Sunday, May 2, 2010

Famous Quotes by Denae

I have just been added as an author and had to do it myself because Denae said she added me but in reality she did not. So as my first post on this blog I want to try and add some of Denae's famous quotes so you can see what I get to hear on a daily basis.

Here is what she said today about me faxing in my GMAT scores first thing in the morning.
Denae: "You better do that first thing in the morning because the early worm catches the birds"
Me: "Wow!?!?!?!? I don't think that's right though."

Hopefully I can keep adding to this post. Thank you and goodnight.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Let's Hear It For New York!!!

We were able to take some time off work and away from our failing water system to go to New York City and Boston. We had a great time. We ate a ton of good food, saw a Yankee's game, Jersey Boys, had a backstage tour of Jersey Boys, watched the Boston Marathon, learned some U.S. History on the Freedom Trail and did a lot of walking!




We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to have lunch at this great pizza place. The pizza was amazing!



I'm still working on converting Jer to my love of Apple.



Jersey Boys was like being at a concert, the music was amazing!



One of Jer's favorite stops was lunch at Sylvia's in Harlem before the Yankee's game. They have good old fashioned soul food. He got the fried chicken and I got the ribs, and with mashed potatoes and mac and cheese for sides how can you go wrong?






Jer love's his Yankee's. It was pouring rain and freezing so I wore just about every article of clothing I brought to try and keep warm during the game. We got to see C.C. Sabathia pitch and they won!









I have to admit, I learned that I know very little about U.S. History on this trip. We ended up buying a little book so that I could play tour guide and we could actually know the significance of the things were seeing.




On of my favorite parts of the trip was watching the Boston Marathon. They basically shut the city down and everyone comes out and cheers on the runners. We were right near the finish line and the streets were just packed with people. People were hanging out of building windows cheering on the runners. One of the best parts was when we saw this group of army soldiers running in full gear. Anyone who knows me knows I am a sucker for sappy sports stories but this was really inspirational. When they came running by in full gear everyone was going nuts trying to urge them to the finish. It was really awesome. We couldn't get many good pictures from the marathon because everyone kept running but just trust me when I say it was awesome.

The Singles Ward

This past Friday night Jer and I were introduced to a whole new under ground world within the Church. It was crazy! We were asked to come help prepare refreshments and take money for a singles dance. So we show up and start asking questions about how many people were going to show up and they said there are usually about 500 people! WHAT! We had never heard of a singles dance getting 500 people so we were a bit shocked. Then one of the volunteers said they have these dances every 4th Friday of the month. Again, we had never heard of this. So finally Jer said, "We were in a YSA ward and we never heard of these," to which the response was, "take off the Y, this is a 30+ singles dance and the average age is 45-65". Insert jaw drop and big eyes now. The average age is 45-65, say what?

We were assigned to take money at one of the doors so Jer went to man our station while I finished up in the kitchen. I was about to head over to our door when one of the ladies said, "wait, don't forget your badge". "Badge?" I said. "So everyone will know you are unavailable". Oh boy. So I get my badge and grab Jer's and start over for our post. As I round the corner, I see this woman standing at the table Jer is at and hear, "So are you like in one of the singles wards?" Really. This lady is hitting on Jer and he has been without his protective hands off badge for 5 minutes? I knew we were in for an interesting evening...



My badge said Priesthood Advisor Companion.

Here are some of the highlights from the evening (keep in mind that all of the people listed below are probably older than our parents):

1. Creepy 50 something guy telling us he had been divorced many times.
2. Crazy lady from above story forcing Jer to write down the website for these dances to pass on the information to our +30 year old friends. It's www.slc-sa.org if you are interested.
3. The woman who came to our table to get a mint and told us she was dancing with some guy who said, "I don't know what it is that you ate but it does not smell good." And she was actually fine with being told this, she said she was just happy he told her so she knew and we both tried to tell her that no one should talk to her that rudely but she didn't really care.
4. The woman who told us we looked like high schoolers and are too young to be married and should get divorced, experience single life for awhile longer and then get married.
5. The woman who told us to never get divorced, even though dancing is really fun it's not worth the pain of divorce. Thank you for that sound advice!
6. The woman who got her bracelet stuck to her dress and I had to perform surgery to remove the stupid thing.
7. The man who said we needed to chaperone him and his date more because she was getting to affectionate with him.
8. The woman who was with the man listed above that asked if she could have a mint and then creepy man asking if they could share the same mint.

Those are just some of the highlights from the evening. Needless to say our eyes were opened and we had a very enjoyable evening.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Water WARS!!!

I like water, I really do.

I like swimming in it



I like hiking in it



I even like playing in the rain every now and then



And as just about everyone knows I believe that hydration is the key to success in life so I definitely like drinking it. But recently I've been getting the feeling that water has it out for me. I don't know what I did, but it must have been bad. After we had our flood we jetted over to NYC and Boston for a little vacation where it proceeded to be the warmest it's been all year in Utah and freezing cold rain wherever we went. But I was willing to just accept that as bad luck and move on. However, today I returned to work and then came home to meet the pipe engineer that our insurance company sent over to investigate why our pipe burst. I took him back to the closet and he snapped a few pictures, reached down and grabbed the pipe to try and get a better pic and...



The pipe just burst AGAIN right there in front of me. It started spraying water like crazy and I started screaming, the pipe man started screaming, there was much screaming. He jumped forward and grabbed for the pipe and ran and turned off the water. I don't know what the deal is but I'm going to assume that I offended the almighty water spirit somewhere and this is my punishment. So now our pipe has been fixed AGAIN and we are now looking in to the cost of replacing all the pipes in this place.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

It's raining, it's pouring, destroying our flooring...

This is how my Tuesday night/Wednesday morning went. The Jazz played in and won an incredibly important and intense game, during which I vowed to name my first born D-Will in honor of his performance. It was a great game and we were really mad we decided not to get tickets. I even managed to stay awake for all of the overtime which is nothing short of a miracle. Because of the game we went to bed much later than normal and I was really tired. Around 2:30 I woke up because Jeremy was climbing out of bed and saying something. And that's when I heard it....the sound of rushing water.

I bolted out of bed to help search for the source. That's when we discovered that there was no water to be found, the sound was coming from inside the wall. It sounded like there was water gushing through the wall though. We turned off the water to our place and the noise stopped. I called the emergency line that was listed by the HOA and got a hold of someone who informed me there was nothing he could do about getting into the units below us so we just had to wait until morning.

Once morning came we discovered that the shared wall between our bathroom and bedroom closet had a pipe burst inside of it. The water had gone straight down through the wall and successfully flooded the two units below us and the bottom unit on the backside of the building. Our condo didn't receive too much damage, just some wet walls that needed to be dried out by fans. The other units did not fair nearly as well.









The two units directly below us received the most damage and will need to have a lot of dry wall work done in the closets, bathrooms, hallways and master bedrooms. The unit on the back side just needed to have the carpet ripped up, drying and then will need to be put back together. We only had to rip off some of the baseboards in our place in order for the fans to be able to dry the walls properly. It looks like our insurance is going to cover our unit, but they are investigating to determine if they think we are liable for the other units. I'm sure if they decide we aren't liable they won't pay for those units to be fixed and we will become to most popular people in the complex!

On a brighter note, Jeremy and I will be heading to New York City on Wednesday so we hope to have most of this taken care of by then so we can relax and enjoy ourselves!

Monday, March 15, 2010

Dumpster Diving: America's Favorite Pastime

Today at work was definitely a Monday. A Monday that started way to early due to Daylight Savings Time. I had just returned to my desk after lunch to see that horrible red flashing light that I absolutely despise....voicemail awaiting. I hate voicemail, and I hate the people who leave me voicemail (at work at least). I just don't get it. If you call, and I'm not there, send me an email. Guaranteed I will respond to that faster and I will be much happier. Anyway, my hatred of voicemail is not the purpose of this post. As I was saying, I had a voicemail and it was someone else in my company telling me that she had talked to one of our Clients about some samples that had arrived today for her department. The Client had informed her that we were supposed to use the Sample ID handwritten on the Samples and not the Sample ID written on the Sample Submission Form. This is stupid. Why would you fill out the Sample Submission Form, whose soul purpose is to provide the information about the Samples you are submitting, with a different Sample ID than the one you intend to use? Stupid. But I have come to realize that Clients can be just that sometimes. Anyway, she knew that I had also received these samples from this same person so she wanted to give me the heads up. So I walked over to the lab to make sure the people doing the test had kept track of the handwritten ID. They had not. But no worries, the packaging was in the garbage so we could just get it from there. Nope. The janitor had already taken the garbage. I became frantic. I did not want to call this Client and tell him that we had started five of his tests and the data would basically be useless because we wouldn't be able to tell him which results were for which samples. I found one of the Janitor's and she informed me that the person who took my garbage had just left for the day and had dumped his trash in the trash compactor. I hate Monday's. So I ran outside to the huge trash compactor to see if anyone had compacted the trash, hoping my bag of trash might be sitting on top. I could see two very accessible black garbage bags and I thought, surely it must be one of those because he had just left. I was going in. Luckily, at the last second someone suggested I go to the clean room and get a clean room suit. They are basically one of those white onesies that you may remember from E.T. or something like that. This was genius! So I went and got suited up and then made my decent. Into the trash compactor I went. This was not a very easy task because trash compactors were not designed to have people hopping in and out of them very easily. Luckily we had a wood pallet sitting outside that I put into the trash compactor to use as a ladder to help get me down. It took quite the effort to get in without killing myself. Once in I started handing black garbage sacks up to my co-workers so that they could sift through the trash. As I was going to grab my fourth bag I grabbed it from the bottom and nearly everything came spilling out. Right on top of the trash I had spilled sat one of the bags we were looking for. There was much rejoicing! After a few more minutes I was able to recover all five original bags and I am now able to claim I am one of a very short list of successful dumpster divers at Nelson Labs! I love Monday's.

Climbing out of the dumpster: dirty, sweaty, stinky, completely happy....priceless!

Monday, March 8, 2010

Viva Las Vegas

I have recently been obsessed with my Ding! App. from Southwest. I love Southwest! I love them because it has been fairly easy for me to obtain free flights so whenever possible I do all I can to fly Southwest. I recently received a Ding! for super cheap flights to Las Vegas so we booked em' and headed to Sin City for the weekend.

This was my priority list:
1. Pool
2. Shop at the Outlets
3. Stay in a nice hotel

This was Jer's priority list:
1. Buffet's
2. Golf
3. Buffet's

This was how the weekend actually went:

We arrived and headed straight to the hotel (a Marriott, so not a super nice hotel like I wanted but still nice - on a side note, I'm not having as much success with the Priceline Negotiation App as with the Southwest, hence the Marriot and not The Wynn). We checked in at 3:00 and were in a hurry to get over to the Bellagio for our first buffet, we wanted to be there around 3:15 to get the lunch price but still be able to get the dinner food which started at 4:00 (I know, how "Senior Couple"ish are we?) However we were running a bit late and couldn't decide if we needed to dress up for the comedy show we were going to at 7:00. We decided we did need to dress up (first mistake) and that we wouldn't have time to come back to change. So we hurried and changed our clothes and off we went.

Unfortunately, because of our delay at the hotel we arrived at the cash register of the buffet at 4:02, which means we got to pay $35 for each dinner as opposed to $17. It was an expensive 2 minutes. But the food helped wash away our pain...and all the hard work we've been doing at the gym.

Jer loved the meats and crab legs.



I loved the chocolate dipped strawberries and the pizza!



After dinner we started heading down the strip, we needed to go 1.2 miles in about 2 hours. Cake, right? Not so much, due to the clothes change. The shoes I was wearing started hurting my feet about 50 yards into the walk, but I thought I would be able to make it. That's when we hit mistake #2. We hadn't made it very far when it started getting kind of cold, we were at the Miracle Mile Shops and I thought, hey that's a mile, let's just walk inside the mall and be warm and still head in the right direction. Wrong. The Miracle Mile isn't so much built in a north-south direction and by the time we came out we had only made it maybe half a block further, and by that time my feet were on fire. I had blisters forming on both pinky toes and both heels. It was so bad we stopped at an ABC store to see about buying some flip-flops, which we found but they cost $8 so I didn't want to buy them, mistake #3. So on we went down the strip with me hobbling along like Quasimodo, literally. I was in so much pain. I kept trying to walk in different ways to avoid the pain but nothing helped, and everything made me look more and more stupid. Finally, by some small miracle we made it to our show and I was able to sit in peace...

Turns out, if you take off shoes that are too small after straining your feet for a 1.2+ mile walk, they swell. Who knew? So now the shoes really don't fit, and really cause pain. I can barely walk. Somehow we hobble down to the main level and stumble upon a gift shop where the flip-flops are now $26. And we kept hobbling on. We decided we just needed to make it to the monorail which was just across the street. We made it outside and I wasn't doing to well so Jer decides he will carry me. So I hop on his back and off we go, we weren't really making better speed with this new plan because every few steps Jer would have to stop and kind of boost me back up on his back because I kept sliding off. People probably thought we were some drunk in love couple but I assure you, we were none of those things at that moment. Finally, we made it to the monorail and we think we are saved and we find out the monorail is going to cost $10 for us to ride, and we will still have to walk all the way through two casinos and across the strip to get to our car. Why didn't I buy the $8 flip-flops? After much debate we just pay the $10 and ride one stop down on the monorail. At this point Jer has finally convinced me to just take the shoes off and walk barefoot. I had been refusing to do this because I didn't think it was appropriate behavior but finally I gave in and we made it back to the car, with very dirty feet.

Luckily, the mini-vacation did get better. We got up the next day and went to the breakfast buffet at the Paris and after stuffing our faces again we walked around for a bit where we were able to learn it is the year of the Tiger.



And we also were able to visit the best Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, star of the show Pawn Stars. Chum Lee wasn't there but we had fun taking pictures anyway.




We then headed back to the hotel for a much needed nap (cause we'd been working so hard...eating and driving). After our nap we decided we needed to do something spiritual seeing as it was Sunday and we were in Sin City, sinning so we headed up to see the Las Vegas Temple.



After the spiritual journey we headed to the Outlets to do some shopping which was quite enjoyable for me, but much less enjoyable for Jer. Finally we ended the evening by enjoying some sandwiches from Capriottis. They were SO good and I'm not sure how Jer ever lived without them. His description of the sandwich is as follows:

"Turkey - Awesome, Stuffing - Awesome, Cranberry Sauce - Awesome, all of it on a sandwich - Awesome!"

After all of this we needed some more relaxation and wanted to head to the hot tub. I was very cold so I decided to dress up for a journey to the pool.



As we got on the elevator, a group of maybe 5 guys was getting off and they gave me an interesting look at my outfit but I didn't really care because I wanted to be warm when we came back up. Unfortunately, the pool was closed. As we dejectedly returned to our floor the same guys were getting back on the elevator. Now I just looked like an idiot, even I can admit that. I mean maybe if I had come back wet, it would have explained walking around in a robe, but to come back up maybe 30 seconds later, just looks ridiculous. Oh well, it's just Vegas!