What Have I Been Up To?

So it's been a little while since I've written anything.  I realize that.  Lest you think I've just been sitting in my basement staring at the wall, here's a little sampling of what I've been doing in the last few months:
I went to the Brigham City Peach Days Festival.  It's kind of like Draper Days- food trucks, carnival rides, etc.  And THE BEST dutch oven peach cobbler ever.  They top it with ice cream from the fat boy factory on the Idaho border.  It's just squares of vanilla ice cream like you would get inside an ice cream sandwich. Delicious!  There was also lots of good people-watching to be done.
I went to Octoberfest at Snowbird and saw a lot of lederhosen. I ate spaetzle and apple strudel. In Germany, the spaetzle I had always came with either just butter or with grated cheese.  But at Snowbird it was covered in gravy.  So good! And more great people-watching.
I hiked waterfall canyon, like we used to do all the time when we were kids.  It looked a little familiar, but I think the city or somebody must have redone the trail to make it a little easier.  It was still nice.  And the view was amazing.  You can see the whole Ogden area from up there!
I went to the theater and saw Back to the Future on October 21, 2015, the day Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled to from 1985.  I hadn't seen that movie in a really long time!  It was pretty fun.
I hiked Ensign Peak for the first time ever.  It's one of those hikes you always hear about and figure that since it's just a few minutes away, you'll get to it eventually.  Well, I finally did!  And it was worth it.  Again, the view was incredible!  With all the leaves changing, and the sun hitting them just right, it couldn't have been better.  And it's only a mile roundtrip, so not bad.  Of course, that mile is straight up and then straight back down, but still fun.
We had our primary program at church. I'm the pianist, which is the best calling ever- I get to see the cuteness of the kids but don't have to deal with any discipline.  The crowning moment of the program came when we sang ALL 13 articles of faith. It was pretty cool.
Let's see, what else?  Now that the weather is cooling down, I've taken up evening and weekend runs again.  Not all the time, but I'll go running once or twice a week at night. Just short runs. And I try to go on Saturdays, but if it's going to be a busy day I'll just go to the gym instead.
That's just a very quick summary.  And sorry there aren't any pictures. I never think to take pictures until I get home and it's too late.

The Saga of the Shower, Continued (yes, it continues)

You may remember the nightmare of my shower remodel last summer.  It took from May until August to get my floor resloped (which ended up not being resloped at all) and to get a glass door installed.  I decided to live with the bad floor and just keep mopping out after every shower, and at least I had the door in.
What I never reported on, though, was that about a month after it was all finished, I noticed that the door was leaking and water was getting underneath the tiles,causing them to lift up a little bit, I imagine because the wood underneath was swelling and warping.  So I just stopped using that shower all together.  I was done. I gave up. That was it. Since then I've been using an upstairs shower.
But I decided I couldn't accept defeat forever, so I revisited the situation this summer.  A few weeks ago I called a remodeling company and got an estimate.  When the guy came to do the estimate, I gave him a very quick summary of my nightmare.  He asked how much the first guy had charged, and then was clearly nervous to give me his estimate.  I told him that I realized the first job was a joke and I was ready to spend more this time, so he should just let me have it.  And he did.  This time around it would cost me about 10 times what I paid last summer.  But it would be done for real.  And it would come with a two-year warranty.  So I signed up for it.  This time, rather than just replace two tiles (the wrong tiles), they would take out the whole floor, reslope everything, and then put in new tiles. And they would take care of the door while they were at it.
Over this last week the guy has been coming while I've been at work (he's Italian, so technically I have an Italian shower now, right?). He came after I left each morning and was gone by the time I got home, so I would just see the day's work and hope it was going well.  By the end, it looked spectacular.  Today I took my first shower (I wanted to give it a few days to make sure everything was dried and sealed), and I think it's a winner!  The water all drained, I didn't have to mop anything, and there was no water outside the door afterwards!  Woohoo!  This may (better be) the last time you all have to hear about my shower!
Unfortunately, with this and Lasik all at once, any fancy toys I had my eyes on (Corvette) will have to wait a while, or for my trust fund to make itself known.

Looks almost just like last year, but if you look carefully, you'll see one difference- no mop hanging on the wall!

You can see how the floor actually slopes toward the drain, not toward a few inches in front of the drain. Genius!

I Can See Clearly Now

As long as I’ve known about vision correction surgery, I’ve been uninterested in it.  My thought was that it was easy enough to correct my vision with contacts and glasses, so it wasn’t really worth the risk of slicing and dicing my eyes for possibly better vision.  But last year when I went to the eye doctor I bought just enough contacts to last me exactly one year.  I wasn’t really thinking about getting surgery, but in the back of my mind I was suddenly leaving that door open.  And in the past year my contacts have been annoying me more and more.  It’s a real bummer always trying to plan around them.  Am I going to be out late tonight?  Should I bring a contact case and some solution and my glasses in case my contacts get dried out?  Should I just wear glasses to wherever I’m going?  Will pictures be taken and will I mind being in glasses in those pictures forever?  It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but contacts and glasses really have become a big part of my life.  So over the past few months the idea of surgery has been creeping into my mind. 

I finally made a consultation appointment at one of the surgical centers in the valley for last week.  It was just a consultation.  The doctor’s office sent me a bunch of brochures ahead of time so I could know what to expect.  Those brochures, along with everything I was finding online, detailed the three most common vision correction surgeries: lasik, which is the simplest surgery and has the fastest recovery, but is for people with only the most basic vision problems and pretty good eye conditions; prk, which needs a few days recovery and is for people with worse vision; and ICL, which is the most complicated: it’s an implanted contact lens, and is for people with big pupils, dry eyes, and is twice as expensive.  My eye doctor has always told me that I have big pupils, and I know from life that I have dry eyes, so I was pretty confident that during my consultation the doctor would tell me I was only a candidate for ICL, which I wasn’t interested in doing, and I could live in peace knowing I had tried but it wasn’t worth the trouble.  So this consultation didn’t seem like a very big deal to me.  And then the doctor threw me for a loop. 

Oh, but first a tangent.  One of the tests during the exam was to form a triangle with both hands and look through it, then put it my hands in my lap (still with the triangle) and then look through it with the other eye.  I don’t know what this is supposed to test, but it turns out I’m ambidextrous.  Apparently, most people have to readjust their hands or have trouble finding their other eye.  I just went straight from eye to lap to eye with no problem.  So, neat. 

Anyway, after the technician ran all the tests and told me she thought I was a better candidate for PRK than lasik, the doctor came in and said I looked like a perfect candidate for lasik.  I was shocked.  I really wasn’t expecting that.  I asked a few questions, and she had good answers for all of them.  So I went out to the front desk to see when I could schedule a surgery.  I was expecting a couple months to still wrap my head around this.  I still hadn’t even decided if I wanted surgery.  I was only looking into the idea.  But they had an opening that Friday- four days later!  The idea of being able to see by the weekend was too much to resist, so I signed up (plus, it was the last day of their summer special pricing). 

I spent the rest of last week freaking out about whether I was making the right choice or if I was risking good enough vision with the possibility of losing it all.  By Friday I was mostly convinced that lasik was a good thing, but still not totally sure.  But I went anyway.  The surgery was gross.  Fast but gross.  Afterwards, I had to sit in the waiting room for a couple hours so the doctor could do a follow up before I left.  So I sat there with plastic shields taped to my face to keep me from touching my eyes (yep, like a dog with a cone on my head), putting eye drops in every 20 minutes.  After 2 hours, the doctor had me read some letters on the opposite wall of her exam room (I could read almost nothing, but she told me I was seeing 20/40 already, so whatever), and then my hometeacher and his wife came and picked me up (I had driven straight from work, so I needed two people- one to drive me and my car and one to drive their car).  I spent the rest of Friday night putting in eye drops every 20 minutes and retaping the plastic shields on.   It was really glamorous.  But nothing compared to the next morning when I woke up with my eyes crusted completely shut.  Super cute.  Once I broke through the grossness though, I could see!  I walked around my house marveling at how I could see clocks from a distance, I could tell when a spot on the floor was just the carpet being rubbed the wrong way and not a spider, I could see license plates on the cars outside!  It’s fantastic!  My eyes still hurt and I’m still doing a lot of eye drops, but it’s getting better each day.  Mostly it’s just fantastic!  I think the worst side effect is that I’m going to have to start cleaning my shower.  Because I can see it now.

My Garden

Since I have nothing else I feel like writing about just now, I thought I'd post some pictures of the progress my garden has made this year.  It was touch and go after my sprinklers died for a couple of weeks during the hottest June ever recorded, but everything came back to life (for the most part- my Medford mint was a casualty), and life is good. The bottom two pictures were taken this morning.  It may look like there's still a lot of bare dirt, but there are actually parsnips, beets, and rosemary in there that just don't show up very well.  Also, I'm eating tons of cherry tomatoes!  It's fantastic!  One big difference this year is that I've finally gotten rid of the pill bugs (sow bugs, roly polies, whatever you call them).  I decided at the beginning of the season that when the door to door pest control sales guys started coming around this year, I would buy into it.  And it's been a game changer!  In past years, I've had pill bug infestations.  They ate more of my garden than I did.  It was really gross.  They also swarmed in my window wells.  I'm not exaggerating.  There were thousands.  Gross.  And it's been every year I've lived here.  I've tried everything I know to get rid of them, but nothing worked.  And this year with the professionals taking care of them, they're gone.  I also don't have any spiders.  I never had much of a spider problem until last year, when it started getting pretty bad.  Anyway, I digress.  My garden is doing well, and I'm glad!

Midwesting

So as most of you know, Mary, Jenny and I went on a midwest road trip last week.  It was great fun.  I won't bore you with all the details.  I'll just bore you with MOST of the details!  And a few pictures.  We flew to Detroit (Detroit!!!) two Wednesdays ago.  Our plane landed a little after 1 am, and we got to our hotel a little after 2, so we didn't really see much of Detroit, but we could feel the general spirit and ambience, and that's enough to make anybody's year.  Great way to start the vacation.  Sidenote- it turns out that THE BEST way to travel is with somebody who works for a major hotel chain.  Free/cheap hotel rooms and upgrades and amenities?  Yes please!  More on that to come.  The next morning, after what felt like about 5 minutes of sleep, we went back to the airport and picked up a rental car.  It wasn't quite the cherry red Corvette I was hoping for.  Instead it was a bright yellow Hyundai Veloster.  I've actually always liked Velosters, so I was happy, but yellow was kind of a stretch.  Anyway, we drove down to Sandusky, Ohio, where Cedar Point is located.  Cedar Point is one of the best amusement parks ever.  Anybody from the midwest will argue that it's the best, but I'd put it just about even with Magic Mountain.  Maybe a little better.  The day we were there, it was certainly better.  There were no lines!  We just walked onto whatever rides we wanted!  And they were all roller coasters!  So much fun!  Until about 5 or 6 when the heavens opened and Mary and Jenny were introduced to the phenomenon of midwestern rain storms.  Within about 5 minutes, we went from a very pleasant sunny day, to rivers and lakes where the sidewalks had been.  All the rides shut down and everybody took shelter wherever they could.  We huddled under one of the weight-guessing game booths, and then realized the nearby photobooth was empty, so we took refuge there (while Jenny sat out in the rain).  Employees were handing out plastic bags to wrap purses in because anything exposed to the rain was sopping within seconds.  It was kind of fun, but kind of a bummer.  It eventually stopped and we managed to go on one more ride before it rained again.  And the second rain was the real rain.  We ran to the car and just made it before all the land became a lake.  We had to drive to Cleveland that night, and it really was like driving through a lake.  But we made it. And Cleveland rocks!

Mary and Jenny on the log ride

No Lines!

Look at all those roller coasters! (this picture is NOT of the van- I just couldn't get the coasters without the van)

The next morning, we (Jenny and I) went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum.  Mary went next door to the science museum and watched an IMAX.  The Rock and Roll Museum was a lot of fun.  My favorite part was a special exhibit on Paul Simon.  He's always been one of my favorites.

This entire exhibit is for the Pink Floyd song 'Another Brick in the Wall'.  This was the number one song on the day I was born, so I was happy to see it had its own exhibit.

 After the museums, we went to a Creole restaurant downtown.  It might have been the best food of the whole trip.  It was delicious (and cost the same as the Subway sandwich we got at Cedar Point).
We drove around Cleveland a bit and then headed out to Holland (Michigan!!!).  That was about a 5 hour drive, so maybe not the high point of the vacation.  And most of it was through Ohio. Holland is a tiny town (Michigan is full of tiny towns, each with their own themes and varieties- I love that) on Lake Michigan.  It was settled by the Dutch, and is modeled after Holland the country.  Every spring they have a big tulip festival, and they had a lot of Dutch-themed stores and restaurants.  We got there kind of late so didn't do much that night.  The next morning, we went to a highly recommended diner for brunch (got there after noon, so I guess it was lunch). Delicious.  Enough said.  Then we hit the beach.  We were a couple weeks earlier than the earliest I've ever been to Lake Michigan, and apparently those couple of weeks make a big difference.  The water was cold!  It wasn't so bad that we couldn't get in, but it took a while to really get numb before it was comfortable.  So it was kind of a 'sit on the sand and people-watch' beach day.  Still a lot of fun.  It was 80 degrees and sunny. You can't go wrong with Lake Michigan.

That night we drove to Grand Rapids, about an hour inland.  The next morning, we went to church (to a ward that my new next door neighbors just moved away from!), then went to Meijer Gardens.  It's a huge botanical and sculpture garden.  We didn't do much there, just wandered a bit, but it was gorgeous. Then we went to find a Frank Lloyd Wright house in the area that we had heard does free tours on Sundays.  When we got there, we found a crowd of people waiting for the tour, but no tour guide.  There was a phone number on the sign, so Mary called, and listened to a message saying that there are certain Sundays each year when they're closed, including that Sunday (probably for Fathers Day).  Would've been nice if they'd put that on the website.  So we walked around and looked in the windows.

That area of Grand Rapids reminded me a lot of Ogden.  It looked like it was built around the same time as our Ogden neighborhood, with a lot of historic homes.  It was pretty.  Next we headed to St. Joseph, another tiny town on Lake Michigan. We didn't know anything about this one except that Jenny was able to get us a hotel room there.  It was wonderful.  The beach was perfect.  Long beach grass, clean white sand, warm (comfortable without numbing!) clear water.  Seriously great.  And the views were spectacular.  We spent a while on the beach and then went to the downtown area.  It kind of had a Park City feel, only on the beach instead of in the mountains.  Lots of people were out walking around, playing in a big fountain, etc.  Lots of fun.

Michigan gives me super powers!

Duck faces with the duck statue

Bright and early the next morning, we drove to Chicago.  Yes, I drove in downtown Chicago, and we all survived.  We checked into the Drake Hotel, which is THE hotel in Chicago.  The whole time we were there I felt like somebody was going to find out we weren't one of them and relocate us to the Holiday Inn or something.  But they were nice.  After our day's activities, we came in and the beds had been turned down and there was a plate of super fancy chocolates and macarons (not macaroons- their fancier cookie cousin the macaron) with a note from the general manager.  Jenny said this is a very nice amenity that hotels do and she was shocked that we got it.  But back to the day's activities.  We went to the Museum of Science and Industry.  This museum could be renamed 'The museum of everything you'd want to do in your summer vacation'. We spent all afternoon there and could have spent several more hours easily.  They had agriculture, cars, trains, planes, biology, anatomy, weather, chemistry, physics, a Tesla coil that they fired up every 30 minutes, even chicks hatching from their eggs! etc.  The place was huge.  Oh, and they had a mirror maze!  It was cool.  After the museum we went to Gino's East for deep dish pizza (and a chicken sandwich for those of us who don't like blue cheese or brisket on our pizza).  It was a really fun place.  Every surface was covered in signatures of people who have eaten there.  So we signed the wall.  And there were tons of photos of celebrities who have been there.  Walking back to the hotel, we found out that all of Chicago was under a tornado watch.  The sky was green and had very ominous clouds. I wasn't too nervous until I saw some Chicago natives rushing home talking about how creepy it was.  But the storm passed with nothing out of the ordinary.
The next day was fantastic.  We left the Drake and walked 1 1/2 miles to the Palmer House Hotel, the oldest hotel in the country.  We thought the Drake was nice- the Palmer House was incredible!  The guy at the front desk immediately gave us a free upgrade to the executive suite.  We were on a floor that required a special key card for access.  We got free appetizers (turned out to be dinner) and breakfast in the executive lounge.  The room was HUGE.  We had two bathrooms, bathrobes, etc.  I don't know that I can ever go back to regular travel.  Thank heavens Jenny was there and the employees wanted to take care of one of their own!  So much fun!  After checking in, we walked just down the street to the Art Institute Museum.  It's a great art museum.  It was three or four buildings all connected and filled with paintings, sculptures, armour, ancient pottery, etc.  Tons of great stuff.  We were there until it closed.  From there we walked over to Millenium Park.  It's a great public park with incredible playgrounds, an amphitheater where people were gathering to watch an outdoor movie, a bunch of sculptures (the bean, which I'm sure you've all seen in tons of facebook pictures). It's also right on Lake Michigan, so Jenny and I walked over for one last look at the happiest place on earth.  That night we gave ourselves a tour of the hotel.  There were something like 10 ballrooms, and they were all crazy fancy.  One of them had garnets in all the chandeliers.  This hotel was built around the time of the Chicago World's Fair, and it has seen all kinds of history.

Taking our picture in the bean

The Hancock Tower- a huge skyscraper

Jenny playing at Millenium Park

The ceiling in the lobby of the Palmer House

The next morning, after a fancy breakfast in the lounge, we lounged around our executive suite and then checked out at the very last minute.  And then we flew home.  Aaahhh....good vacation.

And one last picture of a random building we found in Ohio.

What the What?!?

I went for a run this morning.  This post isn't about running, but the story takes place during my run, so I'm just going to spill the beans here and admit that I'm a runner now.  I don't know how it happened.  A couple years ago I decided to see how far I could make it around Daybreak Lake before I died.  I got about halfway before I had to stop and walk.  After that, each time I went I would go a little further until by the end of the summer I could get around the lake no problem.  I didn't like it, but I liked how I felt afterwards.  So great.  Last summer I didn't do a lot of outside running (see the post on my probiotic fun if you want to know why), but every now and then I'd go for a run around the lake.  This year, since winter never really arrived, I found myself going for runs after work kind of often.  And I kind of liked it.  They were just short runs, but after sitting at a desk for 10 hours, they were just what I needed. I think they were also a good link between last year's running season and this year's.  So when running season arrived this year, I found that once around the lake was just a quick nothing to stretch my legs.  So then I tried another time around the lake.  And that was a workout.  But then I realized that was 6 miles, plus 1 mile roundtrip to my house.  So basically a quarter marathon.  Nice.  So I've been working up and seeing how much more I could do.  Today I did 10 miles!  In 95 minutes flat!  That's 9.5 minutes per mile!  I have no idea if that's good or not, but there it is.  I generally do a very steady 9 minute mile, but I tend to slow down towards the end.  Anyway, let's all just take a minute to reflect on the fact that I ran 10 miles today.  That's awesome.  Yes, I'm congratulating myself.  I don't care.  Christy, we'll talk.
Anyway...back to the story.  I was out for my run, doing three laps around the lake.  The first lap was great.  The youth in my stake were out doing a 5k, so I was smiling and waving at everyone as I passed them.  Spirits were high, everyone was having fun.  About halfway through the second lap, I took off my jacket and tied it around my waist.  Maybe half a mile later, I was just rounding the far end of the lake, and suddenly there was a crazy flapping commotion around my head.  I didn't see the bird that had caused it, but it was enough to make me cower and cover my head with my arms.  By the third lap, I'd forgotten all about it.  As I neared that far end of the lake again, I'd gone about 8 miles and knew I was going to make my 10 mile goal.  I was feeling great and just concentrating on my pace.  And then, at that same spot, I heard the flapping again, only this time, the bird also attacked, either with its beak or its feet- I just felt something sharp on my head.  I cowered again, but didn't want to swat it with my hands, because that might really start a fight. So I just ran faster.  I could hear it following me, but after a few seconds, it turned around and went back to its tree.  I kept running (you better believe I kept running!) but turned to look.  It was a male red-winged blackbird, and he'd gone right back to his perch in the tree, acting like nothing had happened.  I have no idea what his deal is!  All I can figure is that after taking off my jacket I must have looked like somebody who had wronged him or his family, and he was seeking revenge.  Just now I did some quick research on redwinged blackbirds and found out that the males will do anything to get attention (yeah, tell me about it!), and they're extremely territorial (I don't think I look like a threat).  Anyway, I love birds.  I've always loved birds.  And redwinged blackbirds have always been right up there in the list of my favorites.  But what this bird doesn't know is that I hold grudges.  So he'd better watch his back.  I know where he roosts.  The following link is a re-enactment of my experience, but must have been based on the bird's account- pretending he's all innocent.  Right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EElxuL3AFC4

Check Out My Garden!

Well. I'm a believer.  Last year I planted my tomatoes the first week of May, and they froze a week later.  Then they spent the rest of the summer trying to recover.  None of the plants ever got bigger than a foot, and out of my five or six plants, I got about 10 tomatoes all season.  This year, IFA started selling their tomatoes and water walls in March.  I thought it seemed super early, but I use IFA as my farmer's almanac.  If they say it's time, I believe it.  I also use my neighbor as an almanac.  His yard always looks wonderful, so whatever he's doing in his yard, I try to discreetly do a day or two later.  Right now he's fertilizing and weed wacking, so I guess I know what my week holds.  But back to the tomatoes.  So two months ago I went and got 6 tomato plants and water walls.  I was a little skeptical that the plants could survive that early, but I figured it couldn't be worse than last year, and at the very worst, I could just replant in May and be right on time.  And wow! Those tomato plants have been growing out of their water walls for a few weeks, and I finally decided today was the day for them to make their debut.  They're amazing!  They're each about 2 feet tall and flourishing, with little blossoms ready to go.  I'll be eating tomatoes in no time!  I also planted a few varieties of hot peppers a couple weeks ago, and they're looking pretty great.  AND...I ate spinach out of my garden tonight.  I've been eating arugula since February.  It's the same arugula I planted my first year.  That stuff never dies.  Basically, as long as there isn't snow covering it I can go pick some. It's the stuff in the bottom picture with white flowers.  It's pretty awesome.  I harvested about two pies worth of rhubarb yesterday, my strawberries have started blossoming, my cucumbers are sprouting, and I've got various other seeds planted that I can't really remember right now.  It's going to be a tasty fresh year! On a somber note, I've decided to forego zucchini this year.  The last few years, I've had major squash bug problems.  I spend too much time EVERY SINGLE DAY during the summer picking off eggs, hunting and killing nymphs and adults, and spreading pesticide, and it's all no good. They still win the war and kill my plants and I get at most one or two zucchinis.  My hope is that if I go squash-free for a year, the bugs will move on and clear out of my garden.  I talked to a guy at the Utah State Agriculture Extension a couple years ago, and he said squash bugs don't really overwinter, but I'm going to try this anyway.  Or maybe I'll just plant super late and hope the bugs have already moved on.  I don't know.  Anyway, if anybody has any extra zucchini this year, I'll be accepting donations.