Panoramic View

Here is a fascinating 360 degree view of the Michael Jackson memorial service when they sang "We are the World" near the end of the service courtesy of the LA Times. (Click on the link to view)

Jackson Memorial Service Panorama. 

Good Morning Arizona!

Who wouldn't mind waking up to some happy news like this at 4:30 in the morning?

Let's go outside and fry and egg in mid-air...

I don't know if that would actually work or not but it is probably worth a try... if only I had some eggs...  Here is today's weather forecast and the forecast for the upcoming week:

A cloudy day to build a house...

So today the Pulte Building Systems people began major construction on the last 3 houses right across the street from me...  They trucked in the wall sections yesterday afternoon.  The wall sections are built off-site and then they just have to be attached to the foundations and each other... add some drywall, windows & doors, stucco, and a roof and you have a house!  However, it is somewhat difficult to sleep in till noon with this going on outside your bedroom window...  This is the view from my bedroom:

Come on Down!

So I was watching the Price is Right early this morning... (it comes on at 9AM here...) and at the end of the Showcase Showdown I spotted an unusual sight... A "Flat Stanley" on the podium during the showcase:

Sign Spinning

So there a new trend emerging in advertising (at least here in the Valley and other major US cities) called "Sign Spinning".  The concept is relatively simple.  Give someone $10-$20 an hour to stand on a street corner and hold an arrow sign pointing to your business.  But it seems to have become much more than that.  The Spinners (as they are called) have learned elaborate dance moves and tricks with these signs to get your attention while you are sitting and watching them and not the light that just turned green in front of you.  So the moves have become more and more complex and the competition between these spinners ever-greater as those with the most attention getting moves and tricks can command the best paying positions with a potential to do it full time and earn as much as $2000 a month...  (and to think I decided to waste all those years in college!)

McDonald's has even made a series of TV commercial for Phoenix advertising their sign spinners advertising their coffee... Its advertising featuring advertising... go figure:

Here are some youtube videos of the sign spinners in action:

And here is a short documentary (6 minutes) on the sign-spinning culture in southern California (where like many things, it all began):

Cat in a blanket

So the other day I went upstairs and there was a big lump under my blankets... what could it possibly have been?   Why it was Snowy hiding under the covers taking a nap!  Naturally I had to disrupt her sleep to take some pictures...

How many folks does it take to move an 11' tree?

Apparently more than 6...  So I spent the last 3 1/2 hours this morning watching these folks trying to move one of the trees across the street where the last houses here are being built...  The poor tree is on life support after these Do-it-yourself landscaper wannabes manhandled, ripped, pulled, and shredded this poor tree to its last limbs....

After 2 hours of digging and pulling with their suv they got the tree out of the ground and onto their mini-trailer:

The tree was in the hole in front of the foundation by the white barrel:

Then they tied some sheets together to try to cover the tree up...

"The sheet don't fit.... go get me another sheet!"

Oh hey!  lets use pink hair spray to make a sign on the back of the sheet so people don't hit us...  Umm... What should it say???  "Caution" perhaps?   OK... C-A-T-... Umm how do you spell it?   Why did you write some scribbles and then "Cat?"   Isn't that how you spell it???   ::Sigh::  You're and idiot....

Uh oh... the tree is starting to fall off the trailer... go get another sheet....

Meanwhile daughter #2 has died in the back of the SUV from heat exhaustion while the other 5 try to figure out how to get the 4th bedsheet attached to the tree to hold it down...

"Dude, this is really ghetto, even for us..."

"Seriously Dad... this is the worst vacation ever..."

So after 3+ hours they drove off with bits of the tree being ripped off on the asphalt as they disappeared.... R.I.P. tree...

Little Bedroom on the Prairie

So I got the wall in my bedroom painted this weekend.  I painted it "Prairie Grass" as the folks at Sherwin-Williams call the color.  I think it is a very calm and relaxing neutral color for the bedroom.  I once again taped off the three windows over my bed and did a paint 'frame' around them to make it easier to paint around them, and that was probably the most challenging and time-consuming aspect of this room was carefully taping off around those windows to get straight lines and clean edges on the paint...  And then still going back to do touch-ups...

Here is the paint sample card next to the final color...

And here is the painted wall:

Super-Obama!

Check out this great new video from the funny folks at JibJab.com:

Another awesome Jack's commercial

Here is the Jack In The Box commercial for their awesome Mini Sirloin Burgers... they taste great and have a great song for them too... Like the Mini Buffalo Ranch Chicken Sandwiches they come three to a box... Watch and enjoy!

Project Complete

Ok, well 99% complete... I have finally finished painting the living/dining room in the house (except for a few small touch-ups) The Copper Wire & Bolero Red go very nicely together and the 'framed' archways with the white paint turned out very nice... Im just happy to have all my furniture back in place so I can sit down and watch TV again!

The dining room wall:

The dining room, stairs, and entryway to the kitchen:

The wall between the kitchen & foyer (kitchen on the left, foyer on the right)

The dining room from the living room:

The living room room from the dining room:

Best Burger Dance

So today I went to Jack In The Box with Jenna before taking her to the airport and tried out Jack's new Mini Buffalo Ranch Chicken Sandwich.  You get three of the mini chicken sandwiches in a box and they were super-tasty!  However, the one thing better than the food is the song that goes with them...  Jack's has this new ad campaign with a song and dance to promote this new sandwich and it is sweeping the nation (or at least the parts of the US that have Jack In The Box...)

Here is the original Jack-In-The-Box commercial:

And here are some videos made by other folks who have caught the Mini Buffalo Ranch Chicken Sandwich craze:

Here's another video:

And this one proves you can do the dance in your underwear:

And here's the Spanish version of the Jack's commercial, its really bizarre to listen to:

Work in Progress...

Well I have finally settled on colors for the Kitchen and Living Room.  Thanks to the suprer helpful folks at Sherwin-Williams at 59th and Northern, I have selected Bolero Red for the Kitchen and Copper Wire for the living room.   However, the sample cans only go so far so I went back this morning to get more (much more) paint to keep on painting this weekend.  But here is what it looks like right now...  Its a complete and total mess with tape and ladders and painting stuff everywhere but it does give some idea of what the colors will look like...

Here is a picture of the Bolero red over in the kitchen (the picture is a little dark)

Here is another picture from the kitchen (this one gives a better sense of the color)

Here is the Copper Wire in the living room with my wall sconces back on the wall to see what they would look like with the color behind them:

And here is the mirror in the Foyer with the Copper Wire on the wall behind it:

And here is the kitchen and what I have painted in the living room & foyer from the sample cans, as I said, it is a work in progress...

I will continue painting tonight and tomorrow and hopefully will have these two rooms done by Sunday night and then I will try to post the finished product.

A new perspective

So I decided to check my ladder to see if it would be possible to paint the window alcove in the stairwell, and while up on the ladder I got a new perspective on my home that I had not seen before...

Here is the ladder fully extended and in position:

Then I climbed up and looked down, way down to the first floor below:

And then looked out that high window and saw the 'poop room' from the outside for the first time...

And I also saw my roof line and neighbors house... how cool is that???

Telling time

So my big IKEA clock is now hanging up above the stairwell.  It was not easy to get up there but thanks to my trusty adjustable ladder, it was done in about 20 minutes...  It is it perfect view of my desk when I am in the office loft working on some important work...

Looking up from the stairwell at the clock:

Looking at the clock and desk area from the hallway:

Color Splash

So I have finally begun painting the white walls in my house.  thanks to the helpful folks at Sherwin-Williams, I got three free quart size samples of paint to begin painting with...  I'll have to go back tomorrow to get more but I got a start on painting in the guest suite this afternoon and got a little dirty in the process:

And here is a (small) preview of my work in the guest suite...  I like the 'frame' around the window...  A little trick I borrowed from a good friend :-)

Very Cool Commercial

In the last few weeks there have been several new commercials advertising the new 2010 Toyota Prius. Yet these commercials feature the Prius driving through imaginative landscapes made up of people... People as grass, trees, clouds, the sun, and even rivers and waterfalls.... but how did they do this??? I found this "making of" featurette on YouTube that shows how they made these innovative commercials... it is about 5 minutes long... Enjoy!

Giant Jiffy Pop

So here are some pictures I took of the University of Phoenix Stadium (which is an NFL stadium with the naming rights bought by the for-profit University of Phoenix).  The Arizona Cardinals play here and the 2008 Super Bowl was held here.  This stadium is about 5 minutes north of my house.  I think it looks like a huge Jiffy pop popcorn pan when the kernels pop and inflate the foil...

The stadium as seen from the AZ 101 Loop Freeway:

Up close near entrance #3:

Entering the floor of the stadium from the "tunnel" during the 8th grade Career Day field trip in April:

Trading Spaces

So I have survived my first year of teaching and now I am making the move from 7th and 8th grades to 5th grade next year... A new grade means a new classroom so I have been hard at work moving all of my stuff down the hallway to my new room.  Just when I was ready to just put things in the cupboards for the summer I am now starting again from scratch to get my classroom ready for the next year...

Here was the front of my old room from this year:

And here was the back of my classroom from this year:

And now I am down the hall to start all over again... here are all fo the desks and chairs piled up along the north wall of my new 5th grade room:

And here is the west wall of my room (the yellow will be repainted this summer).  You can see my new teacher desk and the computers in the back of the room...

And this is the south wall of my classroom with wall to wall storage:

Once I get everything done in the classroom I will take some more pictures so keep checking back here often!

Hoover Dam (Part II)

Welcome to Nothing, AZ (On the way to Hoover Dam)

Entering the Lake Mead National Recreation Area (about 10 Miles from the Dam)

Approaching Boulder Canyon and the dam from Arizona:

The new Hoover Dam Bypass bridge for US 93 is being build in front of the dam:

Entering the Pacific Time Zone on the Nevada side of the Dam (which is the same time as Arizona for half of the year)

It's Over!!!

School's out!!!  So the last day of school (for the teachers) is over and I have earned a dinner reward.... So I went to Dunkin' Donuts (which is only 1.1 miles from my house!) and got my dinner... 6 strawberry frosted donuts and a large (32 oz) strawberry Coolatta... The best meal ever!

Dinner & Drink:

My massive Strawberry Coolatta:

Coolatta with fork included for scale:

Mmmm, Mmmm, Good!  Now let summer break begin!

A long day of fun

So today Jenna and I traveled up to Hoover Dam...  I left here at 5:40 AM to pick her up and then we drove the 4 1/2 hour, 280 mile journey to the Dam.  We got there around 10:45 and then after a minor fiasco of spending an hour trying to parkwe were able to explore the dam (I drove past all the parking on the Arizona side thinking there was better, closer, parking on the Nevada side of the canyon, there was not, and we got stuck in the 45 minute, one lane traffic jam to get back to the dam from Nevada...) ... We went on the full tour and explored the power plant, the diversion tunnels, the air shafts inside the dam, looked out from an air vent in the middle of the dam, and the top of the dam and visitor's center...  it was very cool to see the dam up-close and realize just how massive it really is at 640 feet tall...  

Inside the Nevada side generator room at the base of the dam.  Hover Dam's 19 generators produce enough electricity for 1.3 million people (for a sense of scale this room is 600 feet long and 8 stories tall):

View of Arizona side of dam from the observation platform atop visitor's center, the dam is about 640 feet tall from the river to the top of the towers:

Looking 600+ feet down at the power station and Colorado River from the top of the dam, fortunately a gust a wind did not push me over the side....

Me with "Flat Stanley" (Long story...) at the Dam before our tour inside in inner workings of the structure:

More pictures to come tomorrow...

Ok, So it has been a while since I posted here, but it has been super busy with the end of the school year coming up... However, I found this floating around on the internet and I must have been here long enough now because everything on this list now makes sense to me...

You Know You're From Arizona If...

You notice your car overheating before you drive it. You no longer associate bridges or rivers with water. You can hear the weather forecast of 115 degrees without flinching. You can be in the snow, then drive for an hour...and it will be over 100 degrees. You discover, in July it only takes two fingers to drive your car, because your steering wheel is so hot. You run your air conditioner in the middle of winter so you can use your fireplace. The best parking is determined by shade.....not distance. You realize that "Valley Fever" isn't a disco dance. You can make sun tea instantly. Hotter water comes from the cold water tap than the hot one. It's noon in July, kids are on summer vacation and yet all the streets are totally empty of both cars and people. You actually burn your hand opening the car door. Sunscreen is sold year round and kept right at the checkout counter. You put on fresh sunscreen just to go check the mail box. Some fools will market mini-misters for joggers and some other fools will actually buy them. Worse.....some fools actually try to jog. You can pronounce Saguaro, Tempe, San Xavier, Canyon de Chelly, Mogollon Rim, Cholla, Gila and Tucson. You can understand the reason for a town named "Why" You can fry an egg on the hood of a car in the morning. You know hot air balloons can't rise because the air temperature is hotter than the air inside the balloon. You see two trees fighting over a dog. You can say "Hohokam" and people don't think you're laughing funny. You see more irrigation water on the street than there is in the Salt River You have to go to a fake beach for some fake waves You hear people say "but it's a dry heat!" You buy salsa by the gallon. Your Christmas decorations include sand and l00 paper bags. You think a red light is merely a suggestion. All of your out-of-state friends start to visit after October but clear out come the end of April. You think someone driving wearing oven mitts is clever. Most of the restaurants in town have the first name "El" or "Los." You think 60 tons of crushed red rock makes a beautiful yard. Your house is made of stucco and has a red clay tile roof. Vehicles with open windows have the right-of-way in the summer. Most homes have more firearms than people. Kids ask, "What's a mosquito?" People who have black cars or black upholstery in their car are automatically assumed to be from out of-state or nuts. You know better than to get into a car with leather seats if you're wearing shorts. You can finish a Big Gulp in 10 minutes and go back for seconds. You take rain dances seriously.  When a rainy day puts you in a good mood.  When you drive two miles around a parking lot looking for a shady place - even in the dead of winter.  You feed your chickens ice cubes to keep them from laying hard-boiled eggs.  You "hug" a cactus only once in your lifetime.  When you have to look up "mass transit" in the dictionary. A hundred ten in the shade is sorta hot, but you don't have to shovel it off your driveway.  A haboob happens. Petrified doesn't mean scared. The temperature drops below 95, you feel a bit chilly. You've lived in AZ your whole life and have never been to the Grand Canyon  You would give anything to be able to splash cold water on your face. You can attend any function wearing shorts and a tank top. You realize that asphalt has a liquid state.  you realize that snowbirds aren't really birds at all, but just really bad out of state drivers that you learn to hate there are only two temperatures, hot and hotter even thinking about not having air conditioning makes you sweat you travel out of state and any sort of humidity nearly kills you you have no idea why 48 other states (Hawaii doesn't do it either) insist on changing their clocks twice a year for this thing called "daylight savings time"

Best airplane safety videos

This interesting animated safety announcement is from the new airline Virgin America:

This computer animated safety video is from Virgin Atlantic:

This popular (and slightly sexy) video is played on Delta Airlines

This LIVE safety announcement is proof of why Southwest Airlines is the most entertaining airline to fly with...  United Airlines doesn't get any applause for their safety announcements!

And finally, this mock-announcement video was made by Mad-TV to make fun of how American Airlines began charging for the most basic of items like carry-ons and snacks in-flight.

Lambchop Part II

Only 34 more days...

So on May 8th the new Star Trek movie premieres! Here are the 3 trailers that have been released for the film. Click on the video window for each trailer to play it.

Lambchops

Today I took snowy to the groomers to get a haircut.  Since her fur was starting to get matted from a lack of brushing on my part (hey, i've been busy lately at school) I told the groomers to shave off the fur and make her a short-haired cat...   And they did!  When I went to pick her up and first saw her I burst out laughing...  She now looks like Lambchops (the Sherri Lewis puppet)  But she got a bath, her back claws trimmed, a mega-haircut, and they even put a bow on her!

Look at how happy Snowy is to be free from 5 extra pounds of fur:

Snowy likes to show off her new bow:

And she worked up an appetite at the groomers!

Rearranging

So last weekend I rearranged the living room when I had the furniture moved out of the room to have the surround sound speakers installed in the ceiling.  I moved the couch and chairs around and put each of the leaning shelves on opposite sides of the room...  The living room feels a lot larger with the sofa moved to the wall and the chairs in the middle of the room now..

Wupatki National Monument

So after visiting Sunset Crater and the Painted Desert overlook, we arrived at Wupatki National Monument... These ruins are at least 800 years old from when the Sunset Crater eruption added minerals to the desert and made the soils in the area more fertile for agriculture.   The weather was beautiful with blue skies and 80 degree temperatures...  the views of the painted desert were amazing and the ruins were fascinating!  

A colorful view of the Painted Desert

After visiting sunset crater, we traveled about 20 minutes northeast and descended from 8000' back down to 3500' and went back from alpine forest to desert brush environment.  Here we came over a hill and the Painted Desert came into view.  It stretches for hundreds of miles to the West, North, and East from the Grand Canyon to the Petrified Forest and is today part of the Navajo and Hopi nations.  We were going from Sunset Crater to the Wupatki Ruins National Monument

And we got closer to the desert....

And then we were finally in the Painted Desert!

Next stop:  Wupatki Ruins National Monument...

Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument

So about 15 minutes northeast of Flagstaff is Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument.  It is the cinder cone of a volcanic explosion from about 900 years ago.  We explored the base of the cone and I climbed out onto the remains of the lava flow.

The lava flow came off the volcano and cooled and solidified near the base of the cone... 900 years later a few pine trees have managed to take root in the rocks...

And finally, here is me in full social studies teacher attire climbing out onto the lava flow rocks...  Who says you can't hike in dress shoes?

Back to Flagstaff

On Friday, Jenna and her mother invited me to join them in Flagstaff for the day.  We left Phoenix around 9AM and it was supposed to get up to 90+ degrees.  But in Flagstaff the forcasted high was 62.  It is a lot warmer at 1500 feet than at 7000+ feet above sea level....  When we got to Flagstaff there was still snow on top of the higher peaks including Humphrey's Peak (elev. 12,000+ ft.)

After some sightseeing, shopping, and lunch in Flagstaff, our next stop was Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument

More about that in the next post!

A coastal vibe

So another one of my mini-projects this week was to try to add some finishing details to the guest suite.  Since I had no family photos to put in the family frame that was above the bed, I took it down and replaced it with a new black and white beach photo that fits perfectly between the two windows above the bed...

And I finally hung up the final square beach print I have had sitting in the closet since January and actually got them hung level to each other!

A little corner to relax...

So I went to IKEA Tempe this week and picked up a tullsta chair and some canvas art prints to finish off the master bedroom with some art and a sitting corner to sit down and read or put my shoes on in the morning or enjoy my view out the window.  (Click on the purple links to see these products at IKEA.com... but don't forget to come back here!)