going (going) back (back) to cali (cali)

i am in san diego (really oceanside) for business. for a week.

sometimes i like to complain about long work trips that require lots of flying and, well, working.

but also, yesterday i ate ice cream on the beach and when i come back to my room at night my bed is made and there are clean towels.

so actually, there is not a lot to complain about. especially since it's supposed to snow in d.c. on wednesday and i haven't worn a jacket or socks since i got here.

before you know it, i'll be complaining this business trip ended too soon.

superhuman. superstar. superhero.

i don't talk much about my job on this blog because that seems like both a boring and a bad idea. and, frankly, if i think too hard about all the servicemen and women coming back from combat with really serious, life-altering injuries, i get really depressed and then i get really mad and then i want to cry.

but, i am also 100 percent inspired by what these wounded warriors accomplish. we are talking about a double leg amputee who ran a 1500 meter race on prosthetic legs he had only had for six weeks. we are talking about service members with severe PTSD who get up every day and face their fears so they can go to work and take care of their families. we're talking about a blind swimmer who will compete in the paralympics exactly one year to the day that an IED explosion took his sight.

it blows my mind, and i feel really honored and humbled to meet these people and see what they can do with my own two (crying) eyes. i still wish it hadn't happened to them, but not a single wounded warrior i've met would give it back if they could, and it's certainly not slowing them down.

so, it's probably no surprise that this promo video for the paralympics made me cry. (embedding was disabled, so click on the link.)

i mean, come on. sure, not all these people were injured in military service, but this is the kind of resilience i am talking about.

it blows my mind. and, when i let it, it changes me, too.

home of champions

we have been working long, long days here, but there are also worse places to spend long, long (loooong) days than the air force academy and the olympic training center.

especially since the training center cafeteria has a mcdonalds sundae machine. so, in other words, the olympic training center cafeteria is heaven.

i work hard for the money.

low: i was at the office, in a meeting, by 7a.m.

high: i ate these (not all of them) for breakfast.




weekend plans include "cowboys and aliens" and a bridal shower.

and probably a nap to recover from this morning.

traveling pants

are you ready for the next installment of "where's frances?"

tonight EH and i are off to atlanta (and hopefully there will be electricity when we arrive) for a long weekend in the gentle south. i have never been to atlanta so i am pretty excited about it. and not just because atlanta has coke world.

we get back on monday and i'll be home for approximately 12 hours (for reals) before i head off to minneapolis on business. i suspect i will have to do laundry all night if i have any interest in taking clean underwear to minneapolis.

which i do.

and then maybe i'll get to stick around for a while.

or maybe i'll find a magical pair of jeans.

or maybe both.

who knows?

today was brought to you by the number five

we celebrated cinco de mayo as close to mexico as we could get. namely, the totally sketchy mexican restaurant by our office where i once killed a baby cockroach (in the restaurant, not the office).

seems pretty authentic, right?

(i mean, not all of us can be this lucky.)

ole!

the government is falling, the government is falling!

all the talk around the office today was government shut down: will they or won't they?

i thought it would be sort of great, because who doesn't want a surprise vacation, but today i found out that i would probably still have to go to work even if the government "shut down," so now i think they should just work it out already. if i don't get a trip to costa rica out of it, it's not worth it.

also today i had four extremely violent cases of the hiccups.

but i guess john boehner doesn't care about that.

we'll always have the alamo

pardon my absence as of late, my babies. i was in san antonio for work, which is remarkable for many reasons, namely that it was my first business trip (at least my first one where we actually left the airport), my first time in texas and, perhaps most importantly, the first boy i ever kissed was from san antonio.

holla!

we spent most of our time touring medical facilities and meeting wounded warriors and attending career fairs and getting briefings and trying to figure out what all the insignia on military uniforms means. followed by eating our body weights in mexican food and barbecue.

holla!

and, since the new principal director for the office used to work in homeland security, learning more (mostly terrifying) things about aviation security than i ever wanted to know.

(co-worker) patrick and i did manage to sneak away on the first night for a stroll around the riverwalk (he covers his eyes like he's embarrassed if i say it was a romantic stroll. so, of course, i call it that as much as i can) and a visit to the alamo.

we decided to skip ripley's believe it or not and the wax museum. (who the heck is louis tussaud?)

and then, almost as soon as it began, it was over.

i always thought that traveling for work was glamorous and exciting and i was jealous of people who got to do it. and there were some really fun and grown-up and glamorous things about it, to be sure. but mostly i am glad to he home.

ross is wearing leather pants! does nobody else see that ross is wearing leather pants?

it was a pretty slow monday until i 1. remembered that i had gummi bears in my bag and 2. saw a woman wearing a leather suit. that would be a suit made out of leather. a leather blazer and leather pants. a leather suit. just rocking it like it's normal to show up at the office like that. in a leather suit.

and then monday didn't seem so boring after all.

the office

the tables were turned on me today and paul, whose cubicle i usually invade, came and invaded my cubicle instead. him and a five pound bag of caramel popcorn and his massive straw.





if you're wondering whether there were three empty cubicles in the room, the answer is yes. but whatevs. i am always glad to have paul around because he shows me all the funny videos on you tube and he eats so many snacks (see: aforementioned five pound bag of caramel popcorn) that i don't feel bad about all the snacks i eat.

things did get a little crowded, though, when edward cullen stopped by.



smack had borrowed him earlier this week and returned him this afternoon. we had a grand old time hiding him behind people's chairs so when they turned around they were overcome with fear. or lust. depending on who they were, naturally.

and that, my friends, is a good friday at the office.

shine or downpour

i am working like crazy this week at a training being held at a hotel that only serves pepsi products, so i don't have much to say except that you should feel really, really sorry for me because a lot of work plus pepsi only is a combination that simply cannot end well.

we did get a little break yesterday to take the event participants to the sunset parade at the iwo jima memorial. we saw the marine drum and bugle corps and the silent drill corps and it was all very lovely and moving.

until it started to rain halfway through. and then rain harder. and harder. and then it started to thunder. and then we saw lightning literally right in front of our faces. which a little scary when the other things right in front of your faces included fixed bayonets. because the marines are hardcore they just kept playing to the end, and then we ran through street puddles that were above my ankle and booked it home, soakingsoaking wet.

and then, for all my trouble, i busted out of that hotel and drank a diet coke.

a bummer, a birthday and some botany

i started a new position at work upon my return from australia, which is good news for a variety of reasons, chief among them that something happens every day that makes me laugh so hard i cry. today it was a text message that my co-worker, smack, got from her brother. it said, "accident at grandma's" and was accompanied by a picture of a riding lawn mower almost entirely submerged in a large body of water, which turned out to be the chesapeake bay.

apparently, smack's mom headed over to grandma's to help with some yard work, but the riding lawn mower had a brake malfunction and driving it through a stone barrier and into the bay was the only way to go.

bummer.

but not so much of a bummer that i did not laugh (until i cried) about it for hours.

yesterday was the mama bear's birthday. i spaced on sending a card or a present, because i am awesome like that, but i did remember to call and she said a blog shout-out would earn me my forgiveness. so, i will say (shout out) this. i love my mom. i want to be just like her in pretty much every way. she is free of judgement and guile and full of patience and love and also makes me laugh until i cry. i feel a oneness with her that is rare and precious. i am glad she was born, and i am glad i was born to her. so, happy birthday mom!

the royal botanic gardens in sydney is (are?) one of the most magical places on earth. it is a place where parrots live in trees and trees live in the middle of the city, and flowers bloom like they are in a fairy tale and cacti grow to be enormous. the botanic gardens is (are?) even home to a woollemoo pine, a species of pine tree that was on the earth with the dinosaurs! (i love dinosaurs!) the woollemoo pine was thought to be extinct until one was discovered in the blue mountains outside sydney in 1994 and transplanted to this safe and happy home.





{the dinosaur pine tree}




and yes, we did hug trees, smell roses and walk on the grass. because if a friendly sign tells me to do it, i will.

going the distance

i hate to be the bearer of bad news, but swine flu could kill 90,000 people by the end of the upcoming flu season. i know this is true because the newspaper said so. and it is threat the department of defense is taking very seriously.

so seriously, in fact, that today my office participated in a social distancing exercise, wherein we all had to stay a minimum of three feet away from eachother and the office security officer walked around to make sure we were complying.

of course, an appropriate reprimand required her to get closer than three feet to the offender, but that is beside the point.

i took the opportunity to keep certain cubicle lurkers at bay, and the receptionist pointed out that social distancing is also a good excuse to avoid people with bad breath.

otherwise, the answer to your question is yes. a social distancing exercise is just as ridiculous as it sounds.

parallelogram

one time, when sarah and i were first called to serve together in the (ward) relief society presidency, we had a meeting with the stake relief society presidency (so many presidencies, so little time!) where they asked us to introduce ourselves so we could all get to know each other a little better.

this is what happened.

sarah: my name is sarah. i am from denver. i have a degree in journalism. i served a mission in japan. now i work for a local non-profit.

me: my name is frances. i am from denver. i have a degree in journalism. i served a mission in japan. now i work for a local newspaper.

pause.

sarah: but i did it all first!

and so it was that we realized we had been living parallel lives all along, which is fine with me because there are few footsteps i would rather follow than sarah's.

so it made perfect sense that when sarah decided to leave her high-powered senior analyst/technical writer position in washington, d.c., she called to see if i was interested. so it made perfect sense that her call came just as i was thinking it might be time for something new. so it made perfect sense that i sent over a resume, went out for an interview, got offered the job and accepted it. so it makes perfect sense that in a little less than a month i will pack up everything and head to a new life.

now you know.

this major change will obviously be a major topic on this (major) blog in the weeks to come, but here are some initial thoughts.

1. if we do not move forward, our lives do not move forward. this means different things for all of us, but it is true for all of us nonetheless. we must change or be changed and i, for one, would rather dictate the circumstances than let them dictate me.

2. that does not mean that change is not scary and hard and it is possible that i will die of a panic attack. but i am going to embrace change anyway.

3. i am truly thrilled for a new chance, a new opportunity, a new adventure, a new challenge, new learning.

4. my heart is also breaking at the thought of leaving behind four years of life and people that i absolutely love. my life in salt lake has blessed me with things i never could have imagined would become a part of me, chief among them some of the nearest and dearest friends i have ever known. i will find good people wherever i go, but no replacements, i am sure.

5. sometimes, when we bring our true desires and efforts before the Lord, He blesses us with exactly the thing we want.

6. i have no idea how i am going to fit all my shoes into my car.

elephant in the room

today was the annual office-only christmas party aboard the good ship enterprise. we had a nice, catered, family-friendly affair a few days ago, but the office-only party is where all the fun happens. and by fun, i mean gambling.

first, though, we had the obligatory white elephant gift exchange. (oh, that old chestnut!) i never really care what i get at those things. my goal is always just to get rid of something lame that's been cluttering up my house. this year it was a wooden craft of unknown origin. i believe it said something like, "family: our greatest gift." the person who got that should feel lucky indeed. and i feel pretty lucky about my take-home as well.


{i am keeping the foreign coke for sure. the spam, strangely, did not make it home.}

once presents are done it's time to break out the petty cash and go wild. (are you starting to see why this is an office-only affair?) this year it was "crap on your neighbor" and "acey-doocey" or something like that. the important details are that there was lots of hooting and hollering and table pounding and shennanigans, the COO lost everything on a big and ill-advised bet and i came home with all these quarters.



do you have any idea how many diet cokes that will buy me at the sev? and may god bless them, every one.

funny every time...

my editor, barb, and my co-worker, becky, are completely obsessed with funny cat photos, and look at them all day long. when there are problems with the funny cat photo web site, major panic, wailing and gnashing of teeth ensues. and no, that is not an exaggeration.

i, you may or may not know, am not super into animals, so this phenomenon is something of a mystery to me. i do not own animals. i do not watch movies where animals talk, or save the day. i am not very amused by people dressed as animals, and i am usually opposed to animals dressed as people. (an exception to this rule is an animal costume that features fake muscles. those are pretty rad.) i recently discovered, though, that animals dressed as other animals can be endlessly hysterical. see for yourselves. i saved this photo on my computer desktop at work, and i open it about once a day. i'm not quite sure exactly what it is, but it gets me every single time.

there's someone i'd like you to meet...

everyone, this is my new computer, sexy sadie.





















sexy sadie, this is everyone.

sexy sadie has changed my life. and to understand the magnitude of what she has done for me, i feel like i need to tell you about my old work computer, ginger (may she rest in peace). ginger meant well, but she was the oldest, slowest, most un-sexy computer known to man or woman. carrier pigeons and a type writer would have helped me get my job done faster (and certainly with more flair). when the mac guy came to install sexy sadie he couldn't even figure out how to use the operating system poor ginger was running. she was slow with e-mail, bad at spelling checks, could barely load most web sites and i was constantly plagued by the white box of death (do you know the box of which i speak? i hate that box). but sexy sadie can do it all: filter junk mail! take pictures (photo booth is my new favorite passtime)! correct spelling and grammar! keep me up-to-date on celebrity gossip! and she does it with the kind of snappy style i appreciate in the electronic devices i allow into my life. so welcome to the world, sexy sadie. how did i survive without you?