With a moo, moo here and a moo, moo there...

Because I work for a nonprofit, I have the awesome opportunity to be a jack of all trades. I'm of course responsible for all of the media things, including 3 weekly articles The Daily Herald posts for us. We have to send in a picture with one of the articles, and so I have become the resident photographer. The other morning was one of the days I had to go take a photo.

I arrived at the lady's home, which was a super cute, little farmhouse that is over 100 years old. It is actually a 3-acre farm in the middle of Provo. She is a certified Master Gardener and volunteers by helping people with their own gardens. I suggested we get some "action" shots of her in the garden. She agreed and took me out back. She said we had to walk out to the garden and asked if that was ok. Since I have always enjoyed walks, and it was actually a nice, warm day, I told her that wasn't a problem, and we went on our way.


Well 10 minutes later, we were still walking. The garden was apparently on the other side of the farm. As mentioned before, I'm not opposed to walking, but I was dressed in my work clothes and a pair of new, open-toed high heel shoes, and the terrain was not exactly paved. During parts of it, I felt as though I was hiking Mt. Timpanogas or something. The very last leg of our journey was walking to a ridiculously steep hill. I felt pretty stupid, but because of my shoes, I had to hold onto the lady to avoid sliding down on my behind.

We finally made it to the gardens, and I started taking pictures as her animals took turns rubbing all over my pants and legs. Now most of you probably know, I don't dislike animals, but only as long as they leave me be. I absolutely HATE touching animals and HATE having them touch me.

After a few more pictures with the garden, her sheep angus, some of the horses and of course the goat and llama, I thanked her and trecked back to my car. My once brown slacks were no longer so because of all the hair, dust and dirt. My poor feet were COVERED in dirt and dust. And my cute little shoes had inches of dirts on the inside and outside.

When I reached my car, I tried my best to empty my shoes and brush off my feet, but it did little good. Well, I had another meeting that I had to attend but knew I was no where near looking presentable. My best friend from when we were about 10 years old's family lived a few blocks from the farmhouse, so I sheepishly walked up to their door with my shoes in hand to see if they would let me use their tub to wash my feet.

I knocked and the door was opened by a very surprised looking my friend's father. I don't think I have seen him for multiple years, and there I was, standing on his porch, dress shoes in hand, and filthy business attire. After exchanging pleasantries, I started to explain, "Well, this is really weird, but for my job, I had to go and take a picture of a lady who lives on a farm just down the road, and I wasn't planning on having to hike across dirt fields and my feet and pants got super dirty, and now I have to go to another appointment, and well, do you mind if I just wash my feet and shoes off in your tub?"

His face got more and more confused as he tried to understand what I had just explained to him. He very generously told me to help myself to the bathroom, sink or whatever else I needed. I was so glad he let me in, despite the fact that I was talking like a crazy person, and I'm pretty sure he had no idea what I had just told him. I cleaned myself up the best I could and went on my way. One of my favorite parts of the adventure was when the dad called out as I was leaving, "Well, feel free to stop by anytime you have a shoe.... shoe problem..." I again thanked him, and ran back out to my unfortunately farm-smelling car. At least now, a few days later, and lots of rolled down windows and open moonroofs, I can happily report my car smells normal again.

Gotta love my job!

The Shunning of Bloggers

The other day, I was discussing blogging and the possibility of an office blog with my boss and coworker. I was shocked when the coworker said he had gone out with a girl a few times and things were looking good. The girl gave him the link to her blog, but after reading her posts, he couldn't bring himself to ask the poor, unsuspecting girl out ever again.

I am so curious, what the heck could someone be writing about that would cause such drastic measures? I wanted so badly to find out more, but since we were in the middle of a meeting, it wasn't possible.

Bloggers beware! Who knows when your innocent post will be the end of a beautiful relationship...

New York State of Mind

My friend and roommate in New York Rachel has these lyrics from Billy Joel on the side of her blog, "No matter where you go in the world, you never really leave New York, and it never really leaves you." Everytime I go to her site, I see it and can't help but agree.

It's been a year next week since I went out to New York, and I've been home from New York about 8 months now, and even though I know I made the right decision in coming back, I still go through serious city withdrawals. It is funny, the first half of my time there, I really didn't think it was that great of a place. I left for the city with high hopes and thinking since I had lived in Vienna, another huge place, I would have no to very little acclimating. In reality, that was far from being true. I didn't like how disgustingly dirty everything was, how it takes 40 minutes to get anywhere or the famous "New York Attitude." It took some serious adjusting, but in the end, when it was time to go, I cried and wasn't sure leaving was what I wanted.

Like I said, I know I made the right choice, but I still have dreams that I am back, living it up, on a regular basis. Little things throughout the day remind me of my time there and I still am planning on going for a visit in the very near future.

I went to the Symphony on Friday, and it made me miss being in the center of all the cultural activities even more than normal. The warmer, perfect for walking weather has also made me miss living across the street from Central Park. In Vegas last week, I excitedly went to my favorite store H&M but was shocked by the small store compared to Europe's and New York's HUGE three stories of cheap but cute clothes. I definitely miss it every two weeks when I have to stop at the gas pump and drop a ridiculously large amount of money filling my car up.

In honor of my short but loved time in Manhattan, here are some pictures of while I was there.

Heather and I at the first of many Broadway shows, "The Drowsy Chaperone."

Waiting to go see David Letterman. Too bad the guest was Michael Moore, who was so boring that I fell asleep.

My tiny I-House room. This is where I spent the first half of my time. That is how wide (the width of the bed) the whole room is. At least I had a sink.

My second day in the city involved a scavenger hunt, this was to show we were at Madison Square Gardens. It was taken with a cell phone and so isn't the best quality.

Best of Both Worlds

Last week my boss came into my office and announced he was going to be trying to get Hannah Montana Stadium of Fire tickets when they went on sale that evening at 5. He asked if I was interested in staying and logging on to help him get some and said there would be a reward of some kind if I got the tickets.

At 4:55, several of us logged on and got sent to the "Online Waiting Room." While everyone else waited there, i had the magic touch and at 5 p.m. exactly, was taken to the purchase tickets screen. My boss came running in and proceeded to buy as many tickets allowed.

My reward is some tickets to the show. It sold out in less than 30 minutes. I am trying to decide if i want to attend the show or become a scalper (don't worry, it's legal in Utah) of sorts and sell my tickets on eBay (they are currently going for a couple hundred dollars). In honor of my considering actually attending the show, I am posting this picture. What do i do? If i do decide to go, i suppose i'll have to go all out, so I feel like a part of the crowd of those little screaming girls.

Do you see the resemblance?

Viva Las Vegas

So I had my first business trip this past week. I got sent to Las Vegas with a few coworkers to attend the UW conference for the western region (although there were a few people from Massachussets and Vermont, I'm not sure where they learned their geography...). I have to admit, I felt pretty darn official.

The conference was held at Bally's hotel, and we knew when we were in for a treat when our taxi pulled up to our hotel, which featured a 10-story poster of the bottom half of a woman in some rhinestoned underwear. We made a team decision to skip the conference's first event, a party at the hotel's club Risque, right next to the topless-dancers show, and get some sleep.

When I checked in, i was informed that i needed to take the suggestion of the person and take a smoking room because the only non-smoking rooms were in an entirely different building than the rest of my party and conference and because it was by the elevators, which are noisy. I thanked her for the suggestion but assured her no noise could be bad enough to sleep in a smoke-scented room. She gave me my keys and sent me on my (wrong) way. It took me 10 minutes to find my room because she pointed me in the wrong direction. The funny thing is, one of my coworkers (who was checked in by someone else) started walking in the same direction as the rest of the group, and the lady who helped me chased after him and told him he was going the wrong way. Maybe i'm wrong, but i kind of suspect she was angry with me for not taking her suggestion, hence her helping him and then sending me on a wild-goose chase.

Well, i finally found my room and settled in for bed. It was the biggest hotel room i've ever stayed in and seemed quite nice. I climbed into the large bed (My very own, i don't think i've every had my own hotel bed let alone room) thinking i was in for a great night's sleep. Boy was i wrong... I had a hard time falling asleep because I could hear airplanes taking off every minute (i wondered if the noise could be the elevators, but it was WAY to loud to be elevators). I finally dozed off, and then i woke up because a man and a woman started arguing so loud that it sounded like they were in my room. They kept at it until well after midnight. This was one of the most, if not the most, intense fight i've ever heard. They were SO loud and yelling things my poor little ears never want to hear. Almost every other word was something i can't actually say, and they alternatively yelled for the other person to get out. There were several points that i almost called the front desk because it sounded like they were about to start beating each other.

After about 45 minutes, they finally stopped and i drifted off into a restless night of sleep and airplanes taking off. The next morning at breakfast, I tiredly commented on how i was surprised we could hear the airplanes and received several confused stares in return. Apparently those airplanes were my fore-warned noisy elevators. I am still shocked elevators could be so loud, but hey, i guess the little lady knew what she was talking about.

Between sessions of the conference, i switched rooms, and from there on out, had a great, airplane-noiseless experience. It was kind of funny to be in classes all day again, it is amazing how quickly your life changes. A year ago, I thought nothing of sitting in classes for 8 hours a day, but it was sure different now.

Me and my coworker wanted to go see Phantom, but the timings just never worked out and we always ended up missing it by about 15 minutes. So, we ended up watching several Bellagio shows, walking up and down the strip and making a few purchases at the beloved H&M. If anyone sees the next Hawaiian Tropic video, be sure to look for me walking by behind the nearly-naked ladies who were taking up almost the entire sidewalk. One slightly creepy guy started walking by me and told me that i looked better than all of those girls. I told him it was because i was fully clothed and that clothes can do wonders, and then walked/speed walked away...

The actual classes were surprisingly good. I feel very confident and excited to launch the new marketing campaign now. I have some great ideas, and I think we're going to gain a lot of people's support.

Another exciting part of the trip was on the flight home. I was talking to the guy next to me, and was asked, "So have you started college yet?" I think i should start keeping track of the number of times i'm asked this.

Overall, I learned Vegas is not my favorite city, but i did enjoy my first official business trip. It was another big step in becoming a real adult :)

Charity Ball and Auction

A few Fridays ago, I went to a Charity Ball and Auction put on by a group of students that are affiliated with our office. It was an awesome, black-tie event that raised money for our initiative to help prepare children to succeed in school.

This was the second year the students held the event. The first year, they raised over $10,000. They really wanted this year's event to be even more successful. They had some huge auction items, VIPs including Miss Utah, Bryan Kehl (both of whom had evenings out with them auctioned off), LaVell Edwards and Congressman Cannon.

All in all, it was a great night and they raised over $21,000! It is amazing that college students were able to pull off such an awesome fundraiser.

I got into the bidding spirit and ended up bidding on more than I should have. Luckily, people out bid me last minute on a few of my items, so I didn't end up spending TOO much. I did get some Lagoon passes, dinner gift certificates, a gift certificate to the mall and an hour masssage, all for under $175!

I'm sad that we didn't get any pictures of my dress. It was a lot of fun to dress up like that again.