Put Your Hand Inside the Pumpkin Head

So, then there was this long long time where we didn't blog. We're back now, to tell you all of our adventures in pumpkin carving. (This is not to be confused with "pumpkin craving", which is actually really abnormal. If you crave pumpkins, see a competent medical professional.) We purchased this pumpkin from our local Kroger affiliate, and some cheap carving tools too. (Again, if you're aware of "craving tools", this is a cause for alarm.) It was Family Home Evening, so we did our lesson thing and got to hacking the gourd. All the patterns that came with the carving tools were a little tough, except for the emoticon ;) which would have been cute, but I think I'd prefer H-#, which is the emoticon for "I was playing some Virtual Reality game from a bad 90's sci-fi, when someone came up from behind me and duct-taped my mouth shut." So we decided on a Happy Pirate, which is actually pretty much an emoticon in and of itself.

First, we had to get the goop out. Lobotomizing Jack, I've heard it called. The goop is gross, and the inside of the pumpkin has a smell designed, I guess, to ward off predators. Or maybe predators like that sort of thing. Again, pumpkin cravings are no good. But you just do it because that is the way it's been done in our country since Squanto taught John Smith to do this in Pilgrim times. John Smith carved a witch silhouetted by the moon, and Squanto carved a haunted ear of blue corn.

We carved the daylights out of that thing, and between the fact that our pumpkin was actually a ball of inch-thick drywall stuffed with canned pumpkin goop and the fact that our tools were made out of the finest aluminum Chinese sweatshops have to offer, it was a little difficult. We broke the tools right off, and finished the carving with some good old-fashioned American kitchen knives. The way our parents did it. The way their parents did it.

Then we put it on our Arizona front doorstep. This was the 20th, and in the more temperate climes from which we came this would not have presented a problem. The only downside we've yet found to the Grand Canyon State--pumpkin rot.

We got sick right after the carving, and so for days we barely noticed anything. Then when we got better, there was the pumpkin, housing its own breeds of creepy-crawlies. It was very spooky, with mold over the remaining eye, and bugs deep inside its entrails. I bravely sort of got a plastic bag around it and, careful not to sever the beast with the edge of the bag, rushed it out to the dumpster. Shame, too. Maybe it had some penicillin in it.

Lessons learned: Beware the deadly pumpkin-rot, and don't carve until the 29th at the earliest.

Pulling Out All the Stops

Pizza and organ music? A winning combination.

Interestingly, we drive past this place all the time. We were certainly intrigued by the name "Organ Stop Pizza" and the sign drolly indicating that the establishment offered "the best pizza you've ever heard", so for date night last Friday, we ventured into that austere palace of musical pie. It was truly awesome. At first, it wasn't that awesome 'cause we could only see the front of the store and the price of pizza, which was actually quite high. We ordered a large and headed off into the dining area, and behold! The Mighty Wurlitzer! This thing was a monster! Less pipes than the Tabernacle, I'm sure, but the Tabernacle doesn't have cymbals, a bubble machine, or animatronic animals. Yeah, the animals are a little much, and they lend a Chuck E. Cheese* atmosphere to the place, but they don't come out that frequently. Homeboy organista was all up on the pops--he went from Mission:Impossible to "My Heart Will Go On" without any problems. And hit everything in between, with a heavy focus on Disney.

The pizza was pretty tasty and we ate the whole large. I don't know. We're just hungry people. We stayed for way after we were done with our pie, and we'll probably go back one day. The end of the experience brought out a little crazy side in us, and Ben thought it would be awesome if they played "Stairway to Heaven". Crystal said we should go ahead and request it. We did, but right before he took a break. And we were pretty ready to go, but if any of you were at Organ Stop Pizza on Friday and the guy played Stairway, that was us. Next time, it'll be Freebird.

• Ben's favorites: the theme from the original "Star Trek" and "Everybody Wants to Be a Cat."
  
• Crystal's favorite: George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue".

*Full Name: Carlos Eduardo Cheese Rivera. Bet you didn't know that!

Heaven on Earth

Being married is awesome. Being in an awesome family ward is awesome squared.

When last you left us, we had gone through the inner circle to get to Mesa, kind of far away from ASU, where Crystal will be going to school (PhD in Chem Ed, for those just joining us). Well, our apartment was (and is) full of junk, and we had done the essential grocery shopping etc. when we realized that we were our own little family now. The dreams of years for both of us lie in the collective stuff of decades, in a second-floor apartment in Mesa ("Five degrees hotter than hell.") We were content despite the disaster.

Sunday came, and we had been looking forward to it for a long time. We would get to introduce ourselves as the Chattertons, and people would know us only as the family we had only briefly been, not as Ben Chatterton and/or Crystal Ward, but as Ben and Crystal Chatterton, husband and wife.

The Harmony Park Ward is aptly named. Part of the ward comes from the apartment complex we live in, part comes from homes of more well-established members of the Mesa community. All were amazingly friendly and helpful. The brethren from the move-in recognized us and introduced us to their families. The bishop was great, and informed us that they already had our records. They got Crystal's phone number and when she said I was looking for a job, I got at least two people calling me with leads.

We got two invitations to dinner. Two.

The first one was that night. Nice family, two kids. In the apartments. They fed us, then they printed out a map of the area and marked everything important on it. They let us check our email and left us feeling loved. The Tuesday night dinner was just as good, and we got to share our meal with two hard-working and good-spirited missionaries.

So good.

Lesson learned: Sometimes the universe just wants you to have 1:30 church.

Hell on Wheels

The story of a young couple, a load of stuff, a U-Haul, a tow-dolly, and a mystical place called "F-Word City".

On the 1st of August, 2008, we intrepidly loaded the U-Haul (thanks Ricky) and clunked our way south. The U-Haul guys said, "Never, ever, if zombies attack and your lives depend on it, back this truck with the tow-dolly attached." Duly warned. In Provo, we picked our bed from R.C. Willey and had hamburgers and our last Sub-Zero ice cream (that is, until we franchise one here in AZ). Then came the long haul, a stretch of misery and wobbliness that occurred from our mountain home so dear down to the edge of anywhere. Dustin had told me to take the Vegas route and give Flagstaff a miss, but we were young and brash and didn't need that sort of crap. Also, Crystal and I hate Las Vegas, so that was another good reason. We had heard that there was nothing between Page and Flagstaff, but we were confident that we would be there before suppertime.

We were horribly wrong.

What with the loading, the bed-loading, the eating, and the fact that we couldn't drive the Deathmobile more than about 50 mph, we got to Page at about 8:30 pm Arizona Time, and wondered whether we could venture into the blackness. You know the end of "2001: A Space Odyssey" where everything's black and silent and then majorly trippy for a number of minutes? It was like that only much, much longer. (Another analog for those unfamiliar with 2001 is the boat ride in the old Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. You know, "Is it raining, is it snowing?") We lost our collective mind. It was real bad. In fact, about halfway through the Arizona Triangle we couldn't think of the name of Flagstaff, and started calling it "F-Word City". Turns out it was appropriate.

In F-Word City, we had supposedly made a reservation to stay at an America's Best Value Inn. This was unfortunate as they filled up their hotel anyway (note: this is in fact a formal call for boycott). We trounced about town, backing our truck rebelliously, looking for room in the inn until, appropriately, we stumbled upon three women in a HoJo having Bible study at like 1am Arizona Time. We'll call them the Midnight Bible Brigade. Well, they pointed us to some divehole down the road and we slept on a kingsize bed made of stone.

We experienced further discomfort in that apparently directions to the Flagstaff IHOP include, "Turn into the ninth dimension of space". The U-Haul was too big to do that, so we ate at the slowest Village Inn in the world. We arrived in Mesa only to find that out apartment complex required payment not with personal check, but with money order or cashier's check. Information that would have been useful yesterday. The ward turned out to help move us, though, and Crystal's mom and bro were essential in getting the money to us on a Saturday. It was a mess. We're here though!

Lesson learned: Page, AZ is a cool little town near some sort of dam. Everything there is a dam joke, as if the town were built by eleven-year-old boys.