Bank robbery in Hyrum...

Bank robbery in Hyrum...  The Wells Fargo branch on Main Street in Hyrum was robbed yesterday (suspect's photo from surveillance camera at right).  It seems so bizarre to have a crime like that so close by!

Judging from my neighbors' reactions, I think this fellow had better hope that the Sheriffs catch him, and not the citizens in the community!

Earthquakes in Paradise?

Earthquakes in Paradise?  When I saw this headline:

Slight tremor felt in Box Elder County

I clicked over to the article, expecting to see a report on a magnitude 2.5 or 3.0 earthquake – what we would have called a “slight tremor” back in California.  But this was a magnitude 0.9 quake, which only has about 1/1000th the energy of a magnitude 3.0 tremor!  There are millions of quakes that size every year in the U.S.  In California even most of the 3.0 quakes went unreported.  Here a 0.9 quake makes front-page news.  Wow!

Before we moved here I did some research into earthquake occurrence in the area.  The map at right (taken from the USGS earthquake site using their search facilities; click to embiggen) shows the last 10 years of earthquakes in our general area.  Our home is smack in the middle of that map.  The biggest earthquake was a magnitude 2.1 tremor about 10 miles east of us.  That's it!  If we were to pull such a map from where we used to live in California, it would be completely covered in those little circles :)

198.6 in Paradise...

198.6 in Paradise...  That's a milestone of sorts for me – first time under 200 pounds in ... a very long time.  I weigh myself every few days, and for the past several months it's bounced around between 201 and 206, so this isn't a big change.  It may well go back up again.  Still, it's very nice to see that first digit be a “1”.  That represents about a 30% drop in weight.

I'm not doing anything special to try to lose weight.  My diet hasn't really changed; in fact, if anything, I'm eating more than I used to.  My level of physical activity has definitely gone way up since April 2014, when we bought our new home.  As my condition gets better, my activity increases.  Hopefully that's the source of my weight loss, and not a tapeworm :)