Man with Metal Detector Finds Atlantis

You've seen those commercials for them on TV. 

An old man plods along a pristine beach at sunset with headphones on and a metal detector on the ground. He waves it over a choice piece of sand, and voila! The camera pans to a close-up of his hand holding a gold deblume. Then it is followed by a bunch of interviews of lucky metal detector owners who against all odds actually found something. And all you have to pay is 6 easy installments of $19.95! Could life get any better?

Well, just this morning, Chester Dodgyfield from Virginia Beach made a great discovery with his trusty metal detector (he calls her Susan). He found the lost city of Atlantis. 

"Me and Suzy just went for a stroll on the beach, and all of the sudden she just wouldn't shut up. She was all beep this and beep that. So, I bent down, testing my arthritic back and started scraping away sand. After only about two handfuls I saw this thing that looked like a metal pumpkin. Well, I had to call Cheryl."

Cheryl is Mr. Dodgyfield's pet dog.

"So I call and I said to her, 'WE FOUND IT!' She said, "Found what?" And I repeated, 'WE FOUND IT!' This went on for quite some time, and people starting staring at me as I was barking into the phone...So anyway, I went to my neighbors house to borrow his backhoe."

After the first few hours, the beach was full of spectators. Local residents came out from coffee shops. Even some of the re-enactment actors from Colonial Williamsburg came by in carriages. It turned out that Mr. Dodgyfield's pumpkin was a portico on the top of what archaeologists later presumed to be a Temple. 

"We got a call that some kook and his dog had found an artifact on the beach. I assumed it was a revolutionary era piece. Turns out we were wrong. We've never found the lost colony of Roanoke, but who could've guessed that we'd find Atlantis so close. If I weren't so excited right now, I might have more time to value the irony," said Harvey Moons, head researcher at the Duke University School of Archaeology.

Mr. Dodgyfield has been thwarted by local government officials from claiming his new prize. He submitted his claim under the notorious "Finders Keepers Rule" which up until now was unchallenged. Asked what he would do with Atlantis if the courts ruled in his favor he said, "I'd probably turn it into an amusement park. I think I'd be pretty competitive with Busch Gardens and that other resort in the Bahamas called Atlantis, because I got the real thing." 

He sure does.

Goodbye DC

Well, my visit back home to the DC area was certainly eventful. I came for my brother's graduation from Thomas Jefferson High School (which consequently is the nation's best). Or, so say the High School rating people (whoever they are). And it got me thinking. If his school is 'the best,' then what school is 'the worst?'

Because to be honest the term 'the best' tends to strike me as perhaps a little subjective. It's like saying vanilla ice cream is the best. Or that Porsche 911 Turbo's are the best. While some of you may think they are, and in some ways they might be, I'm not so sure. I mean, I know what they're saying, from an academic standpoint, but surely, as most people in the US know, that standpoint certainly doesn't always make a school better. You have to factor in the human element and ask questions like: "Is our school made up of entirely nerds?" "Have we won anything significant other than ACADEC?" "Do most of the kids here know how to tie their own shoes or cook a bowl of rice?" "Could anyone here pull off a sweet prank?"


So, at any rate, I can't say I'm entirely sold at this point on his school being 'the best.'

Other than that though another thing I noticed when I came home is how much people eat. Back in Provo, on my own I eat when I'm hungry. Here I eat when people have a meal ready. And so of course, there are two to three times the number of meals, and the food is served in much larger portions and at least in my opinion, is not as healthful as the food I eat in Provo. So, of course, I ate more than I should have, don't have a gym membership here, and feel like I have digressed a bit physically speaking. Let's just say, if I stayed here another week, I might take on a new shape...like maybe become one of the block people from Gumby (but more realistically I would probably look more like pokey after he found a room full of pie). It was, in other words a deliciously sinful weekend.

And on another note, today I return home alone. My brother who came out here with me is staying as he prepares to go on to Mexico and Haiti (raising money and awareness for the impoverished), and I return to Utahville. It's always bittersweet. On the one hand, I'll miss real thunderstorms, east coast mentalities, the metro, family and a sweet car...but on the other hand I won't have to deal with traffic, eat thanksgiving everyday, or pay for an exorbitant gym membership and I can get paid again by my boss.

The Rain

Today it is raining. Well, as I write this the rain is actually puttering to a stop. And, I'm really not surprised. Utah is mostly high desert. I'd say it gets more rain than most deserts, especially in the valley, but it is a desert nonetheless. Rain here is not like rain in Boston or DC, or anywhere east really. Generally it rains for a couple minutes or hours and then its done. Some might like this. To me, it's just a tease. Back home in Duxbury Massachusetts, or in Vienna Virginia, when it rains, it pours. You'll have rain all day, or a whole week at a time. And, you can expect a good storm once a week, or once every two weeks. Out here in Utah, if rain comes you might start to believe it's the second coming, only to be disappointed to learn that it was a false alarm.


I know some people say, "I hate the rain." Well to those people I say, "You're dumb." I was actually going to say something far more biting, but I thought against it. I'm sure people from Seattle get bored with it. However, at the same time it is refreshing. The smell of rain and wet ground is unmatched. The sound of rain, and the way it brings out colors is sweet to the senses. And, I remember a number of times when I was curled up under a blanket on my back porch listening to the thunder and watching the show from a rocking chair. I have ambient sounds of rain and storms (along with the ocean and rainforest) on my computer, and I used to nap to it all the time my freshman year of college. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I need rain. I need green. I want my Nor'easters. I guess what I want is to be back on the east coast.