Life Transplanet

Yesterday as part of my Leadership Weld County class, we had “government day” where we learned about our local and state government. We met with some government officials, including our mayor, Tom Norton. During the Q&A section with the mayor I asked him if he had possibly reconsidered his position on chickens. Suffice it to say that we had words in front of the whole class and there is no way that he is changing his position.We also met with a county commissioner and our clerk and recorder.

With my friends Kelly and Jamie at the Capitol

Then we headed out on the bus to the capitol in Denver. We took a tour of the building and then met with some of our representatives and senators. It was a pretty fun trip.

Looking out the windows of the dome to the Colorado Rocky Mountains

I started out my professional career working at Village Inn when I was 16 years old as a busboy. I learned how to clean the tables pick out which cleaners to use and was responsible and timely with all aspects of the job. It paid off. They moved me up to Dishwasher. Eventually I did so well they moved me up to waiter!

From This (not actually me, Im way hotter)

Its much the same as I did for the company I work at now. Just proving oneself can get you places. I started doing some CD production and distribution and now I am working on software engineering projects for 911 and doing software quality testing with no formal education.

For me its all about setting goals and being persistent. I came here not knowing what the vi editor was in unix. Now I can make advanced shell scripts that run at an enterprise level site (have several hundreds servers and several datacenters). Learning new programming languages, learning about system administration, data cabling, fail over philosophy and many many other attributes of computing that I didn’t even know existed a few years ago.

To This (not actually our data center, our cabling is much cleaner)

When I look at where I started it gives me a good sense of pride to know where I am at now. I don’t exactly know what I will do once I get to PR but if the past is any indication I will do whatever it is I set out to do. I’ve never really failed at anything I’ve tried (rentals, carpentry, flying, computers, sports, jobs, etc)

The saying is true. You can do whatever you put your mind to. The part they don’t tell you is that it takes hard work, perseverance and dedication. Most important of all is that you can’t give up. Ever. The best skill that I’ve gained thru all my hard work is that I will do ‘whatever it takes’ to accomplish something.

I feel the same way about our Puerto Rico goal. I’ll do whatever it takes. Sometimes its discouraging to not have already completed this. Cassie and I were talking about it and as it happens to be; we could complete our goal to move to PR today. We could do this pretty easily.

The issue comes from knowing ourselves fairly well. We have realized that we want a challenge out of this. That is what we do, seek out and accomplish challenging goals. We aren’t ready to retire, we want to get to PR and make a difference or a substanial positive impact and have an adventure.

Who knows. I could start out there doing whatever it takes to get by and end up somewhere I never imagined or thought possible asking myself, “How did I get here?”. I ask myself that pretty much daily already, I don’t expect it to change! lol.

To This?

Stop…..Hammer Time…Or is it Hammer Time stops?

I’ve never broken a hammer  before so I was kind of surprised.  I guess it means I am a badass.  Lol.   I was pulling up carpet tack strips and it just gave way.   I’ve had it for a long time so its like losing a well known friend.  It helped me with our basement (I actually used it as a framing hammer before I knew they had “framing hammers”….Learning curve).

Cassie’s addition to the post:

Well this little rental house is probably the biggest undertaking we have made in our rentals and in our own house. We have finished our basement, are currently working on a basement project on another property and had to do some minimal work on the other rental, but this is the first project that we’ve had to do some major demolition work on. We had to paint, tear out the carpet, all the tack strips, staples and backing for the tub. But the biggest chore so far has been in the kitchen. We had to remove all the glued on sticky blue fake wood formica, the backing and remove the sink.  Thankfully we are hiring out the tiling and wood refinishing, but this has been a major job. Here are a few pictures and a video of the process. We are excited to see how far the tilers got today while we were at work.

Tub area after removing the old plastic backing

Bathroom Floor 1/2 with old pink carpet

Here is the kitchen 1/2 through demo

This was tons of fun! (not)

No, I’m not actually ill from H1N1 -AKA Swine Flu, but I am figuratively sick and tired of it. Ever since my normal job in health education was cut due to statewide budget cuts, I have been working in Emergency Preparedness, specifically in H1N1. At first I didn’t mind too much, and actually I find the whole process kind of interesting, but lately I feel like I am going to burst with so much work! I am in charge of supplies (both vaccine and ancillary supplies -from consent forms to cotton balls), I have to write a situation report daily, I still try to squeeze in a few translations, and I am the volunteer coordinator. Not only that but I am trying to figure out this whole incident command structure. Agh!

I am sure after this initial push, things will calm down and it will run much more smoothly. I just hope things simmer down sooner than later. All these meetings, missing lunch (yesterday all I had for lunch was a cookie!) and putting out “fires” may very well make me literally sick and tired.

On the plus side, I thought of another use for eggs: vaccine!