Today we celebrate Jeremy’s Birthday.  His only request this year was to eat crepes.  So we had family and some friends over for a night of sugary crepes… and lots of laughter.  Jeremy makes me laugh every day.  I love him! 

Happy Birthday Sweet Heart

I finally made it out to the garden tonight.  I thought I should since I can’t remember the last time I went and with a change in weather, the garden needed some water.  I’m feeling like my garden is an after thought this year.  Tonight, one of my fellow gardeners said, “I haven’t seen much of you this year.”  I just don’t have as much garden time and I’m feeling like my garden is suffering.  But on the bright side, some things are looking good!  Here are a few pictures from tonight….

For almost the past 3 months I planned to write a post today, however this isn’t exactly the post I planned.  Yesterday I was scheduled to complete my first sprint triathlon, but due to illness I wasn’t able to.  I’ve been sick for the past week now.  So instead, I’ll post about all the blessings I enjoyed this past week because there are many!

On Wednesday the stars aligned and I was able to go to a cooking class and learn how to make crepes.  Two months ago Jeremy told me the only thing he wanted for his birthday was for me to learn how to make crepes.  I tried signing up for this class, but I got put on a waiting list.  The night before the class I realized I wasn’t going to get to go, so I started looking at other classes I could take from them (to cross off my “Take a Cooking Class” on my 30 before 30 list).  That wednesday on my morning break at work, I checked my messages… and someone dropped out late tuesday night.  I love when the timing all works out on things!  Now I’m a crepe making master!

Thursday my Grandpa Smith, Aunt Wendy and her 4 boys arrived in Seattle while on their road trip.  Jeremy and I headed to thier camp ground and met up with my sisters, my cousin Greg and his family, plus two of my Dad’s cousins.  We sat around in camping chairs at the KOA, eating dinner, looking at pictures and just talking.  I loved it.  I loved being with family.  There was just somethng so familiar and soothing about it.

Friday night, my good friend Amber, her husband Ben and their two girls, Lucy and Maddie met us for dinner over in Edmonds for some yummy Mexican food.  I couldn’t talk very well (I’ve lost my voice) but it was so good to see them!

I’m greatful for my sisters.  They brought me a Jamba Juice saturday morning, so that I wouldn’t feel as bad for missing my race.  AND they said they’d stage a triathlon for me to do.  Plus, I need to thank Amy for going with me last saturday to the lake and giving me the support and encouragment to jump in… and to swim the whole distance, even though my first instict was to get right out.  I’m pretty sure swiming in the cold lake got me sick, but it was good to try it once!

And I’m greatful for Jeremy.  He’s been taking care of me.  Plus he didn’t call me crazy or stupid for insisting all week that I’d still be able to do the race on saturday.  Instead, friday nigth as we’re driving to dinner, I causually mentioned that my mom didn’t think it was the smartest idea for me to do the race, and he calmly said, “I’m surprised you haven’t looked for another one to do instead.”  No judgement, no pushing the fact that I was totally unable to do the race as planned.  That’s when I finally admitted out loud that I couldn’t do the race.  I’m greatful to have such a supportive husband (I think he was really happy because then he got to stay home saturday and play his new xbox).  Plus late last night when I decided I wanted a blizzard.. he got dressed and took me to DQ.  I was going to do it myself, but I can’t talk, so they wouldn’t be able to hear me order.

The week didn’t end as I had planned.  I had hoped to be posting pictures of me triumphantly crossing the finish line.  And writing about how even if my 8th grade teacher gave me the “I can’t award”… I really could do whatever I really tried hard to do.  And it’s true.  I’ll still do a triathlon this summer… but now I just have more time to trian.  Despite the bummer of an ending, I had a really great week full of many blessings!

It’s been awhile since I’ve wasted your Friday…  I hope your pre-weekend productivity hasn’t been too high.

Doodle God – Combine elements to create new elements.
 http://www.avaloid.com/doodle-god?tab=flash
As a bonus….

check out http://store.steampowered.com/, lots of great games are on sale right now…  My picks for some “under $10 shark attack free indoor fun” are Plants Vs. Zombies (30% off), World of Goo (50% off), and Flotilla (50% off).

Office 2010 (O14* to the folks not in marketing) finally hit the streets earlier this week!   To commemorate the event I got a special version of Office Pro Plus with a note as well as a “ship-it” award.  They are awarded every time a product ships to everyone who worked on it. 

Ever since I started work at Microsoft as a contractor four years ago I coveted the plaques, they are just adhesive backed bits of metal  and frosted glass.  It wasn’t so much the physical object but what it represented…  sadly I was ineligible for one of these until now (only FTEs get them). 

Being involved with the RTM builds (Release To Market (or Manufacture, depending on who you talk to)) was a new challenge for me.  I’ve been on high visibility (read: stressful) builds before but nothing like RTM, thankfully I had a vast stockpile of caffeinated products and a forgiving wife to help me through the 18+ x 7 work weeks (I would work 18+ hour days from Monday through Sunday for a week at a time every few weeks).  The ability to work from home was certainly a blessing (as was my natural insomnia and aforementioned wife and caffeine stockpile), but now I’m in the market for a new chair since I literally wore the padding down with my butt (NOT a painless process I assure you).

Perhaps the most exciting part of the whole RTM process is now that we shipped we get to “re-ORG” (a reorganization of all the teams that make up Office), which among other things is a name change for the team (we are now the Engineering Build Team, previously known as PLEX Build), and hopefully a new office to call my own (I’ve been sharing an office for almost as long as I worked at Microsoft).

It’ll be a long time before I fill up the other spaces on that plaque.  Given the timing of previous releases, if I stay in Office it’ll be about 15 years until I fill it up, but for now I’ll keep it in a place of honor in my office… on the shelf right next to my toys.

* – our internal names for MS Office are pretty uninspiring, Office 2000 was O9, Office XP was O10, Office 2003 was O11, and Office 2007 was O12, (we skipped O13 for technical reasons) and are now starting work on O15…   seriously, we need to hire someone to give us codenames…  other Microsoft products have cool names like “Photon”, “Argo”, “Valhalla”, “Blackwater”, “Kahuna”, “Project 42″, “Starfighter”, “Whitehorse”, “Red Dog”, or even “Rome”.  It would be so awesome to be able to respond to a coworker when they ask what I’m doing this week and say “I’m building starfighter”.

The setting for the triathlon

The countdown begins.  Only 4 more weeks to go!

On June 26th I will be participating in my first Triathlon… a Sprint Triathlon that is.  For about 5 years I’ve been wanting to do one, but never committed to training.  But this year as I contemplated my 30 before 30 list, I knew this had to be included. 

I picked the Lake Padden Triathlon up in Bellingham because I used to run around the lake when I lived there.  I thought some familiarity with the area would help ease some nervousness about trying a new sport.  After I picked the race I drove to Bellingham for the day to spend time with a friend, while I was there I scouted out the bike course and kept thinking, “What did I just get myself into?!”

From that day on I knew I had to do some serious training.  I’ve been waking at 5:30 am for a spinning class twice a week.  I’m learning how to actually swim freestyle, thanks to my sister Amy (and some tips from my friend Joie). And I’ve started to run again.  I feel good about my progress so far.  But for the next 4 weeks I’ll be practicing doing one sport right after the other.  They say learning to transition is one of the hardest parts about being a Triathlete. 

My goal is to finish (oh, and to run the whole run portion).  I might just be the last one across the finish line, but I’ll finish!

When I lived in Monterey for a few months one summer I became really good friends with Shana and Jordan.  Lucky for them, they met each other and got married a year (or two) later.  I adore both of them.  This fall I was thrilled to find out they had adopted a little boy and was expecting their first daughter.  After the birth of Vivian Rose, I sent them a little package of ocean themed onesies, since we had all studied Marine Biology together that summer.  I thought they turned out pretty cute.

Here’s the latest from the garden (taken last week).  The peppers are in, can’t wait to eat those.  Plus on the other side of the garden bed I planted our first crop of carrots, broccoli, and few different types of lettuce.  I’ve never grown broccoli or lettuce.  Can’t wait to learn more about it this year.  I think it’s too late to plant my potatoes.  So I’m not sure what I’ll plant down there yet.  I’ll plant the beans in two weeks I think.

Abbie and I have decided to take our relationship to the next level…  and got a cat!  His prison name is “Sylvester”, which is either a clever reference to the obscure’ Sylvester of Assisi’ (companion and the first priest to join St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals) or a much less clever Looney Tunes reference…  I ruled out a Stalone reference due to his super mellow personality. 

According to the calendar I’m 29 1/2 today.  Halfway to turning 30.  Back on my 29th birthday I made a 30 Before 30 list.  30 things I wanted to do during my 30th year of life.  To be honest, Read more…