Sisters

I've been following the unfolding story of events that have followed after a mother of four and her husband were in a private plane crash in Mesa back in August. I had first learned of her from reading a friend's blog who knew her family in Provo while growing up. I started reading her blog and seeing life through her eyes - taking in every moment and being so sincere and honest about her feelings. But now after just a few minutes her life has been changed so drastically. Life can seem so unfair, but it also seems that it is at those times that draw us closer together. I just finished reading this article about her story and her sisters - which seems to summarize not only the events, but the feelings and emotions that drive life itself. It's about sisters and how unique & strong that bond is with it's power to lend support. I'm grateful for my sister and for her love and support. I always look forward to the next time we can talk, laugh, hug. I recommend that if you choose to read this article that you have a tissue close at hand!

Anyone need ideas for a party?

Martha Stewart and Betty Crocker seem to have time to come up with all sorts of ideas for parties. These are some for Halloween. If only I had time or people to come to a party! But alas, I struggle to finish a costume for Saturday's trunk or treat. I'll just dream about a party for now, but if you feel so inclined to use these ideas, feel free and send a picture!

I can't be late to work again...

Definitely not a clothing designer...

So I've been working on helping some teenagers make Halloween costumes...well, sort of. One of them showed me a picture of what she wanted to be for Halloween - some sort of wizard that wears a dress. I looked at it and thought we could figure out how to make it. She thought it would be easy. I thought it would be harder than she thought, but doable. Well, I've changed my mind. It's super hard and somehow needs to be doable because they need them for Saturday's "trunk or treat" event. I found patterns to use, but it's all piece-mealed and I keep having all sorts of snags in the process. Why does it have to be so difficult to get a higher neckline than the one the pattern comes with??? I can't be responsible for making a costume for the bishop's daughter with a plunging neckline and open back...though my thought is "it's just a costume." Oh well, I know he won't think so. I'm hoping tomorrow will be my turn at winning, since the costume, or rather fabric that doesn't look much like a costume, seems to have been the one to claim victory tonight.

Let's get ethical!

It seems like more and more companies are focusing on their ethics policies, and Dunder-Mifflin is, of course, no exception.

Last week Kim and I watched another entertaining episode of The Office and we still have the "Let's get ethical" jingle that Michael and Holly performed playing in our heads!

Well, along those same lines... I just finished explaining to Kim that I had recently registered to attend a Microsoft launch event and that I was offered several options during the registration process to help me comply with my organization's ethics policy:

1. I could choose to attend the all day event and eat the provided lunch for free, or


2. I could choose to attend the all day event for free, then either pay $50 to eat the provided lunch or just forego the provided lunch, or


3. I could choose to attend the all day event and eat the provided lunch for $150 combined

After crunching the options through my ethics subroutine several times, I realized that it might need to have that new Y2K8 patch applied to it to prevent it from crashing when:

// passed in values: fee=0.0, msrp=150.0 and ethics=truevoid pay(final double fee, final double msrp, final boolean ethics) {
.
.
// exception occurs here trying to assign a value to a finalif (ethics==true && fee==0.0) fee=msrp;
.
.
};

I chose to attend for free and eat the provided lunch for free - but how cool is it that we can now be offered the ability to pay for free things?! This is really neat stuff! (Just maybe not free stuff anymore).
To think that I thought that last week's episode of The Office was just a funny episode - when it's oh so much more than that!
Pressured or not, Microsoft's example is just the beginning of a beautiful new era we should look forward to! Imagine what could be avoided if we all took the opportunity to pay for free stuff in order to make sure we don't violate our organization's ethics policies.
Oh - and speaking of ethics... I actually borrowed the picture for this entry from Tom Coombe's blog. I think that maybe he borrowed it, too - possibly from here.

Ladybug Weekend

This weekend was so warm that all the little critter-bugs decided to come out and buzz about. I had a ladybug crawl on me while I was upstairs and figured it had come inside on me. But when I went downstairs, I saw ladybugs crawling on the walls, the front door, and then all over the living room window sill! I tried to take the crawly ones outside since I figure they do some good. The rest needed to be sucked up with the vacuum. I saw a few more today, but hopefully the indoor ladybug season is over.

Made it to Wednesday

I can't figure out if I should have capitalized "it to." Oh well. So I finally made it to and through Wednesday. It's all hopefully downhill from here.

What did I do today?
1. worked a lot, I even went in early
2. picked up 2 girls from church and helped them buy fabric for Halloween costumes
3. checked out a cool project their mom is working on
4. did more work that I forgot to do before leaving work
5. posted this blog

Whew! Weekend, here I come!