Weekly Update - Funeral Potatoes and Non-Stop Fun!

Hello!

I am incredibly late in sending my weekly update and I apologize for that. I appreciate the fact that many of you have been concerned enough to contact me to make sure that everything is okay. Yes, everything is okay, I have just been very busy! I believe that it was just last week that I was stating that my week had been void of great adventure, this week has certainly been the opposite! So much has happened I don't know where to begin...

Work was incredibly busy last week. I had my most productive day thus far last Wednesday (4/20). We had a pot-luck lunch on Thursday for our Bookkeeper who is retiring at the end of this week. I decided that my contribution to the pot-luck should be a Utah classic, "Funeral Potatoes." Everyone loved them, but they didn't get the whole church function, funeral potato connection, I guess it's a Utah thing. My mother has been insisting for years that they are "Potatoes O'Brien" and yet whenever she serves them everyone in Utah calls them funeral potatoes, but everyone at work just called them "good."

Don and I went on the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train on Friday evening. The train leaves Renton, WA and travels along the banks of Lake Washington to the Columbia Winery. It has been a very long time since I have been on a train and the trip was great!

My little brother Jimmy arrived on Saturday morning for a visit. Dave, Kristen, Jimmy and I visited Snoqualmie Falls and had dinner at my place on Saturday. On Sunday, Jimmy and I had breakfast at one of the neighborhood spots, went to Port Orchard to visit Dave and Kristen, did some shopping downtown and had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Although our weekend was super busy and fun, I have to say that the highlight was attending the U2 concert at Key Arena on Monday night. It was an amazing performance and we had a lot of fun.

Needless to say, I was beyond exhausted yesterday! I worked a 10 hour day, but I don't quite know for sure how I did it after having 3 hours of sleep. Last night I went home and did something that I haven't done in years, went to bed at 9 p.m. And, I have caught up on my sleep just in the nick of time because my Mom arrives on tomorrow afternoon for a long weekend which will be filled with just as many adventures.

Hope this update finds you all well!

Weekly Update - Not to busy for a Natural High!

Hello!

It's been a pretty normal week, void of great adventures, so I am feeling that I don't have a whole
lot to report, but here is the little bit that I do have.

Work was busy last week. Two of my co-workers were on vacation, which made for a busy workload. I had the opportunity to work with one of our other product lines, Aqua Guard, which was challenging at time, but a fun!

I did do something that I have never done before. I have my new home completely organized and finished it 6 days prior to my first guest arriving. There is nothing like out-of-town company to force you to finish the last few strangling boxes, but I am usually the one who is finishing up just minutes before the guests walk in the door. So, you may be asking, who is coming to visit? My little brother Jimmy arrives on Saturday morning! I am really looking forward to spending some quality time with him, as well as Dave and Kristen. I know that next week's message will be filled with plenty of adventures to share with you.

Since this message is a little short on news, I thought that I would share some a little something
extra with all of you, don't forget to enjoy your natural highs this week!

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Think about each of these things, one at a time BEFORE going on to the next one.. Don't ever be too busy to appreciate the natural highs that we have the opportunity to experience everyday!

1. Falling in love.


2. Laughing so hard your face hurts.


3. A hot shower.


4. No lines at the supermarket.


5. A special glance.


6. Getting mail.


7. Taking a drive on a pretty road.


8. Hearing your favorite song on the radio.


9. Lying in bed listening to the rain outside.


10. Hot towels fresh out of the dryer.


11. Chocolate milkshake. (or vanilla or strawberry!)


12. A bubble bath.


13. Giggling.


14. A good conversation.


15. The beach.


16. Finding a 20 dollar bill in your coat from last
winter.


17. Laughing at yourself.


18. Holding a newborn baby.


19. Midnight phone calls that last for hours.


20. Running through sprinklers.


21. Laughing for absolutely no reason at all.


22. Having someone tell you that you're beautiful.


23. Laughing at an inside joke.


24. Friends.


25. Accidentally overhearing someone say something nice about you.


26. Waking up and realizing you still have a few hours left to sleep.


27. Your first kiss (either the very first or with a new partner).


28. Making new friends or spending time with old ones.


29. Playing with a new puppy.


30. Having someone play with your hair.


31. Sweet dreams.


32. Hot chocolate.


33. Road trips with friends.


34. Swinging on swings.


35. Making eye contact with a cute stranger.


36. Making chocolate chip cookies.


37. Having your friends send you homemade cookies.


38. Holding hands with someone you care about.


39. Running into an old friend and realizing that some things (good or bad) never change.


40. Watching the expression on someone's face as they open a much desired present from you.


41. Watching the sunrise.


42. Getting out of bed every morning and being grateful for another beautiful day.


43. Knowing that somebody misses you.


44. Getting a hug from someone you care about deeply.


45. Knowing you've done the right thing, no matter what other people think.

Weekly Update - Promenade is my new favorite color!

Hello Everybody!

The last week has been like a whirlwind week and I have just been whirling along with it. I have to say that I don't care for daylight savings time very much.I do like having the extra hour of daylight in the evenings, but think that it is a pain to change every clock, watch or timepiece in your life, and my natural clock has just seemed a "bit-off" all week. If it feels around 7:30 p.m. in my head, you can imagine my shock when I look at the clock and realize that it is actually 9:00 p.m. After catching up on some sleep this past weekend, I think I can finally make the adjustment.

I attended a PEO meeting last Monday evening after I received an invitation from one of the Seattle chapters. It was very nice to meet some Seattle PEO's and attend a meeting. There was one really unusual thing about my evening. When I arrived, I met the President, her name Julieann, then during dinner I sat next to Martha Ann and Margaret Ann. Then another woman joined our table, her name Marianne! Then at the meeting I sat next to Hazel Ann. The meeting was in Queen Anne. It was like being in the Twilight Zone of Anne and it was a bit too much Anne for one evening, don't you think?

Work has been super busy. We had a trade show in Cleveland last week, and although I didn't attend, I had tons to do to put everything together so that the company would be ready to go. Then while half our teams was in Cleveland I had my two most productive days thus far on Thursday and Friday, so I had jello for brains by Friday night. I continue to love it and it gets easier and easier every day!

I shared my frustration over selecting a paint color for the bathroom a few weeks ago. I was mistaken when I thought that selecting the paint color would be the most difficult part of the project. I have never painted a room from start to finish, although I have assisted friends in painting their homes, but never a room of my own, so I had a lot to learn! But I am happy to report that 2 days and 4 trips to Home Depot later, I have successfully painted my bathroom. It is a lovely shade of earthy green called Promenade (from Behr paint). I did learn a few things during the process of this project, and because you are my family and friends, I have decided to pass on this valuable knowledge to you, if you should ever decide to embark on a painting project, keep the following in mind....

1. I was wise to cover every surface not being painted with plastic and tape because I am kind of a sloppy painter, however when you only have a one-bathroom apartment, it is really stupid to cover the toilet!

2. No matter how carefully you tape and paint, when you remove the tape you will have to touch up some edges, I wasn't planning on that and had removed the drop cloths.

3. Make sure that the only functional light that you have in the room is not a "sun light" (you know those light bulbs that warm the bathroom so you feel like you are on a beach)!

4. Make sure that you look in a mirror every once in a while and remove paint from strange places. Right in the middle of my project I ran out of paint, so during an errand to Home Depot and Taco Del Mar I was told by the woman making my burrito that I had paint on my forehead.

AND, finally....

5. Double the time that you THINK that it will take. I assumed that a few hours into it I would be done, but no such luck!

You have no idea how glad I was when I was finished cleaning and moving everything back into the bathroom. I love it now!

I just have two more boxes to unpack and my moving project is entirely done. I am making the final
arrangements for my House Beautiful photo shoot and will send some pics to all of you soon!

Hope all is well with you!

Weekly Update - Monumentally Bad April Fools Morning....

Hi all!

I had a fairly normal and boring week last week and I was thinking to myself on my way home from work on Thursday night that I didn't have much to report in my weekly update, but that was before April Fools Day and now I have quite an adventure to share.

April Fools Day is a weird holiday. I rarely am able to successfully pull off a prank on anyone, but nearly every year I fall victim to a prank. This year proved to be no different because I feel victim to a prank in a early-morning phone call from my old roommate and friend Lyle. But that was after I had the worst commute since moving to Seattle.

I left for work early on Friday morning because I wanted to get in early so that I could catch some night shift folks at my hospitals. So I was headed along my normal route and was atop a "bridge-like" overpass when all of a sudden, a crashing bang scared me and steamy smoke began pouring out of the front of my car. The engine was off, but I have enough momentum that I am coasting along absolutely stunned. Of course the first thing that pops into my head is that I am going to be on every traffic report in the city as "stalled car on 99 South blocking right hand lane" which is not necessarily how I wanted to make my debut in the Seattle media! I got to the side of the road, called a tow-truck and had them take it to the dealership. I made arrangements for them to diagnose the problem and then one of the service guys gave me a ride back into downtown Seattle so that I could catch the bus to work. So my commute was quite the adventure, including 5 forms of transportation (my car, tow truck, dealer car, bus and my feet) and took nearly 3 hours. Around 1130 I got a phone call from the service manager with good news and bad news. The bad news was that he informed me that it was indeed a blown head gasket which had cracked the block and the car was, in one word.....terminal. The good news is that they were willing to give me money for it as a trade in on a new one. Well it took me about 10 seconds to figure out that I was buying a new car this weekend!

I spend 5 1/2 hours at the car dealership on Saturday and after test driving 4 different cars and asking more questions than they ever thought possible I purchased a Chrysler Sebring Sedan. You can check it out at http://www.chrysler.com/sebring_sedan/ It is silver and really fun to drive. So all in all a really bad day turned into a really good weekend. Now I don't have to deal with the headache of registering a car in Washington, because the dealer did that for me.

The remainder of my weekend was spend showing off the new car. Don and I celebrated my purchase at Rock Bottom on Saturday night and I ventured to "the other side of the pond" to Port Orchard on Sunday to share it with Kristen and Dave. I had a lot that needed to get done this weekend (like paint the bathroom) but none of it was completed because my weekend was consumed by the new car.

Hope this finds you all well!