Where did the summer go? The past few months have passed in a blur. I took two courses to finish up my master’s degree and, to be honest, they were more work than I anticipated! The good news is that I got my diploma in the mail yesterday. It feels great to be finished. My courses ended the day before Elliott started his Junior year. We did squeeze in a quick trip to Indy to see my family, but otherwise it was a quiet summer.

You have to get up and get going early in this heat. We went for a walk this morning and saw a rattlesnake. It was stretched out on the side of the road soaking up the warmth from the asphalt. Good thing I have prescription sunglasses and noticed it!

At work, we had a great Cinco de Mayo Fiesta including pinatas, horchata, chips and salsa. We made cascarones. For those that don’t know what a cascaron is (and I didn’t!), it is a confetti filled egg. From what I’ve gathered in a cursory study, cascarones started in Italy during the Renaissance period where gentlemen threw perfumed filled eggs at ladies they fancied. Now, cascarones are used in Mexican celebrations. The idea is if you smash them on someone’s head, they bring good luck. I have to admit, I’m a bit hazy on the details of how this tradition came to Mexico. I cheated and bought the pre-packed eggs. After cleaning out the first dozen eggs in the usual Easter egg fashion, I decided to resort to the online supplier! Tucson has added it’s own twist to the cascaron. Here, people add a paper cone that holds the egg. The cone is as much a part of the decoration as the egg.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Well, this is why I have been ignoring the blog – so much fun stuff to do at work!  The online gaming group has been making videos with screen shots and screen capture software.  This one is from animoto.com – which is fool-proof even for like noobs like me!  But a couple of people have done good little movies. 

Believe it or not, this will come in handy for school.  One final project this term is to make an online tutorial using screen capture software.

For quite some time this winter, we have been feeling very lucky we are not in blizzard or a flood.  No bailing water, no shoveling snow.  Tucson was basking in lovely warm sunny days.  However, we did get our comeuppance this past week. The overnight temperatures dropped to below 20 degrees.  We woke up one morning to find we had no water.  The pipe outside had frozen solid!  Luckily, Tim took out a little electric heater and warmed up the pipe and the water started flowing.

Later that day, as the temperature rose, pipes all over Tucson began to burst. Just about everyone has an irrigation system and almost everyone suffered some water problems.  Luckily, we are able to separate the irrigation system from our inside water supply.  So we are able to have water, even while the irrigation system is dismantled.  Every hardware store is, of course, sold out of spigots and pipe wrap.

I came home from work that evening to find the gas man outside our house shutting off our supply.  Everyone in Tucson was cranking the heat so much that the system was sucked dry.  We have heat, but no hot water.  Many thousands of people had neither.  We are still waiting for the gas company to turn us back on.  The kettle has served us well – heating up enough water to have a little wash.  However, I did take Jo and Ken up on their offer a hot shower to wash my hair. Nice to have family in town!

We have been experiencing a little cold snap here and there is a dusting of snow in the mountains.  New Year’s Day was clear and crisp – a perfect day for a walk in Ventana Canyon.

It was a rather unorthodox holiday, but it was interesting!  Because we were too intimidated to salt a turkey for Christmas dinner, we headed to Las Vegas.  I wasn’t sure quite what to expect, but it was as bizarre as you’d think.  For one thing, I didn’t realize that people don’t actually use money in the slot machines anymore .  There are pre-paid cards to insert.  The card is hooked to the gambler by a lanyard.  The result is an eerie, Sci-Fi vision - a person hooked to a machine by an umbilical cord, staring blankly, hitting the reset button over and over.  We didn’t do any gambling, but we enjoyed going around to see all the different hotels.

The bridge bypassing the Hoover Dam has just opened in the past few months.  It is the highest and longest arched concrete bridge in the Western Hemisphere, as well as the second-highest bridge of any kind in the United States.  It was so packed on Christmas Eve, all the tours were sold out.  To see more information about the bridge, check out the newspaper article from USA Today.  Elliott recognized the Hoover Dam as the location for the climax in the computer game Fallout New Vegas.  I was going to link to show more information about that game – but I noticed it’s 17 + and you have to put in your birthday to see the trailer.  Wait a minute, who lets him play that game anyway?!