Victoria Butchart Gardens

Butchart Gardens is beautiful - even in winter. For Christmas, they had the twelve days of Christmas enacted. Steve is being a partridge (in the pear tree behind him). The pictures of the ocean are on the ferry ride to Victoria.

The picture with the lights is of the capital in Victoria.

Santa in Vancouver

We had taken pictures with these guys before, but when we saw them in Santa hats we had to stop again. There were tons of other people doing the exact same things - mimicking the statues. What a hit!

Lynn Canyon Bridge

Christmas Day was Lynn Canyon Bridge. We worried that Steve wouldn't be able to handle the suspension bridge - as his fear of heights is legendary. But he made it. The park was officially closed, but the 300 other people that were there didn't seem to notice. It was a beautiful park! We had a great Christmas day.

Christmas Eve

These are from our hotel room. Note the lovely white towels adorning the TV.

Today we wandered around Granville Island. It had such fun little shops. Kimberly bought a notebook to jot down ideas for her book. She didn’t reveal the plot. Some of my favorite things were a hammock chair (at a store called Hang Ups) and a check-off diary. There was also a book of lists for you to make on various topics. Very creative!

It’s a Wonderful Life was really fun. The theatre is small and the acting great. It was interesting how they turned a well known movie into a play. Little ZuZu is only four. For the backdrop on scene changes, they used clips from the movie. It was very clever. We hit a Malaysian restaurant – the Banana Leaf. The food was good. Fried bananas and vanilla ice cream may become a Christmas Eve tradition.

We are priming ourselves for a family sauna in a few minutes. My feet are freezing, so I’m more than ready.

Art and Theatre

On Wednesday we talked to the Vancouver art gallery. The landscape scenes were really nice, but the top two floors were too abstract for me. Emily Carr had many of her paintings on display. They weren’t my favorite. One of the unique things was a sculpture by Brian Jungen of a whale, which was made entirely of white plastic lawn chairs. It hung from the ceiling in a large room. It was unique. Another item was a piece of cloth with lots of lipstick prints. It was all of the lip positions of someone singing the Canadian national anthem. There was also the wall of 67, showing 67 individual pictures of oriental Canadians posed in front of the same Canadian mountain scene. The display took the whole wall. On the adjacent wall was another set of 67 pictures showing the same people from the rear. The artist, Jin-me Yoon, was making a statement about cultural identity, but I needed more help understanding it.

The same artist produced Intersection II. The internet says it continues the artist's exploration of motherhood. Like Intersection, this second series is comprised of two staged studio photographs. In one the artist is seen lying on the floor with her day planner in a pool of spilt milk. In the second photograph the artist's child is seen seated and crying in a pool of milk. Both tableaus are shot against a brilliant violet background.

Last night we went to the theatre – Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Nothing is cheap here – and the theatre is no exception. The place was virtually sold out. The performance was good, but added some sexual content that made me uncomfortable. I never can figure out why people think that is so funny. It isn’t clever or plot-enhancing, just disgusting. Today we visit Granville Island to see It’s a Wonderful Life on stage. It should be great!

Christmas in Vancouver

This is definitely a different Christmas for us. For Thanksgiving, it was our year to have everyone at our house. The Christmas holiday this year is for the married kids to be with their in-laws. Steve and I, Kimberly and Greg took off for Vancouver a few days ago. It is a classy city, but COLD. We are lucky it hasn’t rained since we got here. I can’t imagine what we would do in the rain. While the Olympics will be held here in two months, we haven’t seen even a flake of snow, even at the base of Grouse Mountain. Since it was below freezing at the top, we didn’t ride the sky tram to the top.

Stanley Park is a beautiful wooded area not far from our hotel. We walked up on Tuesday, enjoying the Oceanside, birds, and fresh air. They have an amazing aquarium. The jellyfish were beautiful. I’m going to have to read more about them. There was a little marmoset that was sitting on a branch eating. The cutest thing was a little two year old who kept repeating, “It’s a marmoset!” The macaws were so noisy! There were hilarious.



Many things were closed for the season, so we walked a long while before we found a fitting place to eat. We decided just to grab the rental car and visit China town. After loading all of our spare change into the parking meter and walking to the Jade Dynasty, we decided to send Greg and Kim back to the car to move it into a regular underground parking lot. China town looks just like China – all the store fronts announcing their wares in Chinese. Lunch was great. We went to a famous Chinese park nearby. It must have been lovely in the summer, but not much to look at in December.



We visited a world class Indian restaurant – Vij’s. Kim had been told by a friend it was the best Indian restaurant in the West. We tried to get in the first night we were here, but there was an hour wait. On Tuesday, we got there twenty minutes before it opened, but there was already a line. After waiting until people had been seated, we were told we could come in for a drink or go elsewhere and come back. The restaurant was so small, there is no way they could handle all those who wanted to wait, so non-drinkers hit the road. When we returned an hour later, we stood at the back until a table was available. The food was really exceptional. They just assumed everyone would share their food, so it came family style. We later read that the restaurant was “going green” and offering a fare of insects which would require fewer resources to produce. Good thing I didn’t know about the trend before our visit, as I doubt I would have been willing to stand in line at a restaurant that was offering insects. I really didn’t see any insects in my food, but there were some flavors I didn’t recognize.

(Sorry about the random layout. I haven't figured out how to control where the pictures go...)

Do you have room?

I grabbed this from my sister-in-law. I really liked it.

Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

On a regular basis, I have interaction with an individual who is so negative. I have listened to complaints, offered suggestions, and tried to smooth things over. At first I thought I was helping, but have come to realize that I’m not changing perceptions at all. This individual is going to have a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day” – no matter what I say or do. I’ll spare you the details.

I do think we are pretty much hard-wired to always want something more. I recall someone saying that being dissatisfied is actually a good thing, as otherwise, after we achieved our first big goal, we would sit back and say, “I got what I wanted. I don’t need to do anything more.” We would be in a self-satisfied plateau where we never looked for any improvement.

I guess we need to find a middle ground – everything isn’t perfect nor horrible. Yet, it takes no talent to find the negative. Finding the good – now that takes talent, and one that needs practice.

Welcome to my practice session.

I am grateful for Primary Sacrament Meeting programs. Look in the dictionary and you’ll find ours listed under perfection. It was amazing. Song leaders don’t come any better than Wendy Worley. Those kids just belted out every song. There was lots of variety – a mother and five year old son cello accompaniment. At other times, the singing was accompanied by wood blocks (for “I am a builder”), a flute, and the bells. It was so sweet.

I am grateful for members of the church. They are just wonderful people. They are fun to be with, uplifting, educated, loving, and good workers.

I love credit cards. I listen to people who say, “Rip them up. Pay for everything with cash.” BUT, I still love credit cards. You can check charges online, pay them off every week (which is what I choose to do), pay for online purchases, get cash advances while you are in Holland (and didn’t realize they don’t accept credit cards), let them go to bat for you if the computer you paid for by credit card never arrived, and get $500 a year in rewards (while not paying one cent in interest). I realize credit card companies are increasing their interest rate to ridiculous amounts, but since I never pay any interest, my love affair with credit cards is not affected.

I love sales. Smiths Marketplace is really making the game fun to play. They usually have 60% off clearance, regularly have megadeals (where you get five dollars off for every ten items you buy in special categories), give you a turkey for as little as $12 (regularly $25), and have $10 off if you spend $50. They make shopping fun. I went in Saturday knowing I wanted to buy a turkey, but needed as many other non-food items as I could find (to get my extra discount). I found nightlights (about time, don’t you think), slippers, little sacks for Christmas favors (we’re in charge of empty nesters), and even some of our favorite moisturizers. There is little joy in shopping, but they’ve found a way to make it enjoyable.

I love my bed. I’m not a great sleeper, but my bed is awesome. It is warm and comfortable. I just read the book The Glass Castle. (I need to make a disclaimer. There is more swearing than necessary and even an F-bomb, so be warned.) However, the book was such a wake up call. It is a story of a woman whose family was dysfunctional – living on the street, harvesting dinner from dumpsters. Yet, she loves her family. For a while they live in a tumble down house where their mattresses are cardboard. It makes you realize how great you have it – and especially makes you appreciate your bed.

I love my cell phone. AT&T needs to take some clues from Smiths Marketplace, as paying my AT&T bill is not fun at all, but I do love my cell phone. You can call anyone you want without paying a cent extra (as we have more minutes that I could possible use) and can summon help from a snow bank. What confidence as cell phone gives you! I forgot my cellphone when I took Grandma back home today and felt naked without it. (But, I didn’t get stopped, so no one knew.)

I love family – kids, grandkids, husband, parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, in-laws.

I love email. I love email. I LOVE EMAIL!!!!

Don't incite predatory instincts

At the university, I serve as an ombudsperson for tenure meetings. What is an ombudsperson, you ask?

Ombudspersons support effective communication, cooperation, equity, and civility in academic and work environments through coaching individuals, facilitating communication between persons and departments, mediation, providing information on university policy, and where needed, recommending appropriate institutional action or change.

But what I really do is listen to tenure meetings to insure policy is followed and the candidate is treated properly.

It is actually a great job, if you are a people watcher. You have no responsibility other than the obvious (and are supposed to say as little as possible), so you can just sit and observe - who speaks, how they make their points, the phraseology they use.

This week I heard a phrase that was so clever. A committee member was commenting on an opening paragraph to the self-assessment letter which read something like, "I have done such a great job that no one could think to deny me tenure." The candidate was advised to take a more modest approach so as not to "incite predatory instincts" of the higher ups. I thought it was a great line!

Are you smarter than a seventh grader...

As part of one of my grants, we had four area teachers come to campus for the summer to design instructional materials for their technology classes. We had a great time with them. One of the perks has been keeping in contact with them.

This week Megan (one of our RET teachers, who actually is Greg's age) asked me to come to her technology class and present an ILM to her seventh graders. We talked about graph coloring - a computer science abstraction for conflict resolution. (See csilm.usu.edu/Browse Resources/CSILM Activities/Graph Coloring). What darling kids! I had so much fun with them. Megan is an amazing teacher. It is great to watch her in action.

The challenge is this. Draw any kind of map that requires five colors to color such that areas which share a border (of more than one point) can't be the same color. After they had struggled a while, I told them that it was impossible. They would never be able to do it. Well, that didn't stop them. The whole hour I had kids handing me a map saying, "This one takes five colors. I know it does." Find a minimal coloring isn't always easy, so I would tell them, "I'm going to take home your map. If I can't color it in four colors, I'll come be a seventh grader and you can take my place teaching classes at the university - as you are obviously smarter than I am."

Wouldn't that be fun? I would love going back to the seventh grade for a week or so. Those were the good old days! I've often wished I could let someone take my place for a while.

My new favorite restaurant

We went out with friends for dinner tonight at the Texas Roadhouse. The mall parking lot has been crazy with cars ever since they opened. I could never figure out where all the people were as they surely couldn't all fit inside. All the tables were taken tonight, but arriving just before six, we had no wait at all. The food was great and reasonably priced. Yum!

Being special isn't all its cracked up to be...

They say tooth implants are successful 95 percent of the time. I'm so "special" that I fall into the 5% that doesn't work out. Infection takes over and contaminates the threads of the implant - making it impossible to get rid of.

I've had an implant for about five years (you can see I'm not good with dates). The last year or so I've noticed it was a bit sunken. Today was the day they went in to try to save it - cleaning it out and doing a bone graft. I would tell you the details, but Steve just turns green and walks away when I merely set the stage.

They tell you to stop them if it gets too painful. About half way through you realize they were just kidding. It is just going to hurt no matter how much anesthetic they give you.

I did get a great nap out of it once I got home. If its like the last oral surgery I had (a tissue graft to build up the gums), it is going to be a painful few weeks.

I always marvel that when things are going well, you don't even notice, but when something goes awry you can't believe how much pain it can cause. I guess you have to have bad health to appreciate how good you had it before.

Ten Thousand Step Challenge

Through work, we've been challenged to increase the steps we take each day to 10,000. I really need to drag out my pedometer, but without even measuring, I'm sure I'm WAY short of that goal. I counted my steps across campus - about a 15 minute walk, and only got to 1000. I'm figuring 10,000 is a lot of time exercising. I'm guessing there are days I don't walk more than a thousand steps.

Below are some easy ways to increase the number of steps you take each day.

1. Walk in place or pace when on the phone.
2. Get up during each commercial and walk around until the television program begins again. Even better, walk in place during the television program.
3. Use a restroom that's farther from your office or on a different floor.
4. Take the stairs.
5. Park farther away than you normally do.
6. Go to people's offices instead of using the phone or e-mail.
7. Take a walk at lunch and then eat at your desk.

I figure today has been a good day. I shopped all morning, took a walk this afternoon, and have been up and down the stairs a dozen times to answer the door for trick or treaters. I'm going to need to work a little harder the rest of the week.

How about it? Will you take the challenge?

What a difference a few days make

I love Fall. We have had a gorgeous Fall. With our first snow this week, I thought our Indian Summer had ended. But today was absolutely gorgeous!

The top two pictures are taken from my office earlier this week.

The next two are from the top of the hill today.

It's a perfect evening for trick or treating!

I'm a Fan

One of my darling Young Women (who is married with a family of her own) has a blog I just love. Her topic for the day was "Fan Friday" - where she talks about things she is a fan of. I'd like to add my own entry.

I'm a fan of Goodreads! I only started using it a few months ago, but I'm a fan. I have such a hard time finding books I like. With Goodreads, I can get ideas from other friends. There is one friend who is a kindred spirit. If she likes the book, I'll like the book too. I must have six books I've already checked out and can't wait to read. This is definitely something I've never experienced before.

One of the books I just finished is "Mary, Martha, and Me" by Camille Fronk Olson. The whole book is great, but I was particularly interested in this passage:

From either side of the comparison, condemnation stings. Regardless of which path is chosen, someone will certainly criticize that choice. I considered declining further invitations to speak when a woman commented at a “Know Your Religion” lecture, “After hearing you, I felt discouraged because I will never know the scriptures as well. But then I thought, instead of going to school, I chose to follow the prophet – I married and had a family.” Without knowing my choices, she had judged me as disobedient and seemed doubly irked that I was happy about it. I was reminded that I had not embarked on a career path as my first choice but was led to it by a power greater than I.

I'm guessing all of us have had interactions that resemble this one. So WHY do we do that to each other? I'm definitely not a fan of people who judge me or seem self-righteous.

Rainbow Closet

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

In visiting my daughters a month ago, I noticed they had their closets organized by colors. After looking for ten minutes for a black shell I knew I had, I decided to try it. I usurped one of my daughter's closets for my dresses - as my closet just wasn't big enough to incorporate the new arrangement and I only wear them on Sunday anyway so they hardly need prime space. In the process of reorganizing, I learned a few things.

a. I am boring. Over half of my wardrobe is black or beige.

b. Very few things are multiple colors - (which is a good thing, I guess - as it made sorting them easier)

c. I have tons of duplication. I didn't take a picture of the pant rack - but I must have ten pairs of black pants. I tossed out a large bag of clothes I would never wear again, as I had a better version of the same thing.

I think I need to go shopping! I have nothing in orange.

Smile...

I have been in charge of getting photos of the women in our ward for a video on Visiting Teaching. Kelly's idea was to video-tape the older sister talking about Visiting Teaching. She wanted still shots of the rest of the women in the ward. There are 120+.

I didn't even know how to use our camera, but decided I could try to help. We tried to get people to email us their pictures, but that didn't work too well. I think we got two. I'm a pathetic photographer, but I tried. I tried to catch people at church. I tried to catch them at the High Priest Dinner, Personal History class, Empty Nestors, and Board meeting. I wandered the streets with camera in tow.

It was quite a learning experience. People were so different. I would offer to show them the picture I had taken, so we could vote on whether they were blurry or had their eyes closed. (They would look great on my small view, but be unusable once they were on the "big screen".) One said, "Oh, I don't care what it looks like." All the others would run for their lipstick, tell me "You are SO NOT taking my picture - I just woke up," or say, "You really can't take my picture because it is Friday, and I don't wear makeup on Friday." I heard the same thing about Thursday. One woman said, "Oh, I'll send you one. PLEASE delete the ones you took. I look horrible." Another woman said, "I am NOT participating. I just don't do pictures."

This is a picture of the daughter of one woman in the ward. She was dressed in a fairy costume when I dropped by her house. You can see a glimpse of her wings behind her back. She was so thrilled to have her picture taken. She didn't run for her makeup, fix her hair, or make excuses. She was delighted. I have several pictures. In some, she is even airborne.

So, what happens to us as we age? How does it happen that we lose that self-confidence?

You have got to be kidding...

I have flies in my office. LOTS of flies. I kill a half dozen a day. I must make work look fun, because I have flies on the outside crashing into the window. It must look fun in here.

So, I have the secretaries call physical plant. I tell them I want a fly catcher. I was thinking of something like a roach trap. No, three people came to my office and brought be this brown sticky thing to hang in my window. Can you say, U G L Y??? I have (had) a beautiful view, but now it has this ugly fly catcher in it. It was ugly when they first brought it, but it is worse now as it has dead flies stuck to it. Since they left it a week ago, the three of them have been back to check on it.

When the flies get stuck, they make the most horrible sound for hours before they decide to conserve their energy and die slowly. Sometimes they squirm for over a day.

I'm keeping score. Everyday I kill more than does the fly trap, and I only work 8 hours a day, not 24. And my flies die immediately, without a prolonged, pathetic death chant.

Come on, there has GOT to be something better than this.

The best job...

Last night we went to an event in Salt Lake where alumni of our program gathered to visit. There were finger foods and a "bingo" game where the cells were signed by people having a specific characteristic "more computers than kids", etc. I wasn't really excited to go, but felt I needed to support the department.

There were over fifty people who came. We had such a great time visiting, remembering old times, seeing pictures of their children, learning about their jobs. I visited non-stop for two hours. I barely ate, didn't play the game, and didn't even notice prizes being given out. I had forgotten far more people than I remembered, but it was so fun to reconnect. Some lingered around just waiting for a private moment to tell me thanks for getting them through or saying they were actually using that 'game theory' we discussed in multi-agents.

On the way home, I asked myself, "Would I have traveled to such an event to reconnect with my old college professors?" I loved school. I enjoyed my teachers. I was very vocal in class and had good relationships with my teachers, but I doubt I would have traveled for an hour or more to spend an evening with them. As I thought about that, I felt even more blessed to have the best job in the world - (except for being a mom, of course).

The Winter Games...

Sunday night is always "Nine Card" night. Steve was the loser - he is only smiling because I took the pictures before he lost. He is so competitive :-) Grandma Allan is a tough player for her ninety two years. She was the grand winner tonight.

I hope I enjoy a good meal and a rip roaring game of cards when I am 92!