Rebellin

On my lunch break, I stopped by Kinko’s to copy a few photos. I immediately started looking around for the copier keys, and a smiling Kinko’s employee greeted me saying, “May I help you?”

When I asked her about the keys, she said, “We have a new ‘pay at the pump’ sytem — no more keys!”

I was impressed by this, and immediately started thinking how much more efficient their operation must be now that you can just insert your credit card into a copier. That is, until I ran into some problems. That was when I realized there was one Kinko’s employee available out on the floor for about 30 customers. The photo copier I was using required that I had to find an associate to enter the password, and with a ratio of 1:30, and with the smiling Kinko’s worker dropping everything and LEAVING while all these customers were waiting, it took over 10 minutes for me to get her replacement’s attention and assistance.

Kinko’s, never forget that businesses are built and lost based on customer service. Skimping on employees during lunch time is a really bad idea — even if you have ‘pay at the pump’.

Something else I learned on my lunch break (besides Kinko’s new pay at the pump functionatlity) is that Wendy’s serves up a really good Taco Salad.

And those, ladies and gents, are my random thoughts of the day.

I keep thinking that I should post something here, but then end up racking my brain on what to post.

There really hasn’t been anything noteworthy that has happened to me since I last posted. The weekend was nice, with skiing, yard work, and eating at two of my favorite local restaurants (Thai Palace in Reno and Ming’s in Carson). But it wasn’t that different from most of the other weekends I’ve written about.

We watched Mona Lisa Smile, and it was OK. I thought it was going to be an excellent chick flick, but it really wasn’t. It centered around whether or not a woman should stay home to take care of her husband and kids or if she should pursue her own dreams… And, if you can really have the best of both worlds — a professional career and a happy home life. Needless to say, it led to a good conversation afterwards…

Tucker got into a fight with an industrial strengh sprinkler at the park last night and the sprinkler won. He loves to attack spraying water, so he was having an absolute blast biting the stream and running in and out of the water. That is, until he yelped and ran away as fast as he could with his tail between his legs. He seemed fine right afterwards, though.

So that’s about all I have to report. Sorry it’s not more exciting, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes.

Poor Jane is getting ready to pop, as she is really close to the end of her pregnancy with my second nephew. I’m planning to go to Folsom next weekend for Jack’s third birthday, and can’t wait to see her in her full-on pregancy!

Here is the official ‘status’ of my nephew, according to Oxygen:

The countdown continues: 36 weeks down, four to go. Your baby now measures more than 13.5 inches (34 centimeters) from crown to rump and weighs about 6 pounds (2,750 grams). If he was a fruit, she’d be a massive coconut.

Your baby is continuing to grow and fill out during this “finishing period,” even though it may feel like there isn’t any room left. Many of his wrinkles smooth out as he plumps up.

Info taken from Oxygen.

I can’t wait to meet the little guy!!!

I didn’t go to the University of Nevada at Reno, but I have to admit that I’ve caught some of the local excitement now that the Pack has made the Sweet 16. In fact, I’m wearing a WolfPack shirt right now. I don’t look at it as being a traitor to my two alma maters, but more of being a true Renoite. Besides, New Mexico State University and Wayne State University were never known for their athletics…

I think JB and I are headed out to one of the college hang outs tonight to root on the pack. We can pretend that we’re still young college students, right?

If you live in Reno or Northern California, keep an eye out for our Reno-Tahoe TV commercial during the game!

I really hate political TV commercials, and this year the commercial wars between candidates have started earlier and become more spitefull.

But something that is new this year is that both candidates, who are speaking in their own commercials, both say ‘I am (insert name her), and I approve this message.’

And for some reason, that really bugs me. I mean, you are the one speaking, so I would sure hope that you approve what you YOURSELF are saying! I’m wondering what their legal teams told them in order to make them both say that.

Politics really don’t intrigue me at all. I am A. Lynnette Cook, and I Approve This Message. (And I managed to type it without any Texan accent whatsoever.)

Update: Jane informed me that candidates are now required by law to say that they approve of a message. I did a bit of online research myself, and found this:

One provision of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law is that television ads must include “a statement that identifies the candidate and states that the candidate has approved the communication… Such statement– ‘(i) shall be conveyed by– ‘(I) an unobscured, full-screen view of the candidate making the statement, or ‘(II) the candidate in voice-over, accompanied by a clearly identifiable photographic or similar image of the candidate …”

Information found on this site.

Now really, that is just plain silly.

I just went to a Team Building meeting with this speaker. It was rather entertaining, and there was hand holding and many forced (but funny) positive affirmations. The meeting ended with everyone wearing heart shaped eye-glasses and singing Monty Python’s ‘Always Look On The Bright Side of Life’.

I guess the biggest take-aways I got from her were:

• Always make sure you’re looking at life and work through your heart and with empathy.
• Make sure that you’re connected personally with your coworkers and family.
• Strive to put a sparkle in someone’s eye every day.
• If you are negative, you can suck the postive energy out of someone. Don’t be that person, and don’t surround yourself with those people.

That’s about it. It was fun, and I hope to keep a sparkle in my eye and to focus on the positive in life from now on.

On Saturday, I headed to Sierra At Tahoe with JB and my brother, Chuck. We spent the first part of the day skiing, and even decided to try a bit of back country skiing.

Sierra has five gates that lead to back country, you can actually get from the back country back to the ski area so that you can ride the chairlift back up the mountain again. After talking to a ski patrol about the back country gates, we thought we’d give it a try.

It was pretty fun at first. We were making fresh tracks (in the very slushy snow… it was 60 degrees on the slopes), and having a good time being adventurous. We were following the tracks of a skiier that had been there before us, and those tracks lead us to some snowmobile tracks. We had been told to follow the snowmobile tracks back to the ski area.

What everyone failed to mention about back country skiing at Sierra is that you’ll spend 90% of your time poling and walking on your skis to get back to the resort. We got about 10 minutes of fun downhill skiing, and we then spent a good half hour walking and poling our way out of there. And in 60 degrees, that gets really hot really quick. We finally made it back to the resort, and decided that the back country skiing there really isn’t worth the effort.

So then, my brother had the brainy idea that we should all try snowboarding. JB has been saying all season that he’d like to try it. I, on the other hand, am very happy on my skis, and wasn’t looking forward to the idea of being a beginner on the slopes again.

But that is exactly what I did. After spending a few hours on the expert hills and doing the back country, we went and rented snowboards and headed straight for the bunny hill. Chuck had been snowboarding twice before, so he took it upon himself to be our instructor. Yes, it was a bit like the blind leading the blind.

The first frightening experience when learning how to snowboard is getting off of the chairlift. I always used to get irritated with snowboarders as they would crash getting off the lifts, but now I fully understand. When the three of us got to the top of the bunny hill lift, JB and I crashed into each other while Chuck rode rather gracefully out of the way. It was pretty funny, actually. But I landed on the binding of my snowboard, and have a sizable bruise on my thigh to show for it.

I then made my way over to the top of the bunny hill, and have never been so intimidated by a bunny hill in all my life. The first two runs on that snowboard were horrible. I was crashing left and right, forward and backward. Smashing my face into the snow… All of this for a girl that really doesn’t fall much skiing, and when I do fall, I usually know how to minimize the damage.

But not on a snowboard. I was at the mercy of that darn thing. JB and Chuck managed to do two runs in the time I did my first run. Just as I had suspected, JB was a natural at the sport. In the time I did 4 runs, he did at least 8, and towards the end, he wasn’t even falling.

One of the things that makes the bunny hill extremely challenging on a snowboard is all the other beginner skiers and boarders. I never really thought about it, but all a bunny hill really is is a bunch of people skiing and riding completely out of control on the same hill. Granted, no one is going very fast, but as I was trying to learn this sport, I was having to maneuver my way around all these other beginners, and you really can’t predict where they’re going or what their next move will be.

By my third and fourth runs, I was starting to get the hang of it, and managed to actually carve some decent turns, and only fell a few times on the way down.

Chuck did his last run of the day on the intermediate hill. And though he said it was riveting, I guess that could possibly give JB and I something to shoot for.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever be a true Boarder Chick… Although if JB takes a liking to the sport, I may venture back out to try my hand at it again. But for right now, I’m still recovering. My body hurts. My forearms, butt, neck, and many other body parts are really sore. I also have quite a collection of bruises. Of course, JB the stud wasn’t even sore or bruised at all. Ugh. Must be nice to be so athletically gifted.

There was an escape at my household last night. I came home from work absolutely exhausted, so I let the dog in through the sliding glass door and then shut the screen to allow some fresh air in. Then I went up to bed for about an hour.

When I woke up, I thought it was strange that Murray the cat hadn’t been sharing my pillow with me like he usually does. When I got downstairs, I saw that the screen was open just wide enough for my cat to slip out, and Murray was nowhere in sight. That’s right, my genious cat has figured out how to open a screen door.

I searched the whole back yard, calling for the darn cat and peaking into every corner and every bush. He was gone. So I put on my shoes, grabbed the dog, and started combing the neighborhood for my missing cat.

I still didn’t see him, so when I got home, I figured I’d lure Murray, my little piglet, back with some food. I put his bowl in front of the sliding glass door and proceeded to go to bed.

I woke up at about 3 am to Tucker barking frantically downstairs. I looked out my window and saw a mid-80s Mustang stopped in the middle of the street in front of my house with the bass pumping. The guy then took off. This morning, I found a note on my door for the tenant that lived in the house 2 years ago. It was scrawled on a receipt, and said ‘Steph — I just stopped by to say hello.’ At 3 am?! (Can you say booty call?!)

Anyways, since I was up, I took another pass at the back yard looking for Murray. He still wasn’t in sight, but the food bowl was empty — a good sign. He couldn’t be too far.

This morning, I put some more food out in front of the door, and within moments, I heard the ‘tink, tink, tink’ of his tags as he ran to get the food. I grabbed him and brought him inside to finish off the food.

The kid was filthy. My white cat had dirt all over him. That boy must have had a blast wherever he was.

So, once again, I’m exhausted. I had nightmares about my cat being hit by a car or gobbled up by one of the dogs next door, so I didn’t sleep very well. But I’m just glad he’s home. My prodigal son has come home.

St. Patrick’s Day turned out to be a lucky day for me. And it should have been, because I think I’m like 1/8 Irish!

The luck started as I was running around from meeting to meeting yesterday. I ended up at the Convention Center around 1:30, and hadn’t had a chance to eat lunch yet. I was pretty darn hungry. And I happened to mention that I was craving corned beef and cabbage to an employee there, and he said ‘we just finished a huge lunch of corned beef and cabbage and have all kinds of left-overs’. And just like that, I had a free traditional Irish dish for lunch. It wasn’t nearly as good as Mom’s, but it did hit the spot.

I had to work at a dinner last night at the Convention Center. The ballroom was all decked out for St. Patrick’s Day, and looked absolutely amazing. The dinner was first-class, with wine, cleansing of pallates, filet mignon, and a dessert of truffles in a box of white chocolate shaped like shamrocks. I had to take the dessert home in a to-go box because I was extremely full. My slide show of pictures that I took of clients went over very well. It is one of those projects that is really easy for me to do, but has quite a ‘wow’ factor.

The dinner was over around 9:30, so I then headed out to JB’s gig at an Irish Pub. There was a really fun crowd there, and I danced my little heart out. The lead singer of the band even dedicated a song to me — I felt like an honored groupie! Some of JB’s musician friends were there and jammed with the band. Monique from All About Me did a mean Sheryl Crow, and another guy sat in on the drums. (I like it when drummers sit in because it means that I get to hang out with JB instead of just watching him.) I got home around 1:30 am…

Luckily, I had permission to come into work late this morning since I worked until 9:30 two nights this week. But getting to work at 10 am today hurt just as bad, if not worse, than getting to work at 8 am on a normal day. Honestly, I have a bit of a headache, and my bed is calling to me. I sure miss those days in college when I could go out on a weeknight and be fully functional the next day. I guess that is where my luck ends.

So it was a really fun day, but now my sights are on the weekend… I need a few more days of rest to recover!

Well, I’m headed to the slopes again today for work. I’ll be taking pictures of clients as they ski. We’ll be at Mt. Rose, which is a quick 30 minute drive from my office.

I learned from skiing on Saturday that I don’t want to wear my black ski pants, because I got way too hot. I debated about wearing jeans, but that’d look really goofy (like a Texan), so I settled for my grey boarder pants. I’ll be skiing in a turtleneck and a fleece vest, and I doubt I’ll even bother with gloves. It is going to be in the mid-70s down here in the valley today, so I expect that it will be in the 50s on the slopes. That’s really cookin’!

It will be nice to escape my office for a while today. I’ve had a bad case of Spring Fever this past week, magnified by the fact that I don’t even have windows in my office!

This past weekend was so perfect. We skied on Saturday at Sierra-at-Tahoe. It was true Spring conditions… JB was in a long sleeved t-shirt and I was only wearing a shirt and a vest. And we were still hot. The snow was slushy, ego snow as us skiers like to call it. That meant that I felt like I had found my skiing mojo again as I kept a perfect line down moguls runs. OK, not nearly as perfect as my brothers can do it, but pretty darn perfect for me.

We ate dinner in South Shore at our favorite Thai food restaurant, where we both enjoyed some Pumpkin Curry. Yum! On our way back to Carson City, we stopped off at Nevada Beach on Lake Tahoe to watch the sunset. It was such an incredible sunset, with pinks and yellows reflecting off of the smooth as glass water. Watching the sunset over Lake Tahoe is one of my favorite things to do (especially when I’m with JB).

That night, we went out to a few bars to watch some bands. Our favorite 80s cover tune band was playing, and we danced a bit while we played some pool. We both managed to sink the 8 ball, so we tied in our pool games.

On Sunday, I threw on a pair of shorts and went out to enjoy the glorious Spring weather. It was at least 70 degrees. I washed JB’s two dogs and Tucker while he worked on his car. I was a bit doggy afterwards, but it is nice to have such clean dogs because they are so snuggly when they don’t smell.

That afternoon, we went for a hike at a recreation area in Carson City called Prison Hill. It was strange to be hiking in the heat of the desert wearing shorts, considering we had been skiing just the day before. But that’s really what I like about this area — you don’t have to LIVE in the snow to enjoy it! There were some incredible views of the Sierra Nevadas from our hike, and once again, we watched the sunset from an incredible vantage point.

That night, we cooked up a dinner of steaks, served with wine and Frank Sinatra playing in the background. That later transitioned into us dancing to an entire CD worth of Frank songs, and you know what, we’re getting pretty darn good at the waltz and the swing!

So that was my weekend. Two great sunsets, the best company I could ask for, and plenty of sunshine and pooches. Gotta love it.

But we didn’t manage to make it out to the Mountain Oyster Festival in nearby Virginia City… You’ve got to check out this ‘nutty’ article. It really cracked me up!

I didn’t even know it until I stumbled upon this link today, but it is Women’s History Month.

So in honor of that, I’m posting a few tidbits that I snarked from this site.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, data from the 2000 census shows:

• Women make up 50.9% of the US population
• 15% of married women earn at least $5,000/year more than their husbands
• 55% of mothers in the labor force have infant children
• Every year since 1982, women have earned more Bachelor�s Degrees than men
• 61% of women of voting age cast ballots in the 2000 presidential election compared to 58% of men
• The life expectancy for a woman born in 2001 is 79.8 years compared to 74.4 years for a man

So even though we can’t pee standing up, we do have a few things to hang our hats on.

On St. Patrick’s Day 2002, I followed my brothers off of a cornice (that’s a snow overhang at the top of a ridge for you non-skiers) and crashed. Unfortunately, my bindings had been set too tight and my skis didn’t come off. That resulted in a partially torn meniscus and a partially torn ACL tendon in my left knee.

Luckily, after a few months of physical therapy and a lot of weights and cardio exercise to get it strong again, my knee is back to normal.

But my confidence had been taken down a few notches on the ski slopes. All last year, I was extremely cautious on the slopes. This year, I’ve been skiing enough to start to get over my fears.

And yesterday, a bit by accident, it was time for me to face my biggest demon on the snow — a cornice.

My brother Greg has been telling me to “Get back on that horse that threw you” for quite a while now. He regularly goes off of cornices, and makes them look REALLY easy.

So back to my story… Yesterday, I decided to take a different way down one of the double black diamonds (aka Experts Only) runs. I remembered from prior years that the first few turns would probably be hairy… But when I got to the entrance to the run (really, a point of no return), I was confronted with a cornice.

This little Asian woman skied up after me and then quickily skied her way off of it, making it look really easy.

So I got back up on that horse. My ski tips dangled over the edge, my pulse raced, and I was breathing heavy.

You can do this, I told myself. But then I just sat there and stared at it, having flashbacks to my knee injury. And then I let my pulse race and my breath get harder and switched positions. And repeated the racing of the pulse and heavy breathing a few more times.

And after about five minutes (that felt like 50) of staring at my nemesis, I took a deep breath and pushed off of that cornice.

My heart dropped a bit and I let out a scream, and about 15 seconds later, I came to a stop on the hill. I threw up my arms in victory and shouted, “I did it!”

Right then, a ski patrol that had been watching me the whole time said in all his wisdom, “You can’t sit up there and look at it too long. You just have to go.”

What he didn’t know was that he had just witnessed me getting back up on that horse that threw me, and conquering it.

I have to admit that it wasn’t nearly as big of a cornice as the one I injured myself on (that my family has renamed Lynnette’s Leap). I don’t plan on doing one of those ever again. My skis actually didn’t even leave the ground. But damnit, it was a cornice, and I did it.

And I don’t really want to do that for another long while. They still scare the you know what out of me.

I mentioned last year that my Mom is an avid Martha Stewart fan. Sorry, mom, things are looking really bad for Martha right now….

Update: Now what is my mom going to watch?! (link courtesy of Jane)

Last night, JB had band practice in Reno. It happened to conflict with our original plans of seeing Bachelor Bob, aka Bob Guiney perform with his band.

Bob’s free show started at 8:30, and we showed up at 9:30. He had already finished performing, and in fact, most of his audio equipment and band set-up had been torn down already. It must have been a REALLY short show.

But I don’t really think that Bob intended to sing much. I think his true intentions were the ‘meet and greet’ aspect. We got there just in time to see tons of scantily clad girls clutching roses (did we miss the biggest rose ceremony EVER?!) waiting to meet Bob. They were getting their breasts autographed, posing for pictures with him, and the more boring ones were getting their newly purchased Bob CDs autographed.

It was really something to sit back and watch this fiasco. It was as if every single girl in Reno showed up because they thought they really had a chance with Bob now that he has dumped Estella.

And the really smart single men in Reno were there. The man to woman ration was seriously like one man to five women. For the majority of the time we were there, the men sat off in a corner, watching while the women swooned over Bob.

JB kept prompting me to go ask for Bob’s autograph. But I really didn’t want to be one of ‘those girls’ feeding his ego. Although I did contemplate having Bob sign something FOR JB. That would have been funny. If I would have been thinking straight last night, I would have brought my camera. Just for the sake of being completely cheesy, I would have loved to have posted a picture of me and Bob on this site.

When I left Michigan, I ceremoniously threw away my snow shovel. After four winters there and surviving one blizzard, I was sick of shoveling, and vowed that I’d never have to do it again. I almost had to break down this week to buy one because of this storm that dumped about 5 inches at my house.

Luckily, it’s supposed to be in the upper 50s later this week, so I think I’ll let Mother Nature do the work of clearing off my sidewalks.