Friday Five: Oh Me, Oh My

1. Work is really picking up. I worked three nights this week - in addition to my normal day schedule. But I also feel like I'm finally getting in a groove with my new job. One of the reasons I took this job was because I thought it would be a good fit with my strengths and interests, and this week proved I was right. Tuesday was my rock star day: I delivered a presentation that resulted in two new volunteers and a new patient. I also got word that my event chair recruited a volunteer to handle advocacy, a focus area because the Texas legislature is in session right now.
   
   
2. Saturday I'm walking in the Komen Race for the Cure. I've never participated in a Komen Race in the spring before. I hope it doesn't rain.
   
   
3. I found this great, high-intensity workout on Exercise TV On Demand. It's a boot camp aerobic workout, and it wears me out! Any exercise routine that involves burpees and mountain climbers is hard work. If you have Exercise TV On Demand, give it a try. I think it's called BootCampCalBurn.
   
   
4. I know this is old news, but was anyone else shocked when South Africa not only denied a visa for the Dalai Lama to attend a peace summit but announced they were awarding Castro with an honor they've also awarded to MLK and Gandhi?
   
   
5. My sister is getting married next Saturday. Crazy, crazy, crazy. A week after that, my college friend Elisabeth is getting married. So I'll be spending the new two weekends in Houston and Lubbock. As a result, please do not expect regularly-scheduled programming. I've barely kept up the last few weeks.
   

Friday Five: Picture Perfect

I have a strange assortment of photos on my external hard drive. I've picked five of my favorites to share with you today.

1. Rachel interprets the look on Joe's face as "Why I am surrounded by all these crazy white people?" It's a valid question. Me, and the gang, in all our silliness.
   
   
2. The reason I started this blog was to document my trip to Prague in 2006 (?), so I'm including a picture of the chandelier made from every bone in the human body from the "bone church" outside of Prague. Fascinating place.
   
   
3. I couldn't speak Italian, they couldn't speak English, but these nice Roman police officers were kind enough to take a photo with me.
   
   
   
4. I had to provide a childhood photo for a United Way retreat two years ago, so this is the only photo of me as a child in my possession. Aren't I adorable? :-)
   
   
   
5. And of course, the blurry photo of me and John Corbett, the actor from Sex and the City. My shirt reads "Sex my city." I wore this tank under my "normal" clothes. He was greeting everyone after the show, taking pictures, so I told him about the tank I had on. He made me show it to him. Then he made me take a photo with him. And he made me hug him no less than five times. And he slapped my butt for good measure. Ah, encounters with tipsy famous people.
   
   
   

Friday Five: Things You Should Know

Another late Friday post. I was in Austin all last week for a training, so I didn't have time to write.

Today I'm listing five things I think you should know about me. My guess is that most of you already know these things, but, hey, I have to come up with five things to write every week.

1. I keep a Happy List, and I have since my junior year in high school. It's a list of things that make me laugh, I feel blessed by, I am grateful for or I appreciate. You get the idea. I have seven or eight journals full of happy thoughts from the last 20 years, which I think is a great way to track my life. I have a blast reading through old happy lists from college with my ACU friends. All it takes is a simple phrase, and we're laughing and reminiscing. Thanks Janie for the idea!
   
   
2. I love the Dallas Cowboys. Always have, always will. Not sure why. I really don't remember when I started following the Cowboys. It's almost like I woke up one day and decided to be a fan. Growing up, we always watched Cowboys games on Thanksgiving, but that was about it. And I started watching before the first Super Bowl of the 90s, so I wasn't jumping on the bandwagon. You know where to find on Sunday afternoons during football season.
   
   
3. I love movies. My aunt dragged me to see the movie Spitfire Grill in high school because it won some award at the Sundance Film Festival. I had never heard of it. Little did she know that the knowledge that such a movie even existed would change my movie viewing habits forever. In college I started searching out movies with endorsements by Sundance, Cannes and all the other obscure film festivals and film critics groups. Not all were winners. Ask Rachel. But my search led me to films like Memento, Run Lola Run and Billy Elliot. It's why I become obsessed with the Oscars every year, even though I could go on a tangent about how political the Oscars have become. It's why I read film blogs, so I can hear about movies like City of God, one of the best movies I've seen since college. I'm not a film buff, because I haven't seen many classic films. I'm not going to give examples. I don't want to embarrass myself. But I do love films.
   
   
4. I've subscribed to Newsweek since sophomore year of high school. Even when I was living in London and Ireland, I kept up my subscription. The first thing I do when I come home on a Tuesday, is flip through the latest issue. I won't pretend to know everything or even have an opinion about everything, but I want to know what is going on in our country and world. Just like I believe every able person should vote, I believe those of us in free countries should take advantage of the information available to us. How can we keep our leaders accountable if we're ignorant?
   
   
5. If I had the money and opportunity, I would quit my job and leave everyone I know to travel the world. My family always traveled, but we were limited to where we could get by car in a day or two. I don't think I appreciated what my parents gave to me by taking me to different cities and different states. But when I moved to London, and then to Ireland, and started jumping from city to city in Europe, I fell in love with what I was doing. I loved acting like a local to get to know a new city. I loved comparing my culture to the culture I was in. I loved seeing the history I sort of remembered from high school. I loved arriving in a new city where I didn't speak the language with only a book to direct me. You get to know yourself that way. I told a story to my boss about arriving in Athens at night, by myself, with no place to stay, and a guidebook that translated Greek street names into English. Not helpful when you are trying to figure out where to go. I don't remember how I got to the hotel; I just figured it out. And my boss said that story explained a lot about how I work. To her, I take in what I know, what I can get, and then start moving, putting the pieces together as I can to get a result. And she knows I am going to get the job done. Was I always that way or did I develop that skill by traveling? Either way, I know that travel changed me and will always change me if I do it right.