Thanks Sista P

When I lived in Chicago I really had a great time getting to know the Sister Missionaries who were serving the LDS Church at the time. There were a few that I got to know better than others. There are some I still keep in contact with thanks to the world wide interweb.

Well thanks to the world wide interweb today, Melissa (as once Sister Pearson) read about my day, and (gulp!!) brought brownies to me work. How great is she?! I tell you what, at 3 today when we hit our first real hurdle of inventory and I downed one ooey gooey yummy chocolatey brownie ... I tell you what it all fell into place right after that. It was like the brownies contained magic powers! So a heartfelt thanks Sister P! I will indeed pay it forward one day. But, how did you know where I work?

BTW, it also helped when one of my coworkers yelled at me for no good reason. I knew I had brownies if need be! Magic brownies!

A yearly day from ....

Today is inventory day where I work. It comes every year the last day, or the last working day, in May. Always it falls right around Memorial Day. We have very few rules at my office, it is pretty laid back. We have rules about internet content and a set number of vacation days... and that is pretty much it except for the inventory day rule. This rule states that no one is allowed to take vacation on inventory day. It is a mandatory work day. Every year, someone gets permission to leave on vacation during this week. This year it was 2 people. So why this background history on inventory day? Well let me tell you about how my inventory day differs from others here at work:

1. There are 15 employees in my company; 11 of them count inventory
2. Of the 4 that do not count 2 of us enter inventory, the other 2 do not do anything more than answer the phones and take messages for everyone else.
3. When everyone is done with inventory at about 12 they are pretty much free to do whatever they want to do as long as they are not in the inventory program on the computer.
4. After 12 (noon) it is my turn to start working along with my wonderful mother who works here part-time as well. We enter the inventory numbers and it takes us until about 4 or 5.
5. After this we print the value report.
6. My boss analyzes the value report and informs us of any costs that are entered wrong; this takes anywhere from 1-2 hours.
7. Then Mom and I fix the values in the computer, and run another value report with the updated numbers; we are at about 7 or 8 at night at this point.
8. Hopefully at this time the values are all correct and we are done... sometimes not.
9. I have worked 16 hours on inventory day before and had to come back the next day for another 4 hours; the average is about 12 hours.
10. This is not so bad for Mom who is part time and gets to claim all of these hours for full pay... I am salary so overtime does not really apply to me.
11. So when people take vacation on this day it makes it so that there are 9 people counting instead of 11, which does not seem like a big difference. But it can mean an extra hour or two to my day. Selfish I know!

So my cures for today? Glee soundtracks, ordered Joe Morley's for lunch, Wheat Thins, and a nice cold fountain Diet Coke. I ask, does it get better than that? Well maybe chocolate would make it better!

Cool Pics; Cool Pics

(Sister that title is just for you, come on you know what it is from!!)

Once upon a time I love to take pictures, but I do not have a great camera. Please do not get me wrong, I love my little camera, it has served me well for a few years and I think he will be with me for a while. But when compared to some of the other cameras in our family, mine sort of takes the back seat.

That being said, my little wonder took some nice shots while I was in Europe. This is the conclusion of Stephanie's "take a tour of my Europe vacation."

Fountain in Park Guell in Barcelona, Spain

At the Maritime Museum in Toulon, France

Along the street heading to Monte Carlo

A Bentley parked outside Monte Carlo

Also outside Monte Carlo

Streets of Monaco

Staircase in the Monaco post office

Streets of Monaco

French countryside

Statue garden in Florence, Italy

Michelangelo's David (replica) Florence, Italy

Florence, Italy

Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy

Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy

Pantheon Rome, Italy

Pantheon Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy

Colosseum Rome, Italy

Fountain in Positano, Italy

Positano, Italy

Cruise pics of me and my new mates

These are in no particular order!! The group we went with was an LDS Singles group so the people we met all had similar standards and were from all over. It was a blast to get to meet them all. There were only 27 of us in the group so I got to know pretty much everyone we traveled with.

No wonder it leans...

Rosemary from England after the last show, bless her

Me, April, and Emily

Our waiters on the boat

This is my French Kebob with french fries

The trees in the background are French (hee hee)

Wolfe and I in Toulon

Seriously, the best éclair ever, I was dripping in chocolate

French baguette, child please! It was incredible

Me, Emily, Stephanie, Corie

Summur, Janelle, Mike, Melanie

Sean, Piper, Chris, Bryson

Ashley, Wolfe, Nicole, Lisa

April, Trisha, Ully

Ron, Rose, Melissa, Greg

Me at the castle in Monaco

Inside the Pantheon, notice that cute bag Sister made just for my trip?

Eating gellato, this pic was taken on Besty's orders

Throwing my coin in the Trevi Fountain

At the Colosseum

With our cute Italian driver Nino outside Pompeii

On stage at Pompeii

Emily, Summur, Zoe, Nicole, Lisa, and Melissa in Pompeii

Waiting in Atlanta for news on our next flight

There is one more post coming with some shots I took that I think turned out pretty well. It will be up in the next few days.

Happy Birthday LB

Little Bud turns 1 today. These pics were all taken by his super talented mom; Kate. This little man is such a boy; he is surrounded by girls when he visits Grandma and Grandpa, but he is all boy!!

Happy birthday little man!!

France

We stopped in 2 places in France: Nice and Marseilles. At these places I went to Monaco and Toulon. I loved loved loved Monaco. There were 2 main reasons I liked it: it was clean and I love Grace Kelly.



The Monaco Castle. Prince Albert was staying at the castle while we were there. One cool thing we saw was the changing of the guard; maybe one day I can get the video to work on my blog.

A cafe in Monaco

Princess Grace's burial plot in the Monaco Cathedral. They adore Grace Kelly still in Monaco. When I was growing up and I heard reference to Princess Stephanie, I thought they were talking about me; guess not.

The coast in Monaco, seriously, blue water!

Maritime Museum in Toulon; this is King Triton who was rescued from the front of a ship.

The Toulon Cathedral inside

Monte Carlo Casino

Bird of Paradise flowers were all over Monaco