P.A.S.

A good reason to always have your camera with you…

February 1st was my official 10 year anniversary at Nu Skin. I stared out answering phones on the tech support line during the grave shift for about 8 months. The 7 months the followed I worked in the Business Support department answering email questions about our compensation plan and business practices. My next position, which lasted 5 years, was as a Team Lead back in the call center. The next 3 years were spent in Photomax as the manager of our production and scanning lab. After leaving Photomax, I’ve since been in the Global Brand Marketing department where I manage a server that houses all of our digital assets such as photos and design files. I also manage all of the Macintosh hardware in the company.

Despite all of it’s ups and downs, I’ve really enjoyed my time so far at Nu Skin. I’ve learned a lot and have made many good friends. I’m looking forward to what the next 10 years has in store for me.

Today Walter celebrated his 21st (3rd) birthday. He didn’t actually celebrate anything, but he did almost get taken away by our ever-diligent Pleasant Grove Animal Control.

This is Cora’s first attempt at taking pictures. It was taken in early December.

She has a new camera now to practice with (thanks Kyle and Annie), but it doesn’t take real photos. Once she learns to not bang it on the ground or throw it, I’ll get her a real one.

For a lot of people, blogging about concrete isn’t exactly the most interesting topic, but for us it’s a pretty big deal. We’ve been talking about wanting a new driveway for more than a year because of the condition of the old concrete. Well, yesterday we finally got what we wanted.

Since so much snow fell while we were away on vacation, we weren’t able to uncover the new driveway until yesterday. It took us nearly 2 hours to do it, but we finally finished and it was worth the wait. It was so exciting in fact that we should have had a ribbon cutting ceremony or something.

Here’s the [almost] finished product (we still have to seal it in the Spring)…

This is a little video I shot of us tearing out the driveway…

Marie and I have been talking about wanting a new driveway for a while. The one we have now is a wreck. The driveway itself is from about 8 different loads of junky concrete leftover from other jobs. It was flaking away on the top layer, sinking more than a foot in some areas and cracked everywhere else.

Well, last Saturday we began the process of ripping out the old concrete and prepping the ground for the new stuff. Our great neighbor, John, brought over a little bobcat tractor with a jack hammer attachment and broke up the slab into pieces small/light enough to pick up. The boys in Marie’s family, and her mom, all came over and helped load about 25 tons of concrete into her brother’s dump trailer. It pretty much took all day to do because the thickness of the concrete varied from 3 inches to about a foot thick.

All cracked and nasty

These are the chunks of concrete we had to load

This is the final result after clearing all the concrete

So, most of the time, sitting outside in 34 degree weather with no shelter and bored to tears wouldn’t really seem worth it. But, last night, I learned that sometimes it really can be worth it.

I waited in line from 10pm to 5am at Best Buy for a few Black Friday items that I couldn’t pass up. When I got to Best Buy, there were about 20 tents and 75 or so people in front of me. By the time the doors opened, there were more than triple that amount behind me…so it was worth going there so early. The only part of the night that sucked was from 4 to 4:45 when it rained. Besides the rain and cold temperatures, it wasn’t so bad.

I ended up buying a TV and Surround system for my neighbor and a few other things that I was just getting so that I could do a price adjustment. That ended up being worth $340.

When I bought my motorcycle back in June, it came with a nice leather jacket–a $600 leather jacket, I might add. However, when I tried it on, it was a size too small so I never wore it.

I’m not normally the leather jacket type of guy, but with the weather getting colder, I needed something a little heavier than the other jacket I have been wearing. So, I decided to head to the Harley dealership and ask them about trading in the jacket for a larger size. They were glad to do it since the one I had was brand new and still had the tags on it. I wore it this morning to ride in to work and it did such a good job of keeping the cold wind out, I was almost hot.

I forgot to post about these…

The stash I had of my old business cards is just about out and since I haven’t totally finalized everything for my site redesign, I decided to order some alternate business cards in the mean time. These are MOO Cards. They are the coolest things ever–small, full color, great quality, double-sided and attractive little cards. The best part about them is that Moo integrates with popular photo sites and Facebook so you don’t have to upload anything if you already have photos uploaded.

Moo also makes other products as well. Check them out. www.MOO.com