Ayla

Ayla just wanted to say hi to everyone! Yeah, Van Winkle pets like to do that.... according to my Mom's emails.
For those of you who haven't heard the story, Ayla was a puppy when I got her from a pet adoption group in Nashville. She was very cute and loveable, except for the fact that she didn't sleep at night and chewed everything she could get her teeth on. My parents still had our first dog, Logan at the time. After I brought Ayla home for Christmas (she chewed off one of the door handles in the back seat) she never came back to Tennessee. My parents needed help destroying the place before doing some remodeling, so Ayla was perfect for that.

Anyway, Kelly took this picture on Christmas Eve. She is now a very good dog and sadly is the only pet in the house these days.

Another fun game - you win bonus friend points if you know where the name Ayla came from :)

Great websites

In honor of the upcoming holidays and the fact that if you are reading this you already have some free time on your hands, check out some of these great websites I have stumbled on. (I installed "stumble" on my firefox browser) Anyway, I hope you enjoy!!!

For the engineers:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm

Random:
http://www.iiiiiiii.com/
http://www.milk.com/wall-o-shame/waterproof.html
http://www.virtualstapler.com/

Pictures:
http://selfdestruct.net/misc/geneve.jpg
http://www.asa100.com/
http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/flash/cntower_timelapse.swf
http://www.younggalleryphoto.com/photography/brandt/brandt.html

This just in.......

So, after I posted this morning I got another update from Mom.....the 'rents just bought another Buick Rendezvous. That makes 2 in 1 year. Yeah, I live in that family. One is white, the other is "cappuccino" according to the email.... I asked them where my Rendezvous was....no response yet.

Snow tracker.....still here!

Ah yeah, do you like the new coffee colored blog? While I'm working on my image with a new hair cut and continuing to seek out new arctic condition survival apparel (sweaters) I thought I'd splash some new colors on the blog - brown is definitely the new pink...

News from the Van Winkle household:
My dad has a new cool job at the college of Lake County. I don't know what this means, but I guess he has a big office....go Dad!
My mom really likes her job, but unfortunately the office is moving and does not wish to commute so she is deciding what to do next.
Kelly is still a skin farmer in Madison.

Last night I received a late 16th birthday present from my parents. So its a little over 11 years late, it is still very cool. They bought it when I was born intending to give it to me when I turned 16 and forgot about it until they found it recently...

Lets see what else...today is the Christmas party at Lazarus house so I'll be celebrating Christmas in the 'hood with about 80 kids running around. My bible study small group spent a few hours (with no heat) clearing out the gym there to get ready for this. It is very exciting to see God working in Racine - hopefully I'll get a chance to post some pictures soon!

"Near blizzard conditions"

That was the term we heard all morning as we stayed nicely sheltered while our cars were growing back their thick white covering everyone had fought to remove to get to work. I also read that they were calling this "heart-attack" snow because it was so heavy it could give people shovelling it a heart attack. I understood this a little better when I got home and to my joy discovered that my place was a perfect backstop for the storm and there were snow drifts 2' deep in places on my driveway.....yeah....plus a plow hadn't come down our road, there was only one lane cleared from people driving through so I had no place to put my car until I could shovel the driveway, so I drove it into the snow. The walk into my place was when I discovered the snow drifts as snow came up to my knees in spots (and I still wasn't close to hitting ground). I then spent the next hour shovelling a spot for my car, then shovelling my way out of the spot I had chosen to drive my car into. Ah, good times....at least it wasn't too cold - although the warmer air is what made the snow so heavy (I'll probably be hurting tomorrow) so maybe cold wouldn't have been so bad....hmmmm.....Oh, and they did let us leave work early today so that everyone could get home before it got dark. And I guess they couldn't call it a true blizzard because winds did not sustain above 35 mph, it was closer to 30 with gusts up to 40. OK, thats enough about the snow.

Well, I saw that 38,000 people in Knoxville lost power this morning - I hope all of you down there have your power back if you lost it! Have a good weekend!

New hair

Yup....this is what I look like now....right now actually, well, about 30 seconds ago. There is actually some special stuff in my hair that isn't always there: extra grease from not washing it this morning and christmas tree sap (I think that is what makes it shine :0). Seriously, we are right in the middle of prayer time and the Christmas tree falls over - the stand design was very poor and the tree was pretty tore up from falling so it was quite a project getting it back up. Katee prayed for a hedge of angels to rise up around the tree after that.

In other interesting news, here is what I do at work when things aren't going well...ok, I'm not the artist, but I did give artistic suggestions. I had to crop it so none of you would steal our design and try to compete with us. (The parts aren't supposed to buckle like that....our favorite is the guy with the beanie)

Wicked!

Ah well, another excellent Thanksgiving break is almost over :( I made it back to Racine after enough big meals to last me until Christmas! I just downloaded some songs from Wicked which I saw with my family yesterday. Its a great Broadway musical which tells the story of the Wizard of Oz from a different perspective, telling the stories of Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West. I think my favorite song is either "defying gravity" or "popular".

In other news I actually got a quite dramatic hair cut last week. If I remember I'll try to post some pictures soon....Its awesome so far - I got it permanently straightened so it doesn't look like "Alice" hair when I try to blow dry it.

The weather has been great up here the last couple weeks. It was in the 60s yesterday in Chicago! And the sun has even been out! It is supposed to be a high of 20 on Thursday though :( Then I'll get my chance to start whining again.

Sorry I haven't been posting much like I said I would, but I'll keep trying to put any interesting news up from life in Wisconsin!!

Snow, bonfires, and a scary pumpkin

Ah, its definitely fall up here in Wisconsin. My first clue was snow on my car the day I got back from my trip to Knoxville....doh!!! Yeah, so the week was off to a great start as I tore my car apart looking for gloves and an ice scraper. I found 1 white glove and one brown glove, but my hands were cold, so I called that a success - then I found the bad scraper (the good one was under a few layers) and got the first ice covering of the year off my winshield.

Unfortunately, none of my pics from my trip to Knoxville turned out very well, which is too bad, because it was a perfect weekend. Oh, and some of you know all the airport fun I had on my way there. The way back was relatively uneventful, however my wing of my plane did hit a refueling truck as it was taxiing into the gate. I won't tell the whole story, but I spent quite a bit of time watching the 8 men outside the plane arguing as it took 30 minutes before they got us off the plane.

So, the temperatures warmed up to 50s by the weekend and the sun actually came out, so its been a great couple days. I went to a bonfire Friday night and carved a pumpkin in the dark, it is on my porch now. The only people who will ever see it are my landlord and the mail man, so I'm going to post it here for all of you :)



Saturday I went to a party/shower for my on of my best and longest friends, Whitney. Good times :) My parents were there too, so I got to tell them all about my fun week at work (don't worry, I'll spare you...the short story is my next trip to Montreal is delayed) Today I've been cleaning and playing video games - so its been a great weekend.

Word of the week: equine....try to use it casually in conversation, it will be fun

Sleepless in Racine

For some reason I'm having a little bout of insomnia this week - not bad though, I've had a lot more energy and have extra time to do activities such as....er....work.

My trip to Richmond, VA last weekend was great! I went to European Busch Gardens on Saturday and rafting on Sunday. Busch Gardens was a lot of fun, I hadn't been on a roller coaster in a long time, and the 210 ft near vertical drop definitely knocked the air out of me for a minute.

I just read in Time magazine that string theory is being challenged within the physics world. I'm not really sure if I care, just like I'm not sure if I'm anywhere close to understanding what it is, but it doesn't seem like this search for the "theory of everything" has gotten anywhere in the past couple decades. In other news, I read that we might have 12 planets - interesting article:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/08/16/new.planets.ap/index.html

Oh, I also saw my friend Russ's house that he is building this week. He is doing it by himself with his brothers and Dad helping him. It is sweet! Although he thinks he might run out of money before he can buy furniture when he moves in, doh!

Well, this is going nowhere fast - I hope anyone reading this goes and does something exciting to counteract reading this. Fast. OK, bye.

Mid summer thoughts

Long time no post, I'll try not to ramble too much....
Lets see I'll quickly go through highlights of the last 6 weeks:
Utah! Kelly and I went to Utah to go white water rafting/hiking for a week, it was a great time! We slept outside in the canyon (and yes, we got rained on), we hiked to the top of the canyon and our rafting guides set off fireworks, the picture below is our hike to cecret lake (no not a spelling mistake on my part, but it got its name when someone else mispelled "secret" and the name stuck). The cool part about this hike is Kel and I really had no idea where we were going, but it turned out really awesome.







Racing: I did do another triathlon last weekend. The swim was in Lake Michigan and the waves were intense the morning of the race, so that was rough, but the weather was perfect. If you are interested in browsing for cool looking pics of me, go to multisportphoto.com - my race was Spirit of Racine the sprint distance. I also stormed the Bastille in downtown Milwaukee (5K race at 9 pm at night to kick off bastille days) - one of the local bars hands out beer in cups during the race :) Thats about all for that.

Work: Yes, I still have a job. They did announce that they are closing the plant in Clinton (although not til 2009). I hate to see that happen, but no one there is very surprised. I was in Indiana earlier this week for my first customer visit, then flew here to Missouri for some serious partying (er, work).

Coming up: Another whitewater rafting/camping trip up here in Wisconsin over labor day, trip to Richmond, VA in August, trip to Atlanta in September, and hopefully a trip to Knoxville in October!

Yeah Settlers!

Well, I missed the Knoxville Settlers crew terribly, but since Anna wasn't up here playing, I actually won this time :) I wound up getting very lucky - Mathieu almost won but was short one resource like 4 turns in a row. Good times, and of course, check out the awesome party dish next to the game! Even better :)
Mathieu was wearing his Florianopolis, Brazil shirt for me....his roomate in Stuttgart is from there. Random story time... on Friday he was telling me a story about his shirt, then at the Brazilian restaurant I went to the next day, the waiter was from Florianopolis....crazy. I guess it is a fairly large city, but I hadn't heard of it before....



Tomorrow is the first World Cup game - I'm going to try to watch it - or at least the highlights - I think besides the Olympics this is the most watched sporting event in the world. Plus it is fun since I have German friends here who love their soccer.
Nothing else exciting to say right now....hope everyone has a great Friday!!!

Creepy game

Friends, help me out here....check out this pic and comment:

1. Do you think this person looks like me (I feel like I am looking in a black and white mirror....although the dress isn't really my style.... - what do you think?)
and for the grand prize
2. Who is this person - I'll give you a hint - you read work by this person in American Lit

Living room and weekend fun

In 12 hours and I'll be back at work....what an unpleasant thought. In better news I was home for the weekend celebrating 3 birthdays, a graduation, new jobs with my parents and another family we grew up with (the Barnes). It was good times as always - we couldn't find birthday candles so we put a candle holder with a giant candle in the middle of the bundt cake - it was great. Nate and Melissa announced they are having another baby - which was very exciting for all.
My parents have done some shopping for me - so I actually have a little more "stuff" in my living room. I'm still not sure about the picture, but I think it will grow on me....Hope everyone had a good weekend.

Top ten signs it is Friday

1. I spent a bunch of time this morning laughing at something my sister said last night - time wasted = 30 minutes

2. We went out to eat, then to DQ, where I got a brownie earthquake - then stared at the melting gooey mess while I thought about how unpleasant my stomach felt - time wasted = 2 hour.

3. I wanted to write a note to myself for things to do Monday so I don't forget over the weekend, but couldn't find my post-its....this made me stop what I was doing until I could find them....after searching my whole cube, they were under my keyboard - time wasted = 30 min

4. After I decided to throw out the remainder of the brownie earthquake (actually resembled more of an eruption) I browsed google to look up a movie someone was talking about at lunch to decide if I wanted to rent it tonight - time wasted = 20 min

5. It is 3:00 and I am posting to my blog - time wasted about 20 min

6. The constant drone of sound in cubeland is starting to become very quiet

7. Yeah, I'm not going to make it to 10, just don't feel like it

Float build

Well, this is my first year being a part of the Modine float build for the July 4 parade. I must say, it was much more fun than sitting in my cube. Our float design is showing symbols of Racine's sister cities, which are in Denmark, Brazil, Nicaragua, France, and Japan. To answer everyone's first question...no, we are not having a Contra dude with a machine gun for Nicaragua - it is the second thing that comes to mind when you think Nicaragua....wait for it.....ok, a waterfall - yeah, I don't know, we are engineers. Our other float elements are Eiffel tower (France), windmill (Denmark), pagoda (Japan), and the Jesus statue (Brazil). That last one is also controversial too, apparently some people are upset about it. So last night I took a break from work and helped cut 2x4s and the eaves for the pagoda.

In other news, I made the chocolate cake in my bundt pan for something this week and flipped it over too soon - not pretty, I still took the multiple pieces and tried to do some cosmetic surgery before bringing it to the pot luck - ah, I wonder if I'll ever not be a disaster in the kitchen. My mom is trying to teach Kelly and I how to cook every time we are home since she feels like she failed us when we were younger.

I had to blow dry my phone when I got home from work. I didn't let the downpour keep me stranded at work, but it did soak my phone (even in my pocket), it did work once it got dry though.
I think I will watch Will and Grace tonight - I like watching final few episodes of long lasting shows that I never watched - I feel like I can read the ending without bothering with the rest of the story. Well, its almost Friday :)

Entertainment

I've found a new way to get through the day at work....I am leading up a project at work to select a braze alloy for 2010 EGR coolers - I know, everyone pause for a moment to be jealous.....but anyhow, I'm having to spend a lot of my day talking to PhDs who have been working in their field for 30+ years and interpret what they say into a language that makes sense to real people so we can set up the right tests to help in our decision. But anyway, I love finding phrases in the conversation that you just wouldn't hear anywhere else, for example......

"I just got back from San Antonio, and everyone is talking about the need for iron based braze alloys" - before Scott told me this, I had no idea this is what everyone in San Antonio was talking about, here I was thinking it was the Alamo, the river walk, or illegal immigration, but no, it is iron based braze alloys. (actually, he was at a braze conference, but taken out of context I found it quite amusing)

I can't think of any others right now - but there is entertainment to be had.

This morning I went for a bike ride with a couple other ladies - 25 miles....it sounded good before I left - not quite as good after 15 miles. I'm a little tired and sore. I watched Proof last night, it was ok, but I wouldn't really recommend it. Ah well, I was going to take some pictures today to prove that Wisconsin can be really pretty in the spring, but I don't feel like moving, so it will have to wait for another day.

Nil

So, I played spades last night with my parents and my friend/coworker Snehal. To start the night, we had to dig through a mountain of cards in the basement that were either

a) missing cards
b) been destroyed by playing Rats at swim meets
c) pinochle cards (sp?) or
d) ugly - (I vetoed the best deck because they were ugly brown flowers, I refused to look at them all night.....)

This took about half an hour. Then we had to argue about the table because it kept sliding apart. With three degreed engineers there, 2 of us played Rats and made the problem worse while Dad kept pushing it back together every 20 seconds.

I don't think I've ever not had fun playing spades, but this was one of the best games ever! My mom and I went nil and got it 4 times, but unfortunately we missed our bid 4 times, so we wound up losing. Dad and Snehal got their bid every time and never went nil (boring). It came down to the last hand though - good times!

Ah well, pretty good weekend over all :)

When forced vacation goes bad

OK - I promised myself I wouldn't talk about work in case someone from work stumbled across this, but I can't not mention yesterday's events.

Most of my work group (about 40 people) went to Chicago to watch the Cubs/Brewers game....we took a bus. Great amounts of alcohol were consumed. By the bus trip home mass chaos had broken loose. Here are just a few examples: we had to stop twice on the way back so people could go to the bathroom - the first time I walked in on two of my male coworkers in the women's restroom (just one toilet), one of my coworkers had passed out in the arms of one of the supervisors (yes, both men), the Korean guy who was with us could barely stay in his seat they had gotten him so drunk, one of my coworkers kept cussing at our boss - and it goes on and on. The director of the group (3 levels above me) was there too. And this group is the "future of the company". I wouldn't be buying stock now....

Funniest line of 2006

"I thought you said Bolombus"

OK - so maybe this is one of those "you had to be there" things, but I am still laughing about this one. We are playing Taboo and someone (who happens to be my sibling) is trying to get their team to guess "Columbus". One of the teammates correctly guessed the card, but the card holder kept trying to get them to guess. At the end of the round - it was revealed that she thought her teammate said "Bolumbus". No one is quite sure who Bolumbus is or when he sailed across the ocean, but that is what was heard. Oh goodness, well, I needed something to laugh at today while sitting in my cube trying not to fall asleep.

I've been bad about working out since I decided I was just going to do a sprint distance tri in July instead of a really long race.

Nothing too exciting to report on from the last week or so...today is Kelly's birthday, the big quarter century :) Oh, and I got to see my friend that has more stories about me than anyone that I'm not related to will ever have - which was super awesome.

And of course in other news I have another fun and exciting trip to Missouri planned next week - I won't spare you any details on that one!

Katherine - thanks for the invite to festivities next weekend, I can't tell you how tempting that is....
Do any of you in Knoxville have plans for Memorial day? Would anyone be up for hiking if I came down?
Hope everyone has a great week!

I found a time machine

Well, 2 months after the move, I'm still here, but REALLY missing Knoxville, and all the people there of course. As far as getting adjusted up here, I've met some people, but I definitely haven't found a core group... not that I expected to :)
In the mean time, I've had a great time seeing some friends that I haven't seen in a LONG time.

- Last weekend I ran into a friend of mine that I swam with in HS at a bar in Chicago - very random!

- Last week, 3 of my really good friends from HS came up for my first mini party at the new place



- I went to Madison for the weekend and last night I went out to dinner with my sister and another friend that I swam with since I was 8 and hadn't seen in 9 years. We also went to a bar with a tree in it. UWM won some hockey game, so there were a lot of happy drunk people running around town, good times.



- Oh, it was awesome meeting a friend of Kelly's in Madison who went to UT and she was involved in RUF, so we knew some of the same people, very fun.

So yeah, I'm having a rough time dealing with not seeing my Kville friends and community group and going to Redeemer, etc., but it is fun seeing old faces in new settings up here. Thats all for today.

Juliana has no friends at Rose-hulman

LOL - that was what my main page at facebook said, how sad! Web pages aren't supposed to be mean like that....I'll have to find a friend at Rose...
...
So, I then opened up Kelly's profile and facebook was kind enough to tell me that she was my sibling, sheesh! So now I am friendless and can't remember who I am related to, blah!

rambleless

So, yeah, nothing too exciting in Racine. Work is kind of boring right now - life is kind of boring too. 24 is on now, yeah! I'm waiting to watch the rest of it without commercials. I'll try to make a better effort to pay attention to life's subtle details to post some interesting comments on my blog - if I fail, well, it won't be the first time.

Today there was a guy wearing gym shorts who jumped in the lane next to me - I'm thinking, ok, he is kind of cute, but obviously not a swimmer. So he is about to pass me and all of a sudden I am in a wave pool - not even that, it was like being in an antlion trap, (I know only Kelly will find that amusing, but that is like 25% of my audience) anyway, the normal forces exerted on my body while swimming had altered profusely. Apparently he was a swimmer, just not wearing normal swim atire. The girl I was swimming with (who I will probably be doing more training with) and I counted his strokes....he was just doing a relaxed stroke, he took 13 strokes per 25! I'm kind of hoping gym shorts boy shows up in my lane again...I'll keep you posted!

About the only other news I have is that I talked to my Utah friend (yeah, you all know who I am talking about) on Friday. Nothing big, but I had gotten to one of those points again (about the third or fourth time) when I figured I would never hear from him again, so it is always a little shocking to see the name in my inbox.

OK, back to 24, Sarah, I'll try calling you again this week, arg!

The "cow" picture (for Shannon)

Shannon - I hope you came to look at the cow, giant cows are fun, aren't they!

"You can not be anything you want to be"

I had a pretty good weekend. The title of the blog is a quote from one of Kevin Twit's podcasts that I just suscribed to and listened to a couple today. Kevin is the RUF campus minister at Belmont and God has given him extraordinary talents in presenting the gospel message and in particular calling out false truths laid out by today's culture and even within Christian culture. I love listening to Kevin talk because he does not shy away from difficult issues and finds a way to tear into everyone's comfort zone. In my struggle to find a church up here it was especially timely to hear him talk about the church being a place that should bring you closer to reality, not tune out of it - which a lot of church services seem to do. The other thing I really like about Kevin's messages is he doesn't just throw out flowery analogies and tell you to believe something without telling you why. For any given message, he usually explains the history, the opposing opinions, the scripture - going back to greek, other reference scripture, the improper interpretations, etc. - ties all that together and explains his interpretation of the scripture message along with the implications. Anyway, I highly recommend Kevin's podcast - type in RUF Belmont in Itunes to suscribe - it is only half an hour a week, and no matter what you believe, I promise it will intrigue and challenge you.

Other items of note from this weekend:

- Company bowling tournament! This was hilarious - we all were very curious to see how Mr. Jo (from our Korean plant) did at bowling. He got up for his first bowl and nailed a strike - it was a classic moment in my life - we all just looked at eachother not sure whether to laugh or cheer - he was already celebrating so we jumped up to give a good American high five - I guess in Korea they do fist knocking, so we did a little of each as the games went on. Mr. Jo wound up beating all of us. I don't want to talk about my scores - they were my worst ever.

- It always crack me up when older married people want to know what I did over the weekend, hoping it is something exciting so they can dream about life as a young, carefree single person. Well, these are the weekends when I really let people down. So here it is, what I did with my Saturday night: I was up until about 1 am working on getting around the moon with a car that could only carry 1/5 the fuel it needed to make the trip and a full container of fuel that could fill the tank. If anyone asks me the classic question on Monday - I imagine they probably never will again....I'll let you know.

- I think I set a record for time on the phone in one day. Saturday I talked to Grandpa, Kelly, Anna, and Megan. And that was on top of bowling tournament and my moon trip - what a crazy day.

- Today I took another adventure on the bike - I really liked the loop I did, it actually took me by work and the Y, and about 5 miles of it is along Lake Michigan, which is awesome. I miss Cherokee Blvd, but it doesn't come close to being lakeside :)

- I didn't make it to church today - I am still church hunting, I just didn't make time like I should have to set the plan for today. Next week I think I might drive to the closest PCA church, which is 50 miles away, but at least I might be able to talk to people and find out what other good churches might be closer. I figure, if I could drive 30 miles to work every day, surely I can drive 50 to a good church if I need to - we'll see. But, I downloaded Kevin's podcasts and as always, he had very relevant and timely things to say that I needed to hear.

OK, definitely enough rambling for today - I hope everyone has a great week!

Favorite moments of today:

7. Fish day in the cafeteria

6. Will posted a puzzle, yeah!

5. I had hearing and vision test at work today and learned that yes, I can indeed both see and hear, yeah! I also learned that Modine is a sponsor for the big Racine triathlon in July, so I can compete for free if I decide to do the half iron man - it might wind up just being a team if I don't want to do the whole thing.

4. Mr. Jo from our Korean plant is spending a month here - he has picked me as his English teacher (his English is already very good, he just has a lot of questions) - so we had about a half an hour lesson today. I did my first Asian business card exchange. I had already heard how important it was to read the card and comment on it before putting it away in a respectable location - so I was glad to pass that test.

3. 24! I haven't even seen it yet, but I'm sure it will be a highlight

2. I hope you made it this far, because this is great....I'm having a pretty good workout on the treadmill today and as it gets darker I can start to see reflections in the window - yeah, there were 2 VPs of the company on the machines directly behind me. Fortunately I returned focus back to myself and determined that I looked fantastic and it was time for me to run faster :) I guess I'm going to have to get used to that - I'm sure a lot of people at Modine work out at the Y, but it made me laugh. And yes, it is a small enough company that I have met both of them - so they know who I am.

1. A cute German guy had some time to kill so he hung out in my cube for a while, I love corporate :)

Found cool website:

Here are my "places I've been to maps" - I noticed I missed a state on my previous list - I don't think I've been to Nebraska either.
The website is www.world66.com

Just random comments

States I haven't been to: Sadly I have been within 10 miles of both Washington and Delaware on multiple occasions, but never made it across the border. I got Oklahoma crossed off my list on the trip to Missouri (although the first exit was 20 miles over the border, doh!) So states remaining: Delaware, Maine, Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Vermont, New Mexico.

Everybody who is not on myspace.com should leave the blog now and go sign up (and be sure to add me as a friend) I wasted a lot of time there this weekend - very cool though, I found a bunch of friends I hadn't talked to in a long time.

I didn't really post last week just because I was having severe computer strained eyes (seriously) - I was focusing way too hard on my solid models I was working on and had really bad headaches by the middle of the week, but now I have hopefully learned my lesson and will take more breaks and relax my eyes more.

OK, enough babble for today, hope everyone had a great weekend!

SNL

So, I DVRed through SNL last night and there were a couple skits that were hilarious.

One was the opening skit - it was some girls in the airport on their way to spring break - basically being crazy college girls telling spring break type stories and talking about all the trouble they are getting into. The whole time you see an older couple sitting between the 4 chatting girls. At the end you learn that they are the parents of some of the girls. So, the punchline becomes the shock that kids would talk like that in front of their parents and them sitting there like they have no problem with it. Funny skit, but interesting commentary on how many parents just don't care what trouble their kids get in to. I'm sure some of it is that they figure they did it and wound up ok, but I hope if I ever have kids I am not oblivious to the world that they live in. And by the way, for those of you who have never experienced a typical college spring break beach trip - it is every bit as crazy as it is on MTV and more.

Anyway, the second was a skit of a live podcast from Joplin, MO - which cracked me up because that is the town I stayed in the other week (and I will probably be spending a bunch of time there on and off). Then it got even funnier as a main theme became karaoke night at the Holiday Inn, which where I stayed, and I even caught part of karaoke night! I was actually in the lobby area because they had free WiFi, but it was amusing to watch.

Highlights of my trip to Missouri:

And the correct answer is....

A!
Thanks for playing! Yeah, I like D and E - I think F breaks several laws of physics, maybe I'll shoot for one of those on the way back!
Even though my connecting flights in Chicago were 1 gate apart from eachother (I would have gladly gone to get my bag and put it on the second flight) it unfortunately did not make the same trip I did. Since I had to be at the plant at 5 this morning - I decided to wait for a couple hours until my bags got there.
I managed to get 3 hours of sleep before work, but then I fell asleep for a few hours this afternoon, so I should be good the rest of the week.
It is nice and warm here in MO, oh and I'm staying on Rt 66 - good times so far :)
24 is about to start, later!

Airport mishap trivia

This is a fun game... Any takers? Am I....

A) Stuck in Springfield airport because my bag didn't come
B) Stuck in Chicago airport because I missed my connecting flight
C) Stuck in Milwaukee airport because someone hit my car and I missed my flight and can't get home until I can pick up my car
D) In Mexico because I got on the wrong plane
E) In Hawaii because I met my soon to be husband and we decided to elope
F) All of the above
G) None of the above

Official member of uRATS!

So, I guess I am now a member of the "unofficial Racine Area Triathlon Society" - yes uRATS - they have a fancy brochure and everything with a drunk looking rat standing in a U on the front. You'll have to take my word, it is very cool. I sent an email to the group leader, and he emailed everyone letting them know I was a new member. I had a few people write me emails today welcoming me. So, I guess I'm doing triathlons again this year!

I got going on my first big work project today which was good. I didn't work out though, cuz I didn't feel well. It was a good day for a recovery day anyway. I promise not to go on and on about my training, but I will post my workouts - mostly as a personal motivation - but feel free to ridicule me if I start slacking off!

So Day 1: I did nothing but write emails and post on my blog
Day 2 plan: Weights and swim after work

I'm not leaving

Lately I've been feeling rather unwelcomed. I'm not talking about individual people, I'm talking about whole states. I try to live in Indiana and I get kicked out after 5 weeks, I try to live in Tennesee and it tries to drive me out with killer allergies, and now, I've been here two weeks and have been bombarded with 5 snow storms, and a deep dive below zero all weekend. (it was -26 with wind chill when I woke up saturday morning). But I've learned its always going to be something, so I'm staying here, so stop trying to make me leave!!! I'm done with that rant.

So, in other scary news, I hung out at the Y for almost 2 hours today. I ran into one of the members of the Racine tri club in the pool and got to talking to her afterwards. I have the info to mail the club leader and find out when things are starting up for the season. A lot of the people in the club train at the Y, and since I have all the stuff, and some people to train with, I might just start up the tri fun again. I need to ramp up my workouts though. Kel - you'll appreciate this, I did a 200 warmup, then 6 300s on the 6. The last 300 was rough. I'll keep you all posted on that.

Work is getting a little better. I still feel very lost most of the day, but I am getting to know the people who will be helping me a lot, so at least I can start making progress on my first couple projects. I'll be spending next week in Missouri, right down in the corner by Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma. Oklahoma is one of the 4 states I have never even driven through, so I think I'll get that crossed off my list while I am down there.

Uno mas!

So, I'm excited that there is only one more day of training. Today was a REALLY long day. It was another full day of training, and then dinner with Sr management - which was awful for me for the first part, but got interesting at dinner. When I first got there, everyone was at the bar, there was no room to walk around and everyone was fighting for a spot talking to the CEO or one of the VPs - I was just trying to stay out of the way. At dinner we went to a place where you cook your own steak, so 40 of us stood around a grill and cooked our dinners. The Executive VP wound up sitting across from me and he was really easy to talk to. I found out lots of company secrets that I can't talk about (not that you would care) - but to answer Sarah's question - Modine is a thermal technology company - basically meaning heat exchangers, but recently we are getting into fuel cell technology and some newer markets with the companies we bought overseas. While I'm answering questions - Kelly, no, fortunately, none of them bought me a dress, they were wonderful men and all acted very upset when I left. I've actually gotten to know the Italian guy better today - for some reason I seem to be having better luck with foreign guys than US guys....hmmmm.....
On Friday I fly to Missouri and Iowa and back to Racine for quick plant tours. Oh, and Sarah, I do have a new phone number, give me your email address and I'll send it to you, for some reason I seem to have lost your address :(
Anna, yes, I remember going to Panera with you on Valentines day last year - interesting day/night for you :)
OK, enough ramble typing...

Training day!

So, for Valentines day today, I had dinner with 6 men (can anyone beat that? :))- 2 Germans , a jet lagged Korean, a Chinese man who spoke better english than I do, an Italian, and the corporate HR recruiter. After enough beers, the Germans really enjoyed my stories...
I am in the middle of a 3 day executive training class with work, I felt like an idiot most of the day since I know basically nothing about the company outside of the Clinton plant. I am one of two females in the class(which is nice for bathroom breaks) - but dinner tonight was fun, I think I probably learned more about the "global" challenges of the company tonight than I ever would except for maybe an overseas assignment. Everyone was comparing different ways of doing business in the different countries, and some of the stories were unbelievable, I promise I won't ramble on about that, but it is nights like this that really make me want to work overseas for a while.
I should be doing my homework now, but I needed a break.
Hope everyone had a great Valentines day!

Sights of Racine

Well, it wasn't a quiet boring weekend in Racine, cuz Kel came to visit yeah! Here is us by Lake Michigan (just 3 miles from my place) before our swim:



Um, just kidding about the swim - maybe in about 4 months :)
Two people called us twins today. Much better than being called her Mom, I must say.

We also went to check out the Wisconsin stores:



As the saying goes, its all fun and games until someone gets abducted by aliens (or something like that) - fortunately Kel escaped mostly undamaged:



So, its snowed 3 times in my first week here and I've barely seen the sun, but at least I have DVR!
Church was good this morning, I think I'm going to try some more churches over the next few weeks.
Yeah for Sunday night! I've already done laundry, so I just get to bum out for a while and read, wahoo!

Containment!

Well, I've managed to get all the rooms organized except for the room I'm in now - which is a disaster, but at least it is all in one place now!
My place smells like smoking hair dryer (not good) because sadly, my Sharper Image ionic conditioning dryer lived its last day today :(
In other news, I got a laser pointer from one of the managers I met with today - he decided he liked me by the end of the meeting so he gave it to me, wahoo!
I'm very excited to hear people give directions in cardinal directions again - I never caught on to the landmark system.
I think this weekend will be rough settling in - the first real time to relax and realize my world has completely changed. Of course, I've done that before, but it is never easy - I really miss you all.
OK, sorry not too much entertainment tonight.

Random comments

So I've learned a couple things so far:

If you leave your coffee mug in the car over night, the coffee will freeze.
I remember why I had the huge scraper sitting in my car for a couple years before I threw it away....I bought another one tonight after using my hand to wipe snow off the car after work.
Work is about what I expected so far, I'm overwhelmed with information, but it is very different from the plant. Most projects in the plant are urgent and must get done before you go home. My first assignment here my boss estimated would take about 6 months.
I learned about the different between lunch table revolts and expansions today. Apparently a revolt is when table sitters leave as a group of 2 or more and don't invite current table sitters to join. This can get bitter and cause permanent political and career fallout. An expansion is simply growing to another table because there are too many people to fit - in this case anyone is welcome at either table.

I'm heading to Tennessee (the plant by Nashville), Missouri, and Iowa over the next couple weeks to visit plants where our stuff is built. Sometime within the next month I will be spending a week in Missouri, yeah! I'll let you know all about how fun that is!




Check out this picture outside my place - it is in night mode and my hand was shaking, but it looks really scary! That is the cemetary that I can see from my bedroom and living room, I'll take another picture when it is more clear.

OK, thats all for now - oh! But I did watch lost! I'm heading over to that blog maybe tomorrow sometime.

The storm begins

Thanks for the comments - they made my day when I signed on, oh and Tony, I wore that shirt on Thursday night, so it had a days rest before I grabbed it off the floor again :)

I now have high speed internet and TV with DVR, and 24 will be on in 1 hour! (tick tick tick).

Not too much excitement today, just the fun of unpacking. And it is REALLY cold up here, they said the high today was in the low 30s, bleh. I start work tomorrow, good thing I am totally exhausted before I even start, doh! I'm kind of nervous, but mostly I just want to get the first week over with.

I thought of taking pictures of my new place before my stuff started exploding all over it, but thats no fun. This place is huge - I have plenty of room for everyone who plans on coming and visiting me! Its about the same size as the place in Knoxville plus a huge rec room downstairs, wahoo!







This room is where I'm at now - it has no lights yet...

Moving day(s)!

Welcome to my blog! While the rest of the country is watching a football game, I thought I'd take some time to try to make my move sound exciting, so here it goes... I started my northbound migration on Thursday when the movers came to get my stuff. They got started a little late because the police showed up....seriously....


I could make up a better story, but the truth is they were just writing a report for some cable lines that the truck took down on the way in. There were no laws broken except for the lines being hung too low, but the police were called so they had to write a report on the incident...good times...

So by 3 almost everything I owned was on a truck and pulling away. The last DDR party at Tony's was that night and we played Apples to Apples, very fun game even though Tommy bloinked us all....twice! Thursday night I slept on the floor at my empty place.

Friday was another action packed day - I stopped by Panera twice to get on the internet in the parking lot, had lunch with a good friend/previous coworker, cleaned my place, and went shopping for toilet paper because the movers packed it. That night was a fun night hanging out at Anna's and playing Settlers, Anna and I basically tied, although if we played by the official rules according to my sister (build clockwise) then Anna won, so congrats to the Queen of Catan....again! :) I didn't sleep much Friday night.

And of course, the big day of leaving Knoxville was Saturday. After 7 going away parties and gatherings, I finally got the hint that it was time to go :) I left at 7:30 am and I wanted to share some of the joys of the road that day...

In the morning it rained...and rained...until....it snowed!


The snow flakes were HUGE!


I took a 3 hour break from driving to visit my friend Jess in Indianapolis, we had a great time! Jess made pancakes, eggs, and sausage, yummy!



Check out me in my new shirt!


The weather did get better so I could enjoy the beautiful views in Indiana...
Drivers side view:

Passenger side view:


Angela called which was an excellent distraction from Indiana monotony. Angela, thanks for helping to inspire this rambling!

But at least I got to drive by the beautiful Chicago skyline:


Seriously, some of those specled lights are downtown Chicago, but you could barely see it driving by that night. So the weather wasn't great and the scenery was less than inspiring, but at least there were no traffic disasters. My destination that night was my parents house in Libertyville. My sister had some friends from high school over, so I had to rally for social time even though I was sleep deprived and road weary.



Which brings me to today. I went to church with the fam in the morning and picked up my keys at my new place this afternoon. I didn't take a picture, I'll post that soon I promise... Tomorrow is hopefully the final chapter of the moving adventure as my stuff comes and the cable company arrives in time for 24! I hope you'll visit my blog as it develops, most posts won't be this long, and I'd love any feedback on how I can attempt to provide entertainment from my boring life :)