Saturday, October 18, 2008

Working at the zoo!






To keep busy and to make some extra money to pay the bills; I'm working at the Phoenix Zoo. I started on Wednesday. I spend a few days a week working in "Monkey Village." It's an open exhibit where zoo guests can get within inches of squirrel monkeys. My job is to welcome guests into the exhibit and answer questions about the monkeys and observe their behavior during the day and report it to the zoo keepers. I've been learning all the behind the scenes secrets of how a zoo operates. Pretty amazing!

Here are a few photos of my new co-workers along with a video!

Sunday, October 12, 2008

October Birthdays

October is a busy month for Birthdays. I wanted to wish the following people a very Happy Birthday!

Jerene - Keep the checks coming!
Jane
Teresa - my sister from another mother
Chad
Caden and Cole (Happy 1st Birthday)
Rodger...aka Dr. Fun
Danielle
Holly
Patrick

Enjoy yourselves and thank you for reading the blog!

Balloon Fiesta Dawn Patrol

I was talking to my friend Brian about uploading videos on the blog. I wanted to experiment, so here is a short video of balloons taking off at dawn at last week's Balloon Fiesta. The group of balloons in the video are called the "Dawn Patrol."

Dreams without plans

In these days before the political debates for president, it's time to look at the candidates and ourselves.

It's one thing to make comments or offer advice, but do we practice what we preach? It's easy to give advice and tell people what to do, but it's hard to do exactly what you offer as advice/ or when we tell people what they should do.

With the financial crisis, Presidential elections and life in general, I really started to think about my comments above. We hear the candidates for President go back and forth about their dreams for the country. We here about what they will do when the get into office. The candidates all have dreams. There is also a lot of mud slinging and rhetoric.

But what people want to know is, what is the plan? Yes we can go to a website, but people would like to here more of what you are going to do versus, what the dream is.

The funny part is, we are just like the people running for office and running the country. Everyday we (me included) talk about our dreams. We talk about what we would do if and when "x" happens. But just like the candidates, we don't talk about or state what our plan is. Dreams are defined the following ways.

1. A series of thoughts, images and sensations occurring in a person’s mind.
2. A cherished aspiration, ambition or ideal
3. A unrealistic or self-deluding fantasy
0.
Most of us want reality not dreams. The only way to make a dream into reality is by having action or better yet an action plan.

I'm reading a book right now and the author brings up a great comment about dreams and goals. It reads like this:

“Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I will give you a man who will make history. Give me a man without a goal and I will give you a stock clerk.”
James Cash Penney (Founder of JC Penny)

Many times we focus too much on what we want and dream about. We spend and waste a lot of energy dreaming. We start to focus on the wrong thing. We get distracted. Dreaming is ok. Actually it’s great. A world with out dreamers would be pretty boring. The key is to take some of that energy and put it into a plan that will make the dreams come true. We need take make the dream into reality!

Dreams are fun and plans are boring. I’ve heard this from several people. Yes it’s true; plans are no fun. Fail to plan/plan to fail. We’ve heard that before too.

I met a lot of people who are successful. Most started with a dream, but then they put it to paper and started working on making their dream into a reality. All successful people have plans. The people with plans have fun. Boring people are having fun and dreamers are dreaming to be those people.

I’ll end my entry with a classic TV show from the 80’s………”The A Team”....I love it when a plan comes together!

Good luck to everyone and making your dreams turn into a reality. It’s nice to hear about your dreams, but most of us would like to see you make them happen!

Monday, October 06, 2008

Romance and Relationships

I'm sitting in the airport, getting ready for another trip and I decided to clean up a few files. I came across an article on Romance and Relationships and thought it would make a really good post on the blog. Enjoy and feel free to leave comments.

Bringing Romance Back
by Relationship Coach, Rinatta Paries

Below are four attitudes or actions to make sure romance never dies in your relationship - or to help you revive it.

1. Learn compassion and acceptance. Your partner is human, no matter how perfect they seemed in the beginning. Most importantly, remember your partner is not imperfect to hurt you.

2. Communicate negative emotions. Communicate when you feel hurt or when you need something to change. The best thing to do with any negative emotion is to get it out in the open and resolve it.

3. Appreciate and celebrate your partner every day. Live each day as if this is the last day you have with your partner. If this really was your last day together, you would want them to know how much they are loved and appreciated.

4. Touch each other every day. Physical connection is essential to the health and longevity of the relationship, as well as to the health and longevity of each of you.



Balloon Fiesta









This weekend Kelly and I went to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Hot Air Balloon owners, enthusiasts and people from all over the world descend on Albuquerque, New Mexico to watch HUNDREDS of hot air balloons. The nine-day event consists of a variety of demonstrations, races, competitions and displays. Over 800,000 people are expected to attend this year's Fiesta.

We only went for a day because of the weather, but the day we went was amazing! We saw over 650 balloons take off on Saturday morning. The balloons came in every shape, size and color imaginable. The crowd favorite had to be the group from Belgium with Darth Vader Hot Air Balloon!

The Fiesta is called the most photographed event in the world! Here are a few pictures.

For more details on the fiesta, click HERE!