DMV

The registration renewal notice for one of our cars never arrived, even though the registration expires soon. I made Ed call the DMV to sort it out:

DMV guy: "It looks like we didn't send you a renewal notice. You'll need to send in a check by Sept. 8 or you'll have to pay a late fee."

Ed: "Would we have to pay a late fee, even if you never sent us a renewal notice?"

DMV guy: "Yes."

Ed: "So why didn't you send us a notice?"

DMV guy: "Hold on, let me check."

Waiting, waiting....

DMV guy: "It looks like the problem is that we have an exta space between the name of your street and the word 'street' in your address in our computer file."

Ed: "So?"

DMV guy: "So our computer didn't generate a notice."

Ed: "So can you fix it?"

DMV guy: "No. You'll have to fill out form DMV14 for a change of address."

Ed: "So you're telling me I have to send in this form just to get the space removed?"

DMV guy: "I'm afraid so."

Hiking

This month's hobby-of-the-month is hiking. I got really excited about it after going to REI to get a few things for our 'Camping at the Grand Canyon Family Reunion' with Ed's family last month. Everything at REI is cool. I bought new hiking shoes, socks, a hiking hat and a camelbak.

At the Grand Canyon, we hiked down a mile and a half (it's 9 miles to the bottom) and then climbed back out and my legs were toast. We've been hiking regularly since then and I feel like I'm getting stronger. We've been talking about climbing Half Dome in Yosemite in September. Today, however, I realized how weak I still am. We did a 10-mile hike that included climbing Mt. Diablo (3000+ vertical feet of climbing). I don't think I've ever even walked for 10 miles in a row.

It took us five and a half hours and being the lazy morons that we are, we didn't get onto the trail until 11am, so we did the whole thing in the worst heat of the day (90 degrees) - we went through four liters of water and both got sunburned (I forgot to put sunscreen on the backs of my arms). The descents were really steep and gravelly and it was hard not to slip and slide - I fell once and came down hard on my hand.

By the time we got back, our feet were killing us. Half Dome (which is a 16-mile round trip with 5000 feet of climbing that usually takes 10-12 hours) is looking a lot more scary.

VIP's for a day

Today my kind and generous colleague at work gave Ed and me a pair of tickets to see the Oakland A's play the Boston Red Sox tonight. The seats were in the VIP section 5 rows behind home plate and included special parking and all of the free food we wanted. By the seventh inning, Ed had eaten a bowl of Clam Chowder, a plate of fish & chips, a Dr. Pepper, 2/3 of a plate of Nachos, a Stadium Dog, and Hot Chocolate with whipped cream. He also worked his way through half of the bag of peanuts that was on the seats when we arrived. I didn't try to stop him from eating all of that, but being the attentive wife that I am, I did hand him the empty peanut bag in the ninth inning when he started to hold his stomach and mentioned the possibility of throwing up.

The A's lost pretty convincingly. They were down 0-7 after the third or fourth inning. But we were entertained for most of the game by the girl in front of us who was constantly screaming the name of the player in the on-deck circle, which was only 10 or 15 feet from us, to see if they would look over. None of them ever did.

She's Not Fast

Inspired by the opening day of the Tour de France, Ed and I went on a bike ride. As he drug me up the umpteenth really steep hill, we passed a little boy and his mom. Ed went by first and the little boy yelled back to his mom:

"Did you see that guy riding his bike? He was going fast. That's what I want us to do."

A minute or so later, I rode by and he yelled back

"She's not going fast."

Thanks for the update, kid.

Boston

So, it has been a long time since this was updated, so I thought I would post a few pictures from my trip to Boston. I had such a lot of fun hanging out with Devin!




This is Devin's house. It was beautiful, both inside and out. I don't have any pictures from inside, but the decoration is perfect!

I forget what this building is...an old Market in the center of Boston I think...


I love the contrast of old and new that you see here. I think this is trinity church...

Finally, one of us on the waterfront. It is always interesting to see what people get in the photo when they take one for you... I was hoping for something with more water and waist up...

Wedding

Since I promised pictures here they are: Charity and Jared got married in the San Diego Temple in La Jolla...



Charity's dress was custom made by a wonderful designer in New York Colette Komm.




Although I may be biased, I still have to argue that the San Diego temple is the most beautiful place...


Finally, I have to make an argument for my niece being the most beautiful baby ever... She is now about 5 months old... (Here she is with my mom off to the left...Jane works it for the camera...)

Ok, well, I really don't have that much to say... This is pretty much all I did this weekend...Wedding stuff. It turns out when you come home for a wedding early, you get sucked into helping... I made the mistake of assuming that since my Mother and Sister had both be working on this pretty much full time since January, that it would be done by the time I got there... Not so, much stress and many rearranging of tables, picking up of flowers and rings and attempts to rent a mustang later, the wedding really was beautiful.

Cutest Service Project Ever

This almost makes me want to learn to knit. Here's an excerpt from the accompanying story in the Salt Lake Tribune:

Mormon women in New South Wales are knitting sweaters for penguins. Doll size, tight-fitting wool sweaters keep this breed of "fairy" penguins warm as they recover from exposure to oil spills off coastal Australia, dramatically raising their survival rate. (Photo courtesy of the LDS Church )

Baby

Check out my new little nephew, Michael:



Here he is when he found out that Santa Claus isn't real:



That makes three grandsons for my parents, none of them mine. Our only hope for getting showered with love, affection and presents when we finally have one is to produce a girl.

Nuclear War Survival Skills

Lately I've been into disaster preparedness. In my online research, I ran into this gem: Nuclear War Survival Skills. It's an online book that was written in 1979 and distributed by the government. A lot of people believed that Russia wouldn't launch a nuclear attack without clearing people out of it's own cities first (in anticipation of our retaliation) and that since we could detect such mass movements with satellites, we would have a couple of days warning before an attack. During that time, people could prepare by digging trenches in their backyards to use as shelters from radiation.

The book contains detailed information about how to quickly build such a shelter and even tells you how to make a radiation detector from simple household items. Happy digging.

My famous husband

Hey everybody, Ed is a guest blogger at Times and Seasons, a popular and high-traffic mormon group blog, for the next two weeks. Check out his first post here.

I love weekends.

I'm at home at 7:30 in the morning on a Friday, feeling lazy, and I keep thinking to myself: "The sooner I get to work, the sooner I can leave. And then it'll be the weekend! I really need to get to work!"

Budding Artists

My friend and I are in charge of planning bi-monthly activities for the little 8-11-year-old girls at church. Last night we gave them a little lesson on art history (or rather, I gave them the lesson that I outsourced to Ed to write - and he did a great job, by the way) and then we let them paint. My friend brought little canvasses and a set of acrylic paints.

During the lesson, I was talking about abstract art and I showed them these paintings: Jackson Pollack and Kandinsky. One of them said they didn't understand why it was art because it looked pretty easy to do and I told them that it was actually harder than it looked to splatter paint all over a canvas and end up with something that is interesting and pleasing to look at.

We told them that they could paint whatever they wanted and they all decided to try their hand at something abstract. The little girl that was wondering why the Pollack and Kandisky paintings were so great painted the painting in the bottom of the picture below, which as Ed pointed out, could almost pass for a Jackson Pollack if it were hanging on a museum wall.


Here are all of their paintings:

The Ten Commandments

On Monday night I watched the first half of the new ABC "epic miniseries", The Ten Commandments. When I was a kid, I loved the old Cecil B. DeMille Ten Commandments. I loved how Charlton Heston and Yule Brenner would stare each other down - "Let my people go!" "Never!" And they were so very manly. I think I had a crush on Pharoah.

In this version, Pharoah is kind of a weakling who has skinny little bird arms. Moses is just a regular guy who talks to God sometimes. And God, well, let's just say he isn't exactly the thundering Almighty of the Old Testament. When he talks to Moses from the burning bush and tells him to go back to Egypt and tell Pharoah the free lunch is over, he's all gentle and nice about it. When Moses says "They won't listen to me. They won't believe that you've spoken to me. They won't. They won't. They won't...Don't send me. Don't send me. I'm not the person you need. I can't do this. I can't do this," God just kindly reassures him that all will be well.

Cecil B. DeMille's God would have drop kicked him back to Egypt for that kind of faithless wimpering.

Couple-time without kids

One of my friends has been married for some time and is entering her 30's, but doesn't want to have kids just yet because she and her husband are just having so much fun together. They want to spend time just as a couple, and do lots of traveling and... I dunno, other stuff like that, before having kids.

Now this is what I'm thinking: Given the state of medicine these days, and how fit and healthy lots of people are into their 50's, 60's and even beyond, we can do all that stuff *after* the kids! And then as an added bonus we'll be able to stay at our kids' places and play with our grandkids. And we won't have to work 'cause we'll be retired. And we won't have to save for the future and putting our kids through college and stuff, so we'll be able to spend our money on cute sportscars and nice vacations!

SO, "us time" before or after kids? Which would you prefer? When do you think is the right time to have kids?

Real Housewives of O.C.

I have to admit that I've been watching the new reality series, The Real Housewives of Orange County. It's about 5 women (and their families) that live in a gated community, Coto de Caza, in Orange County. Actually, one of the women doesn't live there anymore, but she used to before she got divorced - she provides the contrast between the haves and the I-wish-I-still-hads.

It's all about keeping up with the Jones's. They're always saying things like "Today we're getting a new car. I don't really care about cars, but people here take their cars really seriously. I think it's been hardest for my husband, since it's really embarrassing to have his wife driving around in an old car." Or, as one woman is getting botox, "People in Coto just don't age past 32."

Overall, though, the show portrays a pretty sympathetic picture of the women. They indulge themselves in various things that normal people can't afford (botox, nice cars, frequent vacations to Mexico), but for the most part they seem like nice people who are really focused on their kids and their families.

The people that are easy to hate are the kids - especially the ones who are over 18 and think they should be able to live off their parents while doing nothing. The divorced woman's 20-year-old daughter was living on her own in LA, but shows up at her mom's three-bedroom townhouse and announces that living on her own is too hard and she doesn't want to work. Her mom, who is working to support herself and her other two children (14 and 9 years old) asked whether she wanted to sleep on the couch or share a room with her 9-year-old sister. The response: "I am not sleeping on the couch and I am not sharing a room with a 9-year-old." When her mom asked how she planned to pay her car insurance: "I do not want to get a job." Hello. Earth to spoiled brat.

Then there's the 19-year old guy who had a 4.4 GPA in high school, but went to a party college and got a 1.8 GPA his first year. Now he's home from school and his mom wants him to get a job. He told her that maybe he could find time to work a few hours a week. Her response, "Um, how about 40 hours a week?" (he rolls his eyes). Mom: "Look, you're not getting any allowance this summer, so you'd better start looking for a job." Kid: "We'll see about that." He's pretty much an idiot.

The moral of the story: hide your wealth from your children until they can support themselves. And don't live by rich people who will make you feel like you need more stuff.

Oops

We left my poor salad dressing shaker by the vent on the oven:



This isn't nearly as bad as the time one of my roommates left a pan of vegetables cooking on the stove and went to church. The pan partially melted and when we got home, there was a globule of metal the size of half of a large grape stuck to the stove.

Then there was the time I forgot I had muffins in the oven and went to church. I remembered during the first talk and took off for home to find a bunch of charred muffins and a kitchen full of smoke. Luckily, they hadn't reached the point of spontaneous combustion.

Wheat Grinder

I want a wheat grinder really bad. I have the one I want all picked out. And I want to buy buckets of wheat from the Lehi Roller Mills when we go to Utah this summer. And I want to get the optional hand-crank for my wheat grinder (because I can think of so many disaster scenarios in which I will be at my house hand-grinding wheat to make flatbread that I will fry over an open flame). Actually, I'll feel like a bad mormon if I can't run the wheat grinder without electricity. Because don't we all secretly wait for the day when the national power grid goes down and we have to use the special wheat grinder attachment that lets you run it with your bicycle? (Seriously, my mom has the bicycle attachment - mormons are into disaster preparedness, in case you didn't know.)

But I'm afraid that my enthusiasm about grinding wheat and making bread will dwindle like my enthusiasm for my many short-lived projects of the past (modern dance lessons, learning italian, building my own telescope by grinding a pyrex dish into a lens, etc.)

Luckily, wheat lasts for several millenia without going bad, so if I buy it and never use it, at least it won't spoil and have to be thrown away like the revolving supply of rotten vegetables in my refrigerator. On the other hand, an unused wheat grinder is just a piece of crap taking up space in my house. On the other hand, I want it really bad and that counts for something. (Although it didn't count for anything when EVERY SINGLE YEAR I begged my mom for the 64-pack of Crayola crayons with the built-in crayon sharpener and she would only buy us the 48-pack. Oh, how I wanted that crayon sharpener.)

P.S. Everyone should get a two month supply of food and stuff so that you can stay home during the bird flu pandemic. Seriously.

Funny

This made me laugh out loud: German Coast Guard

(Thanks to Andy for pointing it out.)

Candy

I'm at Ed's house. I just spent the last ten minutes searching for candy and all I came up with was a bag of marshmallows. It's better than nothing, but who is this man I married? And where is his candy?

Visiting NYC

So I just got back from visiting my Brother and Sister-in-Law in New York. As usual I loved the city. Even when it is really cold, there is something about walking around where things and people are that appeals to me. I know that most people have some ideal about walking around outside in the open wilderness, where there is no one else for miles, and I like that too, but there is something about a city. What I really dislike is walking in the suburbs or a city such as Vegas where you can walk forever, and not get anywhere because it is all parking lots.

Also I must say kudos to public transportation. I know that we have it in theory out here, but in practice, not so much. I suppose in everyday life there is much to be said for having a car, but when you are a visitor, and hence will never have a car, public transportation is much better...

I also got a chance to see my brand new niece... (here helping her mom to do laundry)


She has to be the most beautiful baby that I have seen. Perfect skin, long eyelashes, but what really does it is that she will just look at you and smile! Her mom says she is such a flirt!


My sister was also out getting things done for her wedding. This picture is in the fashion district, where we were looking for fabric for the bride's maid dresses. I saw the needle through the button sculpture and I just had to make her pose:)


Getting to JFK via the subways when my luggage had expanded (due to shopping of course) was an adventure as ever. Those A trains to far rockaway never stop where they should, but I made it. As a whole the adventure was great, and I would recommend visiting my neice to anyone:)