Have you ever...

...been sneezed in the face by a parakeet? Let me tell you, bird boogers aren't fun.

It's the perfect end to a very odd day today. Everything started off fine, but it all went downhill starting at about 2:00. Not bad downhill, just awkward downhill.

I'm now going to go watch "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" which I rented more than a week ago. Maybe it will help me feel more normal.

Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival

Carolyn and I went to the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival this past weekend. It wasn't quite what I expected (more Halloween crafts) but it was still pretty fun. Of course the highlight was the gigantic pumkins. And the delicious pumpkin roll with cream cheese frosting :) Mmmmmm. Then we went to Poplar beach and spent some time admiring the beautiful ocean. I'd never been to HMB before. They have a really great stretch of beach! Probably the best I've experienced in Northern California. Every beach I've been to is rocky and the water is gray. Bleh. Here are some highlights:

Great Minds Think Alike

Sylvie and I showed up to work wearing the same dress one day last week. What are the chances? I think we've been spending too much time together. Our coworkers thought it was quite funny. I, however, chose to wear my sweater all day.

Karma and Compliments

For the past four or five months, a dress has been hanging on the chair of my dining room table. Well, part of a dress. It's one I started making for Carolyn. I took a brief break from it once it called for me to blind stitch a seam. At the time, I decided it was too much work to switch the foot on my sewing machine and teach myself how to use it, so I decided to walk away from it temporarily. Now, months later, I found myself staring at it from across the room yesterday. Why did I just leave it sitting there? It's reminding me of what a failure I am! I should move it. I'll never teach myself to blind stitch. I should give it up. I don't know what the big deal is. I taught myself how to sew more than a year ago and seem to have figured everything else out. But, I just gave up.

So today at work, I noticed something was going on with the bottom of my pant leg. Turned out, a thread had come undone, wrapped around my shoe and completely ripped out from the entire cuff. Now the fabric was hanging down unfinished and ugly. I figured I could easily fix it when I got home, but when I took a closer look, guess what? It was blind stitched! Now I have no choice but to teach myself. Ah...it figures.

Ok, I admit. That story was probably not at all interesting to anyone who doesn't sew. But, I think it just shows that if you're meant to do something...the universe will get around to making you do it.

On another note! We got goody bags after our 5k yesterday and they included a bag of salsa picante Corazonas chips. I brought them to work today to have as a snack and oh my gosh...they were delicious! They were like healthy, low fat, low calorie, whole grain chips. I loved them so much, I immediately Googled the chips to find out where I could buy more. They are just a little company, so when I saw that I could email them, I decided to write a note complimenting on how good the chips were. I figured they'd want to know that giving away all those chips, they received a new customer. Well, they wrote me back and are sending me coupons. Yay! I've never been so excited about receiving coupons!! Mmmmm. My mouth is watering already!

Step Out to Fight Diabetes

My friend Katie signed up to walk the Step Out to Fight Diabetes 5k this morning. Since it was held in downtown Walnut Creek, I think she figured it would be convenient for me to join her. I had the same thought for why Mom, Dad and Carolyn should join us too! So, it was Katie, the four Paynes, Katie's brother, mother, brother-in-law and our team captain...Sunny! Sunny is the Cheng family's yellow lab. Of course, she's adorable. I was surprised that the event was so dog friendly, but there were quite a few pooches walking with us. It made it that much more fun!

I can't remember if I've written about Katie before, but we were friends in high school. She was on the tall flags our junior year when I was on letters. Our senior year, we volunteered at Kaiser and, let's just say, had quite a few adventures together at that hospital! We kept in touch sporadically throughout college and the few years afterward, but really got back in touch when I moved here a few years ago. Now we see each other once every couple months or so whenever she gets a break from studying for law school which she's attending in Santa Clara. She's definitely one of those friends that no matter how much time goes by, we just jump right back in to where we left off. And we always have fun and lots of laughs :)

Back in the day...this was at a football game in '97. We're still this goofy.
Us with Lee in our colorguard outfits

Today!
Carolyn, me, Katie and Sunny
Sunny was ready for a nap and so was I!

Turkey Update

I was leaving my house yesterday morning around 8:00 and I saw five members of that turkey family on the hill at the end of my street. They are so big now! They were on one side of a small barbed wire fence and a man was walking his dog on the path just on the other side. He was probably 5 or 6 feet from the turkeys, so I sat at the stop sign for awhile waiting for the dog to go crazy and chase or bark at the birds. But he totally ignored them. Instead, it was the turkeys who came closer, lined up and followed the man and his dog along their side of the fence. They didn't phase the dog, or the man for that matter. It was so weird!

This morning, I was leaving for work around 7:15 and six of the turkeys were on the same hill eating breakfast. Tomorrow I'm going to take my camera with me, just in case I see them so I can show you how big they are now. What a crazy bunch!

Marcos' Art Show

My coworker, Marcos, is an artist and had a showing of some of his paintings last night at Zza's Wine Bar in Oakland. So, I went with a couple of my other coworkers, Sylvie and Nahal, to check it out. It was a pretty cool place and Marcos had a good turnout for the show. Marcos is one of our graphic artists and is the only guy in our department with us 10 other women. Can you believe that? Poor guy. But, Nahal, Sylvie and I kind of adopted him into our little group. We're all the newest to the department and all started around the same time, so it just kind of worked out. After the show, we went to Joe's in Lafayette for drinks and dancing. It was such a fun night!
Me, Nahal and Sylvie. Us three girls have grown pretty close and we always have a good time together. They're good friend. I think you can tell just by looking at our smiles! We warm each other's hearts ;)

Me, Nahal, Sylvie and Marcos

Nahal and her boyfriend Paul

Sylvie and me at Joe's

I've Got Class

I had to teach a class today. Incredible, I know. After all, what do I know? About anything?!?! The kicker is that not only did I have to teach it, but I had to create the curriculum. I called it "The Power of PR" and it was designed to teach some of our agents in Utah about public relations and how they can take advantage of our PR team (me) to draw attention to their business and office. It's all done on a WebEx, which is basically a conference call where people sit in front of their computers and watch as I show them stuff. It's all very exciting.

So, everything went fine. There was one tiny snafu where I clicked on the wrong thing and got lost and then no one could see what I was trying to show them. But, I fixed it, blamed it on the "renegade laptop," and moved along.

My favorite part was at the end when I opened it up to the group for questions and heard one lady say to someone who must have been sitting next to her, "is that it?" WHAT DOES SHE MEAN "IS THAT IT?" WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? I'VE BEEN TALKING FOR 25 MINUTES HERE! I CAN'T STAND ON MY HEAD AND SHOOT FIREWORKS FROM MY TOES FOR A GRAND FINALE LADY!

Overall, the whole thing made me feel very uncomfortable. There's something about these conference calls that I don't like. I don't seem to have too much difficulty talking to groups of people in person, but I can't do it on the phone. I get super nervous. Maybe because I know that on the phone, they are paying close attention to what I'm saying. In person, they are probably focusing more on how poofy my hair looks, or how I have lint on my pants or something, and they don't listen closely enough to notice that I'm not making much sense. At least, that's what I tell myself to make public speaking a little easier. Any little thing helps!

I Love October

I love October. I can't explain it, but this is my most favoritist of months and I am in bliss. I woke up this morning thinking about how happy I'm going to be for the next 31 days. Nothing gets me down in Octobers. At least, for the most part.

And what a great start to the month. I had lunch at the Cliffhouse in San Francisco again, where I listened to the economist for the California Assoc. of Realtors speak about the status of the market. It might sound boring, but it was actually quite interesting. Man their food is good. I purposely ate less of my chicken so I would have room for their SCREAMIN' chocolate mouse dessert. MMM. Then, I got to meet some of our managers who I have only talked to on the phone, and I got an extremely huge compliment from our SF president on a piece that I ghost wrote for him last week. I didn't use words like "favoritist" or "screamin'" by the way :P

Now, I will lay in bed and do some reading. I feel on top of the world!

Maybe I'll do more blogging this month too. I have a few things coming up that might be interesting. We'll see......