Whoopee!

Guess what, I have good news – I don’t have any more coverage for the foreseeable future. Do you know how good that feels? It feels really good. We’re also going on vacation this week. Also very delightful.

I’m not going to fill you in on the weekend, I was asleep so I don’t really know what Shad did all weekend. Last night we had a very…interesting experience.

Jen’s mom is in town for a month long visit. Jen’s mom wanted to attend some sort of play while she was out here. Jen told me this a few months ago and I suggested a few of the companies in Salt Lake thinking she wanted something great. Apparently any play would do, including something at the local community theatre. Shad and I had the pleasure of attending with them. Without further ado, I bring you my review of Whoopee!

Okay so going into the play there was quite the discussion prior at work as to what it was about. Many people guessed Whoopi Goldberg, they would be wrong. The description on the playhouse website told of singing cowboys and flashy costumes. Okay, I asked Jen if it would be like High School Musical but with cowboys, she told me yes – As a side note, after the play was over we soon realized we were thinking of different high school musicals. Me, the delightful Disney production filmed at East High, Jen was thinking of her actual high school musical. She grew up in a small town and in order to have all necessary characters for the play, girls had to play men. Very different mental pictures.

The program explained the play was written in the 1920’s about the time when musical theatre was just getting its start. A possible excuse for the spectacle to come? As the theatre started to fill, it became apparent the mid twenty age range was not their target audience-more like seventy. Jen assured me we would be in the majority once the cast was on stage. Participating in community plays is all the rage amongst our demographic, right? With the opening chorus, it became apparent we were still not in the majority. And that’s where things went wrong.

Now, I felt bad for the actors because I know my facial expression showed my moderate disgust as they poorly danced around the stage and sang. We were in the second row and I knew they could see it, but I was too appalled to hide it. Things took a turn for the confusing about the time of the third scene. A character was talking to the “love of his life” begging her to not marry Sheriff Bob and run away with him to live with “his people.” With his effeminate gestures, orange spray tan and loafers, he clearly wasn’t straight. I was confused why he wanted to bring Sally back to “his people”. I mean the lace wedding dress she was wearing was a bit unfortunate but not enough to call in the Queer Eye guys, right? I turns out he was supposed to be an Indian (loafers=moccasins). I thought Waninis was just a new trendy name, kind of like spelling Tom with a th. I’m glad Jen was there to help me figure out what “people” he was referring to. It was still pretty distracting. I know gay actors and have seen them act absolutely convincingly straight on stage. Were the pickings that slim? Jen didn’t help with her chuckles and comments.

Things got better once Sally and Harry? (Herbert, Walter, Chuck – I don’t remember his name) ran away. Now those two actors were surprisingly wonderful. If the play had just been them for the remainder, we wouldn’t have solved anything plot wise but it would have been a good experience.

I think Jen’s comment after the play sums it up nicely, “In high school we had girls playing men and they did a better job than that guy.” It was a very entertaining night, but not for the right reasons.

They were roasted

Sorry for no real update until now this week, I was waiting to be on backs to have something to do. I'm sure you've all been dying to hear how the hot dog roast went. I have one word - Fantastic!

I was a little worried it was going to be super hot, that's why it didn't start until 7. I really wish our backyard had a bit more shade. Hopefully it will in the next year or so. Since the house is pretty much done, next year's project is the backyard. Gulp.

The evening started off with everyone roasting their hot dogs on the fire - or getting Shad to do it on the grill (cheaters). I was actually surprised how many people roasted their own. Also surprised how hot the fire was, the paito around the fire pit needs to be enlarged a pit - see paragraph above. Here's everyone (mostly my fellow ward members) enjoying dinner.

After dinner and popcicles, and the sun had disappeared behind the house across the street, it was time to play. Jake and I played for about an hour since we were the only ones and it was really delightful. It was nice seeing everyone sprawled out on the grass enjoying the music instead of awkwardly standing in a venue.

Jake and Jess also brought some of their neices and nephews to the roast, they were really cute. They even got up to dance during some of the music. Ah to be young again.

After the music, we roasted marshmallows on the fire and called it a night. I can't wait to do a similar thing in a few weeks at Jake and Jess' house. There's information on our blog if your interested.

Non Sweater Friends related news - Dublin made Shad go and get him a chair to sit on the other day in the backyard. He's kind of a high maintenance pit bull. I thought he only made me do it because I taught him to get on the chair. I would be wrong.

Coping with transition

For those of you that don’t know my company announced a few weeks ago it was laying some people off. The goal was to lay off about 600 salaried people worldwide. We found out about the layoffs about 3 months ago. Luckily the Ogden facility was told our impact would be very limited which was nice, but no one could give us specific numbers. Yesterday was the day of layoffs and not surprisingly Ogden only lost one employee. By yesterday afternoon, work was finally back to normal, it was great.

K-C also has an employee assistance program, if you or family members are struggling, they will pay for you to go see a counselor etc. I guess it’s company policy to have an EAP person present at every facility when a lay off occurs. The EAP person at our plant happened to pick the conference room by my cube to set up shop for the day. Now normally that would be fine, but after lunch a few of my co workers stopped by to pick up treats Jen had left on my desk. We started talking about what we had heard from some other facilities and departments. One of them brought up the story about the French union workers that had wired their facility with explosives because they were angry about wages. The news story reported they had agreed to go into negotiations on Thursday and had removed the gas canisters but promised they would put them back in “15 minutes” if negotiations didn’t go the way they wanted. We had a pretty good laugh at the ridiculousness of wiring the facility with explosives in the first place but we thought it even worse that the facility would allow them to be put back. I guess this was the wrong day and place to be joking about something like that.

Mid conversation the EAP guy walked over to my cube and explained he couldn’t help but over hear our conversation. He reminded us that he was over in the conference room if we felt like we needed to talk. We just sat there in awkward silence until he walked away. I then pointed my finger at the one that had started the explosives conversation and jokingly told him that was obviously not an appropriate conversation to be having at work. The others walked away and the guilty party stayed for another treat. While we were still talking the EAP guy came back and handed us each an article, explaining he knew sometimes people didn’t want to talk about problems. The title of the article…Coping with Transition. I think the EAP guy should try and spend some more time around engineers before he comes back again. Maybe then he would realize the explosives conversation was a normal thing we had all been dying to get back to once we knew everything would be okay. He shouldn’t have been worried to hear that conversation, he should have walked away with a smile knowing we were all going to be just fine after yesterday.

It's Tuesday

Today might be Thursday for the rest of you but today is my Tuesday. There’s nothing like random coverage to totally screw with your schedule. Tomorrow will be my Friday though. I can’t wait until August when things hopefully will be back to normal. I say hopefully.

I’m pretty excited for the hot dog roast on Saturday. I think it should get a pretty good turnout which will be fun. I’m always nervous when we plan stuff in Ogden since I haven’t been here for a long time, I underestimate the number of people I know that might want to hang out at my house. Our house warming party was a good example of that.

I really need to text Jake and get a set list put together. I’m going to do that right now. Hold on.

Okay. Check and check. Speaking of the Sweater Friends we had an ideal show a few weeks ago. It started off as one of the weirdest places we’ve played but by the end of the show, we felt right at home.

We played at a place called the Boing Collective. It’s basically an anarchist bookstore/house. Jake had just told me about the bookstore part so when we pulled up to the address and it was a house, I was a little worried. When we walked in the house and set our stuff down, no one said a word to us. So we stood there awkwardly looking around. Jake went to go find Robin, the kid who had set up the show, only to be asked if he was looking for the girl Robin or boy Robin. While we were standing there two guys came in and asked for Steve Miller. The people in the house said they didn’t know a Steve. Then another guy said, isn’t there a guy living in the basement named Steve, but I don’t think his last name is Miller. They left. We stood there wondering why the people that lived in the house didn’t know the names of the other people who lived in the house. When we asked one person how many people lived there we were given a range. A range? We opted to sit out on the sidewalk in front until it was time to play.

By the time we did start to play, there were quite a few people there (more than the range?) which was surprising. When we started playing, it’s safe to say they were the most attentive audience we have ever played for. The other artists that played with us were amazing as well. I came home with 4 new cds.

Because of coverage I had Monday and Tuesday off this week. I took the opportunity to take my friend Jen down to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house. I hadn’t been to an open house since the Vernal Temple was built so it was nice to go. I’m glad Jen was willing to go with me since I wanted to go on a weekday to avoid the line being long and slow. I was surprised at how small the temple seemed but it was beautiful as always. We also may have gotten yelled at in the celestial room by an usher. We had stopped so I could explain to Jen what the room represented and tell her a little about the temple. Apparently the 6 foot wide aisle way was not wide enough for the group behind us to go around.

After the temple we went back to our house and played on a slip n slide. I had told Shad awhile ago I wanted one (the kiddie pool got me in the mood) and he left me a note a few days ago with a Walmart giftcard that said “for a slip n slide.” I got up early Monday morning before the temple to go purchase said slide. Unfortunately the Walmart near us doesn’t sell slip n slides. LAME! Luckily Shopko came through for us. We brought it home and got it set up. Of course the pieces that were the most time consuming to put together were useless and got chucked to the side after two uses. I guess it’s the thought that counts. We had a delightful afternoon playing though the slide was not built long enough for two average sized adults. We have plans to extend it next time. Sorry for the lack of pictures…I’ve been lazy with the camera but you can imagine the good times that were had.

Also this week I got around to booking the stuff for our cruise in September. I heard there was an airfare war going on last week and decided to take advantage of it. I am already super excited for it. The countdown Carnival puts on their webpage when you log in doesn’t help either… 52 days.

We have a pretty full summer ahead of us trip wise. In two weeks, we’re going to Zion to do the Narrows with a few of my co-workers. At the end of August, hopefully we will be sailing around Catalina. Then we finish up the summer with our week long Caribbean cruise. Ideal. It seems like I tend to save up my vacation time just in case so the end of the year always ends up a lot busier.

Pulley changes

I've been waiting for a pulley change on the machine I'm on tonight for 2 hours. There are no signs that it's going to be done before it's time to go home. So why do I get to stay here? Two words, turnover meeting. I can't tell you how many times I've had nothing to do on coverage but have had to stay the enitre time so I could give my turnover to then next poor engineer that is forced to stay for another 12 hours to turn it back over to me. It makes perfect sense.

In other coverage news the button pusher is back. On the bright side he's not on the same machine as me. On the not so bright side the machine he's on is right next to the one I'm on. He ventured over several times this evening. Luckily since the machine isn't running, he wasn't tempted to push any buttons several thousand times (at least that I personally witnessed).

I also may or may not have been very kind to a fellow engineer that is on coverage on the machine next door. I don't particulary care for this engineer on a good day so combine that with a crappy night on a machine and 5:30 AM, it's only natural for me to make snide comments that the engineer is way overstepping their bounds and if I wanted their help, I would have asked for their help and will you please go back to the machine you are on coverage for and leave me alone this instant before I stop using sarcastic tones and start using my serious tones.

I do have some good news, I bought a bed for the back shift room today. The futon is quite comfortable when you are exhausted after a back shift and could sleep on a cement floor easily, it's not so comfortable when you elect to sleep down there the night before your back shift in hopes of sleeping in longer due to the pitch blackness of the room. My hips are killing me today. I'm pretty excited to use it. I will get the chance next weekend since tonight is my only backshift this week.

Kiddie Pools and Pit Bulls

As the holiday weekend winds down, I keep asking myself if I have to go back to work tomorrow. I really shouldn't complain too much. I start coverage again this week so I have some time off to look forward to. Also more back shifts. Maybe in my back shift stupor this week you'll get a post about the camp song I wrote. I know you're all dying for that. Or maybe I'll get really ambitious and do a post of befores and afters of the rooms in our house. Just a few blogs I've been putting off.

I will up date you on our weekend for now. Thursday afternoon before I left work I was IMing my coworker Danielle. At the work shower a few weeks ago my coworkers had started talking about how nice it is to sit in a kiddie pool in the backyard on the weekend and drink. It sounded really delightful minus the drinking part. It had been a hell of a week at work and she mentioned to me how nice that kiddie pool sounded...It did sound nice. Really nice. Nice enough to brave Walmart the morning of July 3rd and purchase said kiddie pool (a lime green one none the less!).

My husband returned from the gym to find me blowing up the pool in our dining room. He laughed really hard and told me he wondered what got me out of the house so early on a holiday. He had been present for the coworker kiddie pool conversation. I proceeded outside and filled the pool up. It was ice cold, I had planned for that though and went in to clean the house while it warmed in the sun. By noon it was ready so Dublin and I treked out for an hour of bliss. Now I have no issues with water so I dived right in. Dublin on the other hand was not a fan. It did serve as a really big water bowl but other than that, he wanted nothing to do with it. I picked him up and put him in it, he would run right back out. I kind of expected this, pit bulls aren't known as water loving dogs. I layed in the pool until it was time to get out and shower. My parents were coming up to help us get some stuff done at the house.

My mom and I painted the second bedroom upstairs and the boys weeded the front flower beds - we can see dirt now! When we were done the boys cleaned up and we went to dinner at the Bistro. It was delicious as always and I was so grateful to my parents for the help. It was off to bed early - holiday weekends mean catching up on much needed sleep to me.

Saturday I woke up and cleaned up the room we had painted the day before and put the furniture back. I decided on what furniture needed to be added and I think I'm finally going to buy a reall bed for my back shift room in the basement. Hopefully I will get both of those accomplished this week while I'm off.

Saturday afternoon was time to play in the pool again. I was more determined. Shad had mowed the lawn that morning so the pool was full of grass. I emptied it out and Dublin climbed right in and layed down without an issue. Shad and I hatched a plan that we would play with him in it for a bit empty, Shad would take Dublin in the house while I refilled it with water. I would then stand in the pool and call Dublin to come to me. It worked like a charm and he jumped right into the water. He was pretty mad but after playing with him for awhile he chased his ball into the pool and did this...



You can imagine my surprise and joy when he did this. Issue with water fixed. After playing in the pool he ran out and jumped on the lawn chair. He really knows how to make his mom proud. Today while I was sitting in the yard with him, he insisted on getting up on my chair with me. I finally went over and got him his own chair which he sat in next to me for a good half hour. Shad was napping inside or I would have a picture to share. You'll just have to take my word for it. I may have created a monster.

Saturday night we also attended the Ogden Demolition Derby. It was pretty ideal Here is why you don't see many truck demolition derbies. CRAZY!

The fireworks were okay. We sat on the side of the arena that was partially blocked by trees. Now we know for future reference.