Even though I tendered my resignation from St. Olaf two weeks ago verbally, only today did I write a formal letter for my file in HR. I decided on something simple and to the point, much like this example. It would have been much more fun, however, to use something like this to generate the perfect going-away message.
My last day on Manitou Heights is this Friday; I’ll be starting my new position at the Minnesota Medical Foundation June 14.
How can one argue with her husband’s fashion choices, when he tells you, “But Carson says it’s okay.”?
It seems that our entire summer was spent waiting. Waiting for our new puppy to arrive. Waiting for my ten-year high school reunion to come and go. And … waiting for furniture.
You see, in early June I came into a great deal of cash (well, let’s say I was promised a great deal of cash). I decided that I wanted new furniture, so off we were to Big Box Furniture Store. We quickly decided on a big couch and a chair-and-a-half in special-order blue by Company A, and a matching accent chair in special-order patterned fabric by Company B. Three days later, Big Box Furniture Store called to inform us that the fabric of the matching accent chair from Company B had been discontinued. Not a total disaster, we simply found another complementary fabric and assumed all was well — our furniture was still on schedule for a mid- to late July delivery. (In the meanwhile, I sold my existing furniture, knowing full well I’d only have to live on a bean bag for a week or so, until my new furnture arrived.) Approximately five weeks after placing the order for the second fabric, Big Box Furniture Store called to inform us that Company B had discontinued our second choice of fabric. (Five weeks. Something is wrong here.) So, back we went to Big Box Furniture Store to find a third matching fabric. Unsuccesful, we decided to order a completely different fabric from Company B, thus forcing us to order a completely different fabric from Company A. (Little did we know that Company A could have delivered our special-order blue couches that very week.)
Days pass. Days become weeks. And finally, last weekend, our fabulous, new, vibrant red furniture arrives. With a big cut in the back of the couch.
I guess we’ll be waiting a little bit longer ….
In just a few days, some new flames will arrive for Cruiser #1 …. photos to be posted when they arrive!
That’s right, we caved in and bought a Sam’s Club membership today since they were having a half price special for the new store in Bloomington. Actually the store doesn’t open until April 3rd, so we bought the membership out of a trailer in the nearby Wal-Mart parking lot. After fighting the chaos of the other bargain hunters and paying our $17.50 we headed to Apple Valley to use our new cards.
Everything is bigger in Sam’s Club from the 25 pack of pigs ears for Kozmo to the 2.5 pound bag of Starbucks Coffee to the 16 pack of Zest. But it’s buyer beware since some items really aren’t a deal, they’re just overinflated prices in bigger packages. Take Tide for example, it’s basically the same price whether you buy one big bottle or three small bottles.
I’m not sure we’ll save any money by shopping at Sam’s Club over the next year, but at least we’ll have big bags of stuff!
Lynsey decided to take this week off and use up the rest of her vacation for the year or she’d lose it. I on the other hand am currently unemployed. Well, not really…I just have a week off before I start my new job next week with The Blackburn Company. And yes, the “The” is part of the name. This, of course, means that my career as a Professional Boy Scout has come to an end after only 14 months. While I’m excited to be starting a new career in something I’ve always wanted to do, it’s a little sad leaving all of the wonderful volunteers that I’ve gotten to know over the past year. When I announced that I was leaving at recent meeting of about 70 volunteers, the room became so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. I guess it’s nice to know that I made a differance and that I’ll be missed. The other part I’ll miss of course is the truly dedicated staff at the Boy Scout office. And thanks to my Field Director, Bob, I had a nice going away party. But, all good things must come to an end and now I’ll be a manufacture’s rep for about 25 companies, mostly in the hardware products area.
But, back to our vacation. So far we’ve goofed off a little bit and we’ve started a new home improvement project and we’re finishing another. The new project is to make our family room look like one large room, rather than two seperate rooms (one area had wallpaper and the other was painted). Today we labored for about five hours taking off the old wallpaper. Needless to say, this project is only beginning. The next step is to scrap the texture ceiling and patch the walls. The old project is to finish the guest bedroom that we started about six months ago. After striping all the old varnish and paint that was spilled on the floor, I just finished putting on the first coat of polyurethane. We’re hoping that the color matches the other floors in our house.
The rest of our vacation will be spent on getting our cars serviced, getting a haircut for Kozmo, going to Belgrade for Thanksgiving, and of course hoping that we finish our project before the end of next weekend!
My Field Director and I made an interesting observation while at the Vikings Training Facility today, while picking up some autographed footballs for our volunteers. First of all you, need to understand that we drive company cars here at the Boy Scouts and for some reason our accountant has two favorite cars. The first is the Chevy Cavalier, of which we have about five in our lot.
The second is the mighty Ford Focus. Normally I wouldn’t have a bias against a car, but when I look out the window I feel like I’m at car dealership. We don’t have just five of them, nor 10, but a whopping 15 which includes the two brand new ones that were delivered today.
The comment I made to Bob today was, “Do you think the Vikings have the same lease plan as we do because the players have as many Cadillac Escalades as we do Focuses!”
In the past few weekends, Roger and I have:
More later!
As I was driving to work today on Hwy 100 this morning, I saw a truck that had advertising on the back of it. And then it changed to a different ad, twice. As I got closer I also noticed that the sides of the vehicle were changing as well. The company that does the advertising is Ad Mirage and apparently it’s called Mobile Billboard Advertising. I suppose it makes sense as a way to reach all those people sitting in traffic. And since according to the MNDot guy that was at my Rotary meeting a couple a weeks ago, “the traffic is only going to get worse before it gets better!”
What should have been a nice day yesterday turned into somewhat of a bummer. Leaving work a little bit later than I had planned, I didn’t have time to stop at the gym. So I thought that’s fine, I’ll just stop at the grocery store to get the things we need for the week and I’ll have more time to spend out on the deck relaxing and having a beer. That was about the time I hit the guy in front of me while in stop and go traffic. Actually it was more like a tap since we were going so slowly. We pulled off to the side and found that we had neither of us had no damage. And neither of was hurt, although my ego was a little damaged for running into him.
So we decided to call the State Trooper anyway, thinking that I needed a police report for the insurance on my company car. The other guy was really nice about the whole thing and we talked about our jobs. It turns out that he is a house appraiser, so we had plenty to talk about. After 50 minutes a State Trooper showed and told us since no one was hurt and the damage (none) was under $1,000 that we didn’t need to fill out any reports and he couldn’t do anything for us anyway.
Lessons learned:
If that wasn’t enough, I had another incident at the Cub Foods on the way home. After buying everything we would need for the week and after driving all the way home. I realized that I was missing the strawberries I’d bought. I showed Lynsey the receipt and we realized that I was also missing the bread, a turkey, eggs and the bananas. Altogether a total of about $25.00. After retracing my steps, I realized that the check-out girl had put half my groceries on one conveyor belt and half on the other one. Of course at first I thought I was losing my mind and had forgot them somewhere. The good thing is that when went back, they were all bagged up and ready to go behind the customer service counter.
The day did get better though. We had Ryan and Paula over for dinner and relaxed over a few beers and good company. We also met our next-door neighbors Dan and Seth.
This is the personal Web site of Roger and Lynsey Struthers of Bloomington, Minn.
April 20, 2008 —Roger's mom was presented with the Silver Beaver Award in recognition of her contribution to Boy Scouting.