2 years ago

Because Kirsta loves me so much, and reading my blog is the highlight of her day*, she left me lots of good post ideas in the comment section of the last post. One of her ideas was scanning scrapbook pages and posting them here. Well, I'm almost finished with my honeymoon scrapbook, but the pages are 12X12 so they're too big for me to scan, but I'll post some pictures.

We actually went on our honeymoon over Thanksgiving in 2006, 5 months after we got married. We went to Tahiti, specifically the islands of Moorea and Bora Bora. It was the most relaxing vacation I've ever been on. Everything was fabulous. I wish I had taken pictures of the food, because it was AMAZING, but who thinks to take pictures of food? Next time.

Anyway, here are the bungalows we stayed in on Moorea. They each have two decks, one with lounge chairs and a lower deck with a fresh water shower and a ladder right into the water. We could just get in our snorkel gear and go snorkeling right from our room.



Here is a view from the bed to the outside. You can see the lounge chairs on the upper deck, and the square you see in the floor is actually a glass panel so you can see straight into the ocean. We saw a shark swim under it the first night we were there.


This is Brian snorkeling in the crystal clear water right off our deck.


Here I am, showing off the black pearl necklace we bought on the island.


This is us on the balcony off our room in Bora Bora. I believe this picture was actually taken on Thanksgiving (which of course they don't celebrate there, seeing as it's an American holiday). They were having a special show at the restaurant that night along with a special menu-- we got to have duck for our Thanksgiving dinner. It was delicious. (Actually, everything we ate there was delicious. I gained like 10 pounds during the week we were there.)


And last but not least, a picture of the famous Noni fruit. We didn't try any of the juice though.


If you ever get a chance to go to Tahiti, I highly recommend it.


*She didn't actually SAY that reading my blog is the highlight of her day; I'm just guessing.

One more thing

One more thing about the e-mail incident and then I’ll stop talking about it. I promise.

As I was cleaning out my outlook inbox today I came across an e-mail from a couple of weeks ago about a change in the company’s e-mail security. Apparently, internal distribution lists were being used by unaffiliated people to send junk mail and such to employees. (Or “unwanted and disruptive e-mail” as they put it.) So as of November 12th, e-mail addressed to an internal distribution list would not be accepted from outside parties. Apparently they didn’t think employees would cause any problems with these distribution lists. I’m pretty sure November 13th disabused them of that notion.

Anyway, it's Friday and I'm all distracted by some show Brian is watching on Animal Planet so that's all you're getting for today. Anybody have anything for me to write about tomorrow?

Update on the "Reply All" incident

If you didn't read yesterday's post, do that now, then come back here. Back? Alright. I got a few more of the reply all e-mails early this morning, but that seemed to be the end of it. Then around 9:30 this morning I got an e-mail explaining what happened. It seems a new employee inadvertently used the wrong distribution list (this much I figured from the beginning) and IT is working to increase security regarding who can access the company-wide e-mail distribution lists (uh, yeah. Good idea.) The e-mail went on to say that fortunately the IT group had disabled the distribution list before the problem got too bad. Sadly, for me that means I missed out on lots more good blogging material and a probable server crash. Too bad.

The e-mail also included a lovely presentation on e-mail etiquette. Included were helpful hints such as: don't type in all caps, don't over use the high priority marking (I'm looking at you, admin assistant who marked all 3 reply all "this isn't supposed to come to me" e-mails high priority), don't over use read receipts, use proper spelling and grammar (maybe keep a dictionary next to your desk so you can look up how to spell "stop"), don't swear (okay, it didn't actually say that, but maybe it should have), and of course, be prudent when replying to all! I'm sure all the people who made mistakes like these will read this presentation and be sure to NEVER make those mistakes again. Or something.

Moving on.

Mardi tagged me to do this survey about my husband so here it is:

1) Where did you meet? At a party. Brian tells me it was a birthday party, but neither of us knows who it was for.

2) How long til you got married? 9 months

3) How long have you been married? 2 years and (almost) 5 months

4) Your favorite feature of his? His eyes

5) Your favorite quality of his? His good natured helpfulness

6) Does he have a nickname for you? Ummm, he mostly calls me babe. Is that a nickname?

7) His favorite food? I'm gonna go with soup. Seriously, this kid loves soup more than you would believe.

8) What is his favorite sport to watch? Football for SURE.

9) When was your first kiss? At the end of our first date

10) What's your favorite thing to do as a couple? Go to Best Buy. Okay, I don't really know. But we do go to Best Buy an awful lot.

11) Do you have kids? Yes, a daughter who's almost 6 months old. Although, I'm not sure how she can be that old since I'm pretty sure I just had her like last week.

12) Does he have a hidden talent? He's an excellent cook

13) How old is he? 25

14) Who said I love you first? He did

15) What do you admire most about him? His work ethic

16) What is his favorite type of music? I don't really know; he listens to everything

17) Do you think he will read this? Eventually, I'm sure

18) I tag Kirsta and Kari

P.S. I wrote this post over my lunch hour, but I wanted to read through it once more before I posted it and then I almost forgot! I was already in bed when I realized it was still just saved as a draft. Luckily I'm so dedicated to NaBloPoMo that I got up just to post. Of course, if I hadn't already had something written, I'm sure I would have written like 2 sentences before going back to bed. Which is where I'm going now.

The dangers of "Reply All"

I received more than 100 e-mails at work today. 6 of them actually pertained to me. Well, really 4 of them pertained to me, 1 was an announcement about Baker's stock purchase program and 1 was a schedule for upcoming classes I might want to register for, but that's not the point. The point is that I got over one HUNDRED e-mails that I did not need. At all. How does this happen? That's right, reply all.

It all started around 10:30 am, when I got an e-mail that didn't make any sense to me. I assumed it was addressed to too many people since the "to" line just said "Internet Users." Sure enough, a few minutes later the sender sent a recall notice on the e-mail so people would ignore it. Only people didn't ignore it. A few minutes later the e-mails started coming in. The "I don't think this is for me" and "I don't know what this is about" and "I think you sent this to the wrong person" type. The first "Please stop replying to all" came 15 e-mails in. Of course, that didn't stop people. I got an indication of just how many people were "Internet Users" when I started getting e-mails from outside the US. They came from Canada, Venezuela, Italy, Russia, Norway, Egypt, Trinidad, China, Tunisia, Brazil, Scotland, and various other places. One of the e-mails later in the day confirmed that "Internet Users" included every single Baker employee. More than 36 THOUSAND people world wide.

While I was at lunch I got 62 of these e-mails. It was quite interesting actually. The e-mails from people for whom English is obviously not a first language:
"I BELIEVE YOU WRONG ADDRESS"
"Stop to send to everybody"
and the angry e-mails:
"Please STOP I don't care!!!!!!!!"
"Take my dam name off this list please!!"
(I personally would have gone with, "Take my name off this damn list please" myself, but then I also try not to misspell words on e-mails that go to 36,000 people)
There was the one that was written in all caps in 72 point font and included more than 50 exclamation points. There was also the one that just said "stop." Only "stop" included the letter "p" 133 times. Seriously, I counted. Also, it was all in caps except for the last "p". Again, seriously.

Do people just not have anything better to do than send these e-mails? And aren't the people sending out the "please stop filling my inbox with useless e-mail" being a little hypocritical? What about the guy who sent the "stop replying to all" e-mail 3 times? Did he think people would pay attention to the second or third since they obviously weren't paying attention to the first? The best was the people who's e-mail included a request for a read-receipt. I hope they got THOUSANDS. Then maybe next time they'll think twice before hitting reply all.

So there's my public service announcement for the day- be careful who you send your e-mail to. Otherwise someone might blog about it and make fun of you.

Oh the irony

When I was in college, I told my mom once that I wished I didn't have to sleep. I was very clear on the terms though: I would still want to be ABLE to sleep and everyone else would still NEED to sleep. Because what good would it be to not need sleep if nobody else did either right? Right.

Unfortunately I DO need sleep, so I was not amused when my being a light sleeper turned into full on insomnia. It didn't manifest as typical insomnia, or at least not what I thought of as typical insomnia. I wasn't lying in bed for hours without being able to fall asleep, nor was I waking up in the middle of the night, unable to go back to sleep. Instead, every time I woke up during the night, it would take me 15 or 20 minutes to get back to sleep. With my super sensitive hearing causing me to wake up usually 5 times a night or more, this quickly became a problem.

I turned to the internet (known around our house as the source of all truth) for more information. That was how I found out that I was in fact experiencing a form of insomnia. Sadly, I was already doing most of what doctors recommend to help: we don't have a TV in our bedroom, I don't use my laptop in bed, I don't drink lots of caffeine and I don't drink any late at night, I don't go to bed until I'm tired, I don't drink or smoke, and there's not a clock in the bedroom. So, I decided to try the one thing that I wasn't already doing-- get up earlier. Seems crazy, but also seems to be working. Apparently, I do better when I only sleep for 7 hours. Who knew? The best part is, getting up so early means most days I get my workout (AM yoga with Rodney Yee) before the baby is awake.

I still wish I didn't NEED sleep, but these days I'm just glad I can.

Everyday life

I feel tired. I should stop waiting so long to write these posts. If I weren't doing NaBloPoMo I wouldn't post today. In fact, I might not post all week. There are ideas waiting, but like a word on the tip of my tongue I can't seem to get them out. Every time I start to write the words fall flat.

There is clean laundry on the bed waiting to be folded, there are clothes drying in the dryer, and others in the washer sitting wet and clean. There are dishes to be done. I have projects I want to work on. That's life I suppose. It's always something. This morning it was yoga at 5 am, then breakfast and the baby and work. After I got home it was feeding the baby and walking the dogs, putting the baby to bed and dinner and laundry. And today? I think that's enough.

More pictures

I know, I KNOW! This is NaBloPoMo, not post pictures of Kalena every day in November. I have several posts half written, but I'm not in the right mood to finish any of them. I'm not sure how today went by so fast; it feels like I was busy all day, but somehow I didn't manage to get anything done. Oh well, my to-do list will still be there tomorrow.

Kalena got to wear two adorable new outfits this weekend, both were unexpected gifts we got in the mail last week. This one is from one of Brian's aunt & uncle and family. How cute are the pockets on those pants?!

(The headband was one we had, and we took it off her after these pictures-- it just looks too much like a sweatband.)


The dress and shoes are from my parents. This is Brian with Kalena after church today. Although, considering the amount of drool on the front of the dress, maybe we should have taken the pictures before church.


Tomorrow I promise I'll write a real post. I won't promise no pictures, because sometimes I just can't resist, but it will include real actual content and not just picture captions. FOR REAL.

High five!

Maybe she's a genius?



Or maybe she's just very interested in putting her hand out to touch anything you put in front of her. I'll let you decide.

Pictures

I'm feeling a little lazy this fine Friday evening, so today's post is just some pictures of Kalena. Here she is working hard on trying to crawl.



I love her expression here.



Not only does she look like Brian, she zones out like him too. (He's teaching her to be a football fan here.)


Just showing off her fashion sense.


More rambling tomorrow.

This is a little late...

About a million years ago when Brian was redoing our ceilings I promised pictures. And then I had a baby and never posted them. (I know, excuses excuses.) Better late than never right? Here's some pictures of the kitchen and dining room all covered in plastic:


For anyone who's thinking about doing this, here's photographic evidence of the gigantic mess it makes:

(And that's just the mess from taking down the popcorn, not from putting on new texture.)

Here's Brian after putting on the texture:


And here's a picture of one room that's done and one room that isn't so you can see the difference. Arrow A is the beautiful redone ceiling, arrow B is the ugly popcorn ceiling. You can't really tell from the picture but the walls in the two rooms are different colors as well.


Brian worked really hard with the scraping and texturing and drywall repair and painting. I worked really hard not to breath in any paint fumes. Ok, I didn't work all that hard.

If you want to do this at your house you can ask Brian to help you. He'll tell you no, but you can still ask.