First of all, if you are wondering why there is a two week gap between posts, rest assured that we aren’t dead. We’re just really, really tired and also lazy. Mostly lazy. Last weekend I spent in New York City on the first annual Moss girl trip with Rikki and Kathy. There will be pictures and stories to come in future blogs once I got all my photos organized, I promise. I know, I said that about Las Vegas and our trips to Vermont and Minnesota, too, but aren’t you excited to have things to look forward too? Like pictures from other people’s trips? So exciting!

Twice this summer, once on the way to Vermont and just last weekend on the way to New York, I got to take an overnight flight. I had never taken one before but after a year of practicing sleeping on the bus to and from work every day I figured it would be awesome. I’d get on the plane, fall asleep and arrive at my destination refreshed with the whole day ahead of me. So efficient! No time wasted on the plane! Well, I have to say that I was sadly mistaken. There were some things that went well. For one, JetBlue gives everyone eye masks and ear plugs, dims the lights and does everything in hushed tones like it’s nap time in kindergarten.

This works great to lull you almost to sleep so they can cruelly wake you up once they start clanking around with the drink cart. (Also, if you want your husband to pretend like he doesn’t know you, just put an eye mask on under your glasses. What I considered an ingenius method to wear the eye mask without squishing my glasses into my face was apparantly pretty goofy looking.) Despite all my practice on the bus, the eye mask, ear plugs and inflatable neck pillow, it took me a long time to fall asleep. I ended up getting only a couple hours of sleep, and pretty much whined about it the whole time I was awake. As Devon said, after we finally arrived in Vermont, “I would pay twice as much for a ticket not to do that again.” I assumed he meant that he was tired, but I’m thinking from the look he gave me that I might have something to do with that.

The trip last weekend was on Delta, and they didn’t give us eye masks or ear plugs but they did give us a cheap fleece blanket that got my clothes all red. I was determined that this flight would go better, but I didn’t count on the man next to me falling asleep and gradually encroaching on my leg and arm space. I hadn’t realized that the arm rest wasn’t down until this started to happen and with his whole shoulder blocking it I couldn’t reach over and pull it down. It also meant I couldn’t recline my seat either. One hour into the flight I was pressed as close to the window as I could be to avoid touching the sleeping man who was halfway into my space, and my savior in the form of the drink cart came by. The man woke up and once he sat up to drink – BAM! I pulled that middle arm rest down, reclined my seat and slept peacefully for the rest of the flight.

In all, there were some things I really liked about flying overnight. I liked how un-rushed and relaxed everyone was checking in and going through security. It’s nice to be at the airport when it isn’t busy and hectic. I also like that when I got in, I had the whole day ahead of me. That’s about it.

The scene: A big box store (not Target) a few miles from our house. Devon and I are flying to Vermont in a few hours and still frantically trying to fix the sprinklers, but Devon needs to make a run to Big Box Store for some thread tape and travel size toiletries. He decides to skip the line at the cashiers and uses the self checkout. Due to inadvertant washings and a tough life in his wallet, his card needs to be swiped several times to work. His transaction goes through but the screen reads “See Cashier.” so the cashier waddles over to check out the problem.

Can I see your credit card?

Sure, here you go.

Peon compares signature on credit card to hastily scrawled signature on electronic screen.

These don’t appear to match.

I’m in a hurry . . .

Peon, still examining signatures closely.

Can I see your license?

Sure.

Hands license to her.

Peon compares signature on license to signature on electronic screen.

Still not a match.

Devon dumbfounded for a second.

You can compare the names on the credit card to the name and picture on the ID. It’s me.

I don’t know. The signatures don’t match. Driver’s licenses can be forged anywhere.

Umm, I’m pretty sure I’m going to board a plane with that same license in a few hours. It’s real.

Well, I just don’t know. The system suspected something, which is why you got the see cashier message.

You don’t think it’s because I had to swipe my card over three times to get it to work?

I don’t think so. Why would you think that would cause an error?

Because I write software all day and that’s what I would make the system do. You know, to catch all the identity thieves.

Peon is now eyeing Devon even more suspiciously because he just acknowledged that he was a hacker.

I just don’t know why the signatures don’t match . . .

You’re right, I stole a credit card and got a fake license so I could but $18 worth of thread tape, travel sized bottles and a razor.

Peon is now eyeing Devon even more suspiciously because he just admitted he had a stolen credit card.

Do you have a manager I can talk to?

Peon disappears and comes back with a worker who is clearly a friend and not a manager. She is explaining the story as they walk back.

Peon friend examines signatures on screen, card and credit card.

Yep, the signatures don’t match.

Devon is now pinching himself to make sure he’s awake and wondering how much he values his travel bottles and razors.

I’m sorry, the signatures just don’t match.

Are you serious? I was charged for this stuff. I’m not going to leave without it.

Peon looks unsure what to do.

. . .

Get Loss Prevention over here.

Peon looks at Devon dubiously like he is tricking her, but retrieves the Loss Prevention man.

Can I see your license, sir?

Devon hands Loss Prevention Man his license. Man compares face and name on license to Devon and the name on the credit card.

So what’s the problem?

Absolutely nothing.

Devon takes his bag and leaves.

The other week when Devon and I were on vacation we visited both of our families and got to see both of our home baseball teams play the Rays. Yep, we just happened to catch the Rays at both places. Anyway, that also meant that within the span of four days we got to see games at the oldest and newest ballparks in the majors: Fenway Park and Target Field. They are both great places to watch baseball games and I’m not going to say which one was the best because I think both Devon and I would differ in opinion on that one. I think it’s safe to say that we love both of them, despite the fact that they are as opposite as could be. Fenway is everything historic and old fashioned, and Target Field is completely modern and high-tech. I put together some pictures I took of Fenway (some of these are from the past couple years because I didn’t know I was going to do this when we were there a few weeks ago) with pictures of Target Field to show just how different the two parks feel.

Fenway panorama. Ryan took a much nicer one but I could get it to work for some reason so you’re stuck with my own pictures.

Target Field panorama. We all got there a couple hours early to eat and walk around the park and were suprised to see that lots of other people had the same idea. That certainly didn’t ever happen at the Dome.

Outside Fenway on the left and outside Target Field on the right.

Concourses of Fenway (left) and Target Field (right).

Models of Fenway (lego; left) and Target Field (right).

Stairs to upper levels in Fenway and escalator in Target Field.

Wally the Green Monster and TC the Bear.

Manual scoreboard in Fenway and huge scoreboard in Target Field.

You can’t go wrong watching a game at either place. We were lucky enough to have perfect weather for both games, our home teams won each time, and we got to enjoy watchin them with our families. We couldn’t have asked for a couple more perfect evenings.

 Let me tell you a story. First of all, I will give you some background. In Utah, if you want your lawn to live, you need to water it somehow. Otherwise by the end of June your grass is crispy and dead, which probably makes mowing easier but isn’t very pleasant looking. If you are lucky, you live in a house with an automatic sprinkler system that takes care of the watering for you. We are among those lucky ones only because the fall before we moved in, Devon’s cousins were living in the house and they put in the sprinkler system with his uncle. Then they got a job in Texas and moved out and we were the lucky ones that got to enjoy having the sprinkler system when we moved in the following spring. They also re-did the lawn after installing the spinkler system and it looks great. So great that I’m absolutely paranoid about killing it. Anyway, so we move in and take over caretaking duties on the house. Smooth sailing with the sprinklers until this year, all because of this:

That, my friends, is an O-ring. Except right now, it looks like a C-ring. It’s supposed to look like this:

Let me tell you the story of all the trouble caused by this little O-ring. So Devon is at home on break, minding his own business, when Pleasant Grove Water Works knocks on our door and informs him that our east sprinkler section was running too long so they shut off our irritgation water. This section of sprinklers has on occasion been known to get stuck on, but this year it has happened a couple times and this time Pleasant Grove noticed before we were able to manually turn it off. We call the city and have them turn the water back on, but we realize something has to be done because we are leaving for vacation in a few days and with hot weather ahead it would be very bad if the sprinklers got stuck running and the city turns off the water again. We research online and talk to people and it seems like the valve is the problem. We find the valve box, open it and lo and behold, one of the valves is dripping. See the water between on the ground between the first and second valves? (Also see the giant spider web in the corner of the box? Ick. It housed a giant spider, which we sprayed the heck out of with spider killer spray. No, we’re not humane.)

We figure this is the problem, and go buy a new valve. Devon installs it the day we leave while I’m frantically packing and getting ready for our trip. Installation is successful, until we turn on the water and now the new valve is dripping too, and even more than before. After a minor freakout by me (“Aaaaaahhh! What are we going to do!!!!! It’s not fixed!!! We can’t leave the water shut off!!!”) we run over to our kind and wonderful neighbors and hire the neighbor kid to turn on the water for that section manually every other day and have the rest of the lawn water automatically. Good neighbors are priceless, and ours are more than good.

Flash forward, we come back from vacation and the drip has now almost filled the whole box with water. We (and by we I mean Devon) turn off the water and take the whole valve manifold apart and find that the leak is the broken O-ring. Yay! We found the problem! We run to Home Depot to get a new one. Sadly, they don’t have one. By the way, probably the most annoying place to be in the summer is the irrigation aisle at Home Depot. It’s always full of people walking around with glazed looks on their faces holding a broken piece of sprinkler equipment. No one knows what they are doing and it’s impossible to find anything. Anyway, we decide we’ll need to look at an actual sprinkler store, so the next day Devon runs to Sprinkler World. The friendly people at Sprinkler World (they really are friendly. And knowledable. It’s a great place that you hope you don’t need to go to.) give him the bad news. They don’t carry that kind of manifold because – and here’s the fun part – when one part of it breaks you have to replace the whole thing. That’s right, folks, the WHOLE thing. Even just for a little O-ring. So Devon buys a new manifold. Brings it home, realizes the manifold is too big for the current box. Buys a bigger box. Digs out old box, moving a lot of water-soaked clay soil. Fun. Realizes the tubes to connect to the manifold are now too short so he needs to add extentions. Needs glue for that. After two trips to Sprinkler World and two trips to Home Depot, he finally has it looking like this:

He hooked it up just as it was getting dark and we tested them. They work! We filled in the hole and hope we don’t have any more sprinkler repairs this year. All because of one little O-ring.

We haven’t updated the blog in a while and it’s not just because we are extremely lazy. We went on vacation for a week and a half and I promise there will be pictures and posts on it soon. For right now, though, I would like to educate those of you who have always lived in colder climates, like me and Devon. If you plan on leaving your black truck parked outside for a week and a half and the weather during that time will have temperatures reaching 100 with sunny days, do not leave unopened cans of soda in your cupholders. If you do, this might result:

It’s an awesome surprise to welcome you back from a week away.

I’ve been at my job one year now! People always ask how work is going and I never really have blogged about work because it’s really not the smartest thing to do. I do like my job, though, and that’s saying a lot considering I liked my last job and was sad to leave it. If you want to take a cool virtual tour of where I work and see an example research lab like the one I work in (all the labs on each floor are combined in one room and the benches go in forever!) go here. My co-worker and I discovered the tour on the HCI homepage the other day and spent a good ten minutes virtually touring a building that we were physically in and could tour in reality any time we want. Somehow it just seemed cooler seeing it virtually.

Rhett got a little fishing pole for his birthday because he’s wanted one for a while. Because of that, now Ryan, Devon and Cody (Rhett’s uncle on Aubrey’s side) have also gotten fishing poles so they can go fishing with him. They really didn’t need much of an excuse. Anyway, the boys have gone fishing a couple times this weekend. The first trip was to a reservoir near Ryan and Aubrey’s house. It was probably the most manmade looking reservoir I’ve ever seen. The whole thing was a cement pit with sloped sides. It is supposedly stocked with trout every week but no one had much luck catching anything.

We were planning on camping there with Ryan and Aubrey’s family until Devon discovered that the cement covered by water is actually pretty slippery and steep. I’d say he fell in, but a more accurate description would be that he slid in, since he never actually fell and really just stepped into a slippery spot where it was impossible to get back up. Still, we all watched him go down in slow motion until we realized he couldn’t stop and then I ran down to the edge of the water like a crazy woman to help him up because in my mind he was going straight for the bottom and wouldn’t ever return. We certainly weren’t boy scout campers because we were not prepared for an event of that sort and went back home because we didn’t have extra dry clothes for Devon.

Today the boys went fishing again (Devon found it fitting to wear his Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food t-shirt today) at a little pond near our house. Cody caught a couple fish and let Rhett reel one in which made his day. He was a little bit energetic with it on the hook and the poor fish probably has a headache from being whacked into some rocks a couple times but is was alive enough to swim away at least.

It’s baseball season again, and time for more Bees games. We went to a game last night with some friends from Neumont on the perfect summer night – about 60 degrees with a sharp breeze and intermittent rain. Yeah, so maybe it wasn’t the best of conditions, but we already had the tickets and fortunately we have a tough group of friends. Luckily we got a cozy(ish) spot under the upper deck and stayed dry, and $1 hot dogs helped keep us warm.

One thing I didn’t know about Utah until I had lived here during the summer was that nearly every city seems to have a week-long celebration where there are things like rodeos, parades, face painting, food vendors, fireworks and races. The celebrations are staggered throughout the summer, and each city has a different name for them. Pleasant Grove, where we live, has Strawberry Days this week. Spanish Fork, where Ryan and Aubrey live, has Fiesta days at the end of July. Provo has the Freedom Festival over the 4th of July and the list goes on. I wouldn’t say it’s the celebrations themselves that make Utah a great place to live, although they have some fun things for families, but it’s really the sense of community that I enjoy. Utahns on a whole are actively involved in their neighborhoods and communities. They tend to be a civic-minded people that don’t concentrate all their attention on themselves and their own homes. In fact, Utah is the top in the nation for volunteer rates, number of hours per volunteer and volunteer retention – and has been for the past three years. It leads the nation in volunteering for every single age group. It’s definitely an impressive thing to live in a community where you actively have to search for volunteer opportunities. I think a strong sense of community makes Utah a great place to live.

Rhett really liked watching the video of the robot pushing the cans around, so we brought the actual robot over to Ryan and Aubrey’s today to show him it in real life. Devon programmed it to just drive around and turn if it saw something within a foot or so in front of it, so Rhett was entertained for a good half and hour following it around and putting his hand in front of the sensors to make it turn for him. He was pretty sad to see it go, and afterward this is what he told Ryan:

I personally like that he not only wanted a robot, but wanted a black computer like Devon’s to control it. The kid’s pretty smart.