Steven Curtis Chapman concert

Last night was the Steven Curtis Chapman concert at RHCC, featuring Bethany Dillon & Sanctus Real (who are not hot at all. No, not even a little bit. Usually I drool when I see people who are unattractive & I drooled a lot last night. The lead singer is so unappealing that I had to do an actual double take when I passed him in the parking lot. Honesty check - I thought it was Jeremy Camp. Another unattractive speciman that turns me into a Pavlovian dog.) Let's see if it passed the limus test for a good concert. Measurements are taken as soon as the main act has left the stage & the lights come on and the euphoria of a musical high is still upon you:

Ringing of the ears: What?! I can't hear you! CHECK.
Pitted shirt: Nope. Wait a sec. . .yes, I think a little bit. CHECK. (This would have been a definite 'no' except that I jumped for the last 10 minutes of the concert to 2 songs that physically can NOT be sung while standing still.
Loss of voice: Unable to confirm at this point. I still can't hear anything.

There were several things I kept thinking all the way through the concert: Who knew that SCC could rock? His songs are so nice to hum along with on the radio but dang it if he wasn't hopping around the stage with his electric guitar. (OK, hopping probably isn't the right word. I'm sure there's a technical musicial term to describe the moving around on stage on 2 feet and I'm sure the prefix changes depending what instrument you're currently holding, if any.) Of course, I'm sure he's influenced by his 18-year-old son on guitar & back-up vocals and 16-year-old son on drums. (For the record, they rocked too. Not a bad gig - being on tour with your dad and brother DURING THE SCHOOL YEAR).

The other thing I kept thinking was: OH, I didn't know he sang this song! I love this song! This is a fairly regular revelation that I have at concerts. I don't know who I think sings all these songs. They can't all be one-hit wonders can they? And you would think I could recognize voices of people whose CD's I have, right? I'm chalking it up to my ADD while listening to the radio - if I hear a DJ's voice, I usually change the station, thus missing the announcement of who just sang the song I was singing along with.

He also sang several new songs from his new CD. . .oh, excuse me. . .album that's coming out soon. I usually hate when artists do this during a concert because I want to be able to sing along with the oldies but goodies. But oh my goodness, I'm pretty sure I'm buying it today. One of the new songs performed last night was called "Cinderella" and will be the 'Father/Daughter' dance at my wedding. It's 'Butterfly Kisses' meets 'Dance With My Father'. . .except better. And in case you're wondering, yes, yes I did. Through the whole song.

I really wanted to hear/jump to/sing along with the song "Dive" and I started getting really worried because he hadn't sung it and you knew that the concert was headed toward the end. Turns out, "Dive" was the finale! woo-hoo! Because anything after that would have just been downhill. Looks like SCC is a pretty smart guy. Save the best for last. Not only is this great on the radio, it's also been done in the Treehouse so I love it even more. Yes, I did jump, and that is how I was able to check #2 off my list up above.

Now there's only 6 weeks left until the Mother Concert!!! Yea Mindo Doo!

Online suitor who e-mailed me but has a better chance of walking into a room and meeting Elvis & Puff the Magic Dragon than a date with me - take 2

Stats: 35-year-old man
Job status: see below
He seeks: 20-40-year-old women
Picture: taken with SpongeBob & Patrick and fanny pack as a personal accessory
Just happens to: work at my work. . .as a part time produce deliverer

D-Day

Holy bump on a log - the President & CEO of Nike just (unexpectedly) came into our office. Holy bump on a log!!!!!

Don't worry, I didn't choke. I said "Hello" very nice and perky-like. Luckily he was far enough away that he didn't smell my honey mustard breath from my Quizno's salad. And no, I did not fling a resume or anything at him. . .Oh yeah, kind of forgot I don't need to try and get a job anymore.

And a big "I told you so" goes out to my group when they told me not to clean the room today because why would MP ever come into our area????

Labri Dirske

Earth lost and Heaven gained an angel this weekend.

www.caringbridge.org/visit/labridirkse

Men (& Women) at Work

At the rate of sounding like a broken record, I must once again let the world know (or the 4 people reading this blog entry) how much I love my job and the people I work with. I can't get over how extremely blessed and fortunate I am. These are people that I not only like to work with but I would actually be friends with them and hang out with them beyond the 8-5 daily grind. Oh wait, I already do that. Friends with co-workers. . .what a concept. Why didn't I try this sooner? Oh wait, it's because people were mean to me and 20 years older than me with kids. (You can blame the extreme over-use of the phrase "oh wait" and "oh by the way" on my boss. He extremely over-uses it during the day and in e-mails.)

And to think, I had doubts about taking the dang thing because it was in an "off campus" building. (Hello, snob?) Back in "the day", "off campus" was a derragatory term. It basically meant you weren't in a department that was important enough to the company to warrant a space by the lake. It meant that someone thought it was OK for you to trek half a mile if you wanted to see anyone else in the company. It meant playing Frogger with your life as you try to cross one of 2 major roads. So let's recap, if you were off campus you were an unimportant, overweight peon that the company didn't care about if you were to get run over on your way to a meeting.

Oh how the tides have turned. I'm not saying that it's now uncool to be on campus. That is definitely not the case. 4th floorers are still more important than 3rd floorers (in the eyes of the 4th floorers) but in my case - our case - we're off campus because we need to be away from people. If people want to meet with us, then they must trek the half mile, avoid semis & soccer moms and meet one of us at the door because you need a badge and key to get to us. It kind of makes me feel like Princess Daisy in the old school Super Mario Bros. The rest of the world must get by Bowser and the lake of fire to come to our conference room.

Even if I hand-picked my group, I would not change a thing. . .OK, maybe one thing, but then again, no, maybe not. (That's why I could never be a director. Can't make a decision to save my life - not even when it comes to rhetorical questions.) Not only do I work with the hardest-working, funniest, creative, loving people but I have the best seat in the room! I've never had that. I've always sat in the "temp" seat which is always out by the front since it's like a a yearly revolving doors for admins. But now I'm right smack dab in the middle. If I could have planned the seating chart, I would have drawn it up exactly how it is now. I would not change a thing. Which begs the question again: how the heck am I so freakin' lucky? Seriously. I'm already dreading when I have to leave. I'm going to cry like. . .well, like me. Now whether that's in June or August, that's up to God (and the admission counselors.) I really feel like someone said: here is a million dollars, and oh, because I'm so generous or because you're so cool, I'm going to give you ten million more. Except, no one really said that, otherwise I'd be blogging about the beaches of Maldives while sitting in a hammock in Maldives. (Did you know a plane ticket there starts at $3500? Let's see, if I put away $20 a week, I'll have a ticket saved up by. . .no sense in calculating that one. I plan on marrying into money anyway, so it's really not an issue.)

It's amazing how your entire attitude and heart change when you genuinely care for people and are part of a group that wants to succeed. (or have been told, "succeed or get fired".) I don't mind being the coffee person (as long as it's not everyday). Heck, I can even tell you everybody's "usuals": Grande non-fat latte, Venti non-fat white mocha, Venti regular coffee w/half & half and a little bit of brown sugar, Grande americano w/a 1.5 second pour of non-fat milk & 3 sugars, Venti regular coffee w/lots of room for half & half and 1 splenda, 16 oz Diet Mt. Dew and another 16 oz Diet Mt. Dew. Who thought I would ever not mind making copies? I tell you, a genuine thank you goes a long way. Tomorrow will definitely be a bonding day for us. Everyone is coming in their scrubs so we can pimp out our place for the President's walk thru on Monday. That's fine with me because I know there will be loud music, way too much laughing and some of my favorite peeps present.

Hello? Is it me you're looking for?

Wanted: my life back
Last seen: Sept. 23, the night before Oregon Public Colleges & Universities began school
Reward: HUGE!

Hi. I seem to have lost my life. If you find it, will you tell it that I miss it and that I wish it would come back?

Online suitor who e-mailed me but has a better chance of walking into a room and meeting Elvis & Puff the Magic Dragon than a date with me - take 1

Stats: 50-year-old man
Job status: mail sorter during graveyard shift for USPS
He seeks: 18-35 year-old women
Picture resembles: child predator mug shot
Just happens to: have a large movie poster of Casablanca in his bedroom

I wish I could make this stuff up people!

Words heard in the Treehouse today

Teacher B: "When are some times that you should have respected someone but you didn't?"
Kid #1: "One time. After I locked my brother out in the snow. He pushed me down to the ground and held a knife over me."
Teacher B: "Wow. That really scares me."

Teacher B: "King Saul was really jealous & angry."
Kid #2: "No, he was mad."

The Rub Down

So today I did something I've only done once before in my life. No, not jumping out of a plane. No, not jumping off a bridge. Not jumping over or off of anything really. I got a massage. I got my first professional massage 3 years ago courtesy of my entire department who left me for the Athens Olympics for a month. Not quite an equal trade but a nice attempt. I told myself that after the marathon I would get a massage and I can think of no better week to get one - what with all the skunks, tests & flying cyclists I've had to deal with. Since I'm still quite the newbie at the whole massage thing, I forgot how much effort it takes to prepare for one.

1. Shaving - you have to shave your entire leg, not just up to the knee. This is unfamiliar territory for me, seeing as how it's winter now and there will be no need for my pasty whites to be exposed to sunlight until next July and it's been approximately 8 years since someone touched my legs on purpose. Creepy Spanish guys in techno clubs do NOT count.
2. Shampoo - you can't use the weekend, intensive dandruff control, I-can-smell-that-odor-from-across-the-room-and-are-you-sure-the-skunk-hasn't-returned-to-spray-our-house-again shampoo. Luckily at the last minute, I remembered this and changed to the celebrity endorsed, mango smelling stuff - disposing of a quarter-sized lump of orange Head & Shoulders. $1.27 washed down the drain. . .literately.
3. Digits - Your fingers and toes are going to be massaged so they have to be in good shape as well. Luckily, I am a pro at slapping on nail polish at the last second because I have a gene in me that makes me late for everything except soccer games. I only had to open my top bathroom drawer and there was the go-to pink & clear polishes for the toes & fingers, respectively.
4. Under garments - Have to be cute, none of this plain color boring stuff. I don't want a stranger to think I'm boring or too conservative, (because I'm not) nor do I want them thinking I will be going home with Big Joe tonight after a couple of rounds at Dante's. (because I won't)

This is hard work! I probably won't go to this much hard work again until my wedding day. I can handle this every 3 years.

A massage is a very interesting thing. In a nutshell, I am paying someone to grease me up and rub me down. Yeah, put like that, it definitely doesn't sound appealing. I'm just lying there on a table, with one article of clothing on and someone is digging into my lower back and neck. Only a handful of people have seen me with one article of clothing on and for most of those viewings, that article was a diaper. And this is legal?

But once you're in the middle of the massage - it's so worth it. Except that you have about an hour to think to yourself. But first you have to drown out the annoying background music before you can do any thinking. Now I'm a fan of instrumental music but I simply don't enjoy New Age or sounds from nature. If I want to hear the birds, I will open my window thank you very much. A little Jim Brickman or William Joseph will make my week but anything with a sitar and you might as well have Marion Carpet commercials running in the background on a continuous loop. (FYI - Carpet Carl bugs the heck out of me for no particular reason.) So once we've tuned out the music, we can tune into our thoughts. That actually could be quite scary so maybe the monk chanting would be good for me after all.

Hmmmm, what can I think about while a stranger is rubbing my lower hip with oil? So I start making my to-do list for when I get home: make lab flashcards, read 30 pages in my book, study the flashcards I made, watch a movie I have from the library. . .but that totally defeats the purpose of the massage and relaxing. I try really hard not to think about the totally and completely messed up dream I had last night that included my premie baby whose head was separated from its body but was still alive (I know!) I can think about my lines for Treehouse tomorrow - nope, haven't memorized those yet. And then you start playing the "what if" game. And unless all your questions involve winning the lottery, marrying John Krasinski, or traveling around the world (all three of which I fully intend to do at some point in my life) that game can get out of hand FAST! So I tell my mind to go dark. Just go black. Game over. The end. Hasta luego. Nope can't do that either. By now, the music really is playing instrumental music with piano. Yea! I think I recognize this song. Is it from a movie? Is it from church? Did I ever sing this at school? OK, time to go dark again. No more thinking.

And before you know it, it's over! If you're ever looking for a way to pass the day because it's going too slow, a message will put you through a black hole of sorts. Time passes way too quickly. And in another 3 years, I get to go through it all over again.

Whomever argument

This scene was a little longer on Thursday's show but it is still one of THE BEST scenes of any Office.