Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl

I spent the evening Saturday in Denver with my friend Jane at her daughter Kiana's dance competition. I wasn't really sure what to expect but as it turned out, this was a pretty high level competition and I got to see some really fantastic performances. I took ballet and jazz for about five years when I was a little girl and even though I was OK quitting when theater started taking up too much time, I spent a lot of time feeling just a twinge jealous of all those girls on stage. I give all those years of running around in a leotard and having to know my body really well with my relatively peaceful relationship with it even now.

I ended up sleeping over and Kiana was super patient as her mother and I talked about families and parenting until two in the morning.

I met Jane and her husband Dusty back at SUU. They got married and then moved to Korea to teach english and it really wasn't until Facebook got lots of us back in touch that I knew much about what they were up to. Turns out what they were up to was being pretty killer parents and raising a bunch of adorable kids. Jane is the kind of mom that plans fabulous birthday parties and makes green milk on St. Patty's day and spend half her life driving to various lessons. But honestly that's not what consistently impresses me about her. Especially watching her this weekend as she and Kiana interacted, at the very core she absolutely adores her kids and supports the heck out of the things that are important to them. Family is wildly important to her and I admire how hard she works to create meaningful family traditions. At the same time, she went back to school last year and has done a great job retaining a sense of "Jane" amongst all that good mothering and wifing. All of that stuff still sort of scares the daylights out of me but this weekend, Jane made it look kind of effortless.

One of the studios at the competition made some pretty creative music choices and my favorite performance was to a Broken Social Scene song I have long loved.
They have a new album out today. I'm enjoying it to death right now.

Trees

We moved to a big beautiful new office building this week!
This is what greets us when we get off the elevator on our floor now.



It's a really great building with all sorts of fun things like flat screens that run Olympic Highlights, a Wii, a great deck, Diet Coke machines right around the corner and WINDOWS. Oh how I love windows in the office.

It does strike me as slightly funny that although I lived in both LA and Boston, the best two office locations of my career were in Salt Lake and Colorado Springs.

But speaking of my old offices, Tretorn went live with a very cool new site and to celebrate, they are giving Freinds and Family a pretty sweet 45% off one order discount. The code is TRET45EM and you can use it at checkout.

I have my weekly Incline visit this weekend, get to go to Denver and watch my friend Jane's lovely daughter at a dance competition and hopefully unpack some of my last remaining boxes in anticipation of my friend Kristin's visit from Boston NEXT weekend. And then...it's the sister wedding of the century in SLC on the 15th. Did I mention that this guy is taking the photos? I just. can't. wait.

Sometimes

There are days where there are just too many things to be thankful for and I don't even feel right about how happy I am. Is that annoying?

I hope not, because I'm pretty sure the only way to really know how lucky you are is when you look back at your gratitude journal and see that for nearly a year, things like hot showers, 30 Rock and a comfortable bed were the only bright spots in your day.

Or maybe it's just Spring. It really is the greatest. My sister is getting married in three weeks and we get a new nephew any minute after that. Now THAT'S what I call a few bright spots...

Burst

Remember how life was supposed to calm down after the Olympics? How old am I and how long have I been alive to know that life NEVER slows down? A couple of us were here until 7:30 last night because hey, this seems like a good time to move our entire company to a new building. So I'm packing up my office, which by the way contains all the records of 16 years worth of Team Processing. If you would like to know what size pants the Archery team wore in Sydney, I'm your girl.

Or rather I was your girl. We've become somewhat ruthless in our approach to what we save. So we've been shredding and recycling and shredding and recyling and taking breaks to laugh when we find photo albums with pictures of coworkers looking like babies.

I'm trying to actually TRAIN for the Wasatch Back this year since my first leg is rated "very hard", I have plenty to do to get my apartment in shape for several spring houseguests and I'm trying harder to actually make some friends in this town.

So it's been busy around here. Not so busy that I haven't found a new artist to obsess over though. Gregory Alan Isakov. This particular track features vocals by Brandi Carlile and I'm pretty sure it will be a staple of mix CD's I make from here on out. Be warned.

Geneology

I must be my mother's child because she is supposed to be packing up her house and instead she's sending photos to us over email.

This one is so awesome I can't even stand it. Her family getting ready to move to California in 1957-love the car, love my super stylish grandparents, love the luggage, love the cute kids.

Love that this is my history.

Love.

Roots

I've spent more time than usual hunting for new music lately. Several of my favorite artists are releasing albums this year and if the near daily alerts I get from Red Rocks amphitheater are any indication, I will spend a fair amount of both time and money this summer enjoying fabulous shows with new friends.

These are a few things I'd love to pass along...

Last Memorial Day weekend my friend Traci came up from New York to play with me. The National was playing at the House of Blues that weekend but it was sold out and we spent two useless days emailing everyone on Craigslist trying to get tickets. Saturday night came and we figured we'd just give up and watch a movie. Then Traci got a flame in her little eyes and said, "no way, we are getting dressed up, we are going to the venue, and we are freaking getting into this show." I looked for parking and Traci got us tickets and the show was every little bit as awesome as we were hoping. The National has a new album coming out in May and this clip from the Jimmy Fallon show has me so excited about it the hairs on the back of my neck have been on end pretty much since I heard it. It gets better the more you repeat repeat repeat.


Once upon a time I clicked on a music blog my friend Dainon had linked from his blog. It was called You are Fuel, I am Friends and I was instantly hooked. The writing was smart and the author had pretty fantastic taste. She also had a soft spot for the Counting Crows so I knew she was probably awesome. Flash forward about a year and a half and I was moving to Colorado Springs where it just so happened this charming blogger LIVES. Dainon introduced us and she has become one of the best parts of my new home. Now we talk about boys and jobs over pizza but man, that girl nails it everytime when it comes to music. Somehow I missed The Handsome Furs when she first posted about them but now I am pretty much in love.

This is the song she references in the post.



I think this song has showed up in more Facebook status updates than just about anything else lately. The lead singer of Sigur Ros is releasing his first solo album and it's, well, solidly awesome. YouTube has disabled embedding on Go Do by Jonsi, but really, Go Do. It feels like spring to me. New and fresh and full of promises.

So glad Spring is here.

Three's Company

From Emily and Aaron's engagement photo shoot. File under, "why my family is rad".



(more photos here)

Noah's Ark

Lest you get the idea that my life is all fun job/jetsetting vacations/cute dresses let's just be honest that no matter how much fun I am having, the state of my love life will always keep me from drifting into "OMG MY LIFE IS SO PERFECT AREN'T YOU SO JEALOUS" seriously so blessed territory.

I'm nursing a bit of a bruised heart in the wake of a couple of disappointing events in that department. One actually happened a few months ago and was pretty much just a final nail in a coffin I have been too stubborn to close far beyond when it was useful or healthy. I was able to gloss over it at the time but a little distance and some of the emotion dropping out of it is giving me a chance to grieve a little and truly let go. The other is more recent and slightly more raw but I'm trying to let myself just feel what I feel and be able to really move on.

These kind of hurts always make me wonder though how to get through this stuff without putting up a thousand little traps for the next guy. When someone knocks through one of your carefully constructed walls, has a look around and then shrugs and leaves, how do you resist the temptation to build a stronger one?

I don't want to be 22 again where I got a crush on any boy with a nice smile who liked Dave Matthews. It makes sense that as you get older and more comfortable with yourself, you get a little more selective. And you are willing to wait for a deeper connection. I am happy to be in a place where I'm confident enough that when these situations come up I no longer wonder what is wrong with me. I'm mature enough to know that sometimes things just don't work out and it's not because I'm not pretty enough or fun enough. All of those things are comforting.

Still. There is a part of me that I have to fight that wants to declare boys a waste and just eat a whole bunch of ice cream. Instead I put myself on the treadmill and try to figure out ways to stay vulnerable when it seems safer to toughen up.

I know the smart thing to do is allow myself a little time to be sad, not to be too hard on my heart for having the audacity to actually feel something, and then smile brightly at the next boy who gets my pulse up a bit. And just have faith that there will indeed be a next boy and that the pulse won't be too worn out. And maybe it doesn't hurt to take extra pleasure in long phone calls from old roommates and thank you notes from happy athletes and good meetings with good bosses and to be grateful for a life that is far more blessed than cursed.

I got this song a few months ago but today it seemed particulary appropriate. I too tend to Love the Rain the Most...when it stops.

Forever Young

Is there anything better than slow dancing?

The answer is no. There is not.

Maybe this song.

Like the corners of my mind

Over Christmas my long time friend Jed called to tell me he had spent the afternoon looking through college photos. "And let me just tell you," I waited for him to say something sweet about how much he missed all of us or how young and adorable we all were, "the 90's were NOT kind to ANY of us. We looked AW-FUL!"

I would have argued but I spent an entire year in denim overalls and a flannel shirt tied around my waist. So here's to your 30's when you can afford better skincare and good haircuts. And when don't spend a good chunk of your time eating mozarella sticks at Denny's at 2 in the morning.

Hooray for adulthood.

Shadowlands

I think it's safe to say that the last three months have been amongst the most insane of my life. The Olympics feel like some crazy dream that happened forever ago and the trip to Mexico that seemed like it would never come has now had the audacity to be over. And my best friend Lisa got hitched and almost everyone I know from college showed up to celebrate.

Mexico was pretty perfect. Despite our assertions that all we were going to do was lay around, Corey and I kept fairly busy. We went to famous ruins and we swam in a cenote, we snorkeled, we played in the waves, we got massages. We drank more Diet Coke then the Jersey Shore cast off Spring Breakers drank tequila and we squeezed limes into a whole bunch of tacos. It was just the vacation I needed after Vancouver, and frankly, after the last two exhausting years.

(Thanks Jane for the ShakeIt Photo App. Feels so perfect for Mexican vacation photos!)

And then!

I went to Utah and these guys picked me up


I know, I know-you have cute kids/nephews/children you babysit but these two are mine and every single time I am around them it knocks the wind out of me how much I love them. They give me looks where I see their daddies faces and I can't believe I get to be related to all of these people.

My mom dropped me off where some of my SUU friends where staying and I pretty much didn't stop laughing until I got on the plane Sunday evening. I feel so lucky to have gone to school with such a fantastic group of people and that we've all stayed in touch so well. It's so nice to be around folks who knew you before you had any real idea who you were and yet they still manage to love you. Someone is bound to bring up some fabulous event you had completely forgotten and even though I am an adult woman with a grownup job, the boys will tease me mercilessly about something dumb I said ten years ago that somehow stays endlessly alive in their memories. These people feel like home in a way that is so easy and effortless that I honestly felt years and years melt away and it seemed like we were those dumb kids experimenting with the real world.

The best part of course was getting to see Lisa so happy. It was the first time I had met her husband(!) and so we all had to remind him over and over how lucky he was to get her. All I cared about was that he didn't seem to need us to get that. Lisa was a good 50% of the reason I didn't flee college my second semester in what would have been a scaredy-cat mistake of seriously epic proportions (someday I will run you through how my crush on a boy who ran for Student Body President at SUU is pretty much responsible for every good thing that happened from then on). She and I had a public speaking class together freshman year, she gave a talk on love and passed out the lyrics to Howard Jones' Everlasting Love. I think I talked about unicorns. We became dear dear friends and I haven't missed a day making my bed since the semester we started living together. We've been through a lot over the years. She lost her mom just before we graduated, my parents got divorced, her dad had a difficult second marriage, we've both had too many disappointing boy experiences to even start listing (only one of whom was the same boy), we've watched younger siblings and the vast majority of our friends get hitched and have kiddies. "katieandlisa" was one word for a long time and I think everyone knew that if you told either one of us a secret, we would tell the other one but no one else. (except when Brandon SPECIFICALLY told me not to tell Lisa he had bought a ring for his GF. And so I didn't. And then he was ALMOST bugged at me because he didn't tell her assuming I would.) Through all of it, Lisa has been one of the most thoughtful, grounded, kind, generous people I know. She keeps in touch with EVERYONE. She is actually the human Facebook and knew all kind of things about people long before we all started splattering it on the internet. She's the one who will catch in the obituaries that our friend lost a brother and there will be a note on it's way before anyone else knows. She was the one who was there for her little siblings when their mom died and she's the one who got her brother ready for his mission. The night she told me she was engaged her first concern was how I was going to feel since we're the tail end of singles in our group. Which was silly, because what kind of friend can begrudge someone she cares about finding the love of her life?

The reception was packed full of faces I hadn't seen in years and then we stayed out way too late at some funny little bar downtown where there was more laughing and teasing and laughing. I got a good nephew and family dose the next morning and then headed home to the apartment I fall more in love with every single day. All the post-event blues have worn off and the trip totally recharged me. Even a completely full email box Monday morning didn't dampen my good mood.

Here is one of my favorite photos from the weekend. Lisa looked amazing and I think the rest of us are holding up pretty well for being so close to middle age ; )

Arrived

Amazing amazing 10 days. I have plenty to say and some photos to post but this is how the whole experience felt, courtesy of my dear friend Jed.

Christmas Eve

I'm going to Cancun in the morning. I actually finished packing before midnight tonight which is pretty much unheard of in these parts. I spend so much time traveling for work that I forget how FUN it is to pack for FUN. And thanks to the event diet I've been on for the last few months, it was actually pretty pleasant to pull out all my summer clothes. So pleasant I know I overpacked and I will wear a swimsuit or yoga pants the entire time.

I'm super excited for the trip, Corey and I haven't made a single plan-we are just going to go and sleep when we want, sit by the pool when we want, go to the beach when we want and probably eat so many fish tacos and drink so much Coke Light that we'll have to buy new yoga pants. No blinky blackberry light, no early mornings, no scraping my car off three times in the last 12 hours.

Then it's off to Salt Lake for my dearest Lisa's wedding and SUU reunion extraordinaire! So many of my very favorite people all in one place, I'm kind of delerious. And it all ends with a nephew blitz on Sunday because little Oakland nephew is visiting his Salt Lake cousin this week so I get both little weasels for the price of ONE plane ticket.

I probably won't be around the internet much next week, just popping in now and then to check my brackets!!! (22 of 32 in Round One. Not too shabby!) Here is the tune that got me motivated to pack early.

Deleted

I was looking for an old email tonight and happened upon a chain of messages from 2004 debating who is the greatest superhero of all time. I would like to note that both the instigator of the conversation and one of the loudest voices were at the time attending Harvard Law and getting an PhD at MIT respectively. It was a lively discourse. I read my entry into the discussion and thought it was too funny not to post. This was pre-Christian Bale Batman movies but I think that makes my case even stronger. I guess this is what I did before I blogged ; )

I would like to make a case for Batman vs.Superman by bringing us all
back to high school.

Superman is the easy crush. He is the captain of the football team, he
is the Student Body President. He looks good in a tux, he will take
you to the Prom in a limousine (and probably drink too much and try to
get you to stay in a hotel room but that is neither here nor there).
He is six pack abs and straight white teeth. All the girls have a
thing for Superman. He is a good guy, your mom will love him, your
friends will be jealous of you, your life will be predictably
protected. He'll have a good job, the kids will go to summer camp and
get braces and scholarships to the U. Superman is not hard to figure
out. Sure his beginnings were a little sketchy but then he was raised
in a loving home by good people. Superman is cool, and it's easy for
him.

Batman however. You aren't sure what to make of him. He's probably in
your art class. Or he has a band. Or he hangs out in the South Hall
and doesn't make it to class very often. But he's smart. And he's
creative. And he'll draw a picture of you that doesn't just look like
you, it figures you out. And your friends will say "Gross! you can't
like him!!!". And your parents will probably ban him from your house.
But he'll figure out how to get to you. He'll give you your first
copy of Franny and Zooey. He is dark, intense, brooding. He witnessed
his parent's murder for crying out loud. So you are taking a chance
with this guy. He's an underdog to say the least. But you think that
somehow, you will be able to figure him out, solve his puzzle, heal
him. And that is very, very attractive.

I guess I'll let you decide who I'm leaning towards here but I think
I'd rather be Kim Basinger than Margot Kidder.

Boost

Apparently it's brag about who I know week. My good friend Dave, who is responsible for finally getting me into The Smith's at the tender age of 28, is one of those actors out there in Hollywood. It's pretty fun when you are catching up on shows on Hulu and you see his mug spooning with a lawyer. See below if you are confused.

Boost Mobile Commercial Link

Small World

I didn't watch the Oscars this year because frankly, I get to eye rolly by the end of that show with how self-important the movie industry is. Hey guys, film is great, I'll even give you that film is important. But you are all very very well compensated to do a really fun job so...you know, perspective. Not curing cancer or anything.

But. I was pretty excited for Kathryn Bigelow to get that Best Director award. Kind of funny that it's 2010 and it's the first time a woman has ever won it eh?

Anyway, my mom sent this yearbook photos over today-guess who she sat by in English class? Click on the photos below and see if you can find a face that looks kinda like mine on the first page and a famous name on the second page.

Pretty cool.

Birthday

Replikate turned four on Saturday.

I have posted 832 times here. I'm not sure I've been this consistent at anything in my life. Being bossy maybe?

I was actually a really good journal writer prior to writing the blog. I have journals that stretch back to the very first one I got for my eighth birthday. For the most part they are a record of every boy who didn't like me back but there are some flashes of good in them. I feel lucky to have written that much of life down, even if it's often too focused on that one area. I have journals from my mission and journals I wrote while my parents were getting divorced. Journals that run from hating college to really loving it and journals about all my treks across the country.

I stopped writing when I realized that the blog was probably a more real version of me. Isn't that funny? I opened it up to the public and I think I'm more honest here then I was when it was for my eyes only. I don't write about specific boy situations here but looking back, I know who the subtle reference I do make belong to and it helps me remember mistakes I don't need to make again. i know I enjoy the process of writing a post more then I enjoyed just free writing in my journal. I think a lot more about what I want to write here and I feel a certain amount of pressure for it to be reasonably entertaining.

I wasn't sure what I wanted this to be when I started. My friends Betsy and Rebecca had just started a now defunct blog called The New Awesome that detailed their terribly chic lives in San Francisco. At first I hoped Replikate would be as spicy but as I progressed I realized what I wanted to do was just write. I.love.to.write. It's one thing in my life that I never doubt. I know I'm pretty darn good at it, and even if I'm not, enough people humor me that I'm going to keep doing it.

So thanks Replikate readers, I would write this thing if no one ever looked at it and I think it would still be valuable, but over the years that are lots of you I've come to know a little bit and whose opinions I love to hear. I appreciate that you spend a few minutes with me here-our lives are all so busy and it means a lot that anyone bothers to stop by at all. Replikate has been one delightfully consistent thing where I know Mike from Texas is still reading whether I'm in Boston or HB or COS.

Life is returning to some kind of normal here now that the Paralympic Processing is over. I spent a lovely night last night organizing my closet and moving my Oly wardrobe to the back. It's been an exciting few months but I'm ready to get back to a regular workout schedule and try to make a life in this new little city I live in. And subjecting you all to it too ; )

Cooked

It's been an unreal six weeks. We sent the last of the Paralympians off to Vancouver today. Amazing, amazing people.

The Sled Hockey boys made me take this picture I promise.

Right Now

HOLD UP WAIT A MINUTE!!!

Stop everything!!

A very looooooooooong awaited Broken Social Scene record comes out May 4th and I will actually be visiting a CD shop to get my hot little copy.

But today! My smart and cool friend Chanelle gave a Facebook heads up that one of the tracks from the album is out and you can hear it here.

I have a near crazy love for Broken Social Scene. If you want to know what the world feels like to me, listen to five or six BSS songs and you'll get it. As the reviewer says, they are "...expansive, uplifting, dramatic, melodic".

I discovered these guys as my first time in Huntington Beach was winding down and they will just always remind me of warm sand and funny boys and stolen kisses and the feeling that something big is just about to happen with no clue what it might be.

Show Me State

For some reason when I'm naming artists I love, I always forget Griffin House. I can't think of a song of his that I don't just love. And honestly, he has one called "The Guy That Says Goodbye to You is Out of His Mind", and it starts with the lyric, "you don't have to change a thing about you babe, I'm telling you from where I sit you're one of a kind" sooo...what's not to love?

Anyway, my iTunes is doing a good job recently of sensing what I want to hear. Last night I got "Fever Dream" by Iron and Wine, a song that makes my heart skip as much now as it did when it leapt out at me live at a little club in Rhode Island many years ago. Today I got a stellar Griffin House track I hadn't heard in awhile called "Show Me Yourself". It has hands down one of my favorite lines of any song ever

I understand if your heart has been won, but I'd still like to know if I'm still in the game.

Somehow he writes these kind of melodramatic lyrics but because of the melodies and the way he sings them, they just come across as crazy romantic and not weepy emo.

Anyway, listen for yourself, it's a great song, his voice is sexy, and it will kind of make you feel the girl in a John Cusack movie.

Show Me Yourself - Griffin Hou...

Man vs. Wild

Oh hey so I leave for Denver tomorrow to do that big thing I just did in Vancouver all over again for the Paralympic team. I should be packing. Instead I am blogging. Obviously. Because if I had a tag for "doing other things when I should be packing", there would be approximately 1000 entries.

But whatever, I have things to say.

It's a pretty big part of my belief system that our bodies and our souls are intertwined. It's part of the reason that I'm so passionate about being active even though I do not have an ounce of athletic talent in my whole body. My life rolls along better when I make sure I am getting in a good sweat relatively often.

Too often I spend those sweaty hours at a gym, on a treadmill or a stairmaster. I am grateful for those things and on a cold week night when it's dark and snowy, they are life savers for sure. But yesterday I had too much on my mind to even fathom the slight pointlessness I feel logging another mile staring at the TV in the workout room. So I put on the little ice spikes I finally bought and am pretty sure mean I'm embracing my Coloradan status (still sounds so funny though-when did I move to Colorado??) and headed over to face the Incline by myself. I've been at sea level for a few weeks and I could feel every single inch.

It's been a funny 10 days since I got back from the Games and my head has been an absolute mess trying to come back to reality, but also gear up for the Paralympics, sort through what did and didn't work in Vancouver while trying to mesh with a brand new staff, and also making sense of some personal stuff. So sleeping has been tough and I've been a little edgy.

As I got about halfway up the incline, and I was already drenched in sweat and feeling like my lungs would probably never forgive me, all of the sudden I just started feeling so peaceful about pretty much everything I was worried about. I felt like my crazy heart was just forcing all the concerns to seep right out of me. The combination of the clean air and the mind-boggling views of Southern Colorado and forcing myself to do something really hard made me feel like there really isn't anything I can't tackle.

I have said this before-when I trained for my marathon it cleared away six months of fear and doubt about my ability to make my life in California work. My mind just seems to work better when my body is pushing itself. The sleep cycle app on my iPhone says I got more deep sleep last night then I have in a week.

I'm ready for another crazy week of athletes and chaos and not enough sleep and too many rice crispie treat breakfasts.

Neil Young performed at Closing Ceremonies tonight and sang one of his loveliest songs. It seemed so crazy appropriate for both the end of the Games and the direction I want my life to go. Enjoy.

Back to the Beach

The night before I left for Vancouver I was doing my traditional best to avoid packing. I chatted online with some friends, took a new and complicated Facebook profile photo, my friend Katie brought by an adorable care package so I visited with her for a bit, and then I spent some time on iTunes researching all the new releases my friend Paul mentioned in a status update. Patty Griffin had a new album out that week which is sublime, but he also mentioned a band I didn't know called Beach House. I checked them out and immediately fell deeply in love. They are from Baltimore, a city that has more charm than "The Wire" would lead you to believe and they promptly became my Olympic soundtrack.

I really like the entire Teen Dream album but this one is my favorite. I love songs that yearn.

Good Point

From Facebook today...

Katie C i envy the male ability to compartmentalize...
Lance M it's really easy when there are only two compartments: food and sex.

SportsCenter

Sooooooo, how exactly DO you go about recounting an adventure such as the Olympics. I didn't take enough pictures, I should have blogged as I went instead of waiting until the end, and I'm still scatter brained and exhausted even after spending the weekend pretty much asleep. But I want to share some highlights and since this is a blog and not me talking incessantly, I don't have to worry about boring you! You can just stop reading!

Easily the best part of my experience was getting to know a whole bunch of really amazing people-and that's everyone from the athletes and their team staff to my USOC personnel to a group of ridiculously great volunteers, an amazing hotel staff and really terrific folks from all of my sponsors. You know how my favorite thing is people? I was like a kid in a damn candy store for three straight weeks. Every single day was a new crop of collector's items for me. Even as tired as I was and how compounded that tiredness is every day you are there, meeting these people and being part of the culimination of so many dreams was intoxicating. I don't know why my team needed so much beer ; )

Over and over I thought how lucky I am to be in a job where I'm surrounded by people who absolutely love what they do. No one ends up at the USOC because it's the only option-people here are talented and driven and they have high expectations of themselves and everyone around them. So they jump in. When I needed more muscle to help us unload trucks on the first day, I didn't even have to ask-the guys from the Performance Service Center just sucked up the early hour and helped us unload five semis. When I let most of my team go to a hockey game on load out day, the completely exhausted transportation boys came in and built pallets for me. No one complained when the Cross Country team came in late and we had to put in crazy hours to get them processed. Everyone was just as smiley for the Figure Skaters on Day 9 as they had been for the Long Track team on Day 1.

I got to see a bit more of the Olympics than I did when I worked on the Organizing Committee in Salt Lake which was a treat. My dear friend Paul who works with the IOC hooked me up with an Opening Ceremonies ticket which kind of made my head spin. Sarah McLachlan was flawless, hearing KD Lang do Hallelujah was brilliant and that version of "Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell is one of my all time favorites. And after six months of staring at those Opening Ceremonies outfits on worksheets and counting them at the warehouse and hauling them to Canada and unpacking a ballroom full of pallets of them and watching our extraordinary Ralph Lauren tailors work wonders on all manner of body types, I burst into tears when the US Team walked out onto the ice. They looked so cute!!! Their boots were tucked so perfectly and the flags on all the moose hats were over the all the left ears! It was brilliant. And we all got a really good laugh at USA House that night when the stylist from Ralph Lauren who was backstage told us how blazing hot they all were and that they kept laying on the ground trying to cool off and he had to scream at them to STOP GETTING DIRT ON THE WHITE PANTS!

The next night I got some backstage passes to the Nelly Furtado show and my intern sidekick who has put up with me bossing him around pretty much nonstop since October and I went to see Hannah Kearney, Shannon Bahrke, Apolo Ohno and JR Celski get the first round of American medals. We were thisclose to the stage and then afterwards, the interns managed to convince a couple of local girls that they were athletes and I got to catch up with my dear Bev friend who is working furiously to ensure Event Services are flowing smoothly at all the city venues. It was wonderful to see her even if we didn't get enough time.

I made it to a Long Track event and even though the Zamboni broke down (what? in Canada???), I got to see both Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick skate which made my speed skating loving heart nearly burst.

We ran a program called the Olympic Ambassador Program that the athletes go through right before they leave Team Processing. They bring in past Gold Medalists to talk to the athletes about what it means to be an Olympian and to represent your country. So for two weeks we had Dan O'Brien, Nikki Stone, Vonetta Flowers and Bonnie Blair just hanging out at the hotel. There is something pretty fantastic about Dan O'Brien giving you his card and telling you to keep in touch. Class acts all of them, it always felt like the universe might explode sitting at the breakfast table with that many people who have been the very best in the world at what they do. And who were all so nice and down to earth about it.

I had a great time getting to know all the Team Leaders for each of the sports. The Team Leader is kind of like the Den Mother for the team. They handle all the logistics so the athletes can just focus on performing. So we end up working very closely with those guys in the run up to the Games and then on site. They were all so different and so fun. My favorite team leader moment being when the Bobsled/Skeleton TL was standing there on the last day with his Women's Bobsled team, waiting on two of them to finish packing and two of them to pick up alterations and two of them to quit arguing and he looked at me and said, "do you see why I'm single?" . I wanted to give him a gold medal on the spot.

There are a whole bunch of fun moments that aren't specifically Olympic related that you always get when you work an event and spend looooong hours with people. I ended up at the nearby casino more often than I would have guessed which happens when the going out crowd is mostly rowdy boys. I even managed to get up about $200 one night in black jack to the surprise of all the transportation crew. We spent more then a few nights at the Flying Beaver (seriously) eating wings until last call. We found an all you can eat sushi place that had sashimi that it breaks my heart to know I might never eat again. I got to know all my coworkers on a whole new level and even though events TOTALLY bring out the crazy in everyone (me included and perhaps in high doses), I love and appreciate how hard they all work and how much of their hearts they put into what they do.

I had one little personal disappointment amongst all the excitement but with a little distance, I'm relieved to finally let go of someone who had become fairly toxic in the last few years. And grateful that it happened at a time when fun and personal accomplishment could make it clear that everything was going to be just fine.

Professionally the Games felt like redemption. I am to a point where I am at peace with my time in Boston and every time I see Rickie Fowler's smiling face under a PUMA Golf hat I feel a surge of pride at what I was able to accomplish there but this is where I belong. This is a job that utilizes so many of my talents and feels like home. I was sitting in the office one day, cursing my computer for being so slow and not having a single clue whether it was Tuesday or Sunday and eating a rice crispie treat for breakfast and I just started grinning because this is what I love. And now that I'm home I have to say that I miss the constant phone ringing and blinky red blackberry light just a little bit more than I thought I would.

And then there were the athletes. You obviously get a few with too much ego who require more attention than you really think an adult should need but the OVERWHELMING majority of them are just a delight. A few of my favorite things...

-Nike was selling leather jackets, the only item that the athletes have to pay for. Apolo Ohno bought them for all his teammates who wouldn't have been able to get them otherwise. Didn't make a big fuss about it, just did it. The guy is a superstar but he came into Team Processing and just acted like a guy on a team.
-Casey Puckett came in late one night and we had to process him by himself the next morning. This was Casey's fifth team so I imagined he would be over it. Instead he spent three hours with us, trying stuff on, telling jokes, asking me to scratch his back because he was nursing a hurt shoulder. I asked him if the thrill wears off when it's your fifth Games. "Naw, it's always cool. It's the Olympics!"
-Every. Single. Member. of the Men's Bobsled team is just beautiful. I felt like we were on some kind of GQ shoot. I was walking past the alterations room at one point and one of my volunteers pokes his head out and says "katie katie!! You have to get in here!!!". Great, some emergency I'm sure...I go in and there are four guys from the team wearing just their Closing Ceremonies pants, ties and hats posing for photos from my staff and volunteers. So much for our zero tolerance policy on athlete ogling. Also funny when my volunteers discovered that one of them was LDS and ran into my office to tell me to go talk to him! He's single!! And one of your people!! (and 26! I did go talk to him!)
-Johnny Weir=delightful, Evan Lysacek=delightful, Lindsay Vonn=just as beautiful as you imagine.
-Shaun White was on a different flight than the rest of the team so he got to the hotel early. My transport guy called to let me know he was in the banquet hall if I wanted to go welcome him. I walk in and Shaun has wired his iPod to our speakers and he and his coach are LITERALLY bouncing off the walls in the room. I couldn't stop laughing because seriously, isn't that EXACTLY what you would expect when the snowboarders show up??
-There are so many athletes who are never going to medal but who were just so excited to be there. Can you imagine what it's like when you get to be around people whose dreams are coming true every single day for two weeks?? I can't see how I will ever be jaded in this job.
-My favorite athlete moment was my last night in Vancouver. I had gotten to be friends with one of the wax techs with the snowboard team. He called that night to say that they would be celebrating Seth Wescott's medal at the USA House. So after a focus group in the Village and dinner with Nike (oh yeah, I'm totally name dropping), I headed over to meet up with Alex. Most of my team was there so I got to say goodbye to people, ran into my friend Nick who I worked with in Salt Lake and had fun catching up with, and then finally found the snowboard boys. We're talking, flirting a little, and then he asks if I want to see a real live gold medal. So he introduces me to Seth who promptly pulls his medal out of his pocket and HANDS IT TO ME. And I protest, "Oh I can't hold it! It's a gold medal!" and he says, "it's America's medal! Hold it!". So I'm standing there, with four cute snowboard boys, holding a gold medal, in a beautiful city, with a crazy successful Team Processing behind me and all kinds of adventures waiting for me when I get home and everything just felt right in the world.

I am really looking forward to London and my first Summer Games experience but oh my heart belongs to the Winter Games. I spent a lot of time thinking about my experience eight years ago and how lucky I was to get to do this even once, let alone land a job where now this is just what I do.

On a more personal note, this job feels like a message from the heavens that God knows I am here and what my most important dreams really are. In the eight years since Salt Lake nearly every human I know has gotten married and/or had a baby. I never would have dreamed when I stood at Closing Ceremonies that I would be in a city we didn't even know about then, two Winter Games later, still a single lady. There are days I can't help but giggle because really? As Liz Lemon would say-"come on! The female Larry Bird is with a guy? What am I doing wrong?" And then I look at this job. And the eight years I spent feeling like I wasn't doing what I really loved and wanting so desperately to find that passion I had felt at SLOC (and I will interrupt myself here to say that I am FULLY AWARE that even in my low job points, I had terrific jobs in the last eight years and I do realize that no one feels bad for me that I had to travel all over the country and world and pitch deals to celebrities and live in cool cities so, please, take me with a grain of salt) and yet those eight years are precisely what made me a perfect fit for this dreamy job. As in, "we need someone who once worked at the Olympics and then spent a bunch of time working in the apparel industry and hey, if you could have experience with both events AND marketing that would be awesome." So I have to believe that somewhere , He's got a boy for me that will be the perfect fit for my thirty three years of experience. I have said before, and I will stand by it, that I wouldn't trade one second of the life I've had to have been married or a mom before right now. I am so thrilled and satisfied with who I am and the path I'm on. But I also think it would be silly of me to pretend that a family isn't on my To Do list. If you had told me a year ago that I would be writing this post my head would have exploded trying to figure out how I got here. So I'll take this clue that He knows I'm here and knows how to get me where I need to be. And he's out there. And not in any danger of winning a gold medal for speed ; )

Cracks in the Photograph

So I'm back from Vancouver. Back in my apartment, back at my desk, back in Colorado Springs.

I have about a million thoughts and feelings running around but they all have one thing in common-change. Everything here looks the same but you can't go through an experience like this one and come back without so much being different. My view of myself and how I work, my relationships with my coworkers, the volume of new people I met, the friends I reconnected with. It's this crazy and intense three weeks where every little thing becomes a giant thing, emotions are all on the surface and then suddenly you are just back at home and it's all over but you feel like a totally different person.

I had a truly obscene amount of fun and I made new friends and came home with a few phone numbers (wink!) and I saw wonderful things but it was also so many long hours and not enough sleep and too much Diet Coke and not enough exercise and so many heightened feelings and you never know what day it is and you never get to do everything and see everyone no matter how much you wanted to.

And then you get home and you have all of these stories and like pretty much any experience, your friends want to hear a little bit but they DO NOT want to hear everything and really the only people who want to talk about it are the people you are just a little bit sick of after living/working/eating/crying together for a month or so.

I remember on our last night in Salt Lake, everyone was so tired and ready to be done that the office cleared out within about half an hour of the last skater leaving the ice. I was so young and I'm such an emotional little creature that I just stood there looking around at the empty room and feeling like my world had just fallen apart. I'm experienced enough now to know that we'll all come back and we'll debrief and we'll go to London to start scouting Team Processing sites, and we'll take the Olympic Team to the White House and real life will stop feeling anti-climatic. But tonight, while I'm sitting at my kitchen table watching my blackberry crackle with updates about medal counts and media advisories I can't help but feel a bit like my 25 year old self.

Still, it sure felt amazing to be EXACTLY where I wanted to be. I'm a lucky girl. A tired and worn down one, but a very very lucky one.

Go World

Good Intentions

I had these grand plans to blog every night so I wouldn't forget this experience but then I decided I'd rather HAVE the experience than worry to much about capturing it. So I'm not taking a ton of photos and I've hardly written a thing but I'm having a blast. Stuff like Dan O'Brien hopping in the suburban with us to go grab a sandwich or the interns becoming impromptu Secret Service when Apolo Ohno decided to just walk out the front door of the airport with no escort.

Just so happy to be here.

Brief

It's 10:35 and I should reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally get to bed since it's pretty much the last night before teams start to show up but this is so much fun I can't get myself to bed. Great team, great sushi, and the feeling that I'm back exactly where I belong.

More to come...

Gone

Rain

When I moved to California for the first time almost eight years ago I spent a LOT of time alone. I worked from home and it just took me a long time to make friends.

Most of my days were filled going to Lady Foot Locker stores and teaching the staff about the brand I worked for so I was in malls all the time. My favorite one was the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. It's an outdoor mall and it's right next to the beach so I would try to visit that store as often as I could. They had a great music store there that would let you listen to any CD before you bought it. I was in there so much that one of the clerks called me "shoe girl".

Back then I was a pretty diehard Dave Matthews fan and there was quite a bit of buzz around his ATO Records label. I figured if Dave loved someone, they were probably a safe bet (that is true by the way, ATO has some killer artists). Patty Griffin happened to be on sale one day in that little record store on the Promenade and I fell madly in love with her album 1000 Kisses.

That summer I also happened to have a sort of disappointing boy experience and that album turned out to be a major source of comfort. I may have been a bit disappointed by a boy in the last few weeks and I am happy to report that Patty still does a bang up job filling up those little holes only a failed romance can poke.

This song probably spent the most time on repeat that summer. I still love it.

Ring Around the Rosie

I wrote a post a few years ago about how I didn't think I really wanted an engagement ring and for sure I wasn't interested in a diamond. I think I did a poor job of explaining why but my sister does a much better job here of explaining why she got an engagment rocking chair instead. It's one of my favorite things she's ever written.

Jet Plane

Last year when I was trying like crazy to figure out a way out of my miserable life, I had decided I would try to get a job with the Vancouver Organizing Committee. I had some good contacts and I thought it would be a good way transition back into the Olympic world. I told my friend Carrie about my plan and she responded by sending me a book of walking tours of Vancouver. Her confidence that I would need that book still gets me a little teary eyed.

The right opportunity never really came up but I kept that little book by my bed and looked at every night and promised it I would use it eventually. Even so I'm sort of pinching myself that I leave for Vancouver in three days. I spent the first part of the day furiously cleaning my house (full disclosure, I am such a clean freak that normal people might not be able to see an actual difference) and then the second half running around getting my errands done so I can leave for three weeks. And maybe getting my eyebrows waxed and buying a few more cute things to wear during the Games. I mean, if a girl is going to be mixing with Olympians, she doesn't want to do it with stray eyebrows right??

My intern left this morning and we spent about 20 minutes just staring at each other yesterday trying to come up with anything major we may have forgotten. He and I have been joined at the hip for the last three months and I was way more panicked watching him leave my office then I was when my boss left last week. Too real now I suppose.

I know I can do this, and part of me thinks it's funny that 25 year old me was probably less stressed out about the Games than 33 year old me because she was too young and dumb to know what was about to happen.

That's what I am the most excited about-not having any idea what is about to happen. I've planned really well, I've tried to think of everything, and now it's time to just get there and let the adventure happen however it wants to happen. I've been getting all kinds of emails from friends who will be there with all kinds of fun things to do (we already have our tickets to the Barenaked Ladies on the 16th-how Canadian is that??). There is a TON of work ahead-six semis with my name on them will leave Monday morning and we'll unpack them Friday. We have about 600 athletes and team staff come through during our 10 days of operation. Anything could happen and the anticipation and the unknown has me feeling like I'm going slowly up the first hill of some ridiculous Six Flags roller coaster. I know the ride will be fantastic but I also kind of want to throw up.

One thing I do know is that I really can't wait to tell you guys all about it. I feel like the theme of 2010 is going to be "making up for lost time." I have the Games, a trip to Mexico, a site visit to London and two really great weddings all in the next few months. Like Conan O'Brien said last night (and it sort of made me tear up a little bit) "Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen".

Here's to amazing things happening to kind people!

(I've been obsessed with this song all day.)

Witness To Your Life - Lori Mc...

Truth

I can't wait for summer in Colorado.

Wedding Bells

We're finally getting a brother-in-law!


Welcome to the family Aaron!



Good job sister : )

A little great!

My friend Corinne, who has a PhD, a cute husband and two of the most adorable children ever has just given birth to a really fun new lifestyle blog called A Little Great. They have tidbits on everything from fitness to literature to staying organized by a variety of writers. And guess who is doing the music reviews?

Yep, I know enough to be just a wee bit ahead of the mommy set the blog is geared to so it's been a lot of fun. I've only just started but come here to see how I managed to weave Dolly Parton and Common into the same post. It's fun to have another outlet for writing and even though I'm so busy right now I had to drag a date SHOE SHOPPING with me last night just to fit all my errands in, this is helping keep myself a little bit sane. See you there : )

Up

Quite a week folks. I fell into bed at about 10:30 on Friday night which is unheard of for this little night owl and slept like a rock until 8:30. That sleeping like a rock is also fairly unusual but I was BEAT. However, 250 Olympic and Paralympic staffers now have their uniforms for the Games and I took a giant leap towards feeling confident we can pull this off for the athletes in Vancouver next month.

Yesterday I just sort of goofed around, went for a run, got a massage, grocery shopped, watched a movie with a friend-oh, AND went to the office for three hours. So today I resolved that I would not give into the temptation to do any weekend work. Church was over at noon (which is painful when I have to get up early on a Sunday but feels really good when it's over early too) and the weather was spectacular (seriously Boston, you should take a lesson, this is what winter should feel like!) so I decided to tackle the famous Manitou Incline.

The Manitou Incline is the scar left up a mountain here in the Springs by the Mount Manitou Scenic Incline Railway. The fact that people of old preferred to get to the top of this thing by railroad car should tell you something about how insane the trail is.

One mile up.
2800 railroad ties.
2000 feet of vertical.
And four miles back down the Barr trail.

Yep. Here's an old timey poster of it.



My friend Ian lives close by so I talked him into going at least part of the way with me (this story ends with Ian beating me home by about 45 minutes. The shame). I've been using my still not totally adjusted Boston lungs as an excuse not to take the several invites I've gotten to join people. And just before I got to what I had heard was a false summit I started thinking those ill prepared lungs were going to explode. 2000 vertical feet! You can feel every stupid inch. The whole round trip took me a little over two hours and I only had one nasty little spill on the way down-it's super icy on the trail coming back and I was being careless. I had no idea you could buy ice spikes for your running shoes but they must do a brisk business in them here judging from the volume of crazies barreling down the trail.

I got super lazy about pushing myself physically in Boston. If I'm being honest, I got lazy about pushing myself period in Boston. So if the past few months I've been working a little too much and charging straight up a mountain is what counts for a relaxing Sabbath, I'll take it.

Go Time

All the talk talk planning talking counting planning talking of the last three months kicks off tomorrow when I get to outfit about 220 members of Team USA staff. It's a good practice for the actual Team event in Vancouver but I'm a touch nervous about how everything will go. I feel prepared and I know we've worked our tails off but still-I have never done this before and I don't know what I don't know.

BUT, the interns and I had a fabulous time today getting everything set up and then doing our own "shopping trips" through the apparel stations.

I'm really glad these two will be roommates so they can dress the same every. single. day. So cute!
Mostly I just like Ian and Charlie in the back there looking like excited little girls digging through a box.

I may never want to wear red, white and blue again after March but right now I have to say, we are going to look pretty darn sharp!

Perspective

I started the year 2000 fast asleep in my missionary bed in Geneva, Switzerland. I figured it was God's way of helping me build character that the girl who hates with all her heart to miss out on anything had to watch all day as the city prepared for the party of the century and then go to sleep at 10:30. Little did I know that my quiet evening would usher in a decade so rich and full that my head almost explodes when I look back on it.

My biggest fear when I left on my mission was that somehow that was it. I was going to come home, grow up, get a job and be stuck in a monotonous adult life. College had been so much fun and I made such dear friends that I simply couldn't imagine things could actually be better when I could no longer stay up all night and spend half my life laughing around a table at Denny's.

My mother and I went to Paris 29 days into 2000. My dad got a kidney transplant about 35 days in. Within three months I had landed a dream job and met people who are STILL altering the course of my life.

My parents divorced this decade. I bought my first car. And my second. And my third. I was rink side for all the good stories at the 2002 Olympics, I met boys who felt like soul mates and learned that some of those are just teachers and not "the one". I moved across the country three times. I signed a couple of major sponsorship deals, ran a marathon and discovered a passion for activity I never knew existed, I made friends with all my siblings and gained three amazing sisters-in-law. I finally became an Aunt-twice! I watched nearly every friend from college and high school and my mother get hitched and sent more baby presents that I can ever count. I spent six months crying every day before I quit a miserable job but I learned stuff I wouldn't trade. I got my heart kicked around a fair amount but I still find myself offering it up so I don't think the damage is permanent. I've been able to travel like crazy and get to know some pretty great cities here and abroad. I found out sushi is completely awesome. I lived with a ton of really fantastic women over the last ten years but got to finish the decade in my very own beautiful space.

I could go on for days but suffice it to say, the 00's were flat out amazing. I feel like I accomplished so many of my dreams and got to move on to bigger ones. As my blog tagline says, I think my 16 year old self would approve-I flat out love the person I have grown up to be. The potential for the Teens or whatever we are going to call the next ten years is unreal. I already know I have Vancouver, London, Russia and Rio to look forward to which blows my mind just a little bit. I hope hope hope that these are the ten years that include marriage and babies for me and I'm proud of myself for saying that in print. It's not really a goal you can accomplish through work and tenacity like pretty much everything else in my life so it freaks me out to admit that I hope it happens. Soon.

I'll be 43 when I write the next one of these. Forty three. I'm sitting here at noon still in my jammies, listening to Bon Iver and looking out the window at the mountains in Colorado Springs and thinking that if 23 year old me had no concept of what was in store then 33 year old me should not worry about a single thing.

And with that, I'm off to go for a run. 2010 should start with a good sweat don't you think?

Carry Me

My favorite sounds tonight.

Olde Tyme

If you ever lived in Utah as a kid, I am certain you went to Lagoon at least once a summer. And I am also certain that you remember the black and white photo shop in Pioneer Village where you could get your picture taken as a 19th century saloon girl or gunfighter. And I am willing to bet that most of your parents were not willing to pay whatever ridiculous amount of money they charged at said shop to get such a photo. Am I right?

So when Emily came out to Colorado Springs and we walked by such a place in our touristy wanderings, the 12 year old me was just bursting to do it. It turned out that 12 year old Em was pretty easy to convince as well and next thing you knew this happened:



I'm thinking I ought to crop that cleavage, make it my Facebook profile photo and see what if it has any effect on my relationship status.

But don't worry, after we satisfied our inner 12 year olds, we let our inner Olympians out as well.




Sonic drinks are very, very important staples of our training you see.

25

Coming home to Utah is always such a blur. We stay up late, I never manage to see everyone no matter how much running around I do, I drink a truly disturbing amount of Diet Dr. Pepper and then suddenly it's over and I am exhausted and happy and just a little bit dazed.

This trip has been really fun. My sister came to Colorado Springs on Friday to help me put my apartment together and keep me company on the loooong drive home (but oh! to live within driving distance of the family!). It's been just about a week I almost have Morgan convinced that I really am a member of the family.

One of the best parts of being here though has been the social overload. Remember that I totally love my new job and I'm enjoying the new apartment and the new city but it's been a lot of new. 2009 was an absolutely exhausting year. I was miserable for the first three months of it, I changed jobs twice and I moved to a brand new place for the first time in a long time. So I'm having a great time and feeling happy and blessed and all kinds of other superlatives but it's also been a long year of being "on". Learning new stuff, working hard, trying to make friends, being a wee bit concerned about the utter lack of dating prospects-it all combines to wear a girl out. So when I sit at a table with the girls I grew up with and we laugh about junior high crushes and Sunday School teachers we hid from and babies and husbands, it feels like watering a half dead plant. It's been a week stuffed full of those kinds of moments-friends from all stages of my life who just fill me right back up and put back all the emotional electrolytes I lost in this nutso year. I feel awfully lucky for my job and the move but of all my embarrassingly large haul of blessings, I am most thankful for my adorable family and my share and then some of good, good friends. A roommate a few years ago teased me that some people collect stamps-I collect people. I am pretty sure I have a Sotheby's worthy collection because I've been laughing and smiling nonstop for eight days.

Now I'm going to go fill up on getting attacked by my brothers and quilting with my sisters while we listen to Sufjan Stevens. Bliss.

Intro

My baby sister (who is 18 and really isn't a baby at all) started a new blog and it is awesome.

Start here

I'll post this week if I ever stop cuddling with Morgan.

Heist

I went to Vancouver last weekend for a final site visit before the Games and got pulled into a little adventure we like to call "ticket pick-up". That's when four of us go to Canada with empty suitcases and come back with about $2 million in tickets. Yep.

Step one is to go to the Organizing Committee and count out about 14,000 tickets to make sure we got them all. Here is Nancy opening the ceremonial first box.


Then the cute ticketing guy explains to us how to read the ticket.

Awww, look at me with my stack of Speed Skating tickets...notice how I ALREADY look tired and this is BEFORE we spent 22 hours in a conference room counting, counting, counting.
Being at the Office meant seeing several people that I like quite a lot. Scott and Bev from the Salt Lake Games came down to say hello. Bev and I keep in great touch but I hadn't seen Scott in seven years. Aside from a few more gray hairs though, he was the same delightful guy who used to bring us to our knees laughing way back when. We got telling stories and I am pretty sure the interns with us thought we were insane. It felt so good to see them, even just for a few minutes.
Here is the ticket counting machine that sort of makes you feel like you are doing something illegal. Although pretty much the whole experience made me feel like I was doing something illegal. Can you imagine the looks you get at the airport when four of you come through the TSA with nothing in your carryons???
And here is two million dollars worth of tickets.
We spent the next two days counting, sorting, and assigning tickets to all of our National Govering Bodies. We were watching Ellen while we worked and what should be wandering eyes should appear but John Mayer! Wearing one of the Ralph Lauren sweaters our athletes are getting! The very sweaters I have been counting for the last month! Full circle my friends.
And if you are wondering how we got all those tickets home? No armored car, no bodyguards. Just four ladies and our suitcases. The station manager in Vancouver was nice enough to come in early and walk us through the airports so we could get right to the plane with no waiting. You sure get a lot of curious looks when you are being waved through every checkpoint plus customs. Definitely the way to travel folks.Our bags were all crazy heavy. I was pulling mine down from the overhead compartment and said something about it breaking my back and the guy behind me said, "heh, must be all that gold bullion you have in there." I made nervous eye contact with Lisa and Brittney and we all giggled like dorks. We are very subtle.

I was so dead tired when I got home I thought for sure I would just fall into bed. Instead I grocery shopped, did laundry, cleaned my house, got a pedicure and wrapped Christmas presents. I'm hoping there is something like sleep under the tree for me next week.

The end.

Down

As you may have guessed from reading this thing lately, life is pretty good.

I do have a complaint though.

I have had zero zero zero time to write in the last three months. Don't misunderstand, I love being busy! I love feeling really good at my job again! I love getting to do new and interesting things!

But I miss writing. This has been an insane week of Games Staff Training and I had to give not one or two but three presentations and I finally feel like a human again. I desperately want to write about that but it's 10:25 and I'm so friend that I just watched two straight hours of television to give my brain a break. I get to the end of the day lately and I'm completely spent.

But there are tulips on my table (MY table!) and the apartment is warm and my bed is cozy and the sunshine wakes me up every day and I'm going to Vancouver in two days. And yesterday I cried at work and not because I was sad but because our Director of Paralympics brought us all to tears with his closing remarks. And that folks, is why this girl is going to keep the murmuring to a minimum and get to bed.

This Christmas

All I did this weekend was sleep. I managed to pull myself out of the house to go for a failure of a run, go to a parade with my friend Heather and her family, hit an hour of church and get a tiny bit of grocery shopping done.

Other than that, I caught up on a few shows and watched The Proposal so I could stare at Ryan Reynolds for awhile and I slept. At first I was feeling really guilty about sleeping away my weekend but then I realized, hey self, you've been pulling 12-14 hour work days for about three weeks so it's really possible that what you needed was a whole bunch of rest.

I've been listening to a whole bunch of Christmas music while I slugged around. Here are some of my favorites for your enjoyment!

These guys went to school with my friend Lori and they are really quite fantastic.


The Weepies



Is it even Christmas without Nat King Cole??



If you can get your hands on Sufjan Steven's Christmas albums, do. Fantastic.



This is Judy Garland and Bing Crosby doing Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer and it's one of my all time favorites. It's so clever and fun.



How wonderful are the Beach Boys?? This little gem is just a perfect example of everything they were so good at-fun lyrics, great harmonies, and catchy catchy tunes that stick like crazy in your head.



Make fun of me if you want to but I love Justin Timberlake and I think this is such a pretty version of one of my favorite classics.



And finally-Taylor Swift doing Last Christmas!!! What could be better??



I love Christmas!

Finito

So we finished counting all the apparel for the Games today. My shoulders hurt, I've been dirty for like three straight weeks and I'm sick to death of cardboard. But today when we stacked all of our pallets neatly against the walls and our 30,000 items were all accounted for I might have done an actual dance of joy.

Here it all is-every scrap of Opening and Closing Ceremonies, Podium wear and a whole bunch more fun stuff you get if you spend your entire life training your head off. (psss, those stacks are six deep friends. I'm ready to die.)

My coworkers are going to kill me

But then again, this pose took zero coaxing so...


Oh I love my job.