It's Moabites, not Moabees

I am interning for a company called the Wayne Brown Institute. They are the oldest non-profit venture capital accelerator in the country. I have been there for about 3 months. The internship ends in about 3 weeks.

Anyway, because of all the awesome things that the interns have done for the institute, they decided to take us all on a weekend retreat to Moab, Utah.

For those of you who are not familiar with that area, let me take a couple of paragraphs to fill you in.

There are two stories explaining how Moab got its name. One of those stories claims that its first post master, William Pierce, named it after the city of Moab that is found on the East side of the Jordan River, believing that the biblical Moab and this part of Utah were both "the far country." The other story claims that the word "Moab" comes from the Piutes word "moapa" meaning mosquito.

Now, through the years, starting in the late 1800's, some of the residents of Moab wanted to have the name changed due to the fact that in the bible, the Moabites were idolatrous and incestuous. On different occasions they tried to change the name to Vina, and then Uvadalia. Weird, huh?

So now you have a little background info on Moab. That is where Laura and I spent our weekend, with the Moabites.

We left around noon on Friday and drove the 4 hours to Moab. The Institute paid for a couple of condos that we stayed in. Laura and I snagged the master bedroom in one of the condos which ended up being one of the best things we could have done. We got the master bathroom all to ourselves. It was nice.

The first night there we just settled in and had some dinner. We played some ping pong and darts and went to bed.

Saturday was a full day of Jeeping. We got up at 8 AM and went over to the Jeep rental place to pick up the 5 Jeeps that we were going to be using all day. We went to some pretty cool places. Instead of telling you all about it, here are some pictures:

There were a lot more pictures taken...some of you will get the opportunity of seeing those.

We got out of the Jeeps a few times for some site seeing and for lunch. We also got out to take a little hike to Gemini Bridges, which is a pretty cool spot. Here are a few pictures from that hike:

I think we were Jeeping for close to 9 hours yesterday. It was literally (said like Rob Lowe on Parks and Recreation) one of the coolest things I have ever done.

Saturday night we had a nice Mexican style dinner and then went to bed.

We slept in on Sunday and left for Salt Lake City around noon. Here is a part of the story that is funny to everyone but Laura and I...

While we were driving home, Laura and I were playing the game were you trying to link movie stars by the movies they are in. For example: link Meryl Streep to Jack Lemmon...

This was my first chain:

-Meryl Streep to Pierce Brosnan in Mama Mia

-Pierce Brosnan to Halle Berry in Die Another Day

-Halle Berry to John Travolta in Swordfish

-John Travolta to Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction

-Samuel L Jackson to Ewan McGregor in Star Wars

-Ewan McGregor to Jim Carrey in I Love You Phillip Morris

-Jim Carrey to Jennifer Aniston in Bruce Almighty

-Jennifer Aniston to Jason Bateman in The Switch

-Jason Bateman to Will Smith in Hancock

-Will Smith to Jack Lemmon in The Legend of Bagger Vance.

I later came up with a chain that was about half that long.

Anyway, Laura and I were so engrossed in this game that we didn't bother to pay attention to where we were going. We just kept driving and driving. It wasn't until we got to the point where we were so hungry we started looking for nearby eateries. Laura saw a sign and said "In 20 miles we can stop and eat in Beaver." I was like, "Beaver!?!?!?!?!? We shouldn't be anywhere near Beaver!!!!!!!"

It turns out that we were 20 miles north of Beaver when we should have been close to Spanish Fork. We added 2 hours on to our trip because of the never-ending degrees of Meryl Streep.

1. This is where Moab is.

2. This is where were were when we realized we were going the wrong way.

3. This is where we should have been

4. This is home.

It was pretty sucky!

So, that was our weekend.

See how many people it takes for you to link Meryl Streep and Jack Lemmon. Post it in a comment.

A Little Bit of Plywood and a Little Bit of Paint

As I write this post there are pellets of sweat beading under my knees. I am only telling you this so that you know that I am extremely uncomfortable. Why do I want you to know how uncomfortable I am? I don't know, but it is relevant to the post.

This is Jacob, by the way...Did you picture Laura's sweaty knees? Gross!

We live in a little one bedroom apartment with no central air conditioning. In the summertime we use a couple of a/c units that help keep us just cool enough to not want to kill ourselves. Am I complaining enough?...No? I can keep going.

Anyway, the a/c unit in our bedroom prevents us from being able to shut our window. Having the window open makes it very hard for the cool air to stay inside. Well, Laura's dad came up with the idea of cutting out a piece of plywood to cover the portion of the window that is left open. Less than 24 hours after making that suggestion, her dad was back up here installing the piece of plywood.

Now, some of you might be thinking "A piece of plywood? What an eye sore!"

What a coincidence, I was thinking the same thing.

I almost immediately got out some paint and started slapping in on the wood. This is what ended up forming on the plywood:

The painting is about 2 ft. wide and 17 in. tall.

I call it...

"Blind Sailor"