Food Storage

So yesterday I decided to do a little shopping. I have had 6 months supply of staple foods for a while, and I know that I should have 12 months. However, I have never upped it to 12 months. A couple of weeks ago I went through my food storage and found that some of it had expired or will expire this year. I got rid of the expired or near expiring foods, but hadn't replaced them. One of the things I got rid of was the rice. So lately I have been hearing about a shortage and that Costco and Sam's Club are limiting the # of pounds a customer can purchase. Since I know the world used to have 18 months of food storage, and that has now dwindled down to 6-8 weeks, I felt that I should get some rice.

Now I have a 20 pound bag of rice that I need to use over the next couple of years. On top of that, I decided that if there becomes a food shortage around here, I will need flour and sugar. I now have 50 lbs of white sugar, 25 lbs or brown sugar, and 25 lbs of flour. What was I thinking? I let myself get scared into thinking that the shelves were going to go bare and I wouldn't have enough food to eat. But now I am set, and am back to my six month supply. There are a few things I am still missing, like milk, but that is something else for another time.

Bugs...Yuck!

So yesterday as I was getting ready there was a small bug in my bathroom. I didn't even see it in there, but saw Phil staring at the floor intently. So I watched him for a moment before I saw a small black bug. I don't know what it was, but Phil usually eats my bugs. However, he was only playing with it. After a few moments, I thought he lost it because it went under the baseboard. I was a little irratated since now I have a bug in the house in the walls. After a few moments I realized it was back out and Phil was watching it again. So I decided I would take care of it. After flushing it down the toilet, Phil was looking all around to try to find the bug, but had no luck.

So last night as I was watching TV, I realized both cats were staring at the ground by the back door. I watched them for a moment, half expecting a small spider or something like that. NO! This was a huge spider. It was the size of a 1/2 dollar. It was huge!!! It was black and I was worried it may be a black widow since it was black. Just as I got up to get a closer look, Phil put it in his mouth and ran to the hallway. I went over and got closer and realized it wasn't a black widow. However, after seeing Phils great skills this morning, I wasn't going to give him a chance to let this one get away. So I threw it outside. Did I say it was huge??

Guys!!

So a couple of weeks ago when I had everyone over at my house, there was a girl that admitted that she had a crush on a guy in our ward. She ended up telling us who it was. However, he is 32 or 33 and she is 24. She had heard he didn't date way younger girls and so she felt that they would never be able to go out.

I talk to him every couple of weeks and we have a funny exchange of words. It started about a year ago when I asked what was going on, and he said nothing was going on. I said that can't be true and he has to have a story. He came up with one. Now every couple of weeks when we get a chance to sneak in a story before church starts we tell each other the funny stories we have collected. So last week he told me had a story, but it was an embarrassing story and couldn't share it at church because the other party it involves is at church as well. So this Sunday she wasn't there and he told me his embarrassing text message story. He meant to text something to one of his friends about this girl he had a crush on, but accidentally sent it to the girl instead. Yikes! It ended okay, because he realized his "mistake" and sent a cover-up text message indicating someone had, had his phone and accidentally sent a message to her instead of someone else.

So after he told me this story, I told him I knew someone that had a crush on him. He of course wanted to know. I told him that I wouldn't tell him who it was, since I didn't have permission to do so. However, I wanted to know if he would go out with her since she is kind of young. He didn't seem to mind that she would only be 24. She is a mature 24, and I think she is a great girl. So I told her that he would date her, and now it is in her court. Later, I asked her if she wanted me to tell him who had the crush on him. She said go ahead. However, I didn't get the chance to before leaving church. I guess this will just have to wait until next week. AHHH LOVE! ♥

I usually don't let things get me down. However, late last night, I received some news that made me a bit sad. It wasn't even the particular even that made me sad. It just seems that recently it doesn't matter what I do, it's just not getting me where I want to be. When I got that piece of news, I shed a couple of tears and asked the why is this happening question. I still don't have the answer. I know I am not upset about the certain event, it is just that it's another set back and, at this point, I am not seeing a pathway towards my end goal. I know it's there, I just have to find it. So where do I go from here?

I feel better now about the situation, but am still trying to formulate a way to get to my goal.

Fire

I forgot I was going to write about our safety training at work. Since Wednesday was Administrative Day, I was in charge of planning the lunch for the whole office. I am now a boss, and so I have to take care of my peeps. My boss gave me a plate of Chocolate No Bake Cookies. While I was grateful, that sure helped with the diet. :-)

So since I had to email everyone to block out a 2.5 hour chunk of time, I had to come up with some excuse. We were all going to go to lunch at the Elephant Bar & Grill on Stockdale and Calloway. So we wouldn't be close to the office and people needed to plan around that time so we didn't have trucks showing up while we were gone. I had sent a calendar event around to everyone so the time would be reserved. When I was asked what we were doing, I lied and told them we were going to have fire extinguisher training. They actually believed it. That is probably because I usually don't lie, and I had a plausible excuse why we were having fire extinguisher training instead of something else.

Eventually the safety manager came to me and asked me when I was going to let him know so he would be prepared to train everyone. Since he was a manager, he actually knew we were going out to lunch, so I had to remind him of what we were doing. Then he said that we were due for safety and evacuation training and that we should set this up. So I decided to have everyone get together this morning so we could do this.

During the training, it comes out that I am the 3rd person in charge if there was a disaster. I am not sure if you would want to count on me to make sure if everyone gets out of the building in a fire or earthquake. I am one of those people that would be the first one out the door, hoping it wouldn't snap back too hard as it closed behind me. Also, they reiterated where the evacuation meeting place is. I think it really stupid where they put it. If the office, huller, or processing areas get evacuated, we are all to meet between the 500 gallon propane tank and the 3,000 gallon gasoline tank. What in the world were they thinking?

Anyway, at the end, we all went outside and were able to use our fire extinguisher skills to extinguish a small controlled fire. This way we wouldn't be scared to use one in case of a real emergency.

Phil

So I have told the story of Sammy, now it is Phil's turn. I so don't want to be the cat lady, so I drew the line with one cat. Since I work on a farm, the guys are always bringing the strays by the office before they take them to the pound. I have a soft heart and think all the strays are cute. I feel bad knowing what will ultimately happened to them. However, I really don't want to be the crazy cat lady.

So one day my roommate told me she had hit a kitten as she backed out of my driveway when she was late for school. She didn't stop to see if it was okay, but did look back into her rearview mirror to see another kitten come up and sniff the dear kitten. A couple of days later, the same roommate told me that earlier when she started her car up, she heard a strange noise and then saw a kitten run out from under the car.

A couple of days later, I heard some meowing outside the front door. I looked outside, but couldn't find anything. It kept meowing and eventually I saw a small kitten running away when I opened the front door. It was about 9 at night and it was dark. So I ran to try and get it. When I saw it run into my neighbors yard, I figured that's it. I am not running around my neighbors yard in the dark. So I went back to my house and tried to forget it.

The next morning, the kitten was back meowing more than ever. This time when I opened the door in my pj's, I saw the cat dash off towards the neighbors yard. I didn't feel bad about running around their front lawn during the day, so I chased the kitten until I had it cornered. I reached down to grab it, and it almost got away, but luckily I was able to lock onto the kitten before it got away. It was a pretty ferrel kitty, and wasn't happy that I was holding it. I held it away from me as it hissed and tried to claw me. Luckily it didn't try to bite me.

As soon as I brought him inside, Sammy was mad. I didn't let that stop me. I immediately turned the tap on to get some warm water to wash the filty kitten. It had fleas and was covered in dirt. After a short bath, my attention turned to one of its front paws. Apparently this was the same kitten my roommate had seen running from underneath her car. The paw had a very deep cut on it, and it lost the use of two of its "fingers."

Phil quickly made a recovery, became good friends with Sammy, and even though he really doesn't like to be held, there are moments he tolerates me petting him. In the winter, he sleeps on me while I watch TV, or when I wake up in the middle of the night, he is either curled up on the small of my back, or is sleeping on my chest. He is a cutey.

Sammy

I have two cats, and I never thought I would have cats when I grew up. I am more of a dog person. I wish I could have a dog even now, but feel it would be unfair to leave it home while I am gone at work. So when I bought my house, I decided to get a cat. I went down to the SPCA and picked out a really cute black cat. It had blue eyes and long flowy hair. When I picked him out, the worker said that he would turn brown as he aged. I didn't care, I liked him black. He wasn't all black, he does have an occasional white hair. It's cute to have a pepper and salt cat. Anyway, I thought long and hard as to what I would call him, and finally decided on Sam because I would never call my children Sam, and it would be easy to call him Sammy when I needed to. Anyway, he has grown on me and I am glad I picked a cat. As the years have progressed, Sam has put on the weight. Some of it is that he is a slightly bigger cat than Phil, but other than that Sam will chase Phil away from the cat food and will eat both of their portions.

Sam has never been a cuddly cat. He tolerates me petting him sometimes. Other times, he lets me hold him for up to two minutes. Over the past couple of months, Sam has been doing something very cute. As I get ready for bed, he follows me into the bathroom and watches me brush my teeth. When I am in bed ready to read my scriptures, he comes up and sits next to me and likes to put his head on my scriptures. It doesn't matter what time I go to bed, he sits with me until I am finished. As soon as I shut the book, he leaps away. I think that he likes to be near me when I read them.

Blessings.

One of my callings at church is the ward employment specialist. I haven't done a lot with this calling, and I am not really sure what is expected of me. However, we had a meeting tonight on Interviewing Skills. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to go. I felt that I wasn't sure what I would be able to get out of the meeting. I had, had an Effective Communications class in college that spent some time on proper interviewing techniques. The closer the time came for the meeting, the more I drug my feet. It was a 40 minute drive there, and quite frankly, I didn't want to drive that far. Then I decided I would feel like I wasn't fulfilling my calling and not doing what is expected of me. So I went anyway.

It turned out to be pretty good. There were a few things I did learn. I learned the C-A-R mnemonic. When you are asked to give an example of your skills, you need to start out with the "C"onditions, then follow with the "A"ctions, and end with the "R"esults. When giving an example, make sure that you use #'s or %'s. People tend to remember it when expressed in #'s or %'s.

They had a small quiz where he gave us a list of 12 things that employers feel are important when interviewing. He wanted us to rank them in importance, and whoever could name the #1 thing would get a prize. I answered that verbalization of skills, confidence and appearance were important in interviews. I had two of the right answers and when everyone was done telling their answers, he said only one person has got this correct. It was me!! I had two of the three correct. The most important skills were verbalization of skills, enthusiasm, and confidence. So I won a book.

Just to think I wasn't going to go. I learned something, and got a new book. Yippee!

Church

So today I was able to give the Relief Society lesson. It was on the Baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost. I have a couple of really good stories about how the Holy Ghost has touched my life. My favorite just happens to be back in '98 or '99. I was out camping/hiking with a roommate and a roommate with her boyfriend. We were going to college in Logan, UT, but decided to take a week off and go to Zion's National Park in southern UT. I really like it there. Anyway we decided to go back country hiking. I can't even remember the name of the trail, but I know it wasn't the Narrows. So, we needed to get a permit to on this trail and when we went to the visitors center to pick up the permit, we were denied. "Tony the Tyrant" informed us that he didn't think we were prepared enough to go on this hike. We didn't have the proper equipment. Well, that was true, but we said we would go buy repelling equipment. How hard is it to repel? I have done it before, and it wasn't as if we were repelling far, we only needed to get down 10-15 feet. So he told us we couldn't do the whole hike, but gave us a permit to start at the end and then we could hike up as far as we could get, then turn around and come back out. Sure, fine, whatever. We decided since we weren't going the whole way, we would wake up later and go around 10:00 am. This was definitely the first mistake.

I had never been in 100 degree weather before, and it reached that, that day. I put sunscreen on my arms and face, but didn't put any on my legs. I was told this hike was like the Zion's Narrows and decided why bother since there wouldn't be enough sun to tan my legs. This was mistake #2.

When we finally got to the parking spot, I looked around to try and orient myself with the area. I also was trying to tell myself that the car was exactly across the canyon from this spot. I wasn't scared about getting lost, but I wanted a point to look forward to when we were coming back. I knew we were going back country and that none of us had done anything like this. We also didn't have a compass or map. We didn't feel we needed one since we were only going to follow a trail to the stream/river, then follow the stream until we were ready to turn back. So how lost could we be? Mistake #3. By now, you are probably thinking why didn't you turn around? Yep, I should have!

So we started going down to the river. The trail started several hundred feet up, and we had to follow the trail down a rocky/sandy trail to get to the bottom. I had never hiked in the desert before and wasn't familiar with rock cairns. I had read about them, but since I hiked in the mountains with well developed trails, I had never really seen them before and didn't understand what they were until we were 1/2 down. Mistake #4.

Once we realized what they were, we started keeping track of them and looking for other things we would recognize the trail with. We realized that we couldn't really figure out where we had just come from, but wasn't too worried since we weren't ready to go back yet. Mistake #5.

We finally reached the bottom and walked for quite some time. It was very pretty and we enjoyed our little hike. We had brought a water purifier and went to town drinking as much water as we could handle. We knew it was hot, but didn't realize it was 100. Finally we turned around and decided it was time to go. We knew that we had to climb the mountain in order to get out of this canyon. As we neared the part of the trail where we started going up the mountain instead of along the stream, we filled up our water bottles again. Now when I hike, I sure drink a lot. It is crazy the amount of water I drink.

We made it up to the last rock cairn that we remembered and that was the first one we started paying attention to. We couldn't see any others, and weren't sure which direction to go. We put the man in charge. I am not sure why we did this. Anyway, he decided to follow the footprints in the sand. Mistake #6.

Eventually we came to a ledge that was about 2 feet wide. We had about 5-6 feet to go up until we would be on stable ground, but it was on a very dangerous slant. We were all nervous to do this since we couldn't just walk up. All of us ended up crawling up, one person at a time until we were finally up. I was so scared. I really felt I was going to fall off the edge of the cliff. We scrambled up the sandy dirt to the top and when all four of us were up there, we breathed a sigh of relief. We were on the home stretch now....right? Wrong.

From here I could see the point I had oriented myself with at the beginning. I just knew the car was west of where we were. Other than that...no idea! Again we stood up and figured, it's not far now. Just walk west and eventually we will hit a road that will take us in the right direction. By now my legs were sunburned, I was completely filthy, and I was out of water. But we took off towards the west. After 10 minutes of wandering around since it was clear we weren't following a trail, we came across a rock slide of boulders. It was about 20 feet wide. Then after that, there was another one. I was tired and didn't want to boulder hop. It didn't look like fun, and since this is rattlesnake territory, I didn't want to go on the boulders and potentially disturb a snake. The other three seemed to have the same idea. We stood there for a moment.

Two of the people I was with were not LDS. My other roommate and I are LDS. So I decided to say a little prayer to Heavenly Father to have Him help us find the path. No sooner had I closed the prayer when some guy started whistling about 50 yards south of where we were. All four of us stared at him and watched him for a couple of minutes until he was out of sight. We all then tore off running towards the trail. In moments we were back at the car and enjoying very warm water. I know that He listens to my prayers and that He is always there to help. Thank you!!

Technology

I can't believe what we can do these days. I say we, but I really mean them. At work, I fumble around access to try to create a new report out of our nut database. Yesterday I was asked to get a report that would show how many loads a day are leaving our facility. I wasn't successful at that. However, I was able to get it by weeks. Even that was a little sketchy. What I did turn in really wasn't a completed project. I would have needed several more hours to turn in a really clean, and pretty, report. However, I knew they weren't looking for pretty, but instead just looking for the numbers.

Anyway, I finally figured out how to put a playlist on my site. My sister-in-laws site puts me to shame. She has so many pictures, slide show, playlist, and a different background. I will have to work on a personalized background next. I just think it is amazing that I finally got a playlist together and it is actually working on my page. :-)

I finally cut out the pattern for my next window. It is a bit scary to me. There are 134 pieces to it. A lot of them are small and I wonder how I am first going to cut them, then how in the world am I going to wrap them in foil and make sure they get into place correctly. Oh well. I will never know until I try. I should be excited by this challenge, but am actually very intimidated. Hopefully I will be able to finish the project within the next month. I will then be very proud of myself.

Last weekend I finished with all my home improvement projects that I had planned. So this week I have been walking around my house and falling in love with it. I keep thinking about why in the world I want to sell it. I finally got it pretty and now I want out. I just have to remember my end goal is to get a home with a garage.

So I know I have a serious eBay habit that I am trying to break. I am actually doing really well and have cut way down. So far in the past couple of weeks, I have only won 4 auctions. I did bid on more, but decided when I was outbid that it was okay, I don't have to win everything. Sometimes I find that I like winning more than I actually like the item being sold. There are even times when I have decided the other person is SO not going to get that item and they better stop bidding on it, because I will just bid and bid until I am the winner. Well, I am trying to get away from that mentality. I finally received some of the stained glass pattern books that I won last week. I know, I know...what am I going to do with 20 stained glass books? Well, I was mad at the person who outbid me on another stained glass book auction, so I went around and bid on more books that they were bidding on so I would win them out from under them. Well, it worked. I won 20 books. I should be really excited right? Well, I do feel a bit excited, but then a bit foolish and stupid for buying 20 books. Who could possibly need that many, especially since it is just a small hobby? I received them on Wednesday, and immediately sat down to read them. I found it was more to just look at the the different pictures and patterns. I have to admit that I fell in love with a few of them. There are a couple that I am not really sure if I will ever use them. Most of them were just black and white patterns and so I would have to use my imagination and fill in the colors. However, my imagination doesn't work that way. I really don't feel that I am creative. I more copy or imitate instead of create. So to try and fill in a color into a pattern just doesn't work for me. There was one pattern done of a Tiffany window, and it was water lilies. However, I really couldn't figure out what it was to be. It was just lines on a page to me. There was a beautiful book that I did fall in love with. It was a book about the Preston Stained Glass studio in FL. The pictures were in color. However, that didn't matter much since the pictures were of doors with stained glass inserts. The glass inserts were of textured clear glass. That one could have been in black and white, and I wouldn't have missed much. However, they were just beautiful. I hope that one day I can create (imitate) something like that.

Phil was funny last night. I had put all his toys in one spot and was amazed at how many toys that Phil and Sam actually have. Phil decided he wanted to play with one of the toys and so he brought it to me. I threw it into the living room, and he took off after it. He was running too fast and when he tried to stop on the wood floor, he couldn't. He slid smack dab into the couch. He shook his head, picked up the toy and brought it back to me to throw again. He is such a silly kitty. Sam can't be bothered to do anything. I call his name, and he gives me the regal look of..."You talking to me? Why would you talk to me?"

So I just had a few people over for dinner. It was great to be able to talk and have a conversation. It was fun to have a group over and talk together or in seperate little groups. I hope to be able to do this again before I sell my house. I am looking forward to moving closer to town because then I think I could actually do it more often and people would come over.

Yesterday we had a garage sale. I really can't believe some of the people that show up. I know they are bargain shopping, but come on. I went over to a co-workers house to do this and so I was unloading a truck and before I could even unload it, there were people trying to take the stuff out of it and check to see what I had. I had brought over some of my stained glass to see if perhaps someone would purchase them. As soon as I took them out of the truck, a lady grabbed them. I told her that they were $25, I really didn't think that she was someone that would be spending $25 on stained glass. She then said she needed to get a couple of quarters. I repeated they were $25. She still wasn't listening, however, her daughter heard it and told her mom how much it was. The lady said no, they say $.25 on the sticker. I said no, it is $25.00. She couldn't give them back to me fast enough. She was like, I am not paying $25 for that. I didn't care. I knew how much it cost for me to put them together, and I wasn't giving them away.

Later this guy came up and took a sticker off of an item and brought it up to me and told me that he would buy it for $2. I looked at him, because I knew I had, had a sticker on it. I couldn't figure out where it was. I let him purchase it for $2. I later found the sticker, I had $5 on it. Oh well. Even if he had left the sticker on it, I would have probably sold it to him for that. Why do people have to be dishonest? I even think that some of the things were stolen from the yard sale, but oh well. If it didn't sell, I was going to give it to goodwill if the stuff didn't sell.

I sold my paint sprayer to my co-worker. I didn't care if it sold or not. If it didn't sell, then it was coming home with me. However, I didn't really like the sprayer. I had a set $$ I wanted for it and there were a lot of people interested in it, but I wasn't budging on the price because I didn't care if it sold. Finally when I almost had a seller, the co-worker told the buyer that we already had a buyer and so the guy left. Then the co-workers wife said she wasn't really sure if they wanted to buy it. OKAY!! If you are going to scare off a buyer, YOU better be buying it. They purchased it and joked that if they didn't like it, then they would return it. I thought to myself, you are kidding. I am not a retail store and do not take returns. If you use it, how do I know that you are going to clean it out well enough? She also wanted me to look for my Costco receipt so they would be able to have the extended warranty. That wasn't part of the garage sale deal. I was selling it no strings attached. I did tell her I would look for it because I can't imagine I would have thrown it away. I wasn't able to find it yesterday when I looked. Oh well.

Well, now that I have finished creating this blog, I should post something important. Hmm! what to say...I was told yesterday that I needed to burn the pants I was wearing. They weren't flattering, and they were extremely baggy. Last week I vowed to never wear them again because they were too big. However, this week came around, and all my other pants needed to be washed, and that pair was the only clean one. So I wore them. As I put them on, I swore I would get rid of them at the end of the day. However, before the end came, my JC consultant kindly encouraged me to buy some new clothes. Well, losing a bunch of weight does have its advantages. I can get a new wardrobe out of it. It wouldn't be so bad, if I hadn't just went shopping at the beginning of March and picked out some cute shirts that are now too big. Anyway, I had to pull out a picture of me from last June when I joined JC. I compared it to a picture of me now, and I can't believe how big I was.

Today, I ordered some new pants. I will have to post a picture when I finally get them.