Dallas

I am in Dallas and will be here until Friday. Then I jump back on a plane on Sunday and come back to Dallas until Wednesday. I am pretty sure it would have been cheaper for my company to just pay for the extra two nights in a hotel and my meal expenses than for the extra plane ticket. But since I want to be home this Saturday (the first Musician's Corner of the season!!!) I don't mind going home for a day and heading back.

I am here because the mentoring program I helped develop is being launched and I am presenting it. It's a bit nervewracking because everyone in the room will be much more important than I am, but hopefully I can pull it off.

Then next week we have an HR conference with all the HR managers from all the plants. While I am not specific to a plant our team is still going. I am willing to bet that I will have very little to learn since very little will have anything to do with my job. But we are going to a Ranger game and I get free stadium food, so that will be nice.

Finally, it's cicada (sih-cay-da) year. They're these nasty big bugs that hit the south full force every 13 years. And it is the 13th year. I thought it had been last year since we had some around, but apparently it is this year. I have heard horror stories and I am scared. Luckily, they don't bite, but they are SUPER loud. They are due to come out of the ground this weekendish. I am severely hoping they don't ruin Musician's Corner.

2nd Finally, the weather. We have had some severe weather, but nothing extremely bad. It's absolutely heartbreaking how bad it was south of me. I have a handful of friends from Tuscaloosa and somehow none of them have been seriously affected. My kittens are from Tuscaloosa, but they don't seem to understand, so it hasn't affected them much either. We do have flooding in our Missouri plants, but so far Nashville is ok. Time will tell, it’s just a good thing they built our new building 7 feet off the ground.

Introducing:

Baby Kitties!!!!

This is Stoli (black) and Tonic (tabby). In this picture they are 4 week old kittens a friend of mine found outside of her work. They are likely from the same litter but Stoli is much smaller than Tonic.

When we first got them their eyes were still blue, as you can kind of see in this picture. Just a week later the blue has almost all the way turned to green. They have both grown quite a bit in the short week. When we first got them Tonic was 1 pound while Stoli was a whopping 3/4 pounds.

Tonic was a bit tired for a photo shoot, but we did it anyway. Unfortunately, we neglected to clean up the background... Sorry!

Cute little feet!

I got my feet in the picture to show how tiny they are.

I think they are pretty cute :)

Update from South of the Mason Dixon Line

Seems to me I rarely update my blog… so I thought I would.

My life is pretty much same old. I go to work, and then I go home. I haven’t done much traveling for work lately, but that is likely to pick up again. I got the SIOP conference approved, so I get to go to that (and on the company’s dime which is phenomenal!). It is in April in Chicago. I am staying a bit longer than I need to so Kevin and Joy, we will have to see if we can meet up at some point for dinner or something.

This was before Christmas, so many of you may know this already, but I wanted to tell you that I am beginning to embrace the Country music down here. By no means do I like it! I can just tolerate it better now. Before Christmas I went to a Garth Brooks concert with my roomie Kate. It was actually a ton of fun, and I am glad I went. So who knows, maybe someday I will actually like it... doubt it though.

Kate and I have been able to continue our outings surrounding music even with the outdoor concerts being on hold until spring. A few weeks ago we went to hear a friend’s friend play and then John Carter Cash had a set too. (Johnny Cash and June Carter’s son). Then this last week we went to hear a Wisconsin native who moved to Nashville play. He’s got a lot of talent, it will be interesting to see if any of these small potatoes singer/songwriters actually make it. Keep in mind every third person you meet in Nashville is in the music industry, not everyone can make it.

This weekend is plump full of stuff to do. On Friday, Kate and I are going with some of her coworkers to a Joshua Radin Concert, then on Saturday we are going to the Red Wings @ Predators hockey game, and then Sunday is the SUPER BOWL!!! I am beyond excited for the super bowl to say the least.

Another “It’s cool to live in Nashville” story: Although I wasn’t sure at the time, a later google search confirmed that I saw a TN Titan in Walmart. He was just a practice squad guy, but I still thought it was pretty cool. He was a pretty big dude.

I went to the Packer game in Atlanta. It was an amazing experience. Especially since they won the game! There were a lot of Packer fans there, so I felt like a part of one big dysfunctional family. When Williams picked off Ryan at the end of the first half I was up by the concessions. When we heard the roar I went to go see what was going on and saw Williams running into the end zone. I was so excited I gave the girl next to me a huge hug…. I have no idea who she was, but it just seemed like the right thing to do.

That's about all that is going on around here. Oh except for I am fairly certain I will be able to make it to Camp Croix this year since I have more vacation time than I thought I would. Yay!