2 months ago
I forgot to mention...
On Saturday morning I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat at my computer. My husband grabbed his cup and sat at his computer. I spun around on my office chair and looked at him. He noticed and asked what was wrong. "An interruption" i spurted out. " What" he replied. I explained that I felt that there was going to be an interruption that day. We were scheduled to have dinner at my parents house. My brothers were going to be there. The day went on, my mother and I went to shopping, I picked up some California Rolls for appetizers and we went home. Dinner rolled around and then the phone rang. My mother told me her friend Ara was stopping by for dinner.
Background information on Ara... She worked with my mom, for years and one day my mother was talking about my day and ARA asked what his name was. Like my mother, we refer to our husbands as "my husband" when we talk to others. Long story short Ara knows my dad. He used to date Ara's sister back in the day and her family knows my dad's family. There is so much to this woman, like the cult she was in, the bad divorce, the lost job, the family issues, the women that fell in love with her and stalked her. Ara deserves a blog just dedicated to her.
LOL... this post is exactly what I meant by interruption. It's all her. Dinner, we did not sit together as a family. Ara sat with my parents on one table out on the patio and we sat on another. Just thought I write about it. I'm documenting these "newsflashes".
Monday
My boss gave me and others in my department the day off. The painters and decorator came in late and needed to get to work in our offices. So we packed up what little we had out and left. I ran a few in office errands, called my husband and went to an early lunch with him. We decided to go shopping and pick up some groceries. I bought some paint so I can finish a piece I'm working on. I also purchased a new photo album for this year. I'm 8 months behind in my scrap booking. I have photos from Jan. through April printed out. I'll catch up. We have some big accounts coming up this fall and I'll need the painting and scrap booking to de-stress.
My husband I had I came home and we took advantage of the time. He trimmed four shrubs around the house and I cleaned... I mean CLEANED out our office. 1000% better. Time well spent. As a reward we BBQ each of us a specialty hamburger and kabobs of green onion, yellow squash, Roma tomatoes from our garden and yellow bell peppers. YUMMY! We topped it off with strawberries and blue berries mixed with a little sugar on pound cake. (one burger instead of two each, veggies instead of fries, berries instead of cake/ice cream). We even were daring enough to make some drinks. Brandy and Limeade and I had a blue Margarita... so much for healthy eating....the drinks kinda countered that. Over all we had a great day. Thank goodness I was kicked out of my office. It was so worth it. I loved spending that time being productive at home and with my husband.
I have to wake up early tomorrow and take in Kahva for her spay appt., run over to get a TB test (work related), see if the my office needs to be put back together, get paperwork done, pick up the puppy, and make dinner, and then run off to UCR for a meeting about my Masters. Sigh. Things are back to normal.
Maybe I'll wait on the TB test.
Something new
I'm posting this for me and some family and friends to check out, however if you are interested click on it. Especially check out Chicano English.
http://www.pbs.org/speak/
Do you Speak American? Great link. I found it on Tacos and Palabras (link on side bar).
This hit close to home. My first language is Spanish. That disappeared by age 5. My mom is from Idaho, born in Texas. My father is Berdoo, California all the way.
My maternal grandparents raised the 12+ kids in Idaho, in a Mormon/White Christian Community. Neither grandparent spoke Spanish to the grand kids. Grandma is a Tlaxcalan Indian and her father spoke Nahuatl and Spanish. Which dialect of Nahuatl... not sure.
My paternal grandparents were divorced prior to my birth. Neither they or my step grandad spoke Spanish to their kids or the grand kids. (Side note: Grandma was a pachuca and calls herself a Chicana to this day @ 81 years old)
The only family member that spoke Spanish in the family was my great grandmother who died two years ago at 104 years of age.
I learned Spanish from my babysitter and my mother spoke Spanish and English with me.My dad learned Spanish along with me. By the time I was in Kindergarten I was reading at a 3rd grade level and they decided to take me out of the Bilingual ed program and put me in GATE. Gifted and Talented Education. In kindergarten I was surrounded by black, white and brown kids. Sunshine, my best friend invited me over to her house to play one night. They had taco night. There I found out tortillas came in a bag, rice was white with seasoning and beans came out of a can. I came home so excited to tell my mother my new discovery. We both still laugh about it. She sat me down and explained that she already knew this. I thought I was Columbus and discovered a new land.
I was moved into GATE classes 1st through 3rd grade. I was 1 of three brown kids. Let's just say Spanish was not used. At lunch I saw my first sandwich in Saran wrap. Not a burrito in foil.
Today... My husband speaks Spanish great. His Spanish is a Cubano/Puerto Rican type. This poses a problem. When we were in Puebla, Mexico I had a hard time talking to the Mexicanos, however I had no problem understanding the Puerto Ricans on vacation there. My clients tell me I speak Spanish like a white girl, but they are happy I can at least speak Spanish.
San Diego
Ok... now that the other post is off my chest...
My eclectic group of co workers were great. With the exception of two. I however did not leave them out. I opened 10 spots on this trip to my entire staff and these 10 were interested. Others have already gone or could not attend this time. Even though two may not be with us after this financial year I took them anyways. I can not make that call. The CEO has to. I was happy with our site meetings in the afternoon. We had them Mon-Thurs. and were very productive. We were done by 5:00 on Monday, 3:00ish on Tuesday-Thursday and 12:00 on Friday. My husband and I made the most of the evenings.
Monday- Had Pizza with my husband, went swimming and shared a dessert
Tuesday- We went out with my co-workers and families for dinner. We ate a place called Rocking Baja Lobster. Why, because it can accommodate 20 at a moments notice and kids. We went shopping in Old Town San Diego (Tourist Trap) . We window shopped. While I was in meetings, my husband went to Tijuana. His mission, to find a bookstore he had heard about and visit the local cathedral. After our visit to Puebla we have fallen in love with church architecture.
Wednesday - We went to the San Diego Natural History Museum to see the Dead Sea Scrolls. Amazing. The exhibit was very well put together. According to a San Diego Union Tribune Article,
Until the early 1990s, the Dead Sea Scrolls were carefully controlled, with access given to only a handful of scholars who were to interpret them and then publish their contents. But the world grew eager to know more about these mysterious writings, which contain some of the oldest known manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible as well as accounts that might have influenced early Christianity.
The last time an official Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit was in California was in 1993 in San Francisco, on a tour that began at the Library of Congress. A smaller exhibit came to Los Angeles after that but it was an independent showing of a couple of scrolls, according to the scrolls foundation.
There are three exhibitions scheduled in the United States before San Diego's show – Charlotte, N.C.; Seattle; and Milwaukee.
We ate at In and Out after.
Thursday - My husband and I went to a great place called the Little Hawaii. It's actually Japanese food, why the name... ? It was sooooo good. We walked the Gas Lamp District and then came back to the hotel. I sat in the spa reading the paper and he sat reading Don Quixote by Cervantes.
Friday- Last session, most people left early to catch flights back to home (Las Vegas). We wrapped up and then they wanted to show us one more clip... one I have used in meetings before... I decided this was my cue to leave, it was 11:00. My husband and I checked out and went to Ricky's for Breakfast.
Back from San Diego
VS
I'm home....I was able to take my husband this time with me. We took off for San Diego Monday morning. The drive was nice and compared to the Grand Canyon, fast. We arrived at our hotel. We always are on the 6th or 7th floor. This time we were on the 2nd floor. At first I was a little bummed, however it forced me to climb the stairs rather then wait for an elevator just to go up one level. After we were settled in our room I took a shuttle over to the hotel that was the main base of the conference. There were about 4,000 people in attendance. The conference spanned over 5 hotels (convention halls) and thank goodness mine was at the main stop for the shuttle. I was joined my people from my department team and others from the company. The CEO even came on Thursday for the "Lunch" and a 4 hour seminar. One thing I did learn from this is that no matter how much education, school or life experience, people are dumb sometimes. My "strand" as they call it dealt with diversification of staff and customers as well as promoting a positive work culture, expanding leadership with the focus on our Company. Our Company and it's many off shoots. Well on Wednesday I felt that we had only scratched the surface with only one 8 hours left of training in this strand. Were was the meat of it, were was the battle plan? Yes they gave us skills on how to pull ideas from everyone in the building, but what about our Focus?
Then it happened.
The speaker said.....
Okay.... now that your back form your break here is story...
Two of last years participants from Texas decided to test a Business in Tijuana (20 min. south of where we were). Their business failed in the states and they wanted to test it down south. It was a bungee jump place. One guy stayed on top while the other harnessed up and took the jump. He went down and came up so fast that the top guy could not catch him. Jump guy had cuts on his face. This happened again till finally guy on top caught him. He asked him what happened was the bungee to long (mind you everyone was waiting to see what went wrong) then the speaker said that they thought he was a pinata.
Room fell silent. Some of the Vegas participants snickered, Californian participants just stared, Washington and Oregon looked around and the 6 Latinos in the room... just shook their heads.
In a bar ... OK, but the Strand was about culture and diversification. She laughed, her co-speaker laughed and the strand of 50 ... just sat. As they moved the room into the next topic, I went out for a time out. When Friday came around they had us fill out eval forms for the strand and the Conference. Conference, high marks. Strand, I explained my dissatisfaction in the the amount we learned and wrote a note, in detail, on how the joke did not fit in with the topic.
My team learned a lot from their different strands. DIVA is well on it's way of being a power house, besides the "joke" just wish I gained more knowledge from mine.
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