Quote, unquote

Back in journalism school, I DO remember putting together a notebook of city numbers/contacts, but I surely had no clue what each department did. It's been great to apply that to my daily living, because it's been insanely handy!

When I took a job reporting for a small newspaper, covering city government, I didn't know what I was getting into. At all. Honestly, I'm sure I didn't expect to be able to take/translate any of the experience(s) into my daily life. I didn't even know how my notebook of city numbers would relate to my job. Oh boy. Did.It.Ever!

Yet now, 3.5 years later, I'm still able to apply things I learned.

• Knowing who in the city to call when a tree falls across the road in the middle of a nasty storm. Seriously, before watching the city government at work, I would have had NO CLUE. Now I know to call the Public Works department. And call them sooner rather than later. They care b/c they look out for the streets, and if a tree with a diameter of 4 feet is blocking a rod, they want to know about it.

• Bidding it out. The city had hundreds of projects and they'd give the specs and take sealed bids. Now, I'm nowhere near that fancy, but the bidding process was a valuable one to watch. Back when we were taking a portion of our tree out of the backyard, I called 4-6 different places and asked them to come give me a quote. The prices were vastly different, and I'm not sure if I'd have called so many before my days of observing city government. Yet after learning about the bidding/quote process, I was unapologetic about asking people to come and look and bid. We're doing the same now with some duct work, and I expect the prices will range as vastly as our tree did. Yet having several offers on the table will be nice.

• Recycling services. We outgrew our first recycling bin pretty quickly, and since our city takes care of recycling, I knew to head to Public Works and ask them about it.

• Gripes about taxes. Unnamed people in my life will gripe about the city government being irresponsible with tax stuff ... then talk about the school district. Um, while they're both government-related things, if you go to the city and cry to them about building a new school, they won't care. I was able to tell this person they were barking up the wrong tree and direct them to the School Board. The number of taxing agencies in each city is crazy. From the School Board to the City to the County to the Library to the Airport Authority .... those are the few that come to mind off the top of my head. And they EACH can levy/impose taxes.

Alright. This concludes today's randomness.

Colorado, 2011 — Part 5

On the trip, we had a bit of auto trouble. Let me say this: People in Colorado don't seem as friendly/helpful as people in Kansas. When photographing in Kansas, especially somewhere a bit rural, I will often have people stop and ask if I need a lift or if my car has died. We were on our way up the mountain, on a very narrow road and our vehicle went pooey. Know what? NO ONE stopped to ask if we needed help. NO ONE. Stinkers.


With the vehicle out of commission for a day or two, Erik did the only sensible thing possible: We drank our way through Estes Park.


Erik will tell you their brewery was OK, but not fabulous.


We had far better luck with the wine, though.


Loved this.


This place was quaint.


This is the other place in town to taste wine (don't remember the name). We got a nice bottle of Riesling there.

Colorado, 2011 — Part 4

Just odds & ends here.


The name of this place made me giggle. The food was pretty good, too. :)


Found this in a local shop. Loving it.


We walked into town one day via the golf course. Encountered some wildlife.


They were seriously chillin' in the middle of the golf course, and people were just playing around them.


Either Erik is trying to feed something to a ground squirrel with tongs, or he's trying to catch a ground squirrel with tongs to grill it up. Either is entirely possible.

Colorado, 2011 — Part 3

We spent an afternoon at the Stanley Hotel.


Let me tell you a little story. When we were little, my family vacationed in Estes Park. We stayed at the Stanley. I think I knew there was a book related to it, but not much else. I had yet to read "The Shining."


See these keys? The hotel used the keys at that time. Now they have electric cards. When we stayed there as kids, there were the keys, though.

One afternoon, I went into our room, but things were all moved around. I thought my obnoxious brothers moved the furniture. Which annoyed me. Until I looked around and didn't see any of my stuff in there. At all. I looked at the door and realized the key had let me into the wrong room. I totally freaked out and slept in the closet that night. No joke.


Love this wall! So pretty! Love the differing sizes of frames. Just fantastic. And as a side note, this is where Dumb & Dumber was filmed. :)


Oh yes, couldn't forget this! Erik's cousin recommended the Historic Ghost & History Tour at the Stanley. My family was a bit skeptical, but in the end, I think it completely rocked. They have college-aged kids who are in/around the theater come in, and our guide was freakin' awesome! I'd strongly recommend it to anyone! Of course, if you have small kids, the tour is LONG and might not be a good use of their time/energy.

Colorado, 2011 — Part 2

We went down the mountain a bit. I'm not sure where we were, but it was beautiful.


Pretty, pretty, pretty.


Don't ask.


Seriously.


Really nice walking path.


Beautiful.


And guess WHO was crawling in the bushes, taking photos? NOT ME!


PHOTO TIP: Switch your camera to a manual setting and FORCe the flash. With the baseball caps on, out faces would have been in shadow otherwise.


You can see a bit of the flash in mom's sunglasses (2nd from right). But don't we look well exposed?

Colorado, 2011 — Part 1

Soooo, I posted a brief note about our trip to Colorado about a million years ago. I've finally had time to get photos together to share. :)


Erik was glad to get away for a few days.


We headed to Bear Lake. Or was it Big Bear Lake? Not sure which. It's been so long ago!


Of course, there was STILL snow and ice there! Stunning!


He didn't leave his thug attitude at home, though. ;)


For anyone who ever wonders, my father taught me how to work a camera. He's still a photo enthusiast. And perfectionist. Which means we walk about 1/2 a foot, and he stops to take a picture. For 5 minutes. Then we walk 2 feet, he stops and takes another picture. For 5 MORE minutes. Seriously, I was never going to get my heart rate up enough for our 'hikes' to qualify as exercise!


It was extremely beautiful. Using some sprouting branches to 'frame' the mountains here.


Sans framing.




A nice lunch spot!

Photo tip #5

This was taken with my point and shoot (purse) camera in the country. The sun had set, but I liked the tree/silhouette.

I pulled out my camera and used my car door to keep it steady (TIP!). If it's dark/there's low light, use something to stabilize your camera.

I think I also went to the exposure and adjusted. I think I underexposed it a bit (made it darker). Honestly I can't remember. To read more about exposure/overexposing/underexposing (i.e. exposure compensation), you may read THIS blog post.

A few from Christmas, 2011

Theodore wasn't sure at first about the whole Santa Hat thing.


Eventually, he decided it was OK. :)


Theodore unwrapped the first gift of the night.


Uncle Paul scores a win with an empty box. What kid doesn't LOVE a big box to play in? It also occupied small bodies as the big people did gifts.




Sorry sweetheart, worst face ever. But we're now ready for spring training around here!

Chore charts aren't just for kids

I wonder if people sometimes get the wrong idea about me? With this and this blog post about how to do chores the lazy way, I wonder if I come across as lazy?

I hope not.

Yet I am constantly trying to find ways to make things easier. Does that make me lazy? I don't really think so.

Toward the end of 2011, I decided I need to come up with a better system of cleaning. The previous one was to just let things go until company was expected. The problem with this was that then EVERYTHING REALLY needed to be cleaned. All at once.

There had to be a better way.

I consulted with one of my supremely organized clients and started to put ideas together.

This is what I came up with:


Yes, I'm a grown woman, and I have a chore chart.

Is that lame?

Actually, I don't care if you think it's lame. I expect my baby brother to be rolling his eyes at this post. But whaev, Baby Paul.

Previously, I would always put off doing a chore because it'd been XX weeks/months since I last did it, and it was a big/icky job by that point. I started with the hypothesis that if I did things not weekly, but every other week, it wouldn't be so unpleasant of a task. I also figured if I was more on top of a given task, that it would take me a max. of 15 minutes to accomplish. It seems to be working.

For example, I started at the beginning of December. When it came time to "clean" for Christmas because my family was coming over, there really wasn't much to do. Sure, we ran out of time to clean one bathroom, but it was JUST cleaned the week before, calming my guilt over the matter.

I put the super-easy stuff on Monday/Friday, and have one "bigger/deep cleaning" sort of task on Thursday.

Does this mean the task gets done exactly on that day? Not always. Some days, I just have the 15 minutes to get my one chore done. Others, I don't. Another day, I might have an hour to kill. Yet having my chart means I am keeping tabs on things that are getting done (or not, as in the kitchen floor hasn't been washed ... I've been putting that one off for multiple weeks!).

The other way this is working splendidly is that Erik helps. I am usually able to bargain with him. "Honey, I cleaned the entire bathroom, will you scrub the toilet?" (for whatever reason, I loathe scrubbing toilets; but since this is the ONLY cleaning thing Erik has to do, he seems willing to help).

I'm also trying to come up with some other/bigger tasks to be done sometime during the month. For January, it was to put away the Christmas decor. I tend to put this off, but since I got to put a sticker on the chart, it was done before the Epiphany! :) Other examples of this will be cleaning/sweeping out garage and other 'bigger' tasks that need to be done a few times a year.

If you love it/hate it, this is week 7 of my chart, and it seems to be working fairly well. I will admit the first few weeks were rough, because some of the areas needed a BIG clean ... but after the initial clean, it hasn't been so bad!

What do YOU do to stay on top of things? I'm always looking for ways to improve this! :)

#27 — Join a fantasy team

Ooooooh, this is a doozie. Are you ready for this?

Last week, we were at a friend's house, and Marc brought up a fantasy golf league. Yes, you read that correctly. A fantasy golf league. This isn't one of the formal ones; Erik and Marc made up their own rules.

Did I mention we had a draft? Yes.We.Did.

This is a long-term commitment, but one I can handle. All I had to do was select 5 players and then forget about them for the rest of the year. They'll tell me at the end of 2012 how I did. :) Low maintenance. I'm into that. This is great, especially since there are a bajillion tournaments that are eligible to add points to our score.

Oh, did I mention I don't follow the "sport" of golf in the slightest. This is going to be great. Especially since I was the No. 1 draft picker. :)

Here's my breakdown:


1. Rory McIlroy 2. Phil Mickelson 3. Sang-Moon Bae 4. Bo Van Pelt

Let me break down my choices for you by my extremely scientific method for choosing them.

1. Rory. I totally remember watching him crash and burn one afternoon last year. Which tourney was it? Um .... a big one. Masters, maybe? Heck, Idunno. But evidently the next week he went on to kick it in the next big tourney. Which one? Dunno either. But he's gonna be hot this year. Trust me. ;)

2. Phil. I at least have heard of his name before; he's a bit more household. Experienced. Wife is recovering from breast cancer, which is probably why I remembered his name. I like the story.

3. Bae. I looked at a list of top 100 golfers for 2012 and he was on it. Besides, who doesn't love the name? I'm getting a hard time regarding my choice from the other participants. Erik even says I might be about 10 years ahead of my time in choosing him. But I stand by my boy Bae. The South Korean women dominate, so can you, buddy!

4. Bo. Basically, this is a blind date. I picked him off of a list, too. Name sounded good to me.

Last, but the first guy I knew I'd draft:


5. John Daly. Seriously, those of you who know me can't even question this choice. One look at those pants should be all of the reason I need to know he belongs on MY team! :) I think everyone was a bit taken aback by my choice. But know what? If I end up watching much/any golf this year, John will without a doubt provide the entertainment for me. :)

After the first tourney, I'm batting zero. I didn't even have a player in the tourney. :( But my main main, Bae is slated for this weekend, and I have high hopes! (picture this in a Norman Chad voice, ok? it's great).

Erik, however, is off to a more impressive start. Of course, he took the draft very seriously and has selected what everyone else deems as a very respectable lineup of golfers, which is why he's currently in second place.


1. Adam Scott 2. Lee Westwood (I wanted to draft him; darn you, Erik!) 3. Dustin Johnson 4. K.J. Choi (Hey! Erik has a South Korean and nobody is mocking HIM! I guess the decade or so E's player has on mine is the reason?) 5. Ricky Fowler (the kid's got class; I should have looked at him more closely for my team, but I have several young players on there already, gotta get some experience!)

This isn't a fancy league. The winner doesn't get anything, except for out of dinner. The last 2 places have to make/buy dinner, 2nd place is responsible for an evening of adult beverages + snacks; the winner just enjoys it all and doesn't have to prepare/do anything.

This could be a clever ploy by some plotting husbands to interest/involve their wives in golf. If it is, so be it. This should be fairly entertaining. :)