More bad luck???

Daniel took his motorcycle to work this morning and ended having the clutch cable break on him. If you know anything about vehicles that use a clutch, you will know that it is impossible to shift gears with no clutch. Luckily Daniel was close to home when it happened and happened to be on a hill. He turned the bike around and managed to push start it and pop it into 2nd gear to ride. Problem #2, once you are in gear you CANNOT stop b/c it will die if you don't clutch, so he had to ride home without stopping - not sure how he pulled that off in morning traffic. So now I have to call around to find someone that sells a clutch cable for a motorcycle and it looks like he will be fixing it tonight b/c if he doesn't get the bike inspected by tomorrow, we will have to pay a fine! This really sucks.

On a funny note, he called me to complain that he was stuck in traffic. He started riding his bike to and from work this week so having to drive and deal with the traffic was not very exciting for him!

Irony

I am sitting here drinking a Cafe au Lait from Dean & Deluca and reading the book, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built A Company One Cup At A Time.

Because Dean & Deluca is an upscale, European-type cafe/bakery, Daniel thinks I am a snob for liking it better than Starbucks. But in all honesty their coffee is just plain better and it is cheaper. That doesn't mean that I would skip reading a book about a company that did so well. Also, I do like Starbucks specialty drinks, they are just expensive and packed full of calories.

What are your strengths?

I just finished reading Cure for the Common Life by Max Lucado and Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham. Both turned out to be similar books. Max Lucado discusses discovering and living in your sweet spot while Marcus Buckingham focuses on the need to discover your strengths and to continually improve on them and to worry less about your weaknesses.

I took the strenghsfinder test where I discovered my top 5 strengths to be: Strategic, Ideation, Input, Achiever & Self-Assurance. It was pretty interesting to discover what my strengths are - I definitely relate to all of these.

Max Lucado discusses thinking about your S.T.O.R.Y. to discover the things that you truly love by looking back at your life. Strengths - things you excel at. Topics - things you love. Optimal Conditions - what gets you started and keeps you going. Relationships - role you play. Yes! - what feels the most satisfying.

I would definitely recommend both of these books - they give good incite into who you are.

Trip to Nashville

We had a pretty good trip over to Nashville this weekend. It seems like we are on our second wave of weddings since we graduated from college. Last weekend Daniel went to Colorado to be in a wedding and this weekend, Nashville.

We were able to see Daniel's fam and then Saturday we were able to see several friends. I actually ran out to Mt Juliet for breakfast with a high school friend and her husband while Daniel headed into Murfreesboro to go on an 18 mile bike ride with a high school buddy.

We met up in Murfreesboro and had lunch with Daniel's dad and then headed to downtown Nashville for an early dinner with some friends we knew from our time in Cookeville. Why is it that so many visiting times revolve around eating?

After dinner, we walked around downtown where 1) I ended up getting blisters on my feet due to wearing dress shoes and 2) I am a moron because I walked over a grate in a dress and had a Marilyn Monroe experience where all of a sudden air was blowing up from underneath me and my dress kind of took flight. At least I was walking with Hillary BEHIND Daniel & Marshall and when I finally got control of my dress and looked around, no one seemed to have noticed besides Hillary! After grabbing a coffee and walking around and visiting some more, Daniel and I headed down to West End to the Cathedral of Incarnation for the 7:30 wedding.

Daniel really enjoyed getting to see several people he had known from high school. After leaving the wedding, we wandered around downtown and found where Daniel's company's Nashville branch is located and we drove my Cummins Station which is where the start up company I am working for is considering getting office space. It is kind of hard to imagine where we will be in 2-5 years. We have so many friends that are in Nashville now or planning on moving there in the near future. But on the other hand, we are enjoying Charlotte and we want to finish renovating our house and live in a FINISHED house for a little while...

Grocery Shopping Tirade

Here’s the thing: I love lists and there are parts of my life in which I cannot function without a list.

Grocery shopping is one of those areas. I plan out my meals for the week. I compose a list of grocery items I will need from the store. To Daniel’s annoyance, I will ONLY buy what is on my list. I go through the store methodically. And then when I go to check out I organize my items on the conveyor belt as to how I think they should be put in the bag. Whether the items go into the bag in the right way is up to the cashier. Seven times out of ten, the cashier bags it wrong (at least according to my standards).

It is particularly frustrating when I go to all of this effort and they combine items in strange ways such as vegetables with frozen foods or worse bread or eggs with something heavy! It really makes me mad if they overload my bags and the bags break before I can get them from my car to my kitchen.

I am not sure why I have to be so compulsive about my list and grocery process but it really drives me CRAZY when I go to all of the trouble of organizing my items and they get haphazardly bagged!

shoes

What is the one thing that never seems to stay in its proper place? For me it is my shoes. I find them everywhere. My shoes are by the front door. Next the couch in the living room. Under the desk in my office. In random piles in my bedroom. They are never put away. I try really hard to keep them organized and neat in my closet, but they never stay there. I love for my feet to be bare, so as soon as I stop whatever I am doing, my shoes come off. When I finally get around to "cleaning" my house I am forever rounding up my shoes.

Would you rather?

This morning I was having a discussion with several women about the following question: "Would you rather mow the lawn or do house work?" The overwhelming majority answered: "Mow the lawn."

spring

It is amazing to me that you can wake up one day and suddenly it is spring. I love Charlotte in the spring. There are so many trees that are in bloom and every road medium is planted with flowers. Everything is green and fresh and new. I love the rain storms that March brings. I love the sunshine on the warm days that allows me to roll down my car windows and let the wind blow my hair in every direction.

Bad Habit

Daniel and I have formed the really bad habit of eating late at night. We thought we would be better at this since I quit my job and theoretically I am home and should be able to have dinner on the table at a reasonable hour. But it seems like he tends to work late and I tend to work out in the evenings still. Last night we were really bad and went out to eat. We did not sit down at our table until 8 p.m. and it was 9 by the time we finished.

Maybe I would not be wide awake if I had not had 2 large dr. peppers and an entire chimichanga platter at On The Border!

I have no idea how I could eat 1/2 a pizza from Pizza Pro after midnight when I was in college! No more late night eating for me.

Good Things.

Today Daniel went to see the doctor and they removed his stitches and told him that he can walk again. This is excellent news for Daniel, but it is also good for me because I have had to drive him everywhere and do almost everything for him for the last 10 days! It has been like having a toddler that can order you around! Actually he hasn't been that bad. I love him and I am thankful that he is ok.

motorcycle...

Daniel has been very antsy lately since he not been able to walk in a week. This is understandable since he is not the type to sit around doing nothing. He has a million hobbies, all which do not involve being sedentary.

Today he decided that he needed to fix his motorcycle since we only have 2 weeks left to get it inspected. Unfortunately for me, this means that I get the task of finding him tools and holding things in order to help him since he still cannot put weight on his left leg.

The first thing that we had to do was to move the motorcycle. Being the intelligent person that I am, I pulled up the kickstand and attempted to roll the bike to the correct spot in the garage. (I know how to ride a motorcycle but that does not always mean I do the brightest things). It turned out that I had my balance wrong and the 400 lb bike tipped over. I attempted to recover and pull it back toward me but was unable to counter the extra weight. Instead I got a pulled muscle in my calf and had to drop the bike on the ground. At least it is an older bike that already has scratches and dents on it, but Daniel was not exactly thrilled.

Can you imagine if we both had bum legs? I am not sure how we would function.

I should be backpacking...

This will be a short post for me to lament the fact that it is gorgeous out and we were supposed to go backpacking in the smokies this weekend. I am pretty disappointed. But since Daniel is doing really well, I need to just get over myself. There will be other beautiful weekends to go backpacking.

Conforming in the business world.

I was grabbing a coffee this morning after my work out and I noticed that the girls behind the counter had their noses pierced. It struck me that around age 21 and beyond, people start to change. The piercings are not as obvious, the tattoos are hidden, the jeans and flip flops begin to disappear. Is it because we reach an age of accountability or do we actually lose ourselves in the process of becoming "adults."

When was the last time you walked into a real estate office or bank and you saw someone that stood out. It seems that at this age, the individuals begin to go into hiding. Maybe they still try to own their youth by wearing leather pants on the weekends. Maybe they secretly go out and get another tattoo. Maybe they still pull out the jeans and flip flops on casual Friday.

Have you begun to lose your individuality? Does it show up in other ways?

My mother, the alien.

Actually this is a note to say that my mom took her American citizenship test on Monday and passed. She is being approved for citizenship, they just have to wait a couple of weeks to swear her in to make sure they don't uncover something from her background.

I am really proud of her. It is strange, for most of my life she has been an alien, living in places besides her country of origin and now she has finally decided to become American.

Home from the hospital.

We are home from the hospital and Daniel is doing pretty good. He is on crutches and able to get around. The stitches in his leg should come out in about 10 days and he should be able to walk on his own again. It took over 4 hours for him to get discharged - we waited over 1 hour for them to bring a wheelchair! So we basically spent our weekend in the hospital watching cable.

Visit to the ER

I have a quick prayer request o share. Today we were working on finishing a fence we are building and Daniel accidentally cut himself with the chainsaw. It is not really bad, but I did have to take him to the ER and the cut was a bit deep so they did surgery to clean it out and close it up. They are keeping him until Monday. It has been a very stressful day but he seems to be doing fine. He sent me home to get some sleep and so I could pick up some stuff to take to him in the morning. He seems to be doing really well and we are very grateful that it was not worse. They are expecting him to start using crutches tomorrow, so that is a good sign.

A few of my favorite things

Spinning at the Y to the "Sound of Music" (yes it can be done).
 

Opening all of the windows to listen to the pouring rain.
 

Curling up in front of a fireplace with a good book.
 

Going OUT for coffee.
 

The feeling you get after you accomplish something really hard.
 

Learning something new.
 

Kraft Food & Family Magazine - it is FREE and it comes 4 times a year so I never run out of new 

recipes to try out.
 

Receiving real, handwritten mail from a friend.