so that's how they do it!

The way we shop has changed dramatically in the last decade or so. We are no longer a society that physically goes to a store, finds several models/styles of a product, tries it on or holds it, talks to a sales clerk... and then makes a decision and buys one, taking it home in a bag. Instead, we read endless reviews (a few are helpful but most are ridiculous if you can even read the text-speak they are written in without grammar or punctuation), scour the internet for the best price, click the "buy now" button and wait for the item to be delivered to our home. We can buy everything from apples to zebra-striped leggings and more with the click of a button.

Last year Amazon became the world's largest online retailer. Chances are good that if you have access to either a computer or smart phone, you have ordered something from Amazon. And it is delivered to your doorstep quickly - often within a day or two. Some cities now have same-day delivery.

Wow! How can they do that?

A friend invited me to go with her on an Amazon Fulfillment Center tour in Phoenix. She made the reservation for the tour over a year in advance and at last the day came!

The Amazon Fulfillment Center building is really big huge gigantic humongous but fortunately the signage for visitors is quite clear. We were greeted by our tour guide as soon as we arrived, given a visitor badge and head set for the tour. After a safety talk (only walk in the designated areas, walk no more than two abreast, ...) and reminder that there is absolutely no photography and all phones must be silenced and put away or they will be confiscated, we were ready to begin.

The Phoenix facility we were at has small and medium-sized items. There are rows and rows and rows of shelving units with the aisles labeled with a number/lettering system. Our tour stopped on one of the aisles as the tour guide explained the process.

The first thing I noticed were lots of smallish (slightly larger than a shoebox) bins on the shelves filled with a seemingly random assortment of goods. One bin had a package of drinking straws, Disney cookie cutters, saline nasal spray, baby wipes, and measuring spoons. Of course, that's just what I could see without taking the bin out - there was lots of other stuff in the back of the bin.

Why were those particular items together in the bin? My mind was spinning trying to figure out what these items had in common.  And I was getting nowhere fast.

And then the answer was given by our tour guide - there is no rhyme or reason to placing items in the bin, only that they fit in the bin. The entire operation is computer-controlled with employees doing the "stowing" and "picking."

When a product comes into the facility, the barcode on the item is scanned into their computer system and put in a cart. When the cart is filled, an employee called a "stower" scans a product with a hand-held scanner and the computer identifies which aisle and bin has room for that item. The stower finds the correct aisle and bin, makes sure the product will fit and then scans the product into that particular bin (all bins are identified with a barcode).

Okay, that explains the hodge-podge collection of items in the small bins. But how in the world do they find the items in a timely fashion when an order comes in? Wouldn't someone be running all over this massive facility just to find three or four items in a single order?

Filling an order is where employees called "pickers" come into play. Pickers are assigned an area and also issued a hand-held scanner. As orders come in, the computer lets pickers know which items to pick from a particular bin. When an item is taken from a bin, it is scanned "out" of the bin letting the computer know that bin now has room for another product. The computer knows how much space each product needs as well as how much space is in each bin, thus allowing the maximum amount of products in the least amount of space. There is no wasted space in the bin.

Once the picker scans an item out of a bin, it is placed in a large yellow bin which when filled, often with parts of multiple orders, are placed on a conveyor belt system and taken to the shipping area.

In the shipping area, all the parts of an order are put together in a box or mailing envelope by a "shipper" who places a label with a barcode on the package before placing it on a conveyor belt.  From there it passes through scanners and machinery that generate a mailing label and adheres it to the package. It passes through yet another scanner to ensure the label is readable and in the right place on the package before being sent off to a truck to be shipped to the customer.

And all this happens very quickly.

As I was watching this amazing process in action, I wondered how someone came up with this process. It seems like a recipe for disaster for someone like me who craves order and logic, not randomness. But it works and I can't argue with that.

We enjoyed the tour and recommend it for anyone who wants to see what goes on behind the scenes. You can make a reservation for a tour of an Amazon Fulfillment Center near you (in six cities across the United States) here. But make it early - many are already completely booked through 2017! The 2018 schedule will be out "soon" or you can be put on a wait list for a cancellation.

And now I feel a "need" to browse through Amazon....

happy 100th birthday!

The National Park Service turns 100 years old today... and we are all invited to the party! From August 25th through August 28th, 2016 all 412 national parks (including national monuments, national seashores, national battlefields, national memorials, etc.) are offering FREE ADMISSION!

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

It all began way back in 1872 when Congress established Yellowstone National Park in the territories of Montana and Wyoming "as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." It was placed under the exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior. The founding of Yellowstone National Park was the impetus for countries around the world to also establish their own national parks. Today there are about 1200 national parks or similar preserves in over 100 countries.

Congress authorized other parks and memorials which were administered by the Department of the Interior, the War Department, and the Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture - there was no one single agency unifying the administration of the parks and monuments.

On August 26, 1916,  President Woodrow Wilson signed the act creating the National Park Service, a new federal bureau in the Department of the Interior responsible for protecting the 35 national parks and monuments already administered by the Department of the Interior as well as any new national parks or monuments that might be established in the future. An Executive Order in 1933 transferred 56 national monuments and military sites from the Forest Service and the War Department to the National Park Service. Finally, all the national parks, monuments and military sites were administered by one department.

Today there are 59 National Parks located in 27 states and the territories of American Samoa and the United States Virgin Islands - a 68.5% increase in the last 100 years! And national monuments, military sites, memorials, rivers, seashores, etc. have increased just over 530% in the last 100 years! Wow!

One of my Bucket List items is to visit all 59 National Parks. To date, I have been to 29 and I would be hard-pressed to choose a favorite.

(Clockwise from top: Denali National Park (Alaska), Arches National Park (Utah), Voyageurs National Park (Minnesota), Badlands National Park (South Dakota), Grand Canyon National Park (Arizona), Theodore Roosevelt National Park (North Dakota), Joshua Tree National Park (California), Haleakala National Park (Hawaii)

The National Park Service protects our national treasures. They are areas of magnificent beauty, historical significance and/or wildlife refuges. Make it a priority to visit some of these each year. Perhaps even this weekend when they are FREE! You will be seeing America... the beautiful!

a happy place??

As I was scrolling through my newsfeed on Facebook the other day, a post from one of the many crochet sites I follow had this meme:

I suspect most people who saw that post smiled and scrolled on by but it grabbed my attention and I thought about it for quite some time. I've heard people say things like, "A glass of wine is my happy place" or "Quilting is my happy place." 

Do you have to have something or be doing something or be in a certain place to be happy? If that is the case, then happiness is something we have virtually no control over. Things can be taken away, circumstances change so that you can't engage in an activity or go to a particular place.

I get that the idea behind the meme is that you enjoy that activity. It's not meant to be taken literally, and is in fact, meant to be humorous.  But I wonder if phrases like that have an effect on us like subliminal messages. 

If they are subliminal messages, it might explain why I have more yarn than I have projects. And why some people are never happy - they either don't have the right stuff or the time to do it.

Or maybe I have too much time to ponder such things....

thankful thursday - light

This is my last "thankful Thursday" post. I have enjoyed posting something I'm thankful for every week for the past year - I hope you have, too. But now I'm looking forward to random posting - it might be a "Wacky Wednesday" (remember those?) or "Thankful Thursday" post or something totally different - like a restaurant review or someplace I've visited or something about my sweethearts. I will post weekly (or more often) but not necessarily on a specific day. Check back often - you don't want to miss anything!

I never thought much about light until I started dabbling in photography. It was either light or it was dark; I could see or I couldn't. When it got dark, it was time to turn on some lights.

But as I have learned more about photography, I realize how important light is. I have "discovered" all kinds of light, both natural and artificial - filtered, direct, indirect, bright, not bright, soft, harsh. And then there's directionality of the light - backlighting, side-lighting, overhead lighting.

Light provides ambiance, it creates a mood. In photography, it helps us see more of the picture (pun intended ;-)). It enhances the story being told.

And as I dabble deeper into photography, I am learning to look at light... all the time... even when I don't have my camera. I see beauty in the light. I think about light A LOT... how it enriches our lives, sometimes in ways we don't even give a second thought. Or how different light, like using a flash, could completely change a scene or photograph.

The more I thought about light, I came to realize it is a gift from God. He created it and declared it "good." (Genesis 1:3-5). And I absolutely agree. 

Not that darkness is "bad."  It serves a purpose. Our bodies recognize it as a time to rest. Some plants ONLY bloom at night, in the dark.

I have only been in absolute, complete, total darkness for about a minute when they turned off the lights in a cave and it was disorienting, bordering on scary. And I didn't like it very much. 

Yes, I much prefer "light!" In fact, I would say I need light. And that makes me appreciate the gift all the more!

thankful thursday - simple things

My mom used to tell us that we would be about as happy as we decided to be. This was usually in response to one of us moping about lamenting the sad fact that we didn't have something one of our friend's had. There was no point in moping about and being upset because the only thing that got us was extra chores.

In today's world, many would find that to be harsh or even cruel. Some would say that our self-esteem would surely suffer. (I'm here to tell you that is blatantly untrue in this case!) And others would claim that it was an infringement of our civil rights - surely we have the right to be unhappy. (To be fair, she didn't say we could not be unhappy, just that we would be as happy as we decided to be. The extra chores were for moping about what we didn't have - and the chore usually involved taking care of what we DID have - for example, cleaning something.) More than a few would argue that we wouldn't like our parents if they treated us that way, like we were inferior to them. (Nope, that wasn't true, either. We grew up respecting out parents and as adults, had great relationships with them.)

I am glad, grateful even, that my mom taught me that important lesson about being happy. I learned from an early age to be satisfied with what I had, to find contentment in my life. As an adult, that is still true.

In no particular order, here are three simple things that bring me joy, happiness and contentment:

1. Flowers - One of my favorite things to do in the spring is search for wildflowers. They are vibrant and delicate bringing a special beauty to the outdoors. But I don't have to be outdoors. I have a miniature rose bush in a pot on my kitchen window sill where it gets a lot of indirect light. It blooms often and brings a smile to my face daily.

2. A hand-written note - The art of writing a note with pen and paper has almost become extinct having been replaced with email and texts. While I appreciate personal emails and texts - they let me know the person sending them is thinking about me - there is something special about a hand-written note. I can feel the paper (soft, smooth, coarse, rough, ...) and the hand-writing evokes a special, almost emotional, response as I recognize the writer from the strokes of the pen. Texts and emails often get deleted but hand-written notes are carefully saved and reread time and time again. 

3. Flags on houses - I love seeing flags flying on houses. I love the patriotism they show. In this world of division, seeing flags flying on houses in neighborhoods reminds me are united in our love for our country. And who wouldn't be happy about unity?!

But godliness with contentment is great gain.

1 Timothy 6:6