Farmer's Market

Last night Lauri and I went down the hill and I got to experience the Clovis Farmer's Market for the first time. We enjoyed some roasted corn, sampled many types of hummus and homemade jams . . . and had an interesting time trying to eat our persimmons.



I also bought a peach and I cannot describe to you how big it is. It probably counts as two servings of fruit. And I am very much looking forward to when it's ripe! I'm sure it will be heavenly!



After mingling around all the amazing food . . . we ended our night watching a movie about food . . . Julie and Julia. Man, I'm getting hungry just talking about all this. Maybe it's time for a snack.

Early Morning

It's not even 7:00 am here and I am sitting in my office waiting to start a distance learning class. This is the third one I've taken in the last week. Today is: Query: Beyond Essentials. It's database training. I love running queries. It's one of my favorite things working with the database. I can figure out any type of information that I'm curious about. I love building the query and figuring out how to pull the information I'm looking for out of all the records and information we have. I feel quite proficient with queries . . . so I hope there's even more I can learn from this "Beyond Essentials class".

Ok . . . off to class!

Strengths

1. Achiever
2. Significance
3. Focus
4. Analytical
5. Maximizer

If 2.5 of my 5 strengths are being sorely unused, uncultivated, and ignored . . . does that mean I'm failing in life and in my job? 50% is failing in school. Does that percentage apply to everything else?

Brunette

I have brown hair now. I needed a change.

Sorry I don't have a picture.

Mice

Over the last several weeks I have been working on catching the mice that seem to think that my house is their house.

I have now caught seven.

I have released one, killed 5, and left one alive outside on the trap for some other animal to get. The larger forest animals are probably lurking around my house since I keep throwing mice (dead and alive) outside.

To Mary Beth

This is my dear friend Mary Beth . . . affectionately known as MB. We came on full time staff at the same time and immediately were good friends. We lived life to the fullest this past year. We went on many adventures together, ran many miles together, enjoyed a lot of coffee and tea together, made snowmen together, ate many meals together, read together, had hours and hours of conversation together, talked in our sleep to each other, made "would you rathers" together . . . and just generally lived and loved life together. We had a blast. Sadly, she moved away on Sunday, but happily . . . she is going off to do great and exciting things with her life! And we will still have many more adventures together and continue to share life together for many years to come!

If this were a toast . . . now would be the time I would ask you to raise your glass. "To Mary Beth!"

1 Year/6 Months

This week is my one year anniversary in my job as the Development Assistant. It's definitely been good and bad, but overall a good year of acquiring new skills and experiences that would go nicely on a resume. Perhaps I should update mine now. Anyways,I feel that my job has a lot of different aspects to it, and now that I've been through every season and event . . . I think I am well equipped to do a better job this next year. Here's the top 10 job highlights of my past year of being on full time staff (in no particular order)

1. Writing and editing for the Hume News
2. Traveling and staying in hotels
3. Learning to do event coordinting
4. Working on Country Fair with Suzanne
5. Putting together reports on tons of different things - finding new facts from my research . . . which represents real people and real money.
6. Getting better rates on Vision Dinner room rentals than past years. (We've saved hundreds of dollars!)
7. Being successful in soliciting donations for Country Fair (Disneyland tickets, In-N-Out gift certificates, Build-A-Bear gift certificates . . .)
8. Getting a clothing allowance and getting clothes embroidered so I don't have to wear my polo everyday.
9. Working with Tyler. We're very different and work very differently . . . but we learned to work really really well together.
10. Learning new skills

So yeah . . . good stuff.

And by the way . . . Nathan and I had our 6 month anniversary too this past week. We spent it driving in the car. Which is always fun :-)