You should try this sometime...

Tonight I didn't feel like cooking, I didn't want leftovers, and Wendy's just wasn't callin my name. Thanks to my big sis, we had a little leftover on a Macaroni Grill gift card she gave me for my birthday and that seemed to be just right.

So we get there and are promptly greeted by our friendly server. We took a ridiculously long time trying to figure out what the heck we should order and whatnot, but the server was prompt with our bread and water and not at all pushy or invasive about when/what we should order. The food came out quickly and the server was really nice the whole time. I must note that nothing was out of the ordinary, just plain old good service.

So here's the part you should all try. As we were leaving we stopped at the host stand and I asked to speak with a manager. She got that terrified look in her eyes and went to fetch him. He came out a minute later with that "I'm ready to put out the fire" look in his eyes and asked what he could do for us. I told him who our server was and that he had done an excellent job and that we were very pleased with our overall service tonight. He was grateful, relieved, and entirely thrown off. Let's face it, we live in a time when people are silent when things are fine and throw fits when anything is wrong. Having worked in restaurants, I know firsthand that it's a big deal when a customer talks to a manager about your service. When it's negative, you are in the dog house. When it's positive you are praised and rewarded. At one particular restaurant I worked in, the rewards were often more than just a "good job." They'd give prizes like gift cards!

Anyway, so the next time you go to a restaurant, take the time to tell the manager that your server did a good job. It will definitely make the server's day and it will be fun to see that terrified look in the face of the hostess because she assumes you will complain. And you'll feel good about yourself too. If the service is bad, let's just try to remember that those who work in customer service are people too. Regardless of whatever sleight you may have received, it's not the fault of the worker in the call center at your credit card company, the cashier at the store, or the deliverer of your plate. They are people too and we all have ropes that fray and sometimes we find ourselves at the end of. So let's do more to tighten one another's ropes instead of making them fray more, shall we?

There's my soapbox for the night. Maybe it was inspired by the lady who nearly drove my coworker to quit today and made another girl in a different office cry because she was so rude. She was furious because she had misunderstood directions that said: Send one copy of your portfolio to this office and another copy of your portfolio to that office. Because she had sent 2 copies to one office instead of one to both, it then became everyone else's fault that her life was now ruined and she'd never graduate. At that point name-calling and belittling ensued. Interesting. I find it interesting that when we make errors, we blame others instead of swallowing our pride, admitting our error and working out a new solution. I've definitely been guilty of this before, but the longer I work in customer service fields, the more aware I am of this occurance.

So let's be nice to each other and compliment strangers at any opportunity! Happy holidays and happy shopping. And best of luck all you customer servers out there!

Tagged, eh?

Alright alright alright. I'm new to this whole BLOG thing... A lot of times I feel awkward blogging because I never take pictures and I don't have kids to gloat or complain about and for the most part my life involves the same boring thing every single day. It bores me most of the time, why would anyone else find it interesting? Well, all that is about to change. Well, I'm not sure necessarily about ALL of it changing, but the kids part definitely will. I've been sick for a few months now, so I went to the doctor and they found a heartbeat in my abdomen. I wondered if maybe my heart had shifted down a foot, but they say it's a BABY!! So I guess technically I'm already a mom but I'll have real proof of that May 22. (And hopefully not a day later. Or a day sooner really, because I don't have enough sick days at work...)

So there you go. The news is out. People who read my blog probably knew anyway but now you all have free reign to tell your friends and talk about how many people are pregnant in Provo.

Back to this tagging business. Let me quote from my loving sister's blog:

PS--I blog tag LadyCarma, Staci (because she NEVER blogs and she's lame), Brittney, and Jenny.

I didn't know you were allowed to tag multiple people, but apparently I'm the only one lucky enough to get called lame. :)


Tag Rules: Go to the 3rd folder of your pictures and select the 3rd picture in. BLOG!

Wow, I can't believe I actually followed the rules. What a weirdo picture. I'm kind of dissappointed, because when I went into the My Pictures folder a different way, the third pic in the third folder was this really cute engagement picture of Eric and I. But when I went to upload the picture to the blog, they were in a different order. So here you go. And because it is only one pic in a pair, I'll post the other to be fair.

So here's the scoop. This is when Eric and I were dating when he was first back from his mission in Russia. We were at Cameron and Makena's place in Orem, where we were often in the early days... I think this picture was taken in March when Eric surprised me by coming out to visit with only 20 hours notice. :) He had come home in February, so he was still very post-mission skinny!! He had this GIANT chapka-- Russian hat, that I think is his most prized possession to this day. He just wore it for Halloween, actually. He thought the picture of me in that enormous hat was just the cutest thing ever. So there you have it.



And because I thought I was going to get to blog about this pic originally, I'll post it for you too:

Thanks to Gwen for taking all these cute engagement pictures for us. We felt a little awkward about the whole photo shoot, but it was still fun. My reactions to this picture: Awww, we're so cute and giddy! Eric's hair was kind of long... So was mine for that matter. And HEY!! Where the heck is that shirt!?!? I seem to have lost both that t-shirt and the undershirt... 2 of my favorite items. Don't you hate that?? And also, it's different to see me wearing just the engagement ring without the wedding band.

So there you have it all you blog critics. I have BLOGGED!

Oh yeah, and I blog tag: Erlynne, Brittany, Allison and Makena!

It's been a while

I just realized it's been over a month since I last posted. I can't believe how time flies. I wish I had more cool things to say... I'm lacking in that department these days. Since my last post, Eric and I each celebrated our 23rd birthdays! It's fun to be so close in age. We are only 10 days apart. Unfortunately, I'm the old lady of the relationship. I remember being 18 or 19, new to college and meeting a whole lot of 23 year olds. They were old to me then. Funny, huh? Funny how life does that to us. I don't feel old at all, but high school kids think I am. Most everyone else I associate with is older than me, which I'm pretty sure contributes to the fact that I don't feel old in the slightest.

Just a shout out for BYU football: Currently undefeated, ranked #8 in the polls, the only team in the top 12 with a shut-out, 2 to be exact. It's a pretty exciting time to be a Cougar. Unfortunately, we are too poor for tickets so we catch the games online or at friend's houses. However, Eric was lucky enough to be invited to tag along with a friend who had one extra ticket. So while he freezes and cheers for the home team, I'm listening to Christmas music and blogging. Go Cougars!

Musings

I've been thinking all week about things I need to blog. Then I sit down to actually do it and I can't remember a dang thing. Lame. That's been happening a lot lately. I always have that awful lingering feeling that you are forgetting something important. That tends to come from repeated instances of actually forgetting important things. For example, every Thursday night for almost a year now, I have taught yoga at 10 pm. The worst feeling in the world is waking up at 11:05, realizing that your 20 minute pre-yoga catnap turned in to a full 2 hours and you've missed class. Whoops. Thank goodness that only happened twice... or so. Or there was one time Eric and I got home from a really fun date around 11 only to remember that it was Thursday and we had completely forgotten about yoga. Geez. Hence, that feeling of "I must be forgetting something" that ALWAYS sticks with me these days.

Last night I had the privilege of speaking at our ward's quarterly Enrichment meeting about service. It was really fun and I enjoyed doing it. The best part is, during the talk I happened to look at a girl who was saying "She's so cute!" to the girl next to her. And shortly thereafter, another girl said, "She's really funny." It's always nice to overhear people saying nice things about you.

So, Eric just finished his first week back to school and I experienced my first September of no school in 17 years. Weird. After having to drop 2 classes the first day of school, Eric came home and sat down with me and worked out an entirely new schedule. Oh and a new major. He's now "Exercise Science" instead of "Exercise and Wellness." Basically, he switched to the harder version of the major that he already was. This will make him more marketable and a better candidate for grad school or whatever he ends up wanting to do.

Anyway, Eric finally got Mario Party to work so I gotta go!

Happy Anniversary to US!!

August 30, 2007-- Eric and I were married!! It feels like yesterday. Everyone told us the first year was the hardest, there is a lot to adjust to, etc, etc... We beg to differ. Here's a list of adjectives that Eric and I came up with to describe our first year together:

awesome
cool
non-stop party
fun
silly
adventurous
exciting
learning-full
wonderful
new
spiders everywhere
cold
hot
funny
friendly

Bet you can't guess who came up with which adjective. :) But really, I'm so grateful to be married to Eric. He's the cutest, sweetest, and best guy in the whole wide world. That's right, you can all be jealous. :) It's been an absolutely amazing year. One for the record books for sure. It absolutely flew by and I just can't wait to see what the next year will bring!

Adventures in Idol-land!

Ok ok, so I'm not the next American Idol. But it was fun, so here's the play by play.

Monday July 28 9:30pm-- Eric and I "went to bed."

Tuesday July 29 2:30 am-- Eric and I "woke up." I used quotes here because neither of us really slept during that time. If you've ever tried to go to bed about hours earlier than your normal schedule, you can relate. So we got up, got ready and headed up to Salt Lake.

4:15am-- We got a sweet parking place and went to the front of the line to sit around for a few hours. Awesome. It was still dark but we weren't too crowded and it felt pretty nice outside. And luckily, not too many people had started bursting out into song just yet. Some people from Fox were passing out free stuff, so we got a couple decks of cards and some teeny notebooks. That notebook came in handy as I used it to write down whenever we did something different, not that that happened all that often.

6am-- I wrote, "We're still sitting here but at least the sun came up now." The line was so dang long! We couldn't even see the end of it.

Once the sun came up we could tell something was about to get started. This is about when Justin Guarini, runner-up from Idol season 1 showed up. I think he was doing stuff for TV Guide. Eric's eagle eyes spied the mic he was using which said TV Guide. Anyway, we tried to get a sneaky pic with him. *Correction, Eric would like me to say his "elven" eyes, not eagle. Right. Eric wants to be a middle earth elf real bad. Did you all know that?

7 am-- We started the huge group shots for the opening scene for the Salt Lake show. They took about a million shots of all of us saying stuff like "This... is American Idol. WOOO!!!" or "Welcome to Salt Lake City. WOOO!!" or "Simon, Please don't be mean. WOOOO!!!" I've learned that television cameras are a huge motivator of crowds. You want people to cheer their brains out for an hour straight, you put a camera in their face and tell them they could be on national television. Doesn't matter that their face will be on there for less than a second, and they won't look cool... they'll just be screaming. Camera's make people do whatever you want them to. Including Eric and I. We are the ones screaming by the tree in the opening shots. Watch for us in January. :)

8 am--We finally get to go inside! Alright! We were excited to go in until we learned that they were not allowing any outside food or drink. WHAT?? They did NOT notify us of that before! In anticipation of being there alllll day, we had packed PB&J, some pasta salad stuff, trail mix, granola bars, the works. We had to throw it away in order to be let inside. Lame. That's when we started fasting. :)

Once inside, we started practicing our "Crowd Songs." We all had to learn Get Ready by the Temptations and Ain't No Mountain High by Marvin Gaye. We practiced so we could sing these together on camera.

We started taking more group shots for the tv show doing basically the same thing we had done outside. My favorite was "Welcome to Happy Valley! WOOOO!!" Yeah, they really made us yell that.

9:30 am-- They were finally done taking group shots. I was surprised to see that even the camera loses it's motivating power after 2.5 hours of cheering and acting excited to be there.

They finally explain how the audition process will work. They set up tables with a judge or two at each one. We line up in groups of 4 and sing.

11 am-- They paused the auditions, announced a "special guest we all know well" was coming, and Ryan Seacrest showed up. The crowd was spazzy this morning but DANG. Ryan Seacrest sure can motivate a bored crowd of 10,000. I now understand why he is the host of American Idol. He can project really well! and he has fabulous stage presence and energy. I have a new respect for the scrawny host that I used to make fun of. The pictures are all pretty far away, but make them big and you'll see that it really is The Ryan.

He was only there for about half an hour (for which he probably earned half a million dollars, punk) and then after that it was just waiting and watching all the auditions. Most everyone got sent home, with a few getting their golden ticket. A golden ticket in this round means you go to another set of judges for a different elimination audition. If you pass through that round, then you go to Randy, Paula and Simon in September-ish. If they give you a golden ticket, you go to Hollywood in November. So, getting to Hollywood is a bigger deal than I first thought. They allow 100 people in Hollywood I think. They audition 10,000 people usually in each city. Which seems to put the odds of getting to Hollywood at 1 in 1000. It seeeems like decent odds until you actually visualize 1000 other people who want to be that #1.

We took some pictures while we were waiting. They are just normal pics of us, but I can't stop laughing at the girl behind us.

she must have been really really tired.

Here's Eric and I with our cool matchy wristbands and making fun of ourselves for always tilting our chins way up in pictures.

2:30 pm-- The moment we waited 10 hours for!! My turn to sing! Because we hadn't eaten anything in about 12 hours, I wasn't feeling too awesome. My throat was all lumpy, but I was excited. I had practiced a lot and being on the floor of the arena was exhiliarating! The kids in my audition group were mostly all pee-your-pants nervous, but I was ok. We get assigned to booth 10, the one that hadn't really handed out very many golden tickets all day. Oh well, maybe she was saving them for me, right? Nobody got through in the 2 groups that went before me.

Eric had been timing how long people sang at their auditions throughout the day and it was averaging about 30 seconds a piece. Well apparently, my judge was in a massive rush because she cut each one of us off after only 10 seconds each. Wait 10 hours, sing for 10 seconds... fair enough. I happened to audition the same time as some diva at table 9 (separated only by a curtain) was belting out some soul song at the top of her lungs, so I'm pretty sure the judge couldn't really hear me. Oh, I sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I think I could have sung Mary Had a Little Lamb and it would have had the same effect. It was obvious she was not intending to send any of us on from that group. Oh well. So she sent us on out, they cut off our wristbands and ushered us directly to the exit.

So that's that! As soon as Eric and I met up we had 2 missions: 1) Obtain food. Lots and lots of food. 2) Sleeeeep.

Sorry for such a long post. I couldn't possibly sum up 10 hours of waiting into a few sentences! I wanted to make you all feel like you were THERE, bored to tears with us!

Quote of the Day

This is a quote from Money magazine that is so true and oh so humorous: "Borrowing money is like wetting the bed in the middle of the night. At first all you feel is warmth and release. But very, very quickly comes the awful, cold discomfort of reality."

Sorry to disappoint...

Sorry to Lana and any others of you that thought my announcement of Blog-ness was actually going to be something much more significant and life-changing. Nope. Just a blog!

We finally caved

Soooo I decided that we should have a blog. So while Eric goes to fetch his 18th Otter Pop of the day, I will "blog."

MOSTLY, I'm starting a blog because I want to gloat. Yes, you'll allll be jealous. Eric and I just bought our 1 year anniversary gift to one another. (More on how crazy it is that we're nearing one year already later). Any guesses? Fancy jewels? A new car? A cruise to the Bahamas? Not even close. WAY better. A tandem bike. Yep. That's right. We'll be cruisin the hills of Provo on the sweetest wheels on the street!

I guess it's one more excuse for you all to come visit us