Ahh!

Yesterday was Stake Conference. Our stake is so large that we all can't meet at the same time and we hold two separate meetings on Sunday to cover this. My current ward was assigned to go to the 1:00 o'clock session. There was a 9:00 am session as well, and I decided I would rather go to that one. My regular Sunday meetings start at 1:00 and I really like to start earlier. So I got up and ready and got to the stake center a few minutes before it started. It's not like I needed to be there really early. I don't need to save a whole row or find 5 seats together. As I walked in, I saw the wife of one of my co-workers. I smiled, waved, and continued on to my seat. My seat was right on the aisle, this way I would be able to make a fast escape when it ended. I am not one to hang around. I really can't handle crowds of people. Small crowds are okay, but when we have 500 people, I get a bit claustrophobic.

Anyway, I noticed Cassie standing to the side of me after a few minutes. She is four and the daughter of my co-worker. She has come into work a few time, and every time, I pick her up by her ears and talk with her. She apparently likes me. :-) She wanted to sit with me. She was such a good girl. For the first 5 minutes she sat so still and quiet. I can't believe that someone would sit that still and quiet at 4. I then pulled out a pen and paper and she drew for about an hour. Then I handed her my keys and she looked at the different key chains I had. I only had two, but she looked at them for about 10 minutes. Then she sat on my lap and hugged me and I rocked her for about 20 minutes, before she turned to me and asked if she could go back to her mom and dad. I said that was fine. I really like that she wanted to sit with me.

Kids usually don't like me, so it was great that one wanted to.

Picnic

Yesterday we had the company Family Farm Fun Day picnic. This is really the pre-harvest kick-off. We used to hold a picnic during work hours for the employees in July/August depending on when the harvest would start. However, someone had the idea to open it up to whole family. This has been a great idea, and this was the fourth annual picnic. The first year we held it, it was in August and it as 103-106. I can't remember what it really was, but boy it was hot. This year it was unseasonably hot and it was 101.

I have an allergy to the sun, so I always put SPF 50 sunscreen on and that usually works and I don't react. However, I think I was sweating too much and the sunscreen came off. I didn't realize it until it was too late. However, everything is fine.

I was in charge of the dunk tank. It was great. I had a list of 5 people to dunk. There was one that didn't show up for it, and another that decided at the last minute that he wouldn't be able to do it until really late. However, it turned out really well. I had picked one person and he was such a good sport. I probably shouldn't have picked him because of his age, he didn't really seem like he was up for it. However, he was a good sport and went in several times.

Our boss has been against a dunk tank since we started the picnics. However, this year I asked him in front of everyone if we could have one, and he looked at me like I was going to be in trouble, but replied that it didn't matter. So we took that as a yes and got started. I was careful and didn't ask him to sit for it. I knew that wouldn't go over very well. However, at the picnic, he was almost one of the first people to come up and throw balls to dunk a co-worker. He missed with all three balls, but then ran up and hit the mark with his hand anyway. The guy that was in the tank had brought a water gun and was shooting everyone. So of course he squirted the water at the boss. At some point the guy ran out of water and went to fill it up in the tank, but leaned too far forward and fell in. That was unexpected, but funny.

There was an elderly lady there that didn't speak any English and she was mad at me. I couldn't figure out what she wanted, or why she she kept trying to take the winners tickets out of my hands. I kept telling her I didn't know what she was saying, and I turned to the kids that were there to translate and they told her that she would need to throw the balls to win a ticket. Finally after about 4 minutes of her angrily gesturing at me, I handed her a ball and showed her how to throw it, she did, I handed her a ticket and then she walked off. I still am not sure what she wanted.

We had a party crasher that brought along his 4 or 5 year old daughter. They hung out at the dunk tank and kind of took over. That was fine because it was over at that point. I had heard of party crashers showing up at the park parties, but didn't really believe that it would happen. Oh well. It was amusing.

Then it was time for the pinatas. I hadn't volunteered to help out with this, but somehow since I had helped last year, it was assumed and I just pitched in. I did learn from last year, and made sure all the kids were back far enough and would yell stop if the kids got to close. That would either stop the running-candy hungry-kids from dashing in, or at least the wild swinging at the pinata. I can't believe what happens when the pinata breaks open. Kids can't be slow. If they are slow, they won't get anything.

All in all, I think the picnic was a hit. Kudos to Carmen for the planning and preparation.

Phil

So I have changed how I have been feeding my cats. In the past, I left them a big bowl to eat from and when they were finished I would give them a new bowl. However, Sam is getting fat, and I am not talking PHAT. So I have switched back to giving them the 1 1/2 cups of dry food a day to eat. However, this is not really working out so well for me. This morning I woke up about 4 am because I heard a noise and couldn't figure out what it was. When I finally got up, I realized it was because Phil was eating the leafy greens at the top of the pineapple on the counter and had knocked it off and it fell to its death on the floor.

Then around 5:30, Phil was trying to knock me out of bed. He kept head butting me. Just as I would lift the arm he was trying to get under, it would give him more leverage and he would push harder. I couldn't really figure out what he was trying to do until I got up this morning and realized they were out of food. For the past week or so, Phil has been head butting me in the morning, and I am now realizing that it is because he is hungry. It seems that Sam the fat cat has been eating all the food, and then Phil is going hungry in the morning. Phil is the skinny cat, and so he doesn't need to lose any weight. However, I guess that he will just have to push Sam out of the food dish when Phil gets hungry. :-)

Well, today I went with the guys. We had a class up in Fresno to learn about Letters of Credit. A couple of months ago I had received a flyer concerning classes put on by the CITD about International Business. It had about 8 classes that would be given every other week from 9-1. Most of the classes I wasn't interested in, but felt that someone from work should attend. This would help us learn about what we might need to change or update on our contracts and shipping documents. I have been interested in learning more about letters of credit for about a year and a half. I got interested in them after attending a seminar put on by Bank of America. It seems that we could actually make some money from this if we would put a little time and effort into this. So with this class I learned a little more. I would be interested in learning more, but it seems that I would only get what I want to know from talking to my banker. So I probably need to schedule some one-on-one time to discuss the possibilities with our bank. It is interesting to think that we could give 180 day terms to a customer, yet sell this note to our bank at a discount and get paid within 7-10 days of the shipment leaving our facility. Of course if the customer is getting 180 day terms, they would pay a premium for this, and this should more than cover the discount we would have to take to sell the note to the bank. Then we would still make a profit on the difference in the premium paid by the customer and the discount we paid. Interesting, huh? However, there are a few catches to this. One of them is that our bank needs to be comfortable with the issuing bank and that they are willing to assume the risk of the payment. This is where I would need to talk to our bank to see if I can get more information.

Guardian Angel

The wells' water pump went out sometime on Wednesday night, so when we came into work on Thursday, there was no running water. Work brought in some port-o-johns, and made them available for us. They also said that we would be able to use the company vehicle to make a trip to Wasco if necessary. On Friday the water was still not working. The other women in the office were refusing to use the port-o-johns, and felt that they needed to leave early to go home. After listening to them complain for a few minutes, I got the keys to the Explorer and told the boss that we were going into town and would be back soon. We climbed into the car and headed off. Someone needed to purchase some baby shampoo and so we decided to go to Rite-Aid. It probably has the worst bathroom in Wasco and the port-o-johns at the farm would have been better to use. However, we didn't know that until we went to use them.

After everyone was done, we loaded back into the car and headed out of town back to the farm. After we had just stopped at the last light and started to go, I was the second car and there was no one behind me. Since I was driving a company vehicle and there were other people in the car, I was driving differently than if I had been alone. I was a bit more careful and wasn't hot rodding. Not that I really do that anyway. I had let the truck in front of me get about 200 feet in front of me. Just as we came up the small hill, I noticed another truck entering the intersection and looked at the truck in front of me. At that point I tapped my brakes because I realized that the truck entering the intersection wasn't going to get across in time. He wasn't going to clear the truck in front of me. Luckily, the truck in front of noticed in time and slammed on his brakes. Because of the distance between the truck and me, I applied more brakes to allow for a safe distance just in case. It seemed as the truck in the middle of the intersection realized he shouldn't have been there and sped up a bit. This allowed the truck in front of me to narrowly miss the other. I let off my brakes and sighed a bit of relief-crisis averted. Then all of a sudden the truck in front of me veered left. It was a hard left and it was so hard I thought the truck was going to roll. It crossed the other lane of traffic and headed towards the grove of almond trees. At this point, I knew he was hitting dirt and was off the cement and wouldn't be able to regain control. I hit my brakes again, grabbed for my purse to give to the lady in the front seat and told her to call 911. Just as I said that, the truck straightened out and paused a moment and came back across the road into our lane like nothing happened and continued on his way.

That guy really has a guardian angel. He first missed hitting a vehicle that shouldn't have been in the intersection, then he lost control, and in my opinion almost flipped, then he narrowly missed hitting trees and spinning more out of control on the dirt. He is one blessed guy.

That could have been me, but would I have been alert enough to see the truck entering the intersection, or even would I have been able to gain control of the vehicle before hitting something or someone? It just makes me realized that someone is out there watching over me and making sure that I am aware of my surrondings.

Finished another one!

I bought a small beveled glass kit of of eBay (previously I have admitted to my eBay habit).

So this week I decided to finish putting it together. Just because it already came pre-cut didn't mean it actually fit together they way it came. Since these are all bevels, there isn't much that I can do to change it. However, I moved some of the bevels around. Nothing special, just tried one blue one where another blue one was. Anyway, when it got down to it, I only had to make a small adjustment to one of the blue bevels. This is my 7th real project. I say real because I don't consider the ladybugs a real project. I am going to give this one to Mom for Mother's Day. She will like it. She has this thing about blue and pink/peach. Her front room is painted with peach wall, she has peach/pick carpeting, and one blue accent wall. I think she will like this. You can't really tell that this stained glass panel has peach in it, but it does. I had started on my next panel. I am not sure about that one. There are two many small pieces. I am already a bit discouraged since the pieces are so small that it is hard to cut out details on them. However, I will try to do this one and then see if I want to do a second of the same window. I have a small plate that I designed the window around and when I was done designing, I went and bought a second plate. We will see if I will use the same pattern of if I change it up a bit.

Happy May Day!

Well today at work I got a nice surprise when I showed up. Olga nicely stated that we had no water in the building and that it might be a couple of days before it was restored. They were bringing the Port-O-Johns in from the field. However, I don't like to use them. I would rather drive to town when I needed instead of using them.

Another thing, I sort of got put in charge of the Healthly Living program at work. This might be because I announce to everyone what the current challenge is. For instance for the next two months, the challenges are to eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables and also to exercise 5 days a week for 30 minutes. Since I reminded everyone to sign up for this because they can earn themselves a bit of cash, they now ask me if this or that counts as a vegetable serving. Anyway, it doesn't matter I guess. At least they are eating vegetables.