ASU Homecoming

This past weekend was the ASU Homecoming. This year’s theme was Maroon and Golden Anniversary, celebrating 50 years of Arizona State University. I emphasized University because it was 50 years ago that the voters of Arizona approved the name change from Arizona State Teacher’s College to ASU. We are the only University to gain university status through a voter referendum.

There had been activities going on all week, but we took part in the Homecoming Block Party and football game. I was part of the planning committee that designed and ran the ASU Online & Extended Campus booth. It was a lot of fun to see such a huge party with lots of activities, food, freebies, and of course a parade.

Then there was the game. ASU opened a new “bubble” as a practice facility for the football team this year. Everything was fine until a monsoon burst the bubble and ASU dropped six straight games. Ironically, when the bubble was repaired and re-inflated, they started winning again.

Historic Sun Devil Stadium was the home to the Phoenix and Arizona Cardinals (name changed in 2004), Super Bowl XXX (1996), the Fiesta Bowl (1976-2006), and the BCS Championship Game (1999 & 2003). The stadium can seat over 73,379 and they said 61,490 attended a game that at kickoff was 81 degrees.

Washington State is one of the worst teams in the Pac-10 and ASU took advantage of the situation. It was a great game and a lot of fun to watch. We were sitting halfway up the upper level and was in the sun for the first half, but the shadow of the press box fell across us and cooled us off some. The game was a lot of fun, after each time ASU scored, they set off fireworks. Since ASU won 31-0, there were a lot of fireworks.

Hopefully ASU will beat UCLA and our arch rival The University of Arizona, if that happens we will be bowl eligible. Next year we will hopefully have Jack Elway as quarterback. You may have heard of his dad, John.

There are more pictures of the day in the AZ Fun album.

DST ends for you

We hope you enjoyed changing your clocks last weekend. Arizona does not observe daylight saving time because we already have enough sunlight. What this really means is that we are now two hours behind the east coast. The major impact is than NFL football now starts at 11am, instead of 10am.

We had to adjust our DVR recording schedule since some HD channels are scheduled for the east coast, meaning that when you are watching Mythbusters at 9pm, we now get it at 7pm (which is when prime time starts for us).. Before the clocks changed, we were recording it at 6pm.

Trick or Treat

Halloween is big here. There are a ton of haunted houses set up all over the valley and everyone dresses up. A major plus is that there is not an age limit to trick or treating like in Virginia, nor is there a curfew.

Many houses are decorated for Halloween and it seems like at least one family on every street has pulled their back yard fire pit out onto the driveway. There were a lot of little neighborhood parties out on the driveways and streets of the neighborhood. After we got tired of trick or treating, we ended up down the street hanging out and eating with a bunch of our neighbors.

This year we have been near record heat during October. On Halloween the high was 91, but it dropped to the low 80s after sunset. Most of the chocolate candy was a little gooey and had to be put in the fridge so it could be eaten.

For those of you wondering, it did not rain at all here during the months of September and October. This follows the third wettest August on record here.

AZ State Fair

This past Saturday we decided to go to the Arizona State Fair in Phoenix. We began the day with the Tour of Texas booth where you were able to take a virtual tour of Texas from a kayak. We did this to kill time before the first show of CSI: Live. The show begins with a magic act and in the very beginning I am called up on stage. I hold a “lightning” stick for the act while the assistant inside the box has an “accident”. So I go back and to sit with the family and the CSIers show up and recruited Lexi (among others) to help find clues to solve the case. I ended up having a couple of small parts in the show and had to sit with the other “suspects”. Of course, I did look for opportunities to blame the other suspects whenever I could. Too bad the story had me as the perpetrator who committed the crime.

We strolled around the fair that had your normal 4H and animal stuff, petting zoo, rides, and really bad food. I decided that this was a great time to try a deep fried s’more on a stick. Basically it was your regular s’more that was wrapped in dough and then deep fried.

There was also a lot of displays from the cooking, art, and sewing competitions. One group was offering these little ceramic figurines for free for kids to paint to get them involved in art.

Now it was time for racing and we started with the Banana Derby. The Banana Derby is basically monkeys serving as jockeys on dogs running around a track. Lexi got chosen to be a cheerleader and as such was able to get her picture made with the winning “jockey” for free.

We picked this past weekend for a reason, we wanted to end the night with figure eight racing. We are not “race fans” but who can ignore a great crash (safely of course). By the end of the night we had our crashes. There were six races and while you had some nice little spinouts and bumps during first several races, the last race featured a guy getting boxed in as they entered the crossing traffic and surviving only to get driven into a concrete barrier.

Thus ended a nice quiet Saturday. See the pictures in the photo album.

Tour de Fat

We have hopped into festival season with “bikes and beers,” The Tour de Fat presented by Fat Tire Beer. This zany event attracted over 2,500 cyclists, many of which dressed up in costumes and some rode custom “artful” bicycles. We purchased a bike for Dawn a couple of weeks ago and all four of us rode in the four mile bike parade through Tempe. The event highlights how bicycling is good for everyone and the environment and raises money for great cycling related causes. “Ride on!” See some more pictures in the AZ Fun photo album.

The event was rather chilly and very windy. The high temps have dropped from the near 100s to the mid 70s in about a week. At night, the temps have found their way into the lower 50s. We have the pool covered with a solar blanket and expect to be in it next weekend when the temps get back into the 90s.

On a related note, it is so funny to hear the high school bands (I pass two on my way to and from work) practicing at 6am in the morning. That is how school activities like football and band deal with the heat, they avoid it.

Nightmare on Main Street

Tonight was Mesa’s Second Friday event and the theme was Nightmare on Main Street. We have not had time to put together the girls’ Halloween costumes yet; however, that had not stopped Linds and Lexi from quickly making their own. I grabbed my kilt and wore comfortable shoes and the four of us hit the town.

The event is a nice way to see some of the downtown shops and restaurants and we really enjoyed walking the street. There were a lot of people out in costume, but I came in second place in the adult category of “cutest”. I lost out to a Capt Jack Sparrow who actually had a peg leg.

Random Thoughts

It is hard to blog about the interesting things we are doing when most of your time is spent clean and arranging stuff in the house, moving and emptying boxes, and spending too much money at IKEA, Costco, and Home Depot.

Fall has finally arrived here in the valley. We were still topping out at 100 degrees or more until Wednesday. This weekend the highs were in the mid 80s. But never fear, we should be back in the upper 90s in the next couple of days.

This time of year is great because the festival season starts back up. We are planning on going to a couple of events and will post pictures and stories of them as they happen. To give you a hint about next weekend, I bought Dawn a new bicycle last weekend for the festival we are going to attend.

Sunday mornings are great out here. The first NFL kickoff is at 10am. I have never watched the end of so many Sunday night and Monday night football games as I have this season (it is only Week 5!). In fact, the night games finish around 8:30 or 9pm.

Do you like he picture of the lake? It is not a lake, it is a park. If you look closely, you will see picnic tables in the middle of the water. That is how they water the grass at parks, ball fields, and some homes. The ground is built up to contain the water and they flood the area about once a week in the summer and every two or three weeks the rest of the year. I am so glad that I do not have a yard full of grass.

I am hoping to start making pictures of the house to share soon, in addition to chronicling our adventures.