Sixintheworld.com

By far the biggest concern others have expressed to us regarding our upcoming trip is that we remain 6 in the world and don’t drop down to 5. We have spent a lot of time thinking about the safety and continued possession of our offspring. After extensive research and domestic testing, here are our top 6 recommendations for keeping your kids safe while traveling:

6. Become Canadians. Americans seem to draw unnecessary attention to themselves through a variety of conspicuous behaviors including speaking loudly and wearing flashy or impractical outfits. To prevent your children from standing out to potential criminals, teach them the Great Northern dialect and dress them in organic clothing. Make sure they insert an “eh” at the end of at least every other sentence and turn the “ow” in “about” into a “oo” like “a boot.” Throw a maple leaf patch or decal on at least one piece of each child’s clothing.

5. Use technology to stay close. While Kiddie Lo-jack would be a nice step, GPS implants would open a Pandora’s box of privacy and moral issues. Piece together the next best thing—a complete arsenal of Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t care how old you are, how much you’ve traveled, or how much time you’ve spent in a hospital, shots are never fun. My little kids, who usually handle immunizations with relative grace, came completely unhinged yesterday in the face of their last remaining injections before the trip. We traveled to the Utah County Health Department Immunization Clinic in Provo but did not brief them on the cause for the visit. They had no reason to suspect anything as the lobby was packed with people of all ages and no one was in apparent distress. After a brief wait and a lengthy consult with the travel nurse, I was led to a sterile room to review the protocol and examine the syringes and vials. The nurse was insistent that I see exactly what I was getting since I was shelling out such big bucks. The plan was to sneak the little kids in one at a time and quickly poke them while they weren’t looking. The element of surprise is usually our greatest tool for a tear-free immunization experience. I lost the upper hand, however, Read the rest of this entry »

Utahns pride themselves in the natural beauty of their state. The Rocky Mountains, forbidding in their jagged majesty yet comforting in their powerful embrace, cast spectacular shadows over the carefully settled desert valleys. Inspired by such awesome surroundings, many residents revel in outdoor activities such as hiking, biking, running, and camping. Overall, Utah’s people are exceptionally healthy with the state placing fifth in the United Health Foundation’s annual health rankings.

With its history as the home of the LDS people, Utah enjoys the nation’s lowest rates of alcohol and tobacco use. Some critics claim that Utahns’ teetotaling ways prevent them from having fun, but nothing could be further from the truth. Just because most abstain from racier substances doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate a good high every now and then. Visitors just need to know where to look to join in the local customs.

During my initial visit to Utah in 1990, the first business I set foot in was a 7-Eleven. Tom picked me up at the airport and in an apparent rite of passage took me to a nearby gas station for my first sugar run. Inside the store I was confronted by the longest, widest, tallest candy aisle I had ever seen and a soda fountain that stretched the entire length of the store. I noticed a curious arrangement of oversized mugs at the end of the counter but didn’t think much of it at the time. I soon learned that these “jugs” were an integral part of many Utahns’ lives. Ownership entitled the bearer to dirt cheap refills at virtually any convenience store in the state, and wherever I went, I encountered thirsty yet budget-conscious citizens who coddled their jugs like infants.

During our three years living in Utah, I drank only fruit juice and refused to let Tom buy a jug of his own. As a result he was relegated to the ranks of disposable cup buyers and their measly 44-ounce maximum. Ten years later I have mended my ways. I am now a regular visitor to the Alpharetta Qwik Trip, which boasts its own formidable beverage bar even though it resides 1500 miles east of the Rockies.

In a fit of “when in Rome” behavior, I shelled out a cool $5.99 last week for my very own 64-ounce jug. (No, I won’t be taking it around the world.) I opted against the 100- ouncer since the clerk said I’d need a forklift or much bigger biceps to get it into my car. I now enjoy membership in an elite society of soft drink afficionados and chronically parched construction workers who acknowledge each other with an approving nod and secretly evaluate each other’s vessels while filling up.

This lovely young lady—my sister in soda—didn’t think twice when I asked her to join me outside the Holiday Mart for a photograph this morning. Her jug was a particularly vibrant shade of yellow and adorned with surfboards and Woody cars. My navy blue version emblazoned with psychotic clowns paled in comparison.

In case you’re interested, I don’t have any statistics regarding candy, but it is a well-known fact that Utah ranks first in the nation in Jell-O consumption.

Technorati Tags: Big Gulp, Jell-O, Round the World, Round-the-world, RTW, Soda, Utah

Many of you appreciated Tom’s last post on the wonders of Web 2.0. Though I may feign ignorance, I actually know a thing or two about technology, and like most of you, use it just about every second of my day. I share my husband’s hope in the promise of technology, but unfortunately I seem to spend most of my time trying to figure out why it fails me. It seems whenever I begin to revel in the seemingly limitless productivity my gadgets afford, they break, explode, or simply stop functioning. My lackluster blog performance in recent days has largely been Read the rest of this entry »

Do you think lifechanging inventions like the web should continue to have numeric labels that increment every couple of years like software products from the 80’s? And if they do, who will be the person who decides we can’t have a web 8.0 and forces it to be called Web 2019? Just one of the silly things in life to ponder.

One silly thing you shouldn’t have to ponder is why are we doing this blog. We might come across as a little schizophrenic, and you may question our motives, our coordination, or my mental state. There are a couple simple reasons we are doing this and if you understand Read the rest of this entry »

One of the biggest incentives I have for taking this trip is to prove to myself and my family that the world is not nearly as big and as bad as we seem to think it is. Though current events are disturbing, they have taken on a different meaning for me since I have been in many of the places they are occurring. In 1999 Tom and I stood at the Israeli-Lebanese border and watched as laborers crossed back into Lebanon from their day jobs in the Golan Heights. In my mind, I can see those same people now fleeing from the invading Israeli troops, just as I would if my home and life were in danger. I have stood in the exact locations in Bali and Egypt where bombings have occurred. I can see street signs, storefronts, and faces. I understand that the people who inhabit these places are much like me. They love their children, wash their dishes, and yearn for a world at peace. As a result, I feel connected to what is happening rather than being frightened or disinterested. Aren’t I worried about the bombings in Mumbai or the uncertainty in Lebanon? On a personal level, no. The chances of my family being affected Read the rest of this entry »

Tom made a post yesterday that dealt with the more technical side of his life. Though technology pervades the rest of the Andrus family’s lives, we are not involved in the evolution of the internet the way Big T is. We make advances in our own ways: I am trying to master text messaging, a skill with which modern-day teenagers come prewired; Dax (who can text message faster than I can type) is learning iMovie and taking high school classes online; McKane is downloading music and constantly finding ways to spend my money on the web; and the little bits have become experts in seeking out and downloading viruses and spyware into our non-Apple machines. (A plug for Apple here–our two Windows laptops are currently out of commission and not likely to be revived anytime soon. Between Utah and Georgia, the family is currently working off of a collection of two PowerBooks, one MacBook, one G5, and one iMac.)

My relative ignorance aside, tonight I managed to plug in the right assortment of wires and click the right buttons to perform my own high-tech feat of prowess: a long distance dinner with dad. Tom couldn’t be in Utah to share in Grandpa’s roast, but he cooked up Peach Shrimp Scampi and asparagus and joined us via videoconference.

It’s doubtful we’ll do this every night. If Tom is smart, he’ll savor a few evenings of solitary dining before solitude becomes an impossibility!

Technorati Tags: Apple, iChat, Round the World, Round-the-world, RTW, Videoconference

It hit me this week that I am going to be leaving work in 30 days. There is a ton left to do at work, but I am sure there will still be a ton months after I am gone. It wouldn’t be work if it didn’t pile up on my desk. One great thing happened this week that makes it easier for me to start thinking about my leave of absence. You would expect it to be something bad that makes me glad to have a year away, however, it was exactly the opposite. I work at EarthLink, and it is an extremely exciting time with lots of new products and businesses. Three are getting a lot of attention: voice over IP, our Helio cell phone deal, and Muni Wifi. While I have worked in all three of those areas (all in their earliest stages), my attention over the last 2-3 years has been in our web and value added services. I truly find this to be the most exciting area at Earthlink, but people outside Earthlink don’t always get a chance to see the things we are doing. I am so proud of the team of people who work on these products that I feel bad leaving them. I know they are doing a great job and our growth over the last 3 years has been wonderful, but this team needed a little outside recognition. On Thursday night this week we got it. Two of our early products, reader and myfavorites (both still in prerelease) were found by some of the new media thought leaders who pondered when-did-earthlink-get-so-cool. Both Michael Arrington (the writer of leading new media website Techchruch) and Dave Winer(the inventor of RSS) gave us nice endorsements. It is one thing to get an endorsement from a random journalist who only understands RSS after you give them 4 or 5 examples, stop and explain it again as a news ticker, it is all together another story to get nods from people the team respects and reads on a daily basis. The week just kept getting better and Michael also reviewed our photo and web storage product called Weblife.

So what does this have to do with me and my year away from EarthLink? I am not sure why, but this gave me an easy feeling that the work we have been doing has been right and the future roadmaps will be good and all the great people who have been working on this stuff will continue to do innovative things while I am away. This wasn’t a shock to me; I just hadn’t thought about it, and it made me smile when I did.
Read the rest of this entry »