Attitude of Gratitude, Day 2

I'm not sure if I'll blog about my three gratitude items every day, but today I'm thinking "why not?" Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

I flew to Houston yesterday. Now, I fly all the time, but yesterday, as I looked out the window, I was really struck by the beauty of the sky - probably because of this challenge. So, for day 2 of my Attitude of Gratitude challenge, I am grateful for:

1. Beautiful cumulus cloud formations
2. Blue Sky
3. LDS General Conference Ensign editions

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

--Cicero

Attitude of Gratitude Challenge

My friend posted this on her blog, and since it seemed like such a good idea, I have shamelessly plagiarized it (my friend shamelessly copied it from an email sent to her, so it's a challenge several times removed). Anyway, here we go:

Announcing the November Attitude of Gratitude Challenge
Participation is voluntary.

How it works:
Each day during the month of November, send me an email (but feel free to include other people, not just me, if you want).

Each email should include three things for which you are grateful.

The term "things" is used here to encompass a myriad of stuff including, but not limited to: a certain set of circumstances, an event, an inanimate object distinguished from a living being, possessions or effects, a deed or act, a product of work or activity, an idea or notion, a piece of news or information, a person, a memory, anything that makes you smile.

It will be fun, but challenging to come up with three original things each day. Try not to repeat entries.

* The email should be sent by midnight each night. If you miss a day or two, no biggie, but you have to make it up, no skipping!

Quote:
"Gracias, danke, merci—whatever language is spoken, "thank you" frequently expressed will cheer your spirit, broaden your friendships, and lift your lives to a higher pathway as you journey toward perfection. There is a simplicity—even a sincerity—when "thank you" is spoken." --Thomas S. Monson, "The Profound Power of Gratitude," Ensign, Sep 2005

My Three Things for November 1st:

1. I'm thankful for Costco - is that dumb?
2. I'm thankful for the Internet
3. I'm thankful for my mom

One for my sis!

Yo, Karen. I did it!
Readers, if you miss the Rocky reference, too bad for you.

Based on the queue this morning, I wonder how many people will be left to vote on the actual "election day."

Things you don't expect to hear from a flight attendant

As I was taking my seat on my crack-of-dawn flight this morning, I overheard the flight attendant say, "I'm expecting a shipment of guinea pigs. Please let me know when they are loaded."
Maybe because it was the crack of dawn, but I found this funny.

Random oddness

I’ve been working in Eugene, Oregon for the last two weeks, and I really enjoy it up here. Today I went to lunch with my friend Ian (who works at the local newspaper). As we were driving to Café Yumm! (one of my favorite places), a street sign caught my eye. On our way back from lunch I just HAD to stop for a photo. How much would I LOVE my address if I lived on this street?

Just one of my pet peeves

As I mentioned earlier, I spent this last week working in Salt Lake City, which was quite fun. I think I also mentioned the fact that I carpooled with my friend Matt. While providing interesting conversation, Matt also provided me with a passenger, which meant we were allowed in the carpool lane. Excellent, right? Sadly, no. We soon discovered (and re-discovered each and every day) that there are many drivers (at least many Utah drivers) who don’t understand the purpose of a carpool lane. Just because you have the required number of people in your car does not mean you MUST drive in the carpool lane – especially if you insist on driving slower than the rest of traffic. The purpose of an HOV lane is to encourage people to carpool so that they can travel at faster speeds than the rest of the traffic-jammed, single-rider vehicles. I’m not talking about exceeding the speed limit here. There were times when I would have loved to have reached the speed limit. What I’m talking about is the fact that if the vehicles in the far left lane (a.k.a. “the slow lane”) are moving faster than you are, you should get the heck out of the HOV lane. I'm just saying.

It’s a headrest, for crying out loud

This week I’m lucky enough to be on-site for work… in Salt Lake City. Well, lucky in that I get to sleep in my own bed at night, unlucky in that I get to drive an hour each way to work. Anyway, that’s not the point of this story.

My friend/co-worker, Matt, is carpooling with me, which is important to know because when Matt’s up there alone, he usually rents a car and he gets nominated to drive to lunch. Since I had the car today, I drove to lunch (we went to a YUMMY little Greek place off 3rd South and 4th East, I think – but I digress). Anywho, one of the guys who came to lunch with us is 6’5” – on the way to lunch he sat in the back seat of my really small Nissan Sentra. Since that seemed uncomfortable for him, one of the smaller guys sat in the back on the return trip. It was then that Brady noticed that the headrest was folded horizontally instead of vertically – poking him right in the head.

All four of us knew that the headrest should “bend” back to the vertical position, but none of us could get it to do it. I was a little annoyed that my new car – that gets awesome gas mileage, I might add – had such a defect.

So, at the end of the day, after I dropped Matt off at his house, I decided to drive to the Nissan dealership and ask them why I had a defective headrest. With headrest in hand, I asked the first sales guy I saw why it was like that. He said he knew it could be put back in its vertical position, but he couldn’t remember how to do it (see, we’re not so dumb). So he asked another sales guy for help. This sales guy couldn’t remember either, so he suggested we go see if another Sentra had instructions in it (excuse me? Instructions on how to return a headrest to the vertical position?). On the way to find these awesome instructions, he figured it out. There’s no button or lever or anything that resets the headrest – you have to push down even further on the headrest in order to get it vertical. Of course. My car has some techie things, but I didn’t think one of them would be the headrest.

Be your own kind of super hero

It seems like you can't turn on the T.V. or radio without hearing about the state of the economy. Well, it totally stresses me out, and I try to avoid it at all costs. But, at the same time, I have to deal with it. So, that said, I'm turning into Budgeting-girl. Nananananananananananananananana Budgeting-girl. (a la Batman theme song).

The other day I Google-ed "cooking on a budget" and came across several awesome resources, but my favorite was on allrecipes.com (yes, Miss L, it's true, allrecipes really does ROCK). I especially liked the information on The Perfect Pantry. And the fact that they provide actual recipes that use the suggested items? Icing on the cake. Oh, cake sounds good right now...

There’s no place like “Home”

I flew to Erie, PA this week to do a training evaluation. Well, I didn’t fly to Erie; I flew to Cleveland and then drove 2 hours to Erie. Because I would be doing so much driving (and because the Enterprise guy lowered the price from $9.99/day to $6.00/day), I added a GPS to my car rental. It really came in handy as I drove around for four days.

One of the nice features about GPS systems is the “home” setting – designed to get you back where you started. Funny thing (not funny “ha, ha”), but the “Home” setting on this particular GPS didn’t get me back to where I started – it took me to some car dealership several miles north of the airport (north? west? I’m not sure, which is why I need a GPS).

I eventually found the Car Rental Return, and when the guy asked me if everything went well with the car I mentioned that it would have been nice if the “Home” setting had actually returned me to the right place. “Oh, you’re the 2nd person to mention that today.” Moscow Rule #10: Technology will always let you down. OK, I made up the number, but it really is a Moscow Rule.

Make-A-Wish

Several months ago, my friend Sara did a walk to raise money for her local Make-A-Wish in Atlanta. Because I really like what Make-A-Wish does, I decided to volunteer for the Utah chapter (or whatever it’s called). Last Saturday I finally had my orientation and training session.

When I walked into the orientation room I noticed that there were several young girls in the room – high school girls. Evidently they have to do X amount of service hours in order to graduate from High School. How cool is that? Anyway, they invited me to sit at their table, which I thought was very nice of them. During the orientation, we did several group activities as a table. I was having delusions of coolness and hip-ness as I was joking around with these young girls – then, I realized, to my horror (I like that word, horror), that I was old enough to be their mother. YIKES!!

It was quite the emotional morning. They showed news coverage of different wishes that had been granted for Utah kids. I was totally crying. There are so many amazing, generous people in the world – it’s awesome. Click here to read about one of the young kids who got his wish. What a great organization. I can’t wait to get started.