While You Were Cancelling Your Vacation To Beirut...
Let's see, what have I been up to? Chris and I had a housewarming/engagement party, finally.
We went camping for 3 nights for Chris' birthday (which was last Sunday - he's 35!) We went fishing, too, but didn't catch anyting.
We went to the Llamafest in Southern Utah.
We visited the Krishna temple in Southern Utah.
We discovered that our gorgeous tree that flowered beautifully this Spring (I posted pictures here) is a plum tree!!! Oh happy day!
Our garden has been going
nuts and we're harvested cabbages, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, cayenne peppers, bell peppers, and jalapenos thus far.
And now we're off to Wyoming for Chris' family reunion. (Not the overnight camping one that we did last year, we missed that one when we were in Spain. But a different one.)
We are working on a new website, one we'll hopefully update more often. If you are family or a friend in real life, we'll be sending out the URL soon. If you aren't, email me (mail@dumbchick.com) if you want the URL.
In Which I Make Myself Sound LIke A Mental Patient
Last Tuesday Chris and I headed to the Senior Center behind our house
to cast our votes in the primary election. The voting process was
different than usual, because they were debuting the new voting machines.
Gone are the days of the old paper-punch method; these are the days of
the computerized voting. It was kind of fun. The name of the office
came up on the screen, and below it were the names of the candidates, and
you touched the name of the candidate for whom you wished to cast your
vote. You then touched "next", and the screen asked you if you were
sure you wanted to cast you vote for that person, and you touched "yes",
at which point the machine printed a little paper copy of who you were
voting for and displayed it to the right of the machine. If you then
touched "cast my ballot", the machine sucked up the little piece of
paper and told you that you were done. Pretty cool, but it made me
nervous. The paper-punch method allowed you to obsessively scan your paper
before you turned it in, making sure you made all of the right decisions.
Computerized voting just felt so
final. Like with just a slip
of the finger you could vote for your arch enemy. I know that doesn't
make any sense, but I'm a little OCD, and nothing I do really makes
sense.
As Chris and I were leaving the polls (after running into one of our
tenants!) we talked about the new machines. I relayed my thoughts on the
machines to Chris, and told him that I had secretly feared that I was
accidentally going to vote for a Nazi or something. He said, in a
machine-like voice, "Please touch yes to cast your ballot for Hitler." We
laughed at me, and headed off to the library.
We were sporting our "I Voted!" stickers, because we're suckers for
stickers. We got our books and checked out, and as we were on our way
out, we were stopped by a reporter for NPR. He asked if he could
interview us about voting, and we said "sure". My immediate thought was that he was going to shove a microphone in my face and say "So who did you
vote for and why?" and I would end up sounding like an idiot. But it was
worse: he wanted to interview us about the new machines. I went first,
and my only goal (in this situation, and in life in general) was not to
sound like an idiot. So all that was running through my mind during
the interview was "Don't tell him that you were afraid you were going to
vote for Hitler! Don't do it!" And I didn't, although I did say
phrases like "little paper thingy". Brilliant, I know.
Chris went next and sounded educated and eloquent, which isn't hard to
do when you follow the girl with voices in her head. As we left the
library I said to Chris "I sounded so stupid!" to which he replied "Then
you'll definately get on the radio! They always put the stupid people
on the radio!" Isn't he helpful?
Honestly, I thought we'd never hear the interview. But we do listen to
NPR every morning while we get ready for work, and lo and behold, there
we were on the radio the next morning. And I didn't sound nearly as
stupid as I had previously feared, and I would like to point out that
Chris and I
both got on the radio. I wonder how he likes his
little theory now?
