Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Weekend Getaway

This past weekend Dave and I escaped the heat and headed back down to Monterey. On Friday night we stopped in the bay area first to visit some friends who were in CA for their sister's wedding reception. That night we stayed with the Hales, Dave's uncle and aunt. Then Saturday morning we went back over to visit our friends so we could see there little boy who was asleep the night before and actually do some talking since it was really busy at the reception.

The Ricks and the Smiths.

We headed the rest of the way down to Monterey and went to the beach with our friends, Jordan and Sunshine. Dave and Jordan went skim boarding while Sunshine and I laughed at their skills. They actually weren't too bad. Sorry, no pictures. We went out to dinner at Jose's, one of Dave's favorite Mexican restaurants in the area. That night we watched the movie Inkheart. It was enjoyable but a little bit of a let down at the end. Sunday we went to church and it was great to see some of our old friends. It's crazy how much the ward has changed in 3 months. Afterwards, we went to a BBQ at our other friends, the Homa's. It was a great visit. So that's all that's new in our neck of the woods. Sorry for the journal-like entry but I thought I'd share the weekend with you.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Work At ClearBags

So here I am at work. It slows down by Friday. It probably seems REALLY slow for everyone else but I've been pretty busy since everything takes me triple the time to do since I'm still figuring it all out. I enjoy the work and the coworkers. I feel bad having to ask so many questions but obviously I'm not going to get it all the first two weeks. In fact, I probably won't feel super comfortable until I've been here a few months. It's nice to be busy. I started answering phones last Friday, and that's what I do all the time. I take care of customers with orders, returns, samples, etc. The hard part about it is there are so many steps to everything. And sometimes the steps change with different situations so it can be frustrating because I feel like I should know how to do it but then it's different. Also sometimes I just forget. Oh well, I'll get it soon enough. Anyway, I just wanted to update everyone on the new job. I like it but I have lots to learn.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

New Jobs

Well I finally got a job. Well two kinda. First, I started helping Dave's grandma. She needs help getting up in the morning and from naps and then going down for bed (she's in a wheel chair). The rest of the time I'm with her (and grandpa) we read, make sure she takes her pills, and drinks her Ensure.

Second, I started working for a company called ClearBags this past Monday. I am a Customer Service Representative. That means I will be answering phones and taking orders from customers. There seems to be so much to learn but I'll get the hang of it. They have pretty cool stuff. Check out the websites at http://www.clearbags.com/ or http://www.clearenvelopes.com/. I don't know what else to tell you yet. I'm learning lots and am a little overwhelmed but the best way to learn is to just do it. Tomorrow I start using the phones. YIKES! But I'm sure that will help out a whole lot. Everyone seems really friendly and Dave's old bishop is the owner of the company. I've enjoyed it so far but like I said I feel a little overwhelmed.

So with the two jobs I'll be working about 60 hours a week. It's a big change from my summer of vacations but I'm glad to be busy and feel productive.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Let's learn more about Dave


I think it's about time to update everyone about me, partly because I've got things to talk about, and partly because everyone else has gone to bed early because of school and work. Fortunately for me, I don't really have either of those. (sigh...) Well, I do have a "job," but I'm an on-call interpreter for medical appointements that only gave me about 5 hours last week. But I'm not complaining...loudly....
Anywho, Kathryn just got a job as kind of a receptionist at a job here in El Dorado Hills, which she's really excited about. She also helps take care of my grandma several times a week by helping her get in/out of bed, make food, and other things you don't want to read about. I'm sure she'll write a blog post about her job and everything soon.
So while she's bringing home the bacon...again...I'm out surfing. That's right, I am now an official Californian. I've lived in CA my entire life, minus the 6 years I was gone for BYU and Ukraine, but I have never gone surfing until yesterday. My good friend Chris Pritchett took me down to Santa Cruz yesterday and we surfed like you wouldn't believe. Chris actually knows what he's doing, so he managed not to embarass us. I, on the other hand, could hardly even sit on the board without tipping over. Sitting on that thing is harder than it looks! It doesn't help that the first thing you do is make yourself exhausted by paddling out to the waves. Once I got out there, I had to just lay on the board to catch my breath. My first attempts at surfing were a miserable failure. When I finally caught my first wave, I was lying too far forward on the board, so the tip dove into the water and I promptly flopped on my face. My next few tries weren't much better. I did finally manage once to stand up for a second, but the board got ahead of the wave a little bit, so when the wave caught up to me it knocked the board from under my feet, causing me to do a sweet scissor kick in the air that would have had David Beckham drooling. I then decided that the problem must obviously be with the board, so I switched with Chris. His had wax on it. Unfortunately for me, my wet suit only goes down to the knees, so the hair on my legs was constantly being pulled by that sticky wax. Quite uncomfortable, and I now have some sympathy for women (and those freakish men) who wax their legs. After taking a breather/warmer-uper and switching boards back, I was back in action, but only after exhausting myself once again by just swimming out to the waves. The waves started getting bigger (about 5 feet or so), so they were easier to catch, but there were quite a few surfers out there. I had a local guy give me a little lecture about cutting people off after I almost caused a collision. I was trying to play it cool while he was talking to me, saying chill surfer stuff like, "Yea bro, sorry, I totally know better than that," but then a small wave came and knocked me off my board while I was sitting on it, which eliminated any and all remaining respect that that gnarly brosiff may have had for me. My next few tries were actually a little better, and I even stood up for a full two seconds and was definitely moving in a semi-forward direction. I was quite proud of my accomplishment. Our trip was sadly cut slightly short though when a wave crashed in on me and flipped me and the board over, causing the fin of the board to slice my arm open just behind the elbow. It was like hitting your funny bone, except twice as painful. My pinky and ring finger instantly went numb and I couldn't move them for a while. They're ok now, but I looked pretty bodacious rockin' the bloody arm on my way back to the car.
All in all, the trip was quite fun. My only regret is that I really wish I had not watched anything on shark week before I went. Of course, the only thing I saw on shark week was a show about people who survived awful shark attacks but lost limbs in the process, so whenever I was sitting on my board waiting for a new wave to come, my thoughts would instantly turn to my extremities. I was preparing myself mentally for what would happen if I started feeling the teeth of some frisky aquatic monster. I know to go for the shark's eyes. Sharks always let go when you nail them in the eyes. I really wished that I had some sort of a shark tasor though. I would have felt safer. I just made sure that I wasn't ever the furthest one out from the shore, and that I could swim faster than those who were near me. Chris told me, "Don't worry if you see a fin out there. I've seen a lot of dolphins in Santa Cruz." Yea, don't panic. Right. I bet dolphins have sharp teeth too.... Fortunately for everyone involved, (especially for the dolphin's eyes), there were no sea creatures to be found.
In other news, on Thursday I got to interpret for a guy in the operating room! He was having an angiogram, which is a silly little term that means "We're going to stick a giant catheter up through an artery next to your *sensored* and into your heart, then inject some dye in and have a look around." Despite how unpleasant it sounds (although I think I would take it over a colonoscopy any day!), it's actually quite painless since arteries have no nerves, so the patient is awake for the whole procedure. Hence the reason I was invited to join the OR party. I got to put on the booties, a cute little suit, the mask and hair cover, as well as a ginormous lead vest. I sat next to the lady who looks at all sorts of monitors and interprets a bunch of numbers that don't make sense, sort of like in the Matrix. It was interesting, and all I had to do was interpret some things like, "Don't move," "You're going to feel this a little bit," and "How do you feel?" Unfortuantely they found out that the guy I was interpreting for needed a triple bypass surgery and was forced to cancel his upcoming anniversary vacation to Cancun with his wife, but who needs perfect beaches and hot bodies when you can have someone cut open your chest and play with your ventricles? Oh yea, and not dying of an imminent heart attack is a fairly good incentive as well.
Well, that's it for now. Sorry that I can't put spaces between my paragraphs. That annoys me. Peas.

Monday, August 3, 2009

More Birthdays!

Well the birthdays just keep coming. The day after the Ricks Family Reunion (Saturday, August 1), Dad, Mom, Dave, and I headed down to Concord for Uncle Tim and Aunt Darlene's 100th birthday celebration. They aren't really 100 but both turned or are turning 50 this year so they decided to celebrate together. It was pretty clever. Mom and Dad got to see some old friends and I got to meet another cousin. The BBQ food and cake were delicious.
The birthday hats and the birthday boy and girl.

It took the 4 of them (Kimmy, Julie, Dave, and Jessie) to light the candles.

Yes, there were 100 sparkler candles on the cake.

Looks like I wasn't the only one who enjoyed the cake. This is Julie's daughter, Kailey.

And last but not least, yesterday was Josh's birthday. Josh has been here the past week. He came up for the reunion. So of course we celebrated. After church, we had the dinner of his choice, opened presents, played some games, and ate oreo ice-cream cake. So we have been partying a lot lately but I'm not complaining. It's been a great couple of weeks.

Opening presents.

Taking a big breath to blow out all those candles.

Ricks Family Reunion

Well the official summer vacations have come to an end. This past week was the last of them. We had a Ricks Family Reunion up near Shasta Lake at Coram Ranch (in California). It was Tuesday through Friday. Dave and I drove up later on Tuesday night. The next 3 days were full of all kinds of fun.

Dave and I competed in the couples Ping Pong and Bocce Ball Tournaments. We lost both of them to Uncle Chris and Aunt Roseanne. Dave played singles Ping Pong and lost to Devon. He also played partner Foosball with Matt against Devon and Ryan which he also lost. So to make a long story short, Dave and I lost every tournament we played to a member of the McCaffree family. Dave had some bitterness but has since let it go...as far as I can tell.

The time that wasn't devoted to intense tournament play was spent swimming to escape the heat, eating really great food, playing card games (Rook and Nerts), touring caves, entering our guesses for the many different guessing games (Dave did win 2 of those), singing, and telling stories. It was great to meet more family and it was really a lot of fun. Can't wait for the next one!

On the boat ride over to the caves.

Admiring the incredible cave features.

Foosball Tournament: Dave and Matt against Devon and Ryan

Brian, Uncle Ron, Aunt Billy, Uncle David, and Aunt Traude

Cousins Tina, Justin, and James with some of their kids

Grandpa and Grandma, Aunt Marie, Uncle Larry, and Meagan

Getting ready for some serious Nerts.