Hey, new content!

It's been just over a month since my last post. Not that there haven't been Happenings. I just haven't had the steam to write about them--rather, after sitting at the computer all day for work, I'm not so thrilled about logging in at home.

The real story is I'm cheating on Blogger with Facebook.

Despite the lapse, I ran across something post-worthy--a Rolling Stone article on John McCain that ought to be required reading for anyone planning to vote in November.

It's a long, astonishing and worthwhile profile of the career (Navy and political) and the behavior of the original neocon/Maverick/womanizer/POW who wants to be commander in chief.

Make-Believe Maverick
A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty

TIM DICKINSON

Posted Oct 16, 2008 7:00 PM

Click here to read: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23316912/makebelieve_maverick/print

When McCain said in the last debate that the next president needs a calm, steady hand, I snort-laughed at the notion he would provide that. The article shoots even more holes in the carefully polished facade.

Enjoy!

Oops, I forgot I have a blog!

The office slows down after the Symposium, but not nearly as much as I hoped. I'm in the thick of planning regionals in Seattle, Independence, MO, the Bay Area and Washington D.C. That's keeping me hopping!

I recently joined Facebook (officially to promote Sunstone events), which has been a delightful way to reconnect with friends and to spend/waste time adding apps and writing on people's walls. I opted not to Friend my step kids, thinking that would be weird and terribly uncool. I'm easy to find if they want to Friend me--and that's fine as long as it's their idea.

We have a house guest staying with us--Ms. Self Portrait As is our writer/poet in residence for the next couple of weeks until her apartment is ready. We've had a lovely time hanging out, taking walks and talking politics.

We went to the Ogden Farmer's Market Saturday and scored some end-of-day bargains on gloriously fresh tomatoes and melon. We also signed up for Winder Farms grocery delivery service--again, lured by the bargains and freebies the guy threw in.

When I went online to check their full list of products, I wondered if this was a good idea. Yes, it saves time to have weekly deliveries, but I still have to go to the store/Costco to get produce and items Winder doesn't carry and their products often cost more. I'll give it a whirl, but I'm not sure it's going to be a lasting relationship.

And to finish it off, a fun little tidbit from the Deseret News. Who knew Gary Coleman moved to Payson?

Riveted

So I picked up my new iPhone yesterday. I type geriatrically. I still haven't figured out all its tricks yet. I feel it is safe to say I will always have something to do in dull church meetings.

Briefly, some news

As if posting hasn't been light enough lately, I'm going into full symposium mode next week. Officially, it's August 6-9, but I'll be at work tomorrow afternoon trying to get some last-minute things done before the real time crunch.

I'm solo again; Mike's in Texas teaching his last class, rescheduled thanks to Hurricane Dolly. Weekday classes were also rescheduled for the weekend, which didn't occur to the schedulers and displaced Mike's class from their meeting rooms. Such fun.

A bit of good news: we terminated our listing agreement with the agent we (meaning me, mostly) were unhappy with and we're relisting the house with the agent we used when we were house hunting in McAllen. Mike is meeting with her Monday to go over the details. We'll probably pour some more $$ into replacing carpet and painting the interior and hope it will sell with the new representation.

This week's decision: board or find a pet sitter? We'll be staying in SLC for the symposium and will be off to So Cal for a few days afterward. Don't know which is the better option. There's one licensed, bonded in-home pet sitter in the yellow pages and a bunch of boarding facilities. PK is always so hate-filled after being boarded. Plus not all kitties are up to date on their shots--and that's not something I really have time to deal with. I guess I just answered my own question.

Must turn in after a long, lazy day.

Today: My Radio Debut

From Sunstone Blog:

New Sunstone directors Stephen Carter and Mary Ellen Robertson will be interviewed this afternoon on Van Hale’s radio show, Mormon Miscellaneous. We’ll discuss the upcoming Salt Lake Sunstone Symposium and forthcoming issues of Sunstone magazine.

Mormon Miscellaneous airs live in Salt Lake City from 5:00-7:00 pm MST on radio station KTKK 630 AM and streams live on the Internet at http://www.k-talk.com and mms://stream.netro.ca/ktkk .

If you’d like to ask questions during the broadcast, the Salt Lake Call-in Number is 254-5855. Callers outside of Salt Lake Number can call in to 801-470-5855.

Questions and response via email during the program are welcomed at van.hale@k-talk.com

If you can’t catch the live broadcast, you can listen to it later as a podcast at http://www.mormonmiscellaneous.com/.

Tis the Season

I'm in Utah, but Mike is in South Texas dealing with this:



The National Weather Service just downgraded Dolly to a Category 1 Hurricane--good news as she pushes inland toward Hidalgo County.

Dolly's supposed to arrive in our part of the Rio Grande Valley around 7:00 pm. UTPA campus is closed for the next few days. I'm keeping an eye on things via The Monitor's web site.

Besides the canceled flights, power outages, hurricane force winds, rain and inevitable flooding, Dolly is stirring up controversy. Apparently, the Red Cross refuses to work at any RGV shelters because of the region's deteriorated levee system and potential for serious flooding. They will provide aid after the storm passes, but encourage people to evacuate instead.

Since Mike is driving back to UT with moving truck #2, he called the airlines and got a credit for the unused half of his round trip flight, scheduled to leave Monday. A little sliver lining in Dolly's blustering clouds for us.

The Internets are on!

Managed to get everything reconnected this morning. Yippee!

Now I'm trying to find where (or, more likely IF) I can buy tahini anywhere in Ogden. I'm hankering to make hummus and I can't find tahini to go in it. Sheesh, I could get it easier than this in South Texas. Is it locked up with the liquor?

CA Connection

My dear friend over at Divergent Pathways wrote an awesome blog post on her CA friends and made mention of the b-day BBQ. Just the thing I needed while I'm emotionally in Shitsville.

Incommunicado

The wireless Internet is down at our house for the foreseeable future. If you need to reach me on weekends and evenings, calling is the best bet.

Those Darn Cats!

I came home Tuesday night to find a serving platter from our set of fancy wedding china shattered on the kitchen floor. The first casualty from that set. Oh, did I rail at the kitties about that! They know better than to get on the counters.

Mike's broken a couple of bowls of our everyday china. I just keep buying more sets at Target.

My mom says she'll replace the platter as an anniversary present. I'll just have to keep the replacement away from naughty, counter-jumping kitties. Wonder if those motion detectors/counter top deterrents work?

Photos from the Quarentanera BBQ

I won't caption each because Blogger puts them next to the wrong photos.

Party shots of family, friends and Dash, the cupcake-snatching Scottie. Guests by the pond and with the b-day girl. My old CA ward was nicely represented; enough of us have moved to Utah that we may do a Pasadena Ward satellite book group.

I must object to the 60 candles that were used on the cakes and cupcakes. That's just WRONG.

The last picture needs some explaining. My SIL Kelly is obsessed with my shoes. Within minutes of first meeting her, she buried my shoes in the sand at Laguna Beach. On the way back from Lake Powell last summer, we hid her shoes in the microwave and dishwasher and suggested that a third pair were hidden somewhere else in the house. I should have known better than to leave her in our bedroom unattended. This was her little birthday gift to me: ALL my shoes in the bed and more under the mattress. Thanks, Kell. When's your birthday again?

Cracked Up

The week we left Texas, I drove the minivan after a couple of days of using Mike's car. There was a new injury to the windshield--a whorl-shaped rock hit that looked like the Target logo. Great.

Since the move, I've been driving the gas-sipping Honda to work. Both routes on my commute to SLC are under construction, so the truck traffic kicks up a lot of extra gravel.

On Wednesday night, I heard yet another thwack to the windshield. Didn't think much of it.

Thursday morning I walked out to the car and noticed a foot-long crack curving from under the wiper and up across the windshield on the passenger side. Holy crapoly. Like we need another thing to fix.

Windshields, take a number behind the ailing AC unit, the unwelded gate opener, the steeply pitched driveway we all scrape pulling in, the stairs that need railings, the wood trim that needs repair and paint, the windows that need replacing, the water gauge on the pond that doesn't work, the weeds that need pulling, the boxes that need unpacking, etc., etc.

We're ALONE

For the first time in more than a month, Mike and I are home alone.

The two youngest step daughters went home today. 18 was here for a week and seemed to be in a better mood. 15 was a great helper during our move and--get this--won over PK, the crabby Abby by the end of her month-long stay. He actually lets her pet him.

It probably helped that the past week was action packed; July 4 weekend in Idaho Falls included boating, movies, fireworks and BBQs, then a birthday/housewarming BBQ at our place, taking everyone to Lagoon on my birthday and Mike taking 15 and 18 indoor skydiving. What's not to enjoy?

Speaking of enjoyment, I have a groovy birthday present headed my way July 11. We went to the Verizon store to check out Blackberries and the damn things were SO frustrating to me. We walked over to the Apple store and two helpful sales associates introduced me to the iPhone. It was easy, intuitive. I was hooked. So I'll be getting an iPhone come July 11. Mike got an iTouch and a Mac Book through work; it's looking like we're headed out of PC-ville.

I'll post some photos from the BBQ tomorrow. In the meantime, we ought to be making the most of our alone time--and that doesn't mean sitting side by side working on adjacent computers.

Ogden Craigslist

I've been a leetle disappointed with some of the Craigslist people. I've had no problem recycling empty moving boxes on CL before.

So far, of the 9 people who contacted me about the boxes before I took down the ad Saturday afternoon, the very first people to respond were the only ones to show up when they said they were coming. And they didn't take many.

The second caller told me Tuesday he'd pick up boxes Thursday morning, so I put off three other callers. When he didn't show, I called the next two people on my list. One said she'd come Friday night or Saturday, but never showed, either.

I called the next woman on the list and said they had a day to pick up boxes. I got a call back from her husband Saturday morning, who said they desperately needed the boxes--don't give them away! But we were at the house until 6:30 pm and he didn't show up.

When we got home from our Saturday evening jaunt to SLC, there was a minivan in our driveway and two women flattening boxes. I have no idea which callers they were and at this point, I didn't much care. They took most of the boxes we had on the front porch.

I'll empty a few more boxes today, call the next person and give them my new spiel: there are 4 other people on my list. You have one day to pick up any boxes you want. If you don't show up, I call the next person. You snooze, you lose.

Weekend Update

Slept in Saturday--my first time in several weeks. Did some in-house puttering, laundry, tidying, finishing a murder mystery, fielding calls about our empty moving boxes. Mike worked outside draining the pond/watering the front lawn. 15 joined her cousins for a day at Lagoon; we dog sat for their newly acquired big shaggy poodle, Bob Dog.

Mike had bought tickets to the SLC soccer team, but we got too late a start to redeem them before kickoff. We stopped at my office to check SLC movie times but realized if we went to a later show, 15 would have no way of getting in the house. So we drove back to Ogden, picked up Thai takeout, went home and watched 3:10 to Yuma.

About an hour into the movie, we see flashing lights on the street outside. Uncle Matt got pulled over right in front of our house for running a stop sign a few blocks back. He ended up with a warning; as soon as the cops drove off, we poured out of the house to rib Matt and find out how Lagoon day went. 15 had a lot of fun. Magic Mountain is still her favorite, though.

We found out it was stake conference Sunday, so we're blowing it off. I guess we'll get around to attending the new ward eventually. The people there were fairly disinterested in Mike when he went and we're toying with the idea of attending a Spanish ward instead. That might mean walking THREE blocks to the building instead of two.

The long road to Ogden

It was a long drive, but we made it to Ogden safe and (relatively) sound late last Thursday.

Our adventures came mostly at the end of the trip--a motel that failed to
honor our reservation for a pet-friendly room. An aggressive semi truck
that HAD to pass Mike as the passing lane was ending, forcing Mike and
an oncoming vehicle onto the shoulders. A boneheaded pickup driver who
gunned it to pull out into traffic; this threw one of his dogs out of
the truck and onto the road, where we all slammed on our brakes to
avoid hitting the poor animal. Took the guy over a mile to realize and
turn around.

When we got inside the house, the upstairs reeked of natural gas. We slept downstairs and had a tech come out the next morning. He found one leak--the improperly hooked up dryer--but there was a second one somewhere between the meter and some hookup in the house. We don't know where it is, but the tech assured us it's small.

Some furniture was damaged during the trip--a broken buffet leg, broken trim
on an antique piece and scratches all across the stainless steel fridge. So far, all the china and breakables are in their original condition.

The people all arrived intact, if a little short tempered after 3 days on the road together. 15 was a great help wrangling the kitties and we had some nice conversations along the way. It's been fun getting to know her as her own person. She'll be with us until early July. The two oldest stepkids flew out for the weekend to help with the unpacking and 17 will join us for the July 4 weekend.

Monday I spent my first day in the office getting acquainted with the computer
system and looking at the task of organizing 100+ symposium sessions for the preliminary program.

I'll post pictures of the house & pond once we have more unpacked. Turns out 2 koi were left behind and we have a HUGE bullfrog in residence. We had a BBQ on Father's Day and it's a great house for entertaining.

Alas, we're still dealing with surprises. Yesterday's was a flooded cellar
and 6 broken sprinkler heads and 2 broken lines (now repaired). Mike's
draining the pond to replace burned out underwater lights. I'm pulling
weeds and finding places for unpacked things to live. Over the weekend,
I plan to try out the public transit and see what my commute is like by
train. And we'll probably hit a soccer game tomorrow night.

No Room at Days Inn--for Our Pets

We pulled into Albuquerque around 11:30 pm. When Mike went to check in to the pet-friendly room we reserved and had already paid for, he was informed that all the pet-friendly rooms were full.

The owners of this particular Days Inn, he was told, would fine us $250 if we tried to sneak the pets in. Hard to sneak 3 cat carriers, a large hooded litter box and a 5 pound container of kibble past security cameras.

This meant our cats would have to stay in the minivan overnight. Had I been there at check in, I would have demanded Days Inn find us another hotel in the neighborhood since it was their screw up. The $10 off our bill wasn't enough to placate me.

So going forward, I plan to write letters of complaint to the chain and to the owners and hereafter institute a lifetime boycott of all Days Inns. Care to join me?

The Crazy Has Begun

What a week!

Monday: I had a friend come over to help pack. We got a few boxes done, but mostly we talked.

Tuesday: lunch out with the co-workers at City Cafe. I will miss the avocado stuffed with Texas style chicken salad. Worked late.

Wednesday: worked late, picked up some stuff at Target and got home in time to make Enrichment night reminder calls.

Thursday: Morning: baby shower for one of the office's work study students. Loads of food and baby goods. Afternoon: the office send off. Supervisor told the assembled co-workers & friends I'd done a phenomenal job--I was kind but relentless and I'd never raised my voice when things got frustrating (well, not in public, anyway). More divine food and great company. Evening: Enrichment night with me presenting on 72 hour kits/preparedness. Very tired.

Friday: Last round of meetings, lunch out with supervisor and my successor, more desk-clearing tasks. Picked up Exit checklist at HR. Had planned for this to be my last day, but will go in Monday to handle a few loose ends and check out.

Stopped by co-worker's house where she'd been unpacking boxes all day. I took about 25 of them off her hands and may get more this weekend if needed. Nice timing! Dinner out with Mike at City Cafe.

Box packing has begun in earnest. Mike snuck up behind me and scared me so badly that I burst into tears. Something to do with stress, maybe? He apologized profusely and eventually I started laughing. We've agreed he's not going to do that again while we're packing/moving.

Saturday: Church folk coming over to help pack. Hope that will keep some of the chaos at bay. Sort of.

Last Requests

There were two things I wanted to do before leaving the RGV: take a canoe trip down the Rio Grande and have dinner at Tupinamba in Reynosa.

Given all the work we've had to do on weekends, the canoe trip was unlikely to happen. However, the Monday we got back from the last graduation, we decided to dine south of the border.

We parked at the city lot close to the bridge, paid the 50 cent pedestrian toll each and walked across the bridge.



Scott of www.dallasfood.org had recommended Tupinamba back when we first moved to the RGV. I'd eaten Tupinamba's delicious food at the McAllen International Food Festival last year, but hadn't made it to the restaurant itself.

We followed Scott's instructions to veer slightly right off the main square, dodging local drivers as we crossed the street. We went one block too far to the left and ended up approaching the restaurant from the back. (Note: Tupinamba is on the same block as Carl's Jr. on the main square). I turned around saw a pair of blue ornamented iron doors, looked up and saw the restaurant's name. Voila!

There were about four groups of diners when we arrived. We perused the menu and on Scott's recommendation ordered queso divorciado (melted cheese with a meat sauce), empanadas, carne Tampiquena for Mike and cabrito for me.

I'd meant to order a different kind of empanada, but we didn't see the ones Scott recommended on the menu. The kind we ended up with I suspect were goat organ meat--possibly brains. My culinary Spanish wasn't precise enough to tell. They were pretty good.

I ordered a cabrito shoulder, which was gamey and flavorful. In hindsight, I wondered if the thigh/dark meat would have been more tender. Anyhoo, we chowed down and enjoyed the experience.

Here's me with my goat shoulder. Mmmmmm. And outside the restaurant.




We had to go through border security on the way back--show ID, open my purse for inspection and explain what we were doing in Mexico. Just eating goat!

Bloomin'

Before the last open house, we did a bit of landscaping in the front yard. Added 3 Texas firebushes, hot pink pentas and purple lantana to the front bed (all drought tolerant) and put in 3 large agapanthus interspersed with Spanish lavender on the other side of the walkway.

Our real estate agent was impressed we'd done it ourselves--well, with some consulting help from the landscape guy at Waugh's Nursery.





We still have a couple of orange blossom jasmine to plant, but otherwise we're done.