one word for that: bullshit. This is a great example of the quality of education classes at the U of Utah. At least I’m almost done. Just one more that will be over my mid-April, not that I’m counting the seconds…

So, thanks for listening/reading. Feel free to email and check in on the class site (www.mattaffolter.com) or my blog (www.QFL247.com) for updates. On Wednesday, I will talk about what happened to me in 8th grade, the Northridge Earthquake. Maybe this will get them into geology, because it certainly changed me.

Thanks for the support! I certainly think of your example to get me through all this! Now, I got to get back to grading.

-Matt

On this holiday, I always think of a great man and disaster.

MLK is a very influential figure to me, not as much for what he did but more about how he did it.  Following the lead of Ghandi, he again showed how policy can be changed so much more effectively by peacful actions and movements rather than by force and violence.  This is something all sides of the Iraqi conflict should have known all along.

It is kinda strange that I am teaching 8th grade, and in my 8th grade, 13 years ago Wednesday, the most tramatic event of my life occured. Stay tuned for a special post about it. I had my mom send me her pics of the earthquake, so you will be some of the first to see never-before-scaned pictures of the damage, and I will retell the story of how it changed me (but better than last year, ’cause there’s pictures!).

Anywho, in completely unrelated ongoings, I was sick of my crappy comforter and draft house, so I splerged on a $150 king-sized comforter.  Awesome!  Also, the initial parts were ordered for the greatest addition to our legotown yet, details to come.

Don’t you just hate cliffhangers!

Marry BMXmas to all! Oh, and Happy Hanukkah. I can not tell you how many times I’ve been an assumed christian here in Utard. I have not once reciprocated their greeting (which I will not report here), only saying Happy Holidays. I mean, what if I assumed you were Canadian and I wished you a Happy Boxing day? That’s wouldn’t be very nice or appropriate. I mean, I’m more atheist than Jewish, but if I had to pick a religion, I’d be Jewish (my mom is, and religion is typically matriarchal). But almost no one wished me a Happy Hanukkah.

Liz and Ian were our oh-so-gracious hosts.

Anywho, we did our Holiday thing with Aly’s fams in Logan, and it was great. I got some cool presents.

But the best present was Ians. He got a BMX frame, the custom of his fav biker. He literally convulsed when he opened it. If you couldn’t tell from the tree, he’s really into bikes.

Here’s the finished product. He just ordered the forks (the thing that holds the front tire) in the same color as the frame. Pretty bad ass.

One of the best things we had was food!  All kinds of great mucnhies.

On BMXmas day, we drove up to Pocatello for more fams. Here’s little Zander’s first BMX, with pegs and all. Cute!

On the Yahoo! Answer’s front, by my calculation, I should be #10 on the top 10 list for Science and Mathematics.  But I’m not.  I don’t know why.  Less than a dozen of my over 700 best answers are outside of the Sci&Math category.  I’d complain, but I don’t know who would listen.  On the bright side, I got a cool magnet and hat just for the countless waisted hours on that site!

Oh yeah, I should be even more of a stranger the next 3 months.  My student teaching starts on wednesday!  I am looking forward to it, but it will be hard and very time consuming.  Al least I will be completely finished with my M.A. in mid April.  And then it’s so long, teaching suckers!  I more and more am leaning toward going into geology jobs, specifically mining when this is all over.

If you are really, REALLY board, you can check out my class blog and website, which is my Yahoo! 360 page.  I have set it up under the address www.MattAffolter.com.  I am going to put daily updates for parents, and links to web resources and pictures for the kiddies.  First up for them, minerals and rocks!

I’m really sorry. Again, Xanga is taken aback. When student teaching is over (end March), and I reach my goal of the top 10 list for science and math in Y!A (about 50 more best answers), then Xanga will be a higher priority again. OK, to the post, mostly an NCAA Football rant.

Yeah, quite the game. Honestly, I would not change our records/places. I’d rather be 7-5, beat you and keep you out of the championship than the other way. The only downside was the macing and arresting that kept students from rushing the field. I mean, if you can’t rush the field for the beat-your-arch-rival-and-keep-them-from-playing-the-championship-and-snapping-a-seven-game-loosing-streak-and-preventing-them-from-tying-your-mark-of-most-games-won-in-a-row-in-the-series, when can you?

But boy, was that sweet. I’ve hardly taken off my DeShawn Foster Jersey, and I will wear it the next two days at least. I even wore it in the Utah student section for a game last night.

We are so young;look for 10 wins and two-in-a-row over the condoms next year.

By the way, did anyone see after we kicked our extra point (@ 7-0), the ‘sc cheerleader cheering? Watch the replay and look at the bottom of the screen. I though they only cheered for Texas.

But really, it shouldn’t matter, because ‘sc will be on probation at worse, or embarrased as Reggie Bush’s Heisman is stripped and the 2004 (singular) national championship is nullified.

$c is a bunch of cheats, and it will come out sooner than later, if there is a god. Reggie Bush did break NCAA rules (by accepting money and improper benifits) and the violations should lead to punishment ofr usc. However, this startiling revalation is not getting the airplay it deserves (nor is his constant problem with fumbling, but that’s another story).

Read this rather innocent Yahoo! story. Bush fired his marketing agent, Mike Ornstein. Big deal, right?

This is the same agent that allegedly gave the Bush family over $100,000 in benifits. This includes:

$595.20 in round-trip airfare from San Diego to Oakland in November 2005 for Bush’s stepfather, LaMar Griffin, his mother, Denise Griffin and younger brother to attend the USC-California game at Berkeley. The fees were charged to the credit card of Jamie Fritz, an employee of Ornstein. The document detailing the charges was provided by Lee Pfeifer, an estranged business associate of Ornstein’s.
$250.65 for limousine transportation from the Oakland airport to the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco that November weekend for the Bush family, charged to Fritz, according to a document. Ornstein acknowledged both he and Bush’s family stayed at the luxury hotel.
Suits for Bush’s stepfather and brother to wear during the Dec. 10, 2005 Heisman ceremony in New York, a makeover for his mother for the event and limousine transportation;
Weekly payments of at least $1,500 to the Bush family.
$623.63 for a hotel stay by Bush at the Venetian Resort & Casino in Las Vegas from March 11-13, 2005, charged to Michaels, according to a document signed by Bush.
$1,574.86 for a stay by Bush at the Manchester Hyatt in San Diego from March 4-6, 2005, paid for by Michaels, according to a hotel document, a hotel employee and a source.
Approximately $13,000 to Bush from New Era to purchase and modify a car, three sources said.
As reported by Yahoo! Sports in April, $54,000 in rent-free living for a year at Michaels’ $757,500 home in Spring Valley, Calif., according to Michaels and San Diego attorney Brian Watkins.
Also from previous Yahoo! reports, $28,000 from Michaels to help Bush’s family settle pre-existing debt, according to Michaels and Watkins.
Thousands of dollars in spending money to both Bush and his family from the prospective agents, according to multiple sources.

The most damaging is his signature on a bill form Ornstein’s credit card.

Most of this $c could play dumb to (it’s not that hard), but the real good stuff that is damaging to them is this report which says:

“The would-be agents who provided the house, the money for the tricked-out car, the luxury hotel rooms and the tens of thousands in cash used to roll right into the Southern California locker room after the game, right past security, to meet and greet the triumphant Trojans.

The marketing agent who provided the cash allowance, the plane flights, the limo rides and the designer suits used to hang around Trojan practices, filed paperwork with the athletic department and walked the sidelines of the Los Angeles Coliseum like he was Pete Carroll himself.

It is no surprise that Reggie Bush and his family cashed in on his future earnings during his Heisman Trophy career at USC, as so many allege. Finding eager agents willing to pay for an edge on representing him was easy; they were all over the place at the loose ship known as Trojan Football.

At practice. At games. In the locker room. At the football program’s Heritage Hall. Even with permission of the athletic department’s compliance office.”

Now, realize that even with all this, Ornstein got Bush one of the greatest combined marketing deals ever (reportedly over $50 million) and they had worked together for over half a year (officially, anyway). Why then, would Bush get rid of him mid-season, after such a good job?

My guess is the Pac-10 and NCAA had already decided that Reggie was in trouble with his NCAA violations, but decided to wait while the season was going on, not wanting an unfair burden on the current players at ‘$c.

Mark my words, by March (plus or minus), this will come out and at a minumum, Reggie will be ruled ineligable and every game he played in for 2005 (or maybe ever) will be forfited. Sure, I’m biased like an AP voter from the SEC, but the point is THEY CHEATED and THEY SHOULD BE PUNNISHED!

And mark my words, Bush will be the Sam Bowie, or at least, Hakeem of this draft. Vince Young will be the Jordan, he is the next comming of what Michael Vick was supposed to be, if that makes any sence. He may have had some TDs today, but he’ll never be the best back in the league.

On a side, can we get a damned NCAA Football playoff!??! If people changed their vote from Michigan to Florida because ‘they don’t deserve a rematch,’ they deserve death by hanging. People love to blame the ‘computers’, but the voters are the once that are really screwy.

Here is how you fix D-1 football. It’s this easy – 8 team playoff football that only adds 5 (FIVE) games to the schedule and preserves the regular season and the bowl system.

Step one: The week after confrence championships, you seed the top 8 in the BCS, and 1 thru 4 play HOME games vs. 5 thru 8. This way, you still ALWAYS have something to play for. It would not have taken away from the OSU-UM game, because they all want the #1 seed, and any loss in the season may mean a switch from a home game to an away game.

Step two: The big 4 bowls rotate through championship game, quarterfinal game (2), and best of the losers of the first round. The crappy bowls gest the same crap leftover teams playing for pride alone.

It’s that easy, and would make MORE money for the winning schools and would bring in more attention then the current system. Plus, it’s settled on the field and it is FAIR! I know, it seems strange to have things settled on the field and fair, but call me crazy, I think it is better. Terry Bowden agrees (see his bracket below).

This year, it would be Boise St @ Ohio St, Wisc @ Florida, Lou @ Mich, and $c @ LSU. Now, wouldn’t that be fun? I personally think it would wind up a rematch between OSU and UM, but at least it was meant to be, with no questions, comments, or arguments.

In other news,

Did the fam thing for turkey day. We stayed in Berkeley this time, which was nice. I still like being in OR better.

The latest addition to the Lego town is a crane! But the real reason we got it was:

The Lego Latreen! Awesome!

Hey, if the Simpsons can be late, why not me?

We hosted the Halloween party this year. A party the day before (an “Eyes Wide Shut” theme) was the party to be at… if you like skin.

That day I was a Lego vampire. For our party, I was…

Princess toadstool! Aly, of course, was Toad. Man, drag is surely fun. It is worth the embarassment and trouble keeping your skirt down for the look on the people’s faces.

One more thing:

I can not understand this video. It is amazing (especially the sugar part), and kinda gross, but it is real as far as I can tell and find out. What is the scientific explination for this?!!?!?

And what is grosser, the video or my costume?

Da da daaaaa!!!

And now, the moment you have all waited patiently for,

The Greatest Lego® product village ever: Mallytown

Just a little background: most of this is a combined collection of Aly and I from our childhood. These LEGO items were just collecting dust, and one day, we decided to start building. We’ve added things to it via http://www.lego.com, but it is still mostly homemade creations. The cool stuff Aly made, the strange things I made.

Here is downtown.  I truly am sorry about the quality of picture/video… it is surprisingly hard to capture these things on film, mainly due to lighting.

The airport and rail cross.

The main drag.

The industrial park.

Now, don’t think our town is unprepared.  We have a full suite of services fort our citizens.

Hospital, police, and fire, all at your service.

Now, we do have our fun here too.

We get culture at the theater (set design copyright Aly)

We support science with our budding space program (Is NASA a copyright?  I’ll have to look into that…).

And everyone likes Obsidian park!  If you don’t you must be a terrorist.

We also have a five-legostar dining establishment and club (a private club for members, must be 21).

And we even have some …ummm… celebrities.  To answer your question, yes, even lego JarJar sucks.

So now, lets take a tour of some the key buildings and areas in our fine city.

The Aly district-her castle and link’s house.

Did I ever mention that Aly is a big Zelda fan?

My castle, all blue, black and grey.

This is the ritzy part of town.  In the corner, the jungle with the jungle people.  I doubt you can get jungle people anymore anywhere… not PC enough.  In the center is the resort, with a plethora of water sports and aquatic animal adventures.  In the right hand corner is the mansion, complete with hot tub.  They got rich off of selling fish slurry as a cheap explosive.

Here is another brilliant Aly creation, gas station!  Also, a crappy pirate hut I built.

The RxR.

The residential strip, complete with high rise.

The mine… c’mon, we HAD to build a mine… complete with shack!

Peder International Airport

Ye Olde Fort Mally

And last but not least, the most honest folks in town… the mechanics!

So, that’s the brief tour.  I hope you liked it.  We can’t show it all, because it is changing constantly.  As you can see, we have lots more room to add on, and more things are being built all the time at the minor expense of grades and salary.

And by the way, if you have any homeless legos that have no place to go, sitting in a closet and colecting dust, we are always accepting donations.  By adding something or someone to Mallytown, you not only will be helping make Mallytown a better place, but you can see your LEGO bricks in the fame that only this blog can bring it!  Please help today!

So, if you need a wedding/birthday/Festivus present idea, look no further than http://www.lego.com.

We are also looking for more building ideas.  Got any?

I also liked:
“There are 870 people in the U.S. with the last name Affolter.
Statistically the 30847th most popular last name. (tied with 1665 other last names)”

Check protected for a cool field trip!

This weekend was Fall Break, basically a holiday created to observe the beging of the holy season… uhh… did I say holy?  I meant hunting.  Yeah, we get two days off for hunting.  And yet Lincoln and Washington have to share a day…

Well, we (Aly, her dad, and I) took advantage and went to Flaming Gorge National Rec Area.  It was cold, but it’s a great place, right on the Wyoming/Utah boarder.

Of course, the trip was more for these two.  That’s Lulu (L) and Dot (R).  By the way, we convinced Aly’s brother who has Dot to take in Lulu too.

The trip was also for Aly’s dad Jeff, so he could show us geonerds some rocks… this was from a geoscenic drive we took… Ptz Uinta Fm faulted against Madison limestone (Joana/Redwall equivalent).

Don’t you wish mapping was always this easy?

These are the local experts, and their geologic background is as sure-footed as a snow tractor.

We camped in Eocene Green River Fm… mostly shale with local ls.

There was much beauty to behold…

Dot had her giant sticks.

And Lulu was just majestic.

It was quite fun.  I will close with this… strange tubes in sandstone, with moderate Iron mineralization on the outside and extreme Iron Mineralization in the center.  The tubes are only a few cm accross, but the have strang, convoluted shapes.  I have no idea what they are, nor do my (former) profs, ’cause I brought one in and no one knew.  Any gueses?

This is LuLu.  She needs a home.



She is a full bread Healer.  She was born deaf, and was saved from being killed as a puppy.  She was ‘adopted’ by some friends of the breeder to be a shop dog.  However, because of her disability, she was chained up in a garage all day and night because the owners were afraid she would get run over by the machinery because she could not hear it.

Aly and I could not stand it anymore, so we rescued her (against out landlord’s wishes/lease).  Moving is not an option we want to face, so we are keeping her until she finds a home (and hopefully before our landlord finds out and evicts us).


So, if you need a dog, please give her a good home.  She is docile, kind, potty trained.  Like all deaf dogs, she is advantageous for her lack of barking at noise (sirens, other dogs), fearlessness with vacuums, and ability to wake up (it’s funny to wake a dog up, usually you can’t).  All she needs is a little love.

Today is 1.5 years with my better half! We get to celbrate by watching a Ute thrashing of NAU. Speaking of thrashings…

Last weekend we saw UCLA thrash Utah. I really thought it would be a win-win, but it was much more of a lose-lose. Everything good that happened hurt my other side. It didn’t help that Aly felt very outnumbered which, of course, made me feel bad. Oh well, next year will be better.

Pre-game was fun… lots of BBQ, lots of Gammas. I actually saw my old roommates Felipe and Leo, which was really cool.

Events like this certainly added to the Aly-bashing.

Easily the highlight was a small portion of the band was going around playing for fundraising. I’ve never been that close to the band! They played Sons and Iron Man.

Here’s our group!

So, some more (preliminary) details about the wedding:

It will be 6/7/8 in Murray, UT. The ceremony will be in Murray Park, Aly’s childhood park. The reception will be at Wheeler Farm. We are trying to keep it small (since we have negative $$$ and our families are mostly worse off then us) so it will not be very fancy. I’d almost perfer to alope, but it’s not fair to everyone.

On a very unrelated note, here are my new plants!

They are cycads, which were very common in the Jurassic. The top one is called a Sego Palm. The leaves turn yellow when branches are no longer needed to conserve chlorophyl. The bottom one is called a cardboard palm, and a picture can not do it justice. It has two shoot lengths, two leaf types, little thorns, and…

…a little cone in the middle that looks like a bad imitation of a corn on the cob. Strange but awesome…