Victory!

It seems after years of 14 years of brutal competition, the results are finally in, and the victory is mine.  And let me tell you, it's a sweet victory.  Made all the sweeter by the fact that the judges don't know they're officiating in this particular tournament. The yellow post it note is to protect the identity of the specific judge who awarded this trophy, but I think it's safe to assume that any of my neices or nephews would be honored to have their signatures under that post-it.  And I'm proud to admit that this is the only piece of non-work-related decoration ever to have made it onto my cubicle wall.

Do we really need to go over this?

Dear Coworkers:
To make our office environment more pleasant, please respect the following:
1. If you're involved in a conference call and you have a door, make use of it. If I'm not on your conference call, I don't want to spend that hour listening anyway.
2. If it's not a conference call and you're just chatting the afternoon away, still make use of your door. I don't need to hear about your friend's kids' spring break.
3. If you don't have a door to make use of, don't spend hours each day reading Yahoo news articles to your boyfriend over the phone and providing personal commentary.
4. And don't spend the rest of the day doing your siblings' taxes over the phone.
5. Shouting at spreadsheets on your computer isn't going to make them work any better.
6. Yelling expletives at spreadsheets on your computer isn't going to make them work any better. No matter how often you try it.
7. Yawning is not a spectator sport. It's not being judged for volume, length, frequency, etc. If your yawns (every 30 seconds, every afternoon) are loud enough to disturb your coworkers 3 cubicles away, they're too loud.
8. Same goes for sighing- especially the frequency bit.
9. If there's a particular food that makes you burpy the rest of the day, don't eat it. And certainly don't eat it every single day.
10. Since none of my coworkers will read this, sorry for being snarky here. I just needed to get it out.

First Impressions

Last week most of the ward boundaries in my stake got realligned. Apparently, as Daybreak has grown, wards have divided every few years, and everybody in my ward is used to being shifted around. But this was the first time it's happened since I've been here. My ward was shifted into three already-existing wards. My little block was transferred into a different ward. I was kind of excited, because I already knew the single guy situation in my old ward (non-existent), so this would give me a chance to explore the single guy situation in a new ward*. Plus, the new ward has town homes, which increases the likelihood of single people. Also, I know some of the people in this ward from seeing them at the gym every morning, and they're pretty cool, so I was excited to get to know them better. I figure I have friends in my old ward, and now I can make more friends in my new ward. All in all, a good situation. So I really wanted to make a good impression.
I made a point of picking out a cute outfit that I haven't worn in a while- a skirt, tank top, and cardigan; I curled my hair, I did my makeup, and I felt pretty good about my appearance. And then I went to church and sat in the very middle of the chapel, trying to mingle with the ward.
Now, as some of you know, over the last several months, I've lost some weight and my clothes are fitting a little more loosely than they ever have before. And the skirt I chose has an elastic waist band. Keep these things in mind.
As we got into sacrament meeting, the counsellor in the bishopric said he was going to read in all the new members of the ward. I didn't realize they would do that, since we hadn't really moved in, but I was glad I had taken the time to look presentable. When he called my name, I stood up, looked around and smiled, then sat down. After he got through reading everybody's names, he asked us all to stand up one more time as a group. So I did. Then I sat down again. That's when I realized just how loose my skirt really had become on me. It had fallen to my mid-thighs. I guess it had kind of stuck to the padding on the bench when I stood up, and with the elastic waistband, it just didn't stand up with me. I had just flashed everybody sitting behind me. Twice. And I was in the middle of the chapel. In a ward that filled the chapel and went into the gym. I can handle embarassment, but that was a little too much. I just wanted to shrivel up and disappear.
Luckily, I only took a few minutes to recover before I could laugh at myself, and by the time I got to gospel doctrine and the teacher asked all the newbies to stand and introduce themselves, I had regained enough to composure to apologize to the half of the ward who I had flashed. Everybody had a good laugh, and now I've made my first impression. It wasn't the good impression I was going for, but it was certainly an impression.
*Sidenote- one of the first people I met in Sunday School is also a single lady and she informed me we have no single guys in the ward. Sigh....

What Would You Do?

On my drive to work this morning, I had an experience that made me think. Here's the set-up: I was coming up to a red light, going east, in a lane to go straight, with two left turn lanes next to me. There was a divider in the road separating the east-west traffic. After the light, all the cars in my lane were getting onto the freeway, so the left-turn traffic was kind of the last chance to get off the road before the freeway. On the other side of the road, but down the road a bit (where the left turn lane leads) is a Walmart. It was 8am and my car's thermometer said it was 16 degrees outside. Walking away from the Walmart parking lot was a man, probably in his late 40's, fairly well-dressed (jeans, jacket- looked like he could be anybody's next door neighbor). He was carrying several bulky grocery bags and having a hard time handling them all. As I got up to the light and first saw him, he had just dropped a few items and was trying to reposition everything in his hands. And he had no gloves. He was walking towards the freeway underpass, meaning he had at least a little ways to go to get home, since there aren't any houses or parking lots between there and the other side of the freeway. Now think about it- everybody on the road at that time of day on a weekday has someplace to be. When I saw him, I started going through the possibilities in my mind- could he get across 4 lanes of traffic to my car before the light switched? Could I switch enough lanes to get over to him in time? Would it be safe for me to pick up a complete stranger, even if he looks innocent enough? Do I have time to pick somebody up and give him a ride to wherever he's going on my way to work? In the few seconds that I had to process the situation, a man in one of the turn lanes made a u-turn and went and picked the stranger up, and helped him load everything into his car. It made my day to know that there are people out there who would take time out of a freezing and busy morning to help out a complete stranger who obviously needs it. I'd like to think I would have helped if I hadn't seen the other person help, but I also know I felt some relief when I saw somebody else doing it. What would you do?

Cars

I live in a car-centric world. I've known this since 1986. I remember we had a roll of aluminum foil that was in a cardboard box, and the box was advertising some kind of contest. The grand prize was a 1987 Ford Mustang Convertible. Back then, pictures on boxes were just drawings, but even with just a drawing, I remember thinking what a beautiful car that Mustang was, and I was so mad that as a 6-year old I couldn't enter the contest. I begged my parents to enter, but they wouldn't. That 1987 Ford Mustang Convertible was the first car I ever loved. About the same time, my dad pointed out a neighbor lady down the street who had two Mustangs from the 60s, and I remember thinking she must have been a pretty cool lady to have two such cars. The next car I fell in love with was a Jeep Cherokee (what a dream that 20 years later I got to work on its successor!). I don't remember where I first saw it. I probably just started seeing them around, but I thought they were great. After that, it was the red Miata convertible that my parents' friends bought (first model year). From there, my car-love list has grown exponentially. One day in college, my five roommates and I were squished in one of my roommates' cars going somewhere. As we stopped at a light, we were all buried in our own thoughts, and somebody asked what we were all thinking about. We each told what we had been thinking about in that moment, and got a good laugh at how perfectly each girl's thoughts fit her personality. I had been thinking that the Lexus sitting next to us looked exactly like a Camry (this was before I realized that Lexus was part of the Toyota brand), and I was wondering why somebody would pay luxury prices just to get a Lexus name plate on a Toyota.
My car thoughts haven't lessened any with time. A bad commute can be made better based on the cars I see. If I see a really great Sports car, or even just more Audi TTs than usual, I might forget that I got held up in traffic. I very often base my lane choice on the car that I'll be following or watching in my rearview mirror. And way too often, I have to remind myself to watch the road rather than the cars. So if anybody is really stuck on what to get me for Christmas...

You Know You're A Grown-Up When...

You know you're a grown-up when, when your car is getting some regular maintenance done and you don't want to sit in the waiting room for two hours, rather than walking half a mile to the mall to kill some time, you walk a mile to Home Depot.

You know you're a grown-up when you look forward all day to the squash you're going to have for dinner (and it's not even covered in butter and brown sugar!).

You know you're a grown-up when you've been racking your brain for ideas to put on your Christmas list, and the best you can come up with is a new frying pan.

You know you're a grown-up when a day off work means you can finally go get that flu-shot you've been meaning to get.

You know you're a grown-up when the best time of day is bedtime.

Speaking of which...

Crusades

Warning- this post may not be interesting to anybody except me. Don't blame me if you read it and then want those 5-10 minutes of your life back.

I have a few crusades in my life, and since I have nothing else particularly to write about just now, I thought I'd get the message out about a couple of my crusades. Sorry if you've already heard the spiel on one or both of these before.

1. Tomatoes. I feel very strongly about the proper treatment of tomatoes. The Deseret News had an article this week that briefly went over how to care for tomatoes after they've been picked, and I want to go over this in more depth. Tomatoes should never be kept in the fridge. People put a lot of effort into growing or buying the best, juiciest, most flavorful tomatoes, and then they get them home and stick them in the fridge. The flavor compounds in raw tomatoes start breaking down when they get below 40 degrees. That's why tomatoes become mushy and bland (I'm assuming they started good- if you bought a tomato from Walmart in February and were surprised when it was mushy and bland, you've got bigger issues). But if you have a good tomato from your garden DON'T PUT IT IN THE FRIDGE! STORE IT ON THE COUNTER! If you can't eat it before it goes bad, give it away. It's like the Mackinaw peaches on Seinfeld. You've got to eat them while they're in, and share them if you can't appreciate them. Your new tomato mantra should be, "Cold makes it old." Don't forget it.

2. Sweet potatoes vs. yams. These terms have become interchangeable in society, and that bothers me. Sweet potatoes and yams are two entirely different foods. When I was in college taking my fruit and vegetable science class (not only does that class exist, but it's the best class ever!), my professor told us that we would probably never see a yam in North America. But now that we have a more global economy, I'm sure you could find one in an international market in a big city (on a tangent- 10 years ago you would never have found a durian in America, and maybe things were better that way. But if you find one now, make sure it's fresh. Trust me). Anyway, sweet potatoes are the orange or sometimes white tubers you see in all the grocery stores, both canned and fresh. Even if the can says 'yams', they're sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are either firm or soft varieties. To distinguish between the two, back in the early days of production, American slaves sometimes called the soft varieties yams, because they kind of looked like the yams they knew in Africa-that's where the confusion started. Sweet potatoes are in the morning glory family; yams are in the lily family. If you need a sweet potato mantra, try "yams from foreign lands".