Exciting!

Well, after putting out the call for team members for Relay for Life, I already have 9 people (counting myself) either definitely doing it, or 98% sure they're doing it! That's so encouraging! I was really worried that we weren't going to have enough people, but we already have over the minimum and I haven't even talked to everyone yet.

By the way, I realized that I forgot to include the dates of the Relay itself. It's on August 1-2, for 24 hours. And out of towners CAN sign up. Also, the website for the Baker City Relay for Life is here. If you have any other questions, just let me know!

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPY BIRTHDAY NATHAN!

Yep, it's my honey's birthday today! He's 28 years old. Unfortunately, we're both working today so we can't really do anything too major to celebrate. We are meeting up with some friends at Barley's for dinner, and then will go home to open presents. The good news is that we both have this weekend off, so we're planning on going snowshoeing on Saturday. Very exciting!

Love you sweety and happy birthday!

Relay for Life

As some of you probably already got an email about, this year I am captain of a Relay for Life team. When Marla passed away, I really wanted to get involved with this event that raises funds for cancer research, but I just wasn't ready yet. This year, though, is a different story. I'm so incredibly excited to get going on this. Last night was the kick-off party for RfL, and I just jumped in with both feet. So now I have to get together a team of 8-15 people for the relay itself, plus help organize that team to raise at least $1000 to go towards cancer research.

The relay itself is going to be a blast. It's 24 hours long, everyone camps in the middle of the high school track where the relay takes place, each team decorates their camp site, and there's an amazing moment at sunset where everyone lights their Luminaria. Luminarias are white paper bags with the Relay for Life emblem on them that we sell for $10. You then decorate your luminaria to honor a person in your life who has battled cancer or in honor of cancer survivors in general. Once those are all lit, the luminaria follow the outside curve the track and light your way during your walk around the track. It's absolutely beautiful. In the video they showed last night of the 2007 Relay for Life, a luminaria for Marla was shown for a long time...it would have taken a stronger person than myself to keep from crying.

If anyone would like to get involved as part of the relay team, or through donating, just let me know. My email is lindy.yl@gmail.com and my cell number is 541.633.3809.

WAAHOOOOOOO!!!!

Ok, well, today was my official weigh-in day (at home, since I don't do WW meetings). And the final weight loss number for the week....

5.6 lbs!!!!!!!!!!!!

Plus, I lost, on average, 1/2 inch from my measurements, which is super exciting! I'm having to throw away what use to be my comfy jeans (now WAY too baggy) and my 'skinny jeans' are now my comfy jeans! SO excited! And now it's time to go work out and start a new week that is hopefully as successful as this one was!

Catching Flack

So this week at work has been interesting. I've been an incredibly good girl in terms of eating healthy and keeping track of my points, and I'm SO excited about my weigh-in tomorrow morning. But man oh man have my coworkers been flicking me crap about my food. Especially when I'm eating things like salad with chicken and spritzer dressing, or Campbell's Soup-In-Hand.

Until I tell them I've lost almost 5 lbs in a week.

That shuts them up pretty quickly. HA!

I kind of have to feel for them though, I mean it wasn't that long ago that I was making fun of all the "health freaks" too. But I've seen what sitting in dispatch for 12 hours at a time and eating junk food can do to your body, and I don't want that to be me!

I was looking through some photos of my high school years this morning. How in the world did I think I was fat back then?! I honestly thought I was a lot heavier than most of the girls in my class, but then I found a photo of a bunch of us from our Senior Party night...I was just as skinny as all those girl!!! And I'm going to get back to that size! Which just excites the heck out of me! So stay tuned, tomorrow I will post my official weight loss for the week.

Losin' Weight and Feelin' Great!

Well, as of Monday I am officially a member of Weight Watcher's Online. I had been using my mom's account, but for some reason it stopped letting me access all the tools so I decided it was time to branch out on my own. The great part is that my friend, Carly, is also doing Weight Watcher Online. We're both online every day, so we've been supporting each other via gmail messenger constantly.

With that support, I've been motivated to work out every day this week so far. I've been keeping close track of my daily food points and I've been losing weight! Mondays are my weigh in day, and I'm SO excited to see what my weight is on Monday. I KNOW there's going to be a change, because I've done so well on eating right and working out.

But the best part is how good I feel, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I have so much more energy that I've been able to stop drinking soda. Now it's rare if I drink anything besides water most days! I want this to be a life-long change, because of how much better I feel. I'm getting less headaches, less stomach aches, and I'm less grouchy. Gotta love those endorphins!

The hardest part has been refusing the sweets at work. The other day was a coworker's birthday and there was the inevitable cake passed around. But I was able to resist, even when another coworker set a piece of cake down right next to me! I know saying no to that piece of cake will feel soooooooooo good when I see my weight on Monday!

The Last 20 Years

Carly and Arly both tagged me, which means I'm required to do this, right?

20 years ago.....1988
I was about 4 1/2. I believe we were still living in Elgin, OR (a town even tinier than Baker outside of La Grande). Dad had sold his Elgin dental practice, had bought his practice in Baker, and was commuting to Baker every day. I think this was about the time that Mom and Dad had decided that it was time to move to Baker. Which was sad, because that meant leaving the log house my parents built on a beautiful piece of property outside of Elgin.

10 years ago.... 1998
I was 14 years old. This was my first year in high school. I was just getting involved in theatre, I had gotten into the all-women select choir, and was really enjoying it.

5 years ago....2003
I was in my freshman year of college. I was staying up until about 4 am spending time with friends. At this point I had realized that I didn't want to be a pre-med major and was trying to figure out what the heck to do with my college career.

3 years ago.... 2005
Nathan and I had just started seriously dating after knowing each other for 6 months. I was in my junior year of college, a theatre major, and was living off campus (thank goodness!).

1 year ago....2007
I had just started working at the dispatch center and was starting Academy in Salem. Nathan was still working at the Credit Union. Marla had pass away a month ago and we had just moved into her house that she had left us. At this point, we only had Bandit.

Yesterday I....worked, had a pretty relaxed and entertaining day. One of our officers had seen the meteor that went over Baker at around 5:30 am and didn't know what it was. So my partner and I put together an Alien Survival Kit for him, filled with various survival necessities made out of tin foil. Awesome.

Today I...slept in until 9:15 (3 1/2 hours past when I wake up on work days). Now I'm sitting in bed, watching tv and typing this. At some point this morning I'm going to go work out, and then I'm going to go grocery shopping. Oh, and laundry is going to be in there somewhere.

Tomorrow...will probably be very much the same as today. Sleep in, work out, probably clean the house.

Yah, I know. My life rocks. I have no idea who to tag, so if you read it and want to do it, go for it!

Heavenly Occurances

This morning while I was driving to work at 5:40 am, there was a HUGE yellow moon that was about 3/4 full, just hovering above the Elkhorns. It made me wish I had my camera and tripod. By the time I got half way to work, the moon was starting to set behind the mountains and all you could see in front of it was the sillouette of the peaks. It was absolutely beautiful. It only lasted for about 3 minutes, and then it was gone, but I felt special to have gotten to see something so amazing while most of the town was still asleep.

Here's the link to a Portland news station's story from this morning's meteor appearance. They even mention Baker!

Evidently about half an hour before that, our officer had seen a really bright flash of light in the sky. Of course when he reported this, there was the inevitable "alien invader" jokes, but it turns out that he wasn't going crazy. After I got to work, I got a call from Union County asking if we had seen a bright flash of light. Apparently they had also seen it and had gotten a report from some official agency stating that a meteorite had fallen out of the sky pretty close to us and that it had caused a bright flash of light. I still like the alien theory, myself. Or maybe it's some secret government agency conducting tests over Baker County. I'll let you know if we start getting reports of people disappearing or twitching.

I Admit It...

...I'm addicted to changing our blog details. The background, the fonts, the margin settings. I will sit and stare at it until I find something else I can do to make it look better. I'm sure no one else notices the little changes, but it makes me feel better.

Or maybe it's just the fact that there's NOTHING to do at work today. Yeah, that could be part of it.

But definitely not all of it.

Valentine's and Snowshoes

Whew, what a busy weekend! Since both Nathan and I worked on Thursday (Valentine's Day) we had decided to celebrate on Friday instead. However, Nathan still did manage to surprise me with breakfast and a hyacinth plant, which smelled SOOOOO good all day while I was working. That night, we exchanged gifts...Nathan managed to track down some pearl earrings that match perfectly with the pearl necklace he got me for a wedding present. Yes, my husband spoils me and I'm not afraid to admit it!

Nathan took Friday off and the plan had been to spend the day skiing up at Anthony and then stay the night at our friend's cabin up there. Unfortunately, when we got up there in the morning, we found the driveway plowed and approximately 4 ft worth of snow between the driveway and the cabin front door. Strike one. While Nathan set to work shoveling a path to the front door, I took a quick trip around the back of the cabin to find the outhouse we would be using, since the pipes in the cabin had frozen. I found it...approximately 100 feet behind the cabin, half buried, with no path between the two. Strike two. After that, I venture inside the very cold cabin to build a fire. I got a good start but then both Nathan and I noticed that there was an unreasonable amount of smoke collecting in the cabin. Nathan discovered the source...smoke was pouring out of the chimney about halfway between the stove and the ceiling. Strike three.

Oh, and have I mentioned that one of the dogs threw up in one of Nathan's snow boots on the way up the mountain. Somehow the dog, which ever one it was, managed to not get any of the mess ANYWHERE except in the boot. Needless to say, that boot was ruined and Nathan was without snowboots. Not good when we're tramping through over 4 ft of snow. So we gave up and headed back down the mountain. Nathan remembered that there was one of his coworkers who was said to have extra snowshoes that people could borrow. So we called them and borrowed two sets from them. But instead of going back out, we ended up taking a nap all afternoon and then making a lovely fondue dinner, drinking some great wine, and watching the Jeff Dunham dvd I got Nathan for Valentine's Day. If you've never heard of Jeff Dunham, look him up on YoutTube, he's hilarious.

On Saturday, we slept in, lazed around, and then finally got our butts in gear to head back up to Anthony Lakes to try out the snowshoes. After we schlepped around the pond below our friend's cabin for a while, we then went back to the ski lodge to hang out with our friend Dana and listen to the live band they had that night. The band was incredibly good and we got to see a lot of friends. When we got home, some friends came over, stayed until around midnight, and then it was finally bed time.

Today, we woke up and went to a new church called the Harvest Church. It was...interesting. Don't get me wrong, we actually like it and there seemed to be a lot of couples around our age, which is great! Today there was a "prophetic singer" instead of a message from the regular pastor, so we're wanting to go back to hear the pastor speak in two weeks (I have to work next weekend). After church, we did more lazing around, watched a couple of movies, Nathan took a nap, and now I'm watching Becoming Jane and writing this.

And now...some pictures from our snowshoeing trip.

The pond we snowshoed around.

Shadows.

Nathan with his snowshoe gear.

Me being a goober.

Ok, fine. I'll be good. Wow, these make my legs look so SHORT!

Our tracks.

Our friend Dana in the ski lodge bar.

From the ski lodge parking lot at sunset.

The Eagle Caps at sunset. Sorry they're so blurry, it was getting fairly dark.

Goodness Gracious Great Balls of....Fur?!

I've never had a German Shepherd before. I once stayed with someone who owned a German Shepherd. We now have a German Shepherd. We got her as winter was beginning. This means that she already had her winter coat when we got her. And now spring has tentatively sprung. Which means that Heidi's winter coat is beginning to shed...and DEAR GOD! I've seen horses that shed less than this dog! Between Nathan and I, we brushed her for over an hour and barely made a dent. Here is the result (note that I put an Xbox controller in the picture in order to give you something to compare the pile to)....

The side view.

The top view.

The darn dog is STILL shedding. In clumps! We literally have clumps of soft blond hair all over our house. Arly, do your German Shepherds shed like this?! I'm contemplating having it made into yarn and selling it.

Just A Few of The Things That I Love About My Husband

I love that I knew today was Valentine's Day because he surprised me chai tea, breakfast, AND flowers. Any other day, he would surprise me with chai tea and breakfast...on a regular basis.

I love that our Undersheriff has told me repeatedly to tell Nathan that he's making the rest of the guys look bad because he treats me so well. See above.

I love that Nathan understands that sometimes I just need to be left alone, but that I really do love having him around the rest of the time.

I love that he will randomly decide to help with the dishes or fixing something around the house just at the point that the mess is driving me crazy. Nathan, you can't know how much that means to me and how much it helps my sanity level.

I love that even if he rejects an idea at first, I can count on the fact that he will actually think about it afterwards and either change his mind or come back to me with his reasons for saying no.

I love that he's gradually teaching me to not take myself so seriously.

I love that he supports me in everything I do, even when he knows that I'm going to fall flat on my face. Because he knows that I am stubborn enough that I have to learn for myself.

I love that he tells me that I'm beautiful even when I've just woken up, my hair is a mess, my eyes are all puffy, and I'm wearing boxers and an over sized tshirt. I don't believe him, but it's sweet just the same.

I love that he lets me warm my perpetually icy cold feet against his legs.

I love that I can't truly get to sleep until he comes to bed.

I love that he doesn't get angry at me for waking him up when he's snoring.

I love that he has hilariously vivid dreams in which he has full blown conversations with me, is 100% convinced that something strange is happening, but doesn't realize that he's completely asleep. I have to talk him into realizing that, yes, he IS asleep and that, no, the wires in our electric blanket are not falling out.

I love that he keeps my feet on the ground while still allowing me to dream.

And lastly, I love that he loves me as much as I know he loves me.

I love you babe. Happy Valentine's Day!

I Heart My Home

On my first day off on Monday, I cleaned my house. It had been messy and dirty since we got back from Portland and it was driving me crazy, but I hadn't had any time to tidy it up until then. After I got done hanging up all the coats, organizing the mail, recycling the pile of newspapers, washing the dishes, doing the laundry, tidying the bedroom and cleaning the bathroom, I was able to bask in the glow of my cleaned house. And I realized, at that moment, how much I really do like our house. It's quirky and needs quite a bit of repair, but it's ours. It's home. After going 4 years without a "home" to speak of, it always feels nice to walk in our front (or back) door and know that I'm home. Not an apartment or dorm room that I will be moving out of at the end of the school year...home.

On a completely different subject, I'm so completely excited about this weekend. Nathan has taken this Friday off and we're getting up fairly early to head up to Anthony Lakes for the night. Who knows if it's going to be good skiing or not on Friday, but one of our friends has graciously let us use their cabin for the night. So if we go skiing on Friday, great. If not, we'll just sit in the cabin and relax all day. Maybe we'll rent some snowshoes and try snowshoing for the first time. On Saturday, we're planning to sleep in, laze around all day, and then head to the ski lodge to listen to the live music they're having that afternoon, after which we will head home.

On Sunday, I think we're going to try out a new church. Both Nathan and I got use to being a part of a relatively smaller church while we were in college. After moving here, we both found it kind of hard to get excited about going to the huge-for-Baker Nazarene Church that I went to with my parents while I was in high school. Nothing personal against people who go there, I just think Nathan and I prefer something smaller and more intimate. We're not sure where we're going to go yet, but we'll keep you posted.

Besides all that, the schedule that is my life is picking up again. Young Life has started again, we're signing kids up for summer camp, and we're getting ready for our Annual Fundraising Auction & Banquet that is on March 14th. SO much planning and whatnot to get done for that! Tonight several of us are getting together to video tape some skits for club that lead up to the skit that we're doing at the banquet.

I'm so incredibly excited to take kids to camp this July. Last summer at Malibu was phenominal, but I have been missing Wildhorse Canyon like crazy! But I can't believe I'm already planning days off in June and July! I have yet to schedule anything in August, but I know it's just a matter of time. I'm hoping to possibly put together a camping trip to Eagle Creek with a group of friends for the weekend of June 13th, but who knows if all the snow we've gotten in the mountains will be gone by then!

On top of that, Nathan and I are also planning a trip for the first week of June, to celebrate our 2nd anniversary. Last year's anniversary was fun, going to a Mariner's game up in Seattle with Nathan's dad. But this year, I have demanded that we take that time just for us, no one else, to relax and enjoy each other's company, no matter where it is. We were toying with the idea of going to the coast, but pretty much everything there is either booked up or rediculously expensive. So maybe Bend...

Days Off

So Lindy, what are you going to do with your two days off?

Oh you know...the first day I'm going to do dishes, clean our ridiculously dirty house, do laundry, that sort of thing, and then go to club. And on the second day.....I'm going to sit through EIGHT HOURS OF TRAINING. Sweet.

Thankfully, I get this entire next weekend off. Nathan's taking Friday off to go skiing with me and one of our friends is letting us borrow their cabin at Anthony Lakes for the night. It will be nice to get away and just relax. I think we're going to spend Saturday lazing around the cabin until 3:00, when a band is going to be playing at Anthony. Then we'll head home and laze around there!

The weird part is that this past week went so incredibly fast that it doesn't feel like I should already be starting a "short week" (the week where I only work Wed and Thurs). With this work schedule, I'm hard pressed to remember what day of the week it is for the rest of the world, since my Monday's and Friday's almost never coincide with everyone else's. The big joke here is, "This is my Monday, tomorrow's my Friday." And every other weekend we have a 'Monday, Wednesday, Friday'. I think I would go crazy if I had to start working an 8-5, 5 days a week shift.

Anyway, I'm rambling. What started out as me just saying this past week went by really fast ended up turning into a whole lot more than you ever wanted to know. My excuse is that it's not even 7 am here yet. Hope everyone else had a great weekend! I'm so glad it's my Friday!

Feelin' a Little Up Town

Talk about some awesome upgrades.

Last week we had our radio guys come in and do a complete overhaul upgrade on our radio systems here in dispatch. So we have completely new radios in our back room.

Today, I came into work to find all new mouse pads...if you had seen how dirty nasty our old ones were, you would understand why I'm so excited about this.

Then our radio guru came in and gave us brand new back up scanners that we can...wait for it...PAGE OUT ON!!! Ok, I know, this is probably all Greek to you but let me try to explain. When our main radios go down (usually because of updates being done) we have to talk to our officers and fire departments on our little backup scanners. It's like going back to the stone age for us. And then, if we have to page out fire or ambulance, we have to use this funky little device that hooks up to the scanners, type in a code, hope that it tones out, and then talk. (Side note, definition of paging: when we want to dispatch fire or ambulance, we have to hit that station's page button which sends out a special tone that tells responders for that station to listen up, they're about to get dispatched out.) Well, with these new scanners, the paging tones are programmed into it. All we have to do is hit a button, select the station to be paged, it the button again, and then talk. It's very exciting!

Oh, and our boss also ordered new chairs for us. Our current chairs get used literally 24/7, and they are so worn down. The one I'm currently sitting it constantly rocks back and forth because the lever that controls that particular function is broken. We have duct tape wrapped around both arms on both chairs because they are so torn up. And did I mention that by the end of your 12 hour shift, you're back is constantly crying at you? The chairs our boss ordered are expensive and very fancy...they should be here in 6 weeks...I'm thinking about making a countdown ticker just because I'm so excited.

So yeah, I'm feeling pretty fancy right now.

I Think Any Girl Would Agree...

Patrick Swayze...

Dirty Dancing.....

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

SUCH a good move!

For Pity Sake...

I have pink eye.

About 15 minutes after getting to work, my right eye started doing this funky half itch, half burn thing, and then started watering like mad. The last time I felt that, I ignored it and ended up getting nasty nasty case of pink eye that lasted for a long time and caused the blood vessels to rupture. I had a bright red eye for about a month! The upside...I was able to scare small children at a single glance.

So I ran to the bathroom, and sure enough, my right eye was starting to get red...oh, and so was my left one.

I left work for an hour to go to the doctor and sure enough...pink eye.

But there's a silver lining!!! The drops that I use to take as a child when I got pink eye at least once a year always stung like the dickens! Well, somehow they made it so that the drops I got today DIDN'T HURT!!!!!!! Woohoo!

It's the small things in life.

And tomorrow...I will be sleeping. All day. I've given myself permission to do that. And it's going to be lovely.

A Long Weekend

So much for staying home and relaxing for the weekend. But when have you ever known me to allow myself to relax for an entire weekend? Instead, we decided to drive Nathan's Nissan over to Portland to drop it off for Kate and Eliot. The weather cleared up on Friday and Nathan was able to get off work at 1:00, so we jumped in the cars and headed out. The drive was clear and easy until we got into the Columbia Gorge, where it was raining hard and getting dark...hydroplaning is always fun!

We got to Portland without incident, dropped our stuff and the truck off at Nathan's dad's place, went to visit is him mom who had just gotten out of surgery, and then met up with friends from college at the McMenamins in Forest Grove. We didn't get home from that until about 2 am, and ended up sleeping in until around 11:30 am that morning.

After a day of lazing around (on my part), doing some random guy shopping (Nathan and his dad), and doing some birthday shopping (me for Nathan), we met up with Johnny and Laura, and headed into Portland for a night on the town. Laura and I met up with several girlfriends, prefunked at one of their apartments and then went to Duke's for the rest of the evening. Nathan and Johnny pub crawled through various bars in search of an open dart board and good beer. After driving back and forth across Portland several times, we all crashed at Nathan's dad at around 5 am. The plan had been to get up early and be on the road by about 8 am in order to get home for Superbowl, but driving 6 hours after 2 hours of sleep didn't appeal to either one of us.

So instead we slept in really late, had waffles, watched the Superbowl at Nathan's dad's place, then finally got on the road at around 7:30 pm...not our best move ever, but oh well. We barely missed the freeway closing over Cabbage Hill (it opened about 20 minutes before we got there), and arrived home without incident at around 1 am. 4 hours later, I was getting up for work. And here I am, much more awake than I ever expected to be...guess all those 36 hours without sleep has payed off in terms of my ability to function well with very little sleep.