Always Pack the Night Before

Among the life lessons that I will teach my children is one I learned today. Always, always, always pack the night before. Do not allow yourself to believe the excuse that you can do it better in the morning because you are so tired you can't think. It is a lie.

I went to Brandy's house this weekend for a fun filled weekend of scrapbooking. Yesterday I headed home (on time, actually - this is not a usual occurrence by the way, generally I call Sandor and say I'm staying anywhere from 3-12 hours longer), dropped off a few things on my way through Charleston, and arrived home in time for dinner and some quality chatting time with the hubster (who by the way shaved his face for my birthday - possibly the best present I've ever gotten). By the time we were done watching a show he had recorded for us, cleaning up after dinner, and bringing in my bags it was relatively late and I was tired so I decided to pack when I got up in the morning. I set my alarm for a sweet 4am, knowing that I'm generally far more motivated in the morning (even the wee hours of the morning) than when I'm tired and just want to climb in my bed.

Now, had things gone as planned and I woken up at 4am all would be well. Instead, because of the electricity going out the day before my alarm clock was set on AM instead of PM making my 4am alarm be a 4pm alarm, which of course did me absolutely no good at 4am. Sandor's alarm went off at 5am and I realized that I had one hour to pack and shower and get into the car for him to drive me to the airport. Let me just say that the packing that is done during mild hysteria is not good packing. Because I was afraid to forget stuff I overpacked, and since I didn't have time to actually plan anything I was packing I have duplicates of everything I thought of first thing and threw in the bag and then thought of at the end and forgot whether I had put them in. The other complicating factor was that we are going on a boat one day, to a ranch another day, and in a conference room the rest of the days when it's 80 degrees outside, but everything in the south is over air conditioned inside.

Thus, when I unpacked this evening I found that I had:

• 9 pairs of shoes - now really, I'm on a 5 day trip, that most certainly is NOT necessary. I'm going to have to wear multiple pairs each day. I have open toed shoes, closed toed shoes, flip flops, dress shoes, sneakers, and hiking boots. You give me any situation and I can dress my feet for it.
• about 6 baby bottles of lotion and no conditioner - we keep all the baby bottles of stuff in a container in the bathroom and I just grabbed a handful and threw them in. My skin need not worry about being well hydrated.
• an entire container of face wash wipes - I didn't have the time or concentration to take a few out and put them in a plastic bag, so I've got the whole box.
• 3 pairs of jeans in addition to the 3 pairs of dress pants - they will work well with my many shoe options
• at least 4 shirts for every temperature except cold, and two sweatshirts in case it is cold
• amazingly enough I did remember a wind breaker for the boat, a hat and sunscreen - go me!
• I had enough airplane reading to keep me busy if I was stranded all day - I brought a book, a magazine, all the reading for work plus I realized once I opened up my backpack I had packed extra random reading for work (not related to this meeting) and then I had things to actually do on my computer related to work. I won't need to worry about being stranded
• 3 sets of earrings - I love that I packed jewlery but packed one third the number of earrings as I did shoes
• no swim suit for the pool and hot tub
  
• no pajamas for warm weather - I just threw the pajamas I took off as I ran into the shower into the bag so I was packed for coldness. My roomie and I may be air conditioning the room in the evenings.
• and, another impressive thing I remembered was my cell phone charger.

All in all, it was an interesting day. I saw the Mayor of Charleston and someone from my lab in the airport - I don't think I've ever seen anyone I know in the airport and today I saw 2 people in the same airport. The Dallas airport apparently has a shortage on electricity so they decided to not put in any outlets. I had to sit 6 terminals away to be able to plug in my computer. A guy in front of my on one of the flights was I guess a surgeon doing some extra studying on the flight and had these videos of random parts of the inside of bodies with metal instruments poking and proding around - not the greatest thing to see on a computer screen when your stomach is dropping out from under you becuase of turbulence. And as we go to bed Tonna Marie walked to the air conditioning unit and saw a note that said 'Please use thermostat on the wall' and then walked to the wall and saw a note that said 'Please use the thermostat on the unit'. It has just been that kind of day.

Homeward Bound

At least for tonight then off to texas for work!

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Another Weekend Gone

My parents and Nikole came down this weekend, which always throws me off my game for a few days because I'm always melancholy about them leaving. We had a great weekend, complete with a trip to the beach (although it was SUPER windy so we didn't get to stay too long), a house fixing project for my dad (the cats are no longer wandering through the interior of our house through the hole in the wall that was cut out to fix some plumbing), a facial and then a house project for my mom and I (a new set of beautiful plants and herbs for the porch), dinner with Sandor's parents and a random trip (this time to a pottery store for a charity soup eating afternoon). Yes, that is a relaxing weekend for the Walkers. We even had time to watch 2 different movies - one of which was 'The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly' which I had never seen for some reason. Alas, I am now back at work, being semi-productive (not all that much seeing as how I'm taking a break to blog). I didn't take very many pictures but I did take a few...

this is Kaylinn giving the 'please, you don't really have to give me a bath' look after returning covered in salt water and sand from the beach

these are our soup bowls from the pottery store - you picket out a bowl and then got as much of the soup as you wanted and all the proceeds went to the Hollings Cancer Center. AND then you got to keep your bowl!

This is Kaylinn this morning. It has nothing to do with this weekend, but she cracked me up laying there like that.

All Finished!

NOW I am officially finished. The big 2 day event that was consuming my life was last week, it went smoothly, and between then and today I got all the follow-up information out, presented for an evening seminar, and helped plan and pull off the 'Wellness Day' walk and lunch with Maia and Kim. All said and done, my planning brain cells are worn out and ready for a break. Tomorrow I'm taking a half day and my parents are coming in town this weekend, so I'm ready to relax and have fun!

The Chicken had a spectacular time yelling for the runners at Wellness Day, and continued his St. Patrick's Day spirit through the event.

Brain Cells

I find the way brains work fascinating. I've always been a sucker for shows that are talking about how our brains function or why we do certain things based on how our brains handle information. I just think it's pretty amazing (much of the reason I can't imagine human existence was an accidental lightning strike on a pool of water with amino acids in it...I mean honestly, the probability of that happening and ending up with the human brain is FAR bigger than the probability that there is a God who engineered it...but I digress).

So, I find the way that brains remember items from long ago extremely interesting. Let's take for instance, say a video game that I haven't played since I was, oh 13. Sandor got Mario Brothers on the Wii last week and so today while I was waiting for the crock pot to finish our dinner (by the way, I LOVE crock pots) I started playing. Now I have not played this game in quite some time, and haven't' even thought of it beyond the time period when we were picking out games to load on the Wii and I said, oh, load Mario, I used to love that. And yet, as I'm running my little Mario through the Mario world I start remembering where to go down the tubes to get to the extra coins, and where to jump up for the invisible coin, or where you can jump above the screen and get to the warp zone. No matter how crazy it seemed, I kept remembering it. In fact, I made it through to the first part of the 3rd level before my brain ran out of memory of the game - it was amazing. Seriously, couldn't those brain cells have been put to better use over the years? Did I really need to store them up for the off chance that I would play Mario again? Apparently I did.

Just what I needed

An afternoon paddle to wind down.

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Dave Barry and Daylight Savings

Today Sandor and I headed downtown to get a piece of jewelry for a friend of mine at my favorite store, Handpicked. It is a super cute store and I always find something I'm looking for, problem is it is on King Street, which means you have to pay for parking...once you find it. My general rule for downtown parking is I drive around looking for street parking for about 5 minutes, if in 5 minutes the parking gods have not delivered a street spot for me I head to the nearest garage and suck up the 3 or 4 dollars in exchange for my sanity.

No street parking to be found on one of the first gorgeous Sunday afternoons, so to the garage we headed. Then, once you are parked in the garage you figure you better make the best of the fact that you are going to pay 3 or 4 dollars so no sense in only parking for 20 minutes. Thus, we decided to grab lunch while we were there. Sandor happened to see a little sandwich shop on a side road on the way in so we checked it out - it happened to deliver a very delicious italian sub, so I was quite excited about the find.

On the wall of the shop I saw a sign that had '16 things it took me 50 years to learn' by Dave Barry. I had forgotten how much I loved Dave Barry until the moment I saw his name. Lisa and I used to be obsessed with his books, and then when I lived in Florida and actually got the newspaper he writes a column in I got to enjoy him weekly. Reading the list reminded me why I find him so hilarious, and seeing as how one of the points was related to Daylight Savings it seemed fitting to include today. However, in searching for the list on the internet I found out that it is actually a shortened list of the original '25 things it took me 50 years to learn'. So, I decided to pull out a few of my favorites and you can search for the 16 or the 25 yourself if you feel so inclined. Thus, a few of my personal favorites, beginning with daylight savings...

- You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight-saving time.

- You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

- If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

- You should not confuse your career with your life.

- A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.

- The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.

When I lived in Florida I remember a column he wrote specifically on the topic of people thinking they are good drivers and found in during my internet searching - I would HIGHLY recommend you read it...here...and in searching his past columns for the one I remembered I found his review of 2008, which has hysterically laughing. If you'd like something lengthier that he has written I would recommend 'Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States'. Lisa and I read this in high school and loved the fact that he made everything happen on the same date because he didn't like remembering dates. Sadly, I think I learned more history from that book than I did from my 10th grade history class - I mean how couldn't I? The teacher spent a month going over the table of contents in the history book...I'm not kidding you, ask my poor fellow classmates. It was in this class that Lisa and I made an entire language which we then began writing notes in...backwards...and in shapes...and the teacher never noticed.

But I digress. Happy Daylight Savings everyone!

What's with the Weather?

On Wednesday I needed to scrape frost of my windshield. Today I wore a short sleeve shirt and flip flops. Is that normal?

Nearly There

How is the week before the big event going? Well, let's just say my desk is just the start of it, and my brain kinda feels like the way my desk looks...

This is what Anna and I get to do all day tomorrow - bind papers into little conference books.


What has brought us to this point?
1) people have no respect for deadlines - unfortunately our deadlines don't change which just means we have to do more things in less time because we couldn't finalize anything until this morning (getting things from people that were supposed to be sent to her on the 24th of last month is all Anna's been doing this week!),

2) we are state employees - which means instead of getting to send this to say Kinkos where we would just go pick up our finished conference books we need to spend endless hours of our lives binding them ourselves (you see the state doesn't actually consider my time an expense, however, Kinkos is an expense...logic has never been government's strong point)

3) the copier decided to copy some pages, but not all and sometimes just for the fun of it copy 2 of some things when there was supposed to be 1 - this lead to us needing to check through every single stack of papers that needed to be added into the conference book to make sure everything was there...not so great on the efficiency side of life, which means it took much more of today getting the piles of copies before we could start binding

4) and lastly because we are working with equipment that was probably made before I was ever a twinkle in my parent's eye - it was a 20 minute ordeal just to get the first book made. Time per book has decreased significantly, however, it is still not fast by any stretch of the imagination. There is no good way to explain how absurd it is. Jason took a video of us because we were all cracking up at the fact we really need to make 150 books in this manner.

So, wish us luck - tomorrow will hopefully be my last working Saturday for a LONG time! I am going to need some major vacation when this event is over. I was possibly going to Africa for the last week of the month (I know only in my world does one 'possibly go to Africa in a few weeks') but due to court dates and work travel dates not cooperating with each other I won't get to go with my aunt to Ethiopia. :( Perhaps I will just take vacation that week anyway and sit on my couch :)

And the Family Grows...

I have three new cousins! My aunt and uncle passed court today, well yesterday in Ethiopia, but yesterday in Ethiopia is today in the US...point being Abel, Helen and Rediet are now part of the ever growing Walker clan (they are Knights technically, but we Walkers claim them as well)!

Seriously, how can you look at their sweet faces and not smile?

100 year storm

A little factoid I learned today that I thought you all may be interested to know - well those who live in a flood zone will probably be more interested to know this than those who don't.. A 100 year storm does not mean that statistically you are only likely to experience that storm once in 100 years. In fact you could experience a 100 year storm three years in a row. What it does mean is that statistically you have 1% chance of experiencing that storm each year. And, FEMA defines it as meaning you have 26% chance of experiencing that storm during your 30 year mortgage. Kinda changes the meaning of 100 year storm, eh?

Thought for the Day

I love C.S. Lewis. I love that he can say in 20 words what it can take me 2 days to think about and understand. Perhaps it's the scientist in me, but I truly and totally appreciate the ability to take complex thoughts and put them in simple english using well thought out words and logic. I also love that when you read his books you never feel like he is trying to make you believe something, you feel like he is trying to make you think about something, and in thinking make your own decision about what you think about his thoughts and the many other thoughts you may have previously heard on that topic. It's really quite an incredible gift that I don't believe many writers posess.

Due to my love of him my mom got me a morning devotional that has a portion of one of his writings each day. Every day I find them extremely thought provoking and insightful, but today's seemed especially timely to the situation our country finds itself in, and I believe crosses beyond thoughts on Christianity, to thoughts on morality as a whole. So I thought I would throw it out there for my fellow readers:

Taken from Mere Christianity (which just so happens to be my favorite book of all time)

"Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonizing the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet out to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants to play...

Almost all people at all times have agreed (in theory) that human beings ought to be honest and kind and helpful to one another. But though it is natural to begin with all that, if our thinking about morality stops there, we might just as well not have thought at all. Unless we go on to the second thing - the tidying up inside each human being - we are only deceiving ourselves...

What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behavior, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill temper and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? I do not mean for a moment that we ought not to think and think hard, about improvements in our social and economic system. What I do mean is that all the thinking will be mere moonshine unless we realize that nothing but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly. It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society."

I'll leave it at that, because I doubt I can add much to his thought other than to throw it out there for others to think on.

My Brain Hurts

The calendar I keep in my purse has 'health tips' on each month. The health tip for January was to stop multi-tasking and it listed all these reasons why it wasn't good for you and wasn't effective. Here is the problem calendar 'health tip' writer - if I don't multi-task I physically cannot do all that I'm supposed to do in a day. It's really not an issue of whether it's the most effective way to do my job, it's the ONLY way I can do my job.

Take this week for instance. I am at a conference in Myrtle Beach. I am also in the last week of planning for a 2 day meeting taking place next week, that as I have mentioned in previous posts is determined to be the most difficult, most time consuming meeting I have ever planned. So, I need to sit in talks during the sessions and then at breaks I need to check my voicemail and call people back and then at lunch I need to check my e-mail and e-mail people back, and then after the conference is over and I drive an hour back south to my friend Nicole's house (since the state won't pay for travel...which is a whole other story about effectiveness) I need to do all the work like updating agendas, writing abstracts for workshops so people can choose between the options, writing out a list of who needs to be where at what time, sending invoices and proposals, and OKing quotes for things...the list goes on. So please tell me how I can possibly do any of this by thinking about one thing and nothing else? Not going to happen ladies and gents. Perhaps I am just not good at my job, but I feel that I'm pretty decent and I think it has more to do with the 'health tip' person having a job that doesn't involve multi-tasking, and probably adding to that they are bad at multi-tasking and so they decide that since it strains your brain you shouldn't do it. It's true, it strains my brain, my brain hurts from having lived through today and knowing what I need to finish tonight, but it is what it is. On March 12th I will go into work and focus on one thing at a time, but until this meeting next week is over, there is no such thing as the OPTION to remove multi-tasking from my life - for the next week multi-tasking IS my life!

Finally!

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