Neither of us had ever been to a drive-in movie, so we thought we should try it out before it got too hot outside.

Pros:

• Personal space

Cons:

• Blurry picture
  
• Terrible sound
  
• Smoking neighbors
  
• Bugs

I feel like there should be more pros, but that was all I could come up with. In any event, I really don't feel the need to go back.

I have about three and half weeks of wearing my stupid glasses before I can finally cast them aside forever (or for awhile, anyway). There's only two bases that currently do laser eye surgery in the Air Force, so I figured I should have it done while I'm here. After that, it's probably only a matter of time until Carrie gets jealous and wants to get her eyes lasered as well.

I think I'm developing an obsession with alarm clocks, or at least building up a ideal super-clock in my mind that satisfies all my alarm clock needs. I feel like most people probably don't give their alarm clock a second thought as long as it wakes them up on time. I, on the other hand, think about which features are must-haves, which are nice-to-haves, and which ones I really don't care one way or the other. I also don't really think that people are going to go out in droves and buy an ultra fancy clock, so alarm clock companies are probably justified in the minimal function clocks they produce.

I currently have a clock like this one that my sister got me for Christmas a few years ago. I wasn't super excited about the projection feature, but have come to love it. It's nice not having to look for the clock in the middle of the night, since I can just look up and there's the time on the ceiling.



It also sets the time automatically based on the atomic clock, which is very nice. I know that I don't want to have to set another clock if I don't have to.

Here is my current list of desires in an alarm clock, which may or may not be realistic.

Must-haves:

• Atomic clock - As mentioned above, I'd rather not have to manually set my clock. It's also nice if there's a power outage in the middle of the night and the clock can reset the time itself, although this isn't super-critical since most clocks have battery backup.
  
• Beep, not buzzer - I hate buzzer-type alarms with a passion. I hate being jolted awake by an extremely loud buzzer that makes me think the house is on fire. I still remember my dad waking me up by either banging like crazy on my door or shaking me by the foot, both of which I hope to never experience again. I much prefer a softer beep, preferably one that starts low and gets steadily louder.
  
• Nap button - It's not like I take a ton of naps, but it's nice to have a quick button to set nap alarm in 15 minute increments. I hate having to change my alarm time to take a nap, since it just means I'll probably forget to change it back and oversleep the next day.

Nice-to-haves:

• Adjustable snooze - I think I prefer a snooze length of around 15 minutes, if the clock can be programmed to do so. I've seen some that do this, so it shouldn't be a big deal.
  
• Ceiling projection - I guess I could live without this, but it's dang convenient.
  
• Separate weekday/weekend alarms - Ideally, I'd like to set a different alarm time for each day of the week, but weekday/weekend would satisfy most of my needs.

Don't care:

• iPod/MP3 player audio input - I can see why some people would like this, but I can't say it's something I've been yearning for.
  
• Weather information - I don't really need to know the current temperature or forecast when I wake up. At least, I don't think I do.

The best contender I've found is this Sangean alarm clock, though it's not without its shortcomings.



It meets a lot of my needs, including atomic clock synchronization, nap button, and multiple alarms for weekday/weekend. It also has what they call the Humane Waking System (HWS), which sounds like it was designed specifically for people like me. The HWS "begins with a low volume beep and gradually increases in intensity to slowly wake you instead of receiving a firm jolt that others provide." Right up my alley.

Its Achilles' heel, at least to me, is that the snooze length is only 5 minutes. My old travel alarm clock had a snooze of 5 minutes and it drove me up the wall. It would wake me up, but it puts me in a bad mood. My current alarm clock is 8 minutes, already a minute shorter than the standard 9 minutes (who decided 9 minutes was the best choice, anyway?), and I couldn't imagine dealing with a 5-minute snooze every day. I'd rather have one long snooze than multiple short ones. The other downside I've read about is that it has a built-in capacitor to store the time/alarm settings in the event of a power-outage, but the clock won't alarm if the power is out. How is that helpful? I'd rather put my own batteries in, if it guarantees that the clock will actually do its job in the morning. It would also be nice if it projected the time, but it's not the end of the world.

I probably think about alarm clocks way too often, but I feel like there's so much room for improvement. As cheap as transistors are these days, it doesn't seem like a big deal to throw some extra functionality on clocks that are out there.

Maybe I'll just buy a bunch of different clocks and duct tape them together into one mega-clock.

I got the day off of school today, so the snow is A-ok in my book. I guess it can't snow this much everyday, because we would eventually run out of food in the house and have to eat the cats. I can only assume they taste as bad (or worse) than they smell, so that's a scary proposition.



This wasn't meant to be a picture of the cats, but they're always interested in getting in the way of whatever I'm doing. I was trying to take a picture showing how the snow was piling up against the back door.



I'm pretty sure that shoveling snow is the winter equivalent of mowing the lawn.

I didn't think I took that many pictures while we were at Sundance, but I forgot about the ones I took with my cellphone because I didn't feel like carrying around the real camera all the time. They're just random pictures that are in no way related to Sundance, other than they were taken during the festival.



Here's a shot of the temperature on the way to the airport in Dayton. I sometimes wish the car would just lie to me, because holy balls that's cold.



It was around 40 degrees in Sundance, and pretty pleasant in the sun. Carrie had to borrow sunglasses from Tim because she forgot hers.



We saw this gem in the window of one of the shops on Main Street. We considered buying it as a gag gift for someone, but chickened out. It's called The Duke if you want one of your own. It's only $24.95 if I remember right.



If you still need to get me a birthday present, you could get me this painting. I didn't go inside the store to get a price, but maybe it's on sale!



I'm thinking that I need to jazz up the MINI with a little chicken wire and duct tape. Classy.

The past two years when we've gone to Sundance, it's been quite a shock, weather-wise. But this year, the current temperature of 30 degrees in Park City seems almost tropical, compared to the 2 degrees right now. I probably won't even bring my heavy-duty snow boots.

p.s. My morning class got cancelled today due to the ice/snow, which was pretty sweet.