Ummmm....yeah....

I was just driving to work and saw a dead deer on the side of the road. Sadly this is not an uncommon site on my route. However, I swear to you that deer was wearing a red t-shirt. Yeah.

In unrelated news I have not been sleeping well.

Google for Safety

Thursday was our monthly safety meeting at work. As previously mentioned, these are sometimes the highlight of the day. Sadly we do not have our sexist instructor anymore, its now some really nice guy who never says anything inappropriate. No fun. A couple months ago at a meeting someone had asked a question about handling blood and injuries with blood or something along that line. So this month they had asked our Workers Comp rep to come in and do a presentation about blood born pathogens.

This guy has done at least three meetings for us, I would remember because I like his sense of humor and he is kind of cute. Two things together that make it pretty hard for me to forget :) The first thing he asked us was if we were all new because he didn't recognize us. Awesome. Guess we didn't leave an as impressionable memory. He showed us a 10 minute movie made in 1994 for school janitors. I graduated in 94 and did we really think the jeans back then were attractive?

Then he opened it up for questions. Someone asked a question about what you should and shouldn't but in bio hazard bags. Answer - I'm not really sure on that, we will have to ask someone and get back to you. Next question, Our area doesn't really have a set policy of how to handle cleaning when dealing with bodily fluids, is there a set policy we can refer to. Answer - Not sure on that one, we should look into it. Last question, How long does blood and bodily fluids stay hazardous, do you use the same precautions on something that just happened and something that has been there for a period of time. Answer - Not really sure but I'm sure you could Google it and find that out.

So basically we should have spent the hour sitting at our desks searching Google. Of course Google doesn't tell you jokes. Maybe that's a change they need to make, daily jokes when you search and random pictures of cute guys. I would never leave my desk.

True Colors

Last week my little sister Britta and her clan came out to visit from Pennsylvania. The Kanabies came up to see them and I figured it might be awhile before we were all actually in the same place, so good time to try and take a family picture.

My family isn't really known for their picture taking abilities. There are a certain few people that seem to have a hard time "focusing". Or say, smiling. My friend Wade Haskell very willingly said he would take some photos for us. We were to be Wade's first family photo shoot, and I think we gave him a good glimpse of what that wonderful world holds. Pretty sure he is sticking to wildlife from now on.

I'm sure it's harder to get a good shot the more people are involved, and none of the group pictures came out perfect. But I do think they show off our family's personality, a little quirky.


I do think we got some really great smaller group shots. And I think Wade got some really good ones that show off people's personalities, which is just what I wanted. Not the perfect group picture to hang above the mantle we don't own, but little glimpses of the people I love so dearly and yet don't get to see on as often as I wish. And memories of all of them to look back at fondly.




And there are many more posted on my flickr page.

ABC giggles

Will has finally been showing interest in practicing his numbers and letters. Tonight he wanted to sing the ABC's. B makes an appearance at least 3 times and on the 3rd one it gave me the giggles. I was trying to sing softly so you could hear Will, but it just made him sing softly. I think you'll get the point though.

Trumped

My sister Britta and her family are out visiting from Pennsylvania. Yesterday Will got just a taste of what it would be like for his mommy to have another baby, and he wasn't that fond. I was holding my new niece for about 5 minutes before he told me that I needed to be holding him. I tried telling him that I could hold both of them, but no, he did not want to share his mommy.

My sister Keeley, uncle Will and Alex just got here a little bit ago and Keeley took to holding the baby right away. Will came running over to me on the couch and asked if I wanted to hold the baby. Yes, he was telling me to hold the baby because he wanted Keeley to hold him. I've been trumped by aunt NeeNee.

I need a hero

Last week a lady from HR called to check and see if our conference room was available. Usually people are scheduling a 2 hour meeting, nothing to get too excited about. But this was no ordinary business meeting call. No, she needed to book the room for 2 1/2 days of interviews for firefighter recruits. I told her I would do my best to squeeze them in. Oh, and since the walls of the conference room are constructed out of cardboard you can hear everything that is being said inside from the waiting area. So could these potential public servants wait in my office area before their interviews?

Hmmm...20+ young men throughout the day waiting in my office...I'm gonna have to get back to you on that one. I did make sure to offer that if they needed any additional interview testing, say a mock emergency just to make sure their rescue instincts are intact, I am happy to go beyond my call of duty to make sure we have the most qualified applicants.

This may sound like a shallow, sexist comment, but I'm just relaying the truth. I'm pretty sure there is a question on the firefighter application that says you must be a young, good looking, in shape guy to apply. And maybe it's more like one of those Facebook quizzes where it asks them random, seemingly unrelated questions to be able to come up with that decision, that yes, they are fit to rescue scared women from a burning building.

When I went to lunch I thought it very appropriate that I heard the following song. And can I just say that they made the best music videos in the 80's.



And just in case you are extremely bored today, If I ever have to go to prison, not that I foresee that in my future, but just in case, I hope I go to this prison.

Dog Town

Few people have ever had the interesting job experience that my little sister Keeley has had. She has worked at two different jobs that were currently filming two pretty different reality shows. And they both involve dogs.

The first one was when she lived in Seattle and worked at the Downtown Dog Lounge. While working there they filmed a show called Adventures in Doggie Daycare (I put the link up to Kee's bio from the show. I love the picture of her, that her home town is Pason, and that they mixed up Nev. and Idaho). It was a kind of behind the scenes look at life of the pampered pet. It was really cool to see Keeley on tv. It was also fun to talk to her about things that happened on the show and find out the truth behind "reality tv" and all the times they re-set a shot and things like that. It was also fun to watch the show and then find out more info about the people and dogs on the show. Sort of your own behind the scenes.

Last year Keeley decided that she wanted to work for Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah. So she moved down to Kanab and applied for a job. Now that right there is something I could never do and admire about Keeley. She moved there because she wanted to work there, and then applied not knowing for sure how the future was going to play out. I have a hard time picking where to eat lunch. By myself.

Well it happens that National Geographic was filming the second season of Dog Town. If you get National Geographic and have never watched this show, and like animals at all, you should watch it. There has yet to be an episode where I didn't think, I want that doggie, for at least one of the animals. And several episodes have produced tears. I might have a hard time working there and not becoming crazy animal lady. The only bad thing about the series is that they only focus on a few staff members, so Keeley hasn't been on tv, but it's still fun to talk to her about the dogs and find out what's going on with them now.

I had never heard of Best Friends before my sister started working there, so I'm gonna assume some of you may not have either. Best Friends is the country's largest No Kill animal shelter. A lot of the animals they house would have been put to sleep at other shelters because they were considered "unadoptable". Best Friends works very hard to rehabilitate all the animals so that they can be adopted, but those that can't be rehabilitated will live out a happy life being cared for and comforted.

These animals don't just stay locked up in cages and thrown food. The dogs in my sisters care get daily visits that include play time, walks and attention. Best Friends does a lot of work going into disaster areas, such as Hurricane Katrina and rescuing animals that were left behind. They also had an episode this season where they went to countries in the Middle East to rescue animals left behind in war zones. I cannot express how impressed I am by this organization and proud to say that my sister works there.

Of course I'm getting around to posting this just as the season is ending, but the shows do get replayed. The first episode of the first season focused on the Michael Vick pit bulls. 22 of the dogs were sent to Best Friends. These were dogs that even the Human Society told the courts that they needed to be put to sleep. And yet Best Friends was able to rehabilitate most of them into loving pets. Keeley's first week included hand feeding one of the Vick dogs. I love watching this show and seeing the care and patience that the staff show to these animals.

The show Dog Town focuses just on the area of the sanctuary with, you guessed it, pigs. Well actually just dogs. But Best Friends houses everything from rabbits to horses (where Keeley hopes to someday work.) When ever I watch the show I'm reminded of the quote by Gandhi "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the ways its animals are treated." I think there will be a special place in heaven for the people who have dedicated their lives to making the lives of those below them just a little bit better. And I have a feeling there will be lots of puppy kisses to go around.

Irritating

Just had to get this off my chest this morning. You do not need to be watering your lawn yet people. Especially on a morning where the gutters are still full of rain water from yesterday.

This has been a public service announcement. You may continue with the rest of your day.

Faded Memory

One of the many events we run at work each year is the Provo Corporate Challenge. Different companies compete against each other for three weeks in a variety of events. The first year we took over running the program they asked all of us in the department to help volunteer at the events to take some of the load off of the sports staff. The first year I was told that the pistol shoot would be an easy one to volunteer for because a guy from one of the companies actually runs it, so I would just have to check people in and be a rep from the city. Ok, I can do that.

I didn't really think before hand about the fact that I'm not really comfortable around guns. I was strictly trying to avoid the events where you might have to do on the spot bracketing or explain a rule debate. But that first year as I was standing in the gun shop waiting for people to check in, I definitely didn't feel relaxed. One of my grandpas used to own a gun shop, so it's not like I have never been in one. But the times we would stop by the shop I was more interested in testing out the elk calls and checking out the bottles of animal urine and wondering why someone would put that on their body.

I felt a little different looking around a room and seeing all of the automatic weapons out for display. And when there are targets that are actually photos of people, I'm just not exactly in my comfort zone. Not really the point of this though. So three years ago while working the event I saw a friendly face come walking through the doors. A guy I went to high school with, Matt Smith (name has been changed to protect the guilty.) Matt was a few years older than me, but we had a class together and I had a pretty big crush on him. When he came up to check in I smiled and said hi. There really wasn't any sign of recognition there. He sat down in the room waiting for the new shooter orientation. Since we were the only ones there I decided that I would break out of my normal shy shell and talk to him.

I told him that I didn't know if he recognized me, but we went to high school together. We started chatting about how we knew each other and about what we had been doing since high school. Talked about his brother that was my age and what he was up to. I left with a smile on my face happy to have run into someone I hadn't seen in years. So the next year I was excited to see his name on the roster again. When Matt came up to check in again I smiled and said hi, thinking he was as cute as he was in high school. Matt said hi and gave me that look, where you are trying to place someone you recognize. "Do I know you?" Yeah. You do. I went through the schpeal again about how we had a class together in high school, I knew his younger brother, etc.

Inside I was wanting to yell at him. Remember how we were in the same group in our class? I got my first C in that class because I spent the entire class time talking to you instead of doing my work. I remember that you wanted to become a pediatrician just so you could prescribe sugar pills to mean parents. I remember how you would practice having illegible hand writing because that was a pre-requisite to becoming a doctor. Nothing?

Well I guess we all need those times when we get knocked down to keep us humble right? So I left that year not quite as excited to see him as I had been the year before. Skip ahead to year three. Would he remember me? Now I felt a little nervous seeing his name on the roster. He walks in comes up to the counter. I figure the ball is in his court. Of course I smile and say hi, I can't ask his name because I know it very well, so instead I just say, Matt right? He gives me that confused look again. "Yeah, I know you some how don't I?" Dude!!!!!!! Yeah we went to high school together. "Oh, yeah", still looking confused.

Don't you remember how you personally invited me to your missionary farewell? And how after the farewell you invited me over to your house during the family luncheon. Remember how as I was leaving you told me to do you a favor and get married before you got back? I still don't really know what you meant by that but I did think it might mean there was some sort of recognition of me floating around in your head.

"Did we used to work together though?" NO WE DIDN'T! How about you remember me from THIS!! So Thursday was the pistol shoot and again, I volunteered to go. It was a cross between disappointment and relief to not see his name on the list. I asked the guy running it if Matt still worked for them. He said he had gotten an offer from another company and had left a few months ago. Well I guess my memory will have faded forever by now.

Odd thing is I happened to have another guy I went to high school with come into the office on Thursday to sign up for a softball tournament. Again I didn't feel like I could just let it go so I told him we went to high school together. Now I didn't really expect much because we weren't friends and never had friends that were friends, but there was zero recognition from my name. Oh well. This isn't really making me feel too excited about going to my reunion this fall. Maybe everyone else just tried harder to block high school out and move on. I obviously haven't.