June - Week Four

June 24th - June 30th: VACATION!! I decided to visit Salt Lake City this summer since I didn't make it home last summer. My sister and I always try to coordinate our summer trips home so we can all be there at the same time so she came in from Seattle and I from Chicago and we spent a couple weeks doing family things and filling our days with local tourist activities. I got to thinking that I hadn't been to some of the museums since I was kid if at all so I thought I'd make time to go since I'd probably appreciate it now more that I'm older and wiser (somewhat ;) ).

One of the first things we did was go to the Utah Arts Festival. We saw some pretty cool things of which I wish had lots of money to buy. The picture to the left you see is my contribution, an artistic shot of the Salt Lake City & County Building.

Then I went to the Aerospace Museum at Hill Air Force Base. I have wanted to go to this museum for a really long time. I remember seeing it when we'd go visit my Grandmother who lived in Roy. I finally got the chance this summer. I went with my Dad and it was worth the wait, I think. Lots of really cool planes and information. I highly recommend going if you're looking for something for the family to do.

The rest of my trip was filled with lunch with Grandma and my Aunt Maryiln, a trip to the Natural History Museum and of course lunch/dinner at some of my favorite spots among many more activites and fun that I didn't capture on film and certainly a trip to SLC would not be complete without fries and fry sause.

June - Week Three

June 17 - 20th - Back to San Francisco to facilitate another class, time it was a FOSSE class for CFRST Event Planners, which for you non-Marriott folks means cluster event planners that work with all of our select service hotel customers (Courtyard, Fairfield Inn, Residence Inn, Springhill Suites and TownePlaceSuites, hence the term CFRST. Pronounced C-first) with their meeting and event details. FOSSE is a computer system.

Anyway, not much to report about this trip, except that I was able to visit my friends at Hotel 480, now known as Marriott Union Square. I spent a good couple of months working at this property before it officially became a Marriott. I trained all their Manager's and Supervisors on Marriott's Payroll processes and the payroll system, then went back later and trained/assisted all the Sales and Event Managers on Marriott's catering processes and systems. I became pretty good friends with several of the people that work at this hotel and have continued to keep in touch with them. I went to dinner with and hung out with a couple of them while I was in town and that was fun. Aside from that it was all business.

The photos below are of the New Marriott Union Square. It just completed a multi-million dollar renovation and it looks awesome! I wish I had some before picture to show you because it looks completely different!

June - Week Two

June 8th - 12th: I left early Sunday morning to head back to California, this time to San Ramon. I was facilitating a week long training class for Sales Admins. I was facilitating with a co-worker of mine, Kelly Horaney. We mesh well and always have a good time when we work together. I didn't get many (if any) pictures from this week, but it was mostly filled with boring work stuff anyway. I have a couple somewhat entertaining stories I could tell from the trip.

1. At most Marriott hotels you can expect excellent customer service, but every now and then I run into one that is just so bad, it's almost comical. The hotel where this training was at was one such hotel. Nobody seemed to know anything and didn't care to go the extra mile to find out. I have been to San Ramon and was familiar with the area somewhat. I had recalled that I visited an area just over the hill that had restaurants and shops, etc. I asked several people and everyone looked at me as if I were crazy! Finally the valet guy said he knew what I was talking about and called us a cab because the place I was thinking of was too far to walk. We waited 30 minutes for the cab to arrive. We got in and 2 minutes later the cabby pulled up to this market place thing, literally a 1/4 mile from the hotel. We tried to explain that this was not the location we wanted, but he acted like he didn't understand what we were saying and seemed to not speak very good English so we just got out. We ended up having to pay $15 because that's the minimum fare in San Ramon. It's not like Chicago where you can hail cab from pretty much any street corner. We ended up just finding something to eat at the place he dropped us off at and then ended up walking back to the hotel. Which took us about 5 minutes. So basically we waited for 30 minutes and paid $15 to get to a place that we could have walked to in 5 minutes for free!! You can bet we let the valet guy our thoughts on the matter.

2. There were all these people walking around the hotel wearing these white robes or white linen sheaths or skirts. They all looked like hippies for the most part and smelled of incense. You'd walk around a corner and one would be sitting there in a meditative state. I always felt like I had to whisper everywhere because you never know when you'd happen upon someone in full meditative trance. Anyway, we finally asked the front desk clerks if they knew who they were and what they were in town for and it turns out they were Amma followers. Amma is guru that passes enlightenment to her followers through her hugs. She hugs thousands of people day after day supposedly enlighten their spirits to heal themselves. Now I'm am all for whatever is going to make you happy and if hugging Amma is your thing, I'd rather you do that than go out and shoot a bunch of people. It might seem weird, but at least it's a positive thing to do with your life. So more power to you. In case some of you need a hug, stock up on white linen outfits and visit Amma.org to find when she'll be in a city near you. :)

June - Week One

It's been a while since I've blogged. Over a month now, but I've had good reason. I spent most of June traveling back and forth from various parts of California for work.

June 3rd - 4th: I was in San Francisco facilitating a 3 hour training class for Sales Manager's on how to set-up their home offices. It was a quick trip. I flew in on Wednesday morning, taught the class Wednesday afternoon, and flew back to Chicago Thursday morning. The best part about this trip is that my good friend Andrea was there attending the weeklong training class for which my class was a small part. I haven't seen her in a while so it was a real treat to be able to spend time with her. We went out to dinner with another a couple of former and/or current co-workers of ours as well as a friends, Krista and Julie. We caught up and had a great time.

I returned home to the chalk written note on the sidewalk outside our house that you saw in the previous post. Ahhhh. Then on Friday night, we went to a place called Delilah's for a little Happy Hour type thing. We didn't stay long, but had a good time. Below is a photo of me and Jen, one our MiC friends.

Somebody Loves Me!

I returned home after my 1st trip to San Francisco to this note written with chalk on the sidewalk out front of our house. It's from the neighbor girl, Mi. I let her and her brother help me plant flowers the past two weekends and everytime I'm outside, they are usually right there hanging out with me, no matter what I'm doing.


Mi is 5 or 6 (I think) and her younger brother is around 3. His name is Khoa. They are both adorable, Khoa is so sweet and Mi is too, but she's also kind of a brat. I don't mind hanging out with them though.


I grew up loving kids, I baby-sat and worked in several day care centers, just to be near them!! I was a kid magnet, they loved me. Then as I started to get older and spent less time around them I started to feel a little uncomfortable and wondered if I'd ever be able to have that same type of relationship with them again. So it's nice to know that at least with these two, I still seem to have the touch! (and by touch I mean the skill, or talent to engage kids, not physically touch them, just to be clear!! You can't be too careful these days!)