Sprinkler systems?

I grew up in a place where you throw some grass seed out your back door, and a week later, you mow. That's the extent of grass maintenance. Um...only now I live in a place where natural ground cover is called sagebrush, so grass is a serious endeavor. The house we're renting has an in-ground sprinkler system, which is cool. But last fall the property manager sent out a guy to drain and winterize my system. And I seem to recall that last spring, they sent someone out to undo all that and get it up and running. I've been waiting for that to happen this spring, as well. Meanwhile, the grass is getting...crispy. So, I called the property manager. "Oh, no," the girl assures me. "You don't have to do anything special. You just turn it on."

Me: Um...really?

Her: Yes (thinking: you dolt, why are you wasting my time??)

I hang up, and go turn on the system. N.O.T.H.I.N.G.

Like, no water goes on. BECAUSE IT'S BEEN TURNED OFF. But, I don't know any of the right words to use to explain this, because I didn't see the details of the turning-off in the first place. And the YouTube video about turning it back on completely does not match what I see in my house.

Yes, I called her back. Yes, she is completely skeptical. But she did say she'd sent someone out. I wonder how long it will take? In our experience, they don't tend to be very speedy.

If anyone knows something about sprinkler systems or even what words I'm supposed to be using, let me know. I am clueless.

University dinner

Tonight was a university-wide faculty dinner, so free date night for us. :) I don't remember any other university doing something like this--wait, there was a food reception event at an art museum in Charleston that was pretty nice. But nowhere else (and this school and the College of Charleston have a surprising number of good things in common, come to think of it). The food was nice and they recognized various faculty members, and showed a video of students talking about different professors (sans names) who had affected their lives. And there was a cello/bass duet where perhaps the guys had been watching The Piano Guys, because they had some humorous interaction going on during the Rossini. Somehow we ended up sitting at this corner of the table where everyone was either German, or had lived in Germany, or was married to someone whose first language was German, or had some other connection there. It's always nice to talk to people who can still understand you when you throw in the random phrase you can't find a good translation for into English. :) We also saw several people who we went to the same grad school with, long, long ago in a state far, far away. Not to mention just recognizing people whose children I know from school, or whose spouses I know from writing. This is a very strange town. But I suspect this sort of thing happens when you set a large university in an otherwise very small farming community (like the University of Illinois and many others). It's sort of the best of both worlds--nature and culture, but minus the traffic and crime.

Overall it was a nice event--especially since the whole attitude was about how to help the students, and about not only scholarly achievement, but sharing that sort of achievement with students so they can be hands on and expand their minds and learn new things. Which is such a difference from some university-related events I've been to at other schools that seem to focus on the egocentricity of one's position and on sniping at other faculty members. There is a really huge workload here (especially in my husband's sort of unique situation), but there's also a hugely supportive atmosphere, and it really makes a difference!