Putting out Fires

There are few things in life that piss me off more than when the check comes after a nice meal and right there hidden between the chicken enchiladas and the extra side of guac is “15% Gratuity”, hoping not to be noticed. 

Ryan and I are very generous tippers actually.  As a for instance, we went for lunch today to one of our favorite places, Red White and Brew (plug!), and our waitress Amy was so good that we gave her what amounted to about a 25% tip.  We’ve noticed that there’s really no such thing as great service anymore, so if we have stellar service we always ask to see the manager and thank them for having their servers go the extra mile.

However, tonight we met my parents and a couple they’ve been friends with for about 20 years for dinner (and if you can do simple math you know that’s 6 people total).  When the check arrived, there it was.  Gratuity added in.  For a party of 6!  The bill was $93.68 and when the waiter came to ask us if we needed any change (translation:  how much of this will be left over for a tip for me?) my dad (who has never been known to keep quiet when there’s a point to be made) brazenly told him that no, no change was needed and that his $93.68 in exact change was right there clanging on the tip tray.

And if I was vindictive, I’d tell you exactly what the restaurant was that we ate at.

Ryan and I had a great time this weekend!  Funk if fully under control and I’m back on my regular Barros pizza, Red Bull and vodka Sunday routine, so life is grand.  Prepare yourself for a verital onslought of photos from our camping trip.

This weekend was the trip of many visits!  We’ve never been camping and had people make a special trip just to come up and visit, but it happened THREE separate times this weekend.  First though, here’s a look of our campsite (hopefully that tent will be replaced by a nice, comfy trailer by this time next year).

Our fist visitor was one of Ryan’s firefighter buddies.  I only know him by last name and nickname, so we’ll have to call him Mr. V.  Anyway, I got some much-needed hammock time while the boys were doing boy stuff.  Evidence:

Our next visitors were my friend J and his awesome wife.  You know, the couple that saved my England adventure?  We had NO idea that they were coming up and it was a shock when a vehicle pulled into our campspot in the middle of nowhere.  They came to see the view, have a beer, and chat.  How often have you had someone say to you, “Oh yeah, if it works out we’ll stop by” but then they never do?  But to have someone drive all the way up to the mountains just to see you?  After they left we hit the sack earlier and were up all night because of a group of 20-somethings (oh shit, I’M a 20-something.  I feel like an old woman…) had their music blaring until 4am.

The next morning my in-laws came up to see us for the day and we took what turned out to be a 5.2 mile (ouch!) hike around Woods Canyon Lake.  The dogs, who normally refuse to get within 5 feet of our pool, had a BLAST running through the water.

We also saw some interesting wildlife.

I swear that mushroom is real.  After R’s parents left the REAL party began.  We decided that the only way to combat the roudy youngins in the neighboring camping was to blast our own music.  To our dismay, they liked it and cheering echoed through the forest after every song.  But we still had a good time.  And they still kept us up until 4am.  Again. 

At any rate, it was too short a trip and I can barely remember what I’m stressed out about work for.  I feel like a whole new person after our trip.  And just so you get a full appreciation of what our campsite was like, here’s the view from our front yard.

But on the flip side, this is about 1/4 mile from where we were camping.  This is what was left after the Rodeo-Chediski fire. 

Burned trees as far as the eye can see.  So kiddies, lesson for today:  enjoy your wilderness but please put out your fires.  I know, very moral today, but I’m about two red bulls in, so this is what you get.  More tomorrow!

In my bid to find the perfect hobby to fill my newly found free time, I let Min convince me to try out her yoga studio.  I seriously question the intelligence of a yoga style based on doing postures in a room that is purposely as hot as the Arizona afternoon outside.  I’m not sure yet if I got a good workout, but I certainly was dripping by the time we left. 

This week I’ve felt a little bit like a shell.  I haven’t been able to feel like myself at all.  I know it has a lot to do with adjusting back to life in the US, but I can’t seem make that turn back to normal.  And I have to tell you that someone who reads here on this blog told me that I’m actually more entertaining when I’m pissed off about something.  Isn’t that sad?

But when I walked out of yoga today, I felt new and shiny.   And now with the imminent camping trip, all I have to look forward to is fun. 

I hope you all have a great weekend and I look forward to sharing pics of forest craziness when I get back.

When I was growing up, my family was always going on camping trips. Its hard to be sure when you’re a kid, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t have that much money so camping was an awesome way to get out of the heat, spend some quality family time together, and it was relatively inexpensive. Once we got beyond the general stress of the packing (sometimes this would lead to some very angry family members and us two kids hiding in the car trying to stay out of the way), we were off and it was fun time! My brother Kevin and I are the best of friends now, and I’m sure its because instead of leaving us to sit in front of the TV all weekend, my parents let us loose on the forest where we built forts, played hide and seek, ran with the dog, and generally just were wild children. We used to do this thing with our canvas hammocks where one of us would lay in it and pull it tight all around us until we were in a cocoon, then the other person would flip us over until we were upside down and we’d try to hook our knees and shoulders and hang just so we wouldn’t fall out on to the ground. I came by my love of books during monsoon seasons when we had to stay cooped up in the tent trailer all day, and I acquired my card shark abilities on nights where it was too cold to be outside by the fire. Oh, and I’m a pro at getting a marshmallow the perfect shade of toasty brown.

For all that camping in the middle of nowhere, I’m a highly spoiled camper. I’m used to: sleeping in a tent trailer, having a porta potty, having a PeePee TeePee (I swear its really called that) to use as a bathroom and as a shower stall (yes, I said shower), we always had electricity from a battery, my mom always cooked gourmet meals, I could go on…

When I met Ryan, he’d never been camping before. For our first big trip together we decided to go to Sequia/Kings Canyon National Park for a long weekend. He was hooked! Since then, we’ve gone camping more than a few times every summer, and occasionally we even go and camp on the beach in Mexico when the weather’s right. Camping is the best because its an opportunity for us to just veg. It is absolutely impossible for me to get Ryan to sit still at home, but if we’re camping I can get him to lay in a hammock with me for hours. So, I may not have any of the frills now (picture me trying to cook on a barely functioning propane stove balanced precariously on a rock), but we still have a blast.

This weekend we’re going camping for the first time this summer and I’m so excited. Just to get out of the valley and be in nature. To hang out with friends with a good beer and a story around the campfire. I’m SURE this is going to get me out of my funk.

Oh, and there is a slight possibility that my little bro will come along too, but I’m betting that there’ll be less fort building and more tequila shoting.

I know enough people who are clinically depressed to know that depression, true depression, is sometimes not a choice.  And I know enough women to know that hormones really do affect the way you feel and how you react to things.  Not to mention how a full moon can make people a little loopy.  (Just ask my hubby what happens to me on a full moon.  But that’s another post…  :-)  )

Having said all that, I’ve felt for a long time that for most people there’s a moment in your day where you make a conscience decision whether to be cheerful or not.  But sometimes you have days like today.  Sometimes you just feel like wallowing in it.  Taking a walk outside and letting yourself feel blah.  Sometimes it feels good to just let yourself feel sad for no reason in particular.  Not be ‘on’ for people just because they feel more comfortable when you are.  A smile for everyone who walks by.  I just didn’t feel like it today.  Stuck my headphones on.  No smiles.  No chatting with coworkers.  And it felt pretty good.  Guess I’ll work on being ‘on’ tomorrow. 

Two Rules to Live By:

1.  Never go grocery shopping when you’re hungry.

2.  Never go get your hair cut when you’re upset about something.

I’m about to do the latter.

When I got invited to my first girls’ “toy” party this week, I of course asked Ryan if it was something he’d be cool with me going to ’cause it sounded like fun.  His response:  “Um, you guys don’t, um, try that stuff out at the party do you?”  hehehe 

These were taken by J and his wife in England. 

I don’t ever really talk about work (as any good blogger knows not to do), but today I’m pissed (and not in the English beer-drinking sense).  I was supposed to be in England for three weeks to work on a specific program.  Instead I was there NINE weeks and I sort of ended up taking over leadership of another program happening at the same facility in addition to the program I was originally assigned to.  I honestly think I was instrumental in helping save a program that is going to bring about $1million profit to the company. 

Yesterday I was forwarded an email that was sent by the England project lead to my management team telling them what a stellar job I did for my lowly pay grade, and how I was a self-starter and took initiative and all that crap.  He spelled out to them that they were lucky to have someone as educated and motivated as me and that they should reward me in kind.  I was blown away!  Coming from him it was quite a compliment and it made the whole trip worthwhile.  He actually pinpointed myself and my friend J as two people who put forth extra effort.

Well, today I walk past my big boss (who I swear doesn’t even have a clue what I do there) and he asks me if I like baseball.  I was so shocked that he actually spoke to me that I stupidly said yes.  So then he thrusts two crappy upperdeck tickets into my hand for a monday night baseball game.  No explaination.  No “hey, just wanted to say you’re doing a good job”.  Nothing. 

A little later one of the other bosses went up to my friend J and I heard him giving tickets to J too.  “You and Amanda did such a great job in England and we wanted to thank you.”  This is one of the biggest companies in the whole world and all we get for putting forth a huge amount of effort, saving the company a TON of money, and giving up two and a half months of our lives is CRAPPY BASEBALL TICKETS?  I’d have preferred that they just went on pretending that I didn’t exist.

I admit it.  I want to be the ‘cool wife’.  At the fire stations its a touchy situation with women visitors.  The guys definitely see their fair share of ‘hose bunnies’ and I would hate to be associated with that in any way. 

I’ve got a lot going for me in the cool category.  I’ve got a job that guys think is awesome, I like camping, I fund my husband’s man hobbies without complaint (well, without MUCH complaint), I fuel conversations about which famous chicks are hot or not, but for me its not enough.  All of those things are the same reasons I’m ‘one of the guys’ at work.  I don’t want to be that to the firefighters. 

So I bake.  I love to bake.  But even more so I love to bake and have people gush over how good it is, and I’m lucky to have built-in guinea pigs at Ryan’s work.  My Better Than Sex Chocolate Cake made its first appearance at Station 57, and my Holy Cow cake made a tour of the stations before it was perfect.

Yesterday, to celebrate Ryan’s first day back since I got back from England, I tried my hand at a new recipe.  The tricky part was the homemade frosting.  It turned out SO GOOD, but in my haste to get it down to the boys I skipped the part about letting it set in the fridge, figuring that the A/C in the car was good enough.  I carefully arranged the cake so that it sat flat on the front seat next to me, then I pulled out of the garage… and the afternoon Arizona sun hit the cake full-on.  By the end of the street the chocolate started to drip.  When I came to a stop at the first intersection the top layer went sliding right off the bottom layer.  When the light turned green I managed to get it to slide all the way backwards off the bottom layer in the other direction.  For 15 miles I played a game of trying to drive just right so that the cake’s layers would match up.  The closer I got to the station, the more I knew the cake was a goner.  All the sliding had stressed the top layer to the point of cracking.  So I stopped and bought cookies.

After visiting with the guys for a few minutes and watching them scarf the cookies, Ryan walked me to my car where I showed him the chocolate disaster in the front seat.  I was about 5 minutes down the road when I got a call on my cell from an unknown number.  It was the station.  “Are you going to bring that cake back down here for us to eat or what?”  He’d told them about the melted cake and now I felt pressured to take it down there.  The guys deemed it ‘artistic’ and graciously thanked me for it.  I drove home feeling mortified that I’d actually shown that monstrosity to people.  At 10pm I got a call from Ryan.  The 6 of those guys finished off every last bit of the cake and wanted to know when I was making another.  (firefighters’ll eat anything)