On the Road Again...

Benjamin and I decided to take a our first real holiday together over the July long weekend. We had originally planned to go to a family reunion of his in Seattle area, but when it was cancelled, we ended up keeping our plans for a Washington state holiday anyways.

We left Wednesday night and drove to Fernie, BC. We drove through several large rainstorms on the way, so we were not hopeful that our campsite would be dry or that we would be able to light a fire. When we arrived, the last rainstorm had been through almost an hour before and the sky was clear, so we had a lovely evening around the campfire (once Benjamin got it going with the slightly damp wood we had picked up – about an hour's effort).

The next morning, we drove to Spokane. I had offered to drive the first leg of this portion of the trip, since Benjamin had driven the entire way from Calgary to Fernie. This meant that Benjamin was in charge of getting the directions from my iPhone. After entering in the address of my cousin in Spokane, he directed me onto a highway heading south and we were on our way. It wasn't until we were crossing the border at Eureka, Montana that I realized that we hadn't gone through Yahk, BC, which my original trip research had indicated was the fastest way to Spokane. Turns out that the iPhone had confused Upriver Drive, Spokane with Riverside Drive in Eureka, Montana. We ended up taking quite the detour south through rural Montana to make it over to Bonner's Ferry and back to the main highways to Spokane, but it was a beautiful drive! We drove right along Lake Koocanusa for over 100 km and passed the huge Libby hydroelectric dam.

Spokane was great. It was so fun to see my cousin Karen and her family, Doug and Charles, again. Little Charles was adorable. We ate delicious food and had a fun Canada Day picnic in a park by the river. We also were very lucky and got to see my other cousin, Monica, and her husband, David (whom we had never met before).

Since the highway from Spokane to Seattle is fairly well-travelled and well-marked, we avoided a scenic detour on that leg of the trip other than to stop at the Petrified Gingko Forest site in Washington. It was so amazing! A really small little National Parks site where they've found some of the only petrified gingko trees in North America. I love stopping at random roadside attractions.

We spent the 4th of July in Lynnwood with Benjamin's cousin. I enjoyed visiting the temple in Seattle, one I've never been to, and it was great to meet so much of Benjamin's family.

Throughout our entire drive through Montana, Idaho, and Washington, I had noticed stands set up in parking lots everywhere selling fireworks. I love fireworks. I love watching them and have always wanted to be able to buy my own and set them off. We made a stop in a parking lot in Lynnwood and bought a ton of sparklers, Roman candles, and spinning ground flowers. Lighting them on Independence Day was one of the highlights of the trip. We attended a 4th of July party in a neighbourhood where everyone seemed to be competing over who could put on the best fireworks show. Everywhere I looked, there were fireworks, and they started at 8 pm and went almost constantly until 11.

After staying up late watching the fireworks, we had to get on the road before 7 the next morning to get home in time – a 12-hour drive. It was incredible to go for such a fun trip together and squeeze so much into 6 days, but we were glad to get home again. I almost wished I had left a day afterwards to recover from our vacation!

Graduation!

In my last semester of school, I decided that I wanted to take an accounting course. Of course, I couldn't take it at the U of C, so I had to do a correspondence course from Athabasca University. I finished it and applied to graduate with my economics degree.

Benjammin was also set to graduate this April and was really excited to go to his convocation, so I booked a day off work to come. I decided that it wasn't worth taking two days off work for convocation, so I figured I'd have my diploma mailed to me.

Last week, I was in a team meeting and once we had gone over our various projects, my boss reviewed the upcoming time off, reminding the team that I was going to be off the following day for my convocation (somehow he had thought that I meant I was taking the day off for my own graduation ceremony). I piped up to tell him it was actually Benjamin's convocation and decided to add a funny story - I got an email about one week before convocation, telling me that I was one credit short of graduation and would not be able to receive my degree the following week. Really, University of Calgary? You tell me this one week before I had planned to receive my degree? Couldn't have pointed this out to me a month ago or something so I could remedy the situation? I mean, I did apply to graduate back in November.

After telling this story, my coworker Joe said in pseudo-disbelief, "WHAT? You didn't graduate? You don't have a degree?" Ha-ha, Joe. This was followed by my boss raising his eyes to heaven and wondering aloud, "What else in the interview was a lie? Oh great!"

I then spent the rest of the day being teased about being a college dropout.

Benjamin, however, graduated and received his Bachelor of Commerce degree on Friday. It was

great to see him in his gown and walk across the stage, even if the rest of the three-hour convocation was kind of boring. Congratulations, Benjamin! I'll catch up to you when they award the degrees in November. Although I think sitting through one covocation per year is probably enough.

Songs in My Head

Sometimes I feel like my mind is like an iPod on shuffle. Today I had 8 separate songs in my head, most of them for no discernible reason – I didn't hear any of them or even listen to any music at all today.

I woke up to "Just Haven't Met You Yet" by Michael Buble. I don't wake up to a clock radio, otherwise I might have had some reason to have a song in my head very first thing. An hour into work, I suddenly was singing Backstreet Boys to myself – nothing that I do at work should remind me off "Backstreet's Back". As I microwaved my lunch, I tapped my toes to the background music of a Chevy commercial that always plays when Benjamin watches the hockey game on cbc.ca. As I settled back in after lunch, into my head popped "Zero to Hero" from Disney's Hercules. You start to see the randomness of the iPod in my head?

Oddly enough, within 15 minutes of my Disney singalong, I was listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing their hearts out to "I Believe in Christ" which actually did make sense. We didn't sing it in church yesterday, but we did sing the song right next to it in the hymnbook. Next came "YMCA", as I checked the online schedule at the Y. It was at this point I decided to start making a list of all the songs I'd had in my head that day, which prompted the DJ inside to switch tracks to Greg Hanna's "Song in My Head". Go figure.

After getting home, I was soon back to singing Disney tunes with "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan while I made dinner. However, soon, and completely without reason, I whistled the Beatles' "Come Together" (not even a Beatles song that I actually like that much!) while doing the dishes.

I'm torn between being curious about what's coming next and turning on some real music to stop the madness.

The Lights of Las Vegas

My office is right across the hall from our floor's large conference room. Unfortunately, this conference room has only sliding glass doors that do nothing to block sound. I've been privy to the details of quite a few meetings, especially those meetings on which the door is not fully closed. Let's just say I've gotten used to pulling my headphones out when a particularly loud group takes over conference room 2923.

Sometimes, though, I get to hear little gems of conversation during my inadvertent eavesdropping. Like today: A group or market forecasters was in a meeting. While they waited for all the attendees to arrive, one was asked about his recent vacation. "I was in Vegas" he replied. Many others chipped in with their anecdotes about Sin City, one commenting on how bright it is to walk down the strip. Suddenly, one of the mused, "I wonder what the total electric load for Vegas is?" Another pulled out the relevant statistic. A third chimed in that each hotel on the strip averages approximately 8 MW. Suddenly, stories about wild vacations in Vegas had turned into dorky shop talk.

I work with a bunch of nerds – and it feels like home.

Reading List

My new job requires a 30-minute bus ride every morning and every evening. During my first few weeks of work, I usually spent at least the bus ride home getting carsick, as I have done on buses for years. However, after consistently riding almost every day and learning at which stop I was most likely to get a seat at the front, I've been able to get to the point where I can read on the bus. This is great, because for the last several years, I've been so busy with school that my reading has dropped off a little (although not enough to stop me from devouring Stephanie Meyer's Host in the 24 hours before my Economics of Taxation final – don't worry, I still passed).

The past two months, I've read over 14 books (not quite back up to my high school level yet)

from such a scattered assortment of genres, the list looks like it was created by a butterfly with ADD. It's just reinforced what I told people years ago in high school: if it's got pages between two covers, I'll probably read it. Here's some of my favourites for those of you who are looking for a good summer read:

The Host, by Stephanie Meyer

The Host tells the story of the world after an alien invasion. These aliens are a completely peaceful race and have implanted themselves in our brains to prevent violence, war, and anything else nasty. The main character, Wanderer, has arrived on earth after the aliens' dominance is mostly complete, but is implanted in the brain of on of the last human survivors, a girl named Melanie. Melanie is strong-willed enough that she remains present even after the insertion and Wanderer begins to feel some sympathy for the human race and the remaining survivors. They go off on an epic adventure to find the rest of Melanie's family, who are still on the run. Yes, I know it's the same woman who wrote Twilight. I know that amongst my acquaintance, Twilight has gotten extremely mixed reviews. Let's just say that I do enjoy Twilight, but I'm under no impression that it's a work of fine literature. The Host, on the other hand, is much better written than Twilight. The drama that pervaded Twilight is still there, but feels less hokey and more believable. Even though I was reading it for the second time, I couldn't put it down.

Frederica, by Georgette Heyer

My sister Jaima got me into Georgette Heyer books after I got home from my mission, and I've been reading them whenever I can find them from the library since. Heyer started writing in the 1920s and most of her books take place in the Regency era, the same time as all the Jane Austen books. Frederica is my favourite so far. It tells the story of a girl in her mid-twenties, Frederica, who is left in charge of her family when her father dies. Determined that her younger sister will not waste her beauty on their insignificant country circle, she takes her siblings to London to attempt an advantageous marriage for her sister, who although beautiful, is rather stupid. She prevails upon their distant relative, the wealthy Marquis of Alverstroke, to sponsor them in society, which he does, mostly to spite his other scheming relatives. Adventure piles on adventure as the Marquis finds himself increasingly involved in the exploits of all members of the young family as they caper through Regency area London. As with all Georgette Heyer stories, the wit is plentiful, the characters sparkling, and happy endings abound for all.

The Firm, by John Grisham

I first read The Firm is high school, and for the following few months, took out every Grisham novel I could find at the library. Grisham has the ability to keep his readers glued to the page, throwing twists and turns and describing everything in compelling detail. The Firm is one of his earlier novels, from 1991, and has all the appeal of his very early stories without the dated feel that I've gotten occasionally from some of the very first. It tells the story of Mitch McDeere, a young Harvard Law graduate who gets an incredible job offer from a small sized firm in Memphis. They offer to pay off his student loan, arrange a mortgage, lease him a car, and pay him much more than any other offer he's received. It's only after a few months there that Mitch realizes that the offer too good to be true came from a firm that is really not what it appears to be, when he is approached by the FBI to assist them in an investigation of the firm and its number-one client. Caught in the crossfire and blackmailed from both sides, Mitch has to keep on step ahead of spies, goons, federal investigators, and lawyers to do the right thing and save his family.

Happy reading, and if you have any suggestions for my next book, let me know!

I love my job, I promise!

I should probably clarify from my earlier post... I've had a few people ask me about my job with looks of sympathy, apparently under the impression that I trudge off to work every day with a heavy heart and tearful eyes. I actually really love my job. Sure, I have the odd day every now and then when I'm bored, and getting used to a new schedule always has its blips. But in case you interpreted my earlier post to mean that I was dissatisfied with my job and life in general, I promise that I'm happy. Especially with my job.

We actually had an offsite meeting on Wednesday this week, where our department booked meeting rooms and a gym at the Talisman Centre. We got fed a custom-ordered lunch from Jugo Juice, had two hours of presentations from our VP and directors, and then we were let loose to play basketball or badminton. They had even booked a yoga studio and hired a yoga teacher for those who weren't into getting body-checked under the hoop by their supervisors.

I was invited to join our group's basketball team, the Market Operations Hawks. Or, as we liked to call ourselves, the MOHawks. Despite an ill-fated attempt by the Market Design Dream Team, or M-DDT (apparently the only thing they could think of that would kill hawks was DDT – I know, how nerdy can you get?) the MOHawks were triumphant in the end, thanks to our lovely cheerleader, a co-worker who grew up in Ireland and didn't even know the rules of basketball, having never played sports at her convent school.

There are so many reason why I love my job.

The Racy Chart

At work, a few members of my team are working on a system that outlines our project planning process. It outlines the different required tasks along the way and tells you who is responsible and accountable for each task, and who should be consulted and informed each step of the way. What can I say, I work for a large company with a very complicated approval process, but we do it to keep YOUR lights on.

On one of my first days, we had a team meeting where everyone gave updates on their projects. I was still adjusting to my new work schedule and, as usual, was drifting off in a meeting. Suddenly, I started awake when I heard a co-worker say, "... and the racy chart is coming along fairly well."

First, I should clarify that I work in an environment of very lovely, but fairly average people. Most are somewhat middle-aged with families and we don't work in the sexiest industry. Most of my days consist of separating authoritative and informational content in procedural documents that outline the Alberta transmission line system or trying to determine a satisfactory definition of the term "acceptable operational reason". Not the most glamorous job in the world, but I like it.

Now imagine my surprise when my colleagues start talking about some racy chart. I started wondering what I had gotten myself into.

Fast-forward through about three minutes of bewilderment. Apparently we have a RACI chart (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed individuals), not a racy chart.

At first a relief, in retrospect, maybe a bit of a letdown. It would have really spiced up my workday.