Learn Or Do

Yeah, it’s a couple years old, but I dare you to watch this without laughing.  Happy Weekend!

By the time I was maybe 11 or 12 years old, most summer afternoons I went to the pool.  At the end of the school year, Mom would buy me a season pool pass and then almost every day after lunch, I’d hop on my bike and ride the mile or so to the Wapakoneta Pool.  If I close my eyes, I can still smell the chlorine in the locker room of the pool house and hear the squish of my friends’ feet as we filed through the gate into the pool area.

I always laid my towel down on the east side of the pool – about in the middle.   It was a strategic place – close to the snack bar.  If I’d been good, Mom gave me quarters – and that meant frozen Zero bars, Charleston Chews or a popsicle.  Those were the days….  I never worried about sun burns, the radio was welded to the pop rock sounds of CKLW and the summer passed by playing tag or doing flips in the water with other kids I’d known pretty much since birth.  Makes me smile to think about it….

What’s your favorite summer memory?  Let me know in the comments!

 

 

I can hear you all right now – burpees?  Yes.  I love burpees – which makes me REALLY unpopular in my kickboxing class sometimes.  If you’re thinking it’s some weird sort of gas problem – you’re wrong.  It’s a killer total body exercise.  Check out this video of how to correctly execute a burpee:

You can also modify the burpee by stepping back rather that popping both legs back to make it even easier to start.  But any way you look at it, the burpee works almost every muscle – and gets your heart rate revving!  There are lots of variations that can make it more challenging and keep you from being bored – I’m a fan of the 30 Day Burpee Challenge from Shape Magazine.  Want to join me on the challenge?  Click the link and follow the instructions on the video and in the graphic!

On this to-do Tuesday, the only thing on my list for today is a job interview.  I have a 3 hour time-slot with 5 different people interviewing me today.   So here is my process for getting ready for the interview:

• First – I do my homework on the company.  The best resource I’ve found for any company is there SEC filings which are usually available in the investor relations section of the company’s website.  You can find a LOT of information about the strategy the company is following and who they consider their biggest competitors as well as the financial health of the company.  All good things to know.
• Second – I check the LinkedIn profiles of each of the people I’m interviewing with.  You never know what you might have in common – and if their profiles are really good, you may get a sense of what kind of boss/co-worker they would be.
• Third – I review the job description and make notes of items from my past that line up well with the needs of the role.  And I practice how I would frame up answers using facts, figures and stories of similar past projects.  While I’m doing this, I put the all the job related info (job description, correspondence, etc.) into a folder to take to the interview with me.  That makes it easy to refer to anything during the interview itself.  And hint – always tuck a couple extra copies of your resume into the folder too!
• Fourth – I pick out my outfit.  This is trickier than it seems these days.  You can be really out of place wearing a suit in a casual workplace so I’ve started asking the HR person about appropriate attire.
• Fifth – I try to get a good night’s sleep, get up early and have a good breakfast.  Taking care of myself means I can easily get into the right frame of mind — and avoid my stomach growling in the middle of the interview!
• Last but not least, allow enough time to drive there – take traffic and propensity to get lost into consideration!  Blast the confidence inspiring music and knock them out!

Wish me luck – I’d really love to get an offer!

The first time I crocheted was in 3rd grade.  We had a bad winter so the class had to stay indoors for recess time far too often that year so my poor teacher, Mrs. Campbell, brought yarn and crochet hooks and taught a group of girls some basic crochet.  Looking back, she was brilliant – at least part off the class was sitting quietly!

I loved being able to turn yarn into something and my great-Aunt Hazel took up teaching me more.   She started me on doilies – which will definitely give away my age!  But the first doily I made earned me a ribbon in the county fair so I kept going.  Now, I’m not sure my family would know me without a ball of yarn and a hook!  I have a whole Pintrest board devoted to my work (My Work) if you’re interested in seeing how far I’ve come since my doily days.

I find crocheting very soothing – and as a bonus, you have something great when you’re finished!  I’ve made everything from bags to blankets to sweaters.  If you’d like to try your hand at creating something crocheted, I recommend buying a Learn to Crochet kit like this – Boyle Kit.  I love the Boyle book for crochet (or knitting) and you get a variety of hooks, stitch markers and yarn needles to experiment with.

Then get yourself a skein of worsted weight yarn and practice, practice, practice!  Your stitches might not be even at first, but practice makes perfect – you’ll get there.  And if you need advice or help along the way send me a message!  I’d love to help you!

Happy Weekend!

So I was cleaning out some papers in my desk this week and I found a $20 Traveler’s Check!  If that isn’t a throwback, I don’t know what is.  It has no date on it so I have no clue how long I’ve had it but Traveler’s Checks used to be a must have when you went on vacation to avoid trouble trying to use personal checks or to keep from carrying large amounts of cash in the days before ATMs were everywhere.   Talk about a blast from the past!

So I got curious and started Googling to see if banks even issue Traveler’s Checks anymore – and I was shocked to learn they are still available.  American Express and Visa are the big names affiliated with them but after reading more, good luck with actually using them if you buy them.

First, you’ll pay a fee of 1-2% of the face value of the Traveler’s Check to buy it – and then you need to find a merchant that actually knows how to redeem it in order to spend it.  Your best bet if you want to use one is to find a bank that accepts them and redeem them for cash there.  Makes me glad we’ve moved on to gift cards, credit/debit cards and Apple Pay these days!

Here’s my old Traveler’s Check – yes, I covered the numbers on it just to make sure one of you enterprising readers doesn’t try to steal my $20!  Now I’m off to Fifth Third Bank to see if they’ll cash it!  Wish me luck!

 

I just read an article on Shape.com that said on average, if you work in an office you’re probably eating an extra 1,300 calories each week in snacks.  You know, the cookie tray in the break room, the candy dish on a co-worker’s desk, the random birthday celebration.  I had no idea how fast those calories could add up!

But consider this – a regular size Snickers bar is 215 calories.  A fun size Snickers bar is 80 calories.  A Snickers Mini is 42 calories.  If you eat a full size candy bar, it probably isn’t a mindless thing – you made the decision to go to the candy machine and bought it.  But the smaller the candy, the easier it is just to pop it in your mouth and not even think about it.  So 5 Minis in, you might as well have just eaten the full size bar.

On average, if a person consumes 3,000 calories without a corresponding increase in activity to burn them – they gain 1 pound.  That 1,300 weekly calorie addition the article spoke about could translate into 22 pounds by the end of a year.  UGH!!!!  Nobody wants that!

So the next time you’re tempted by the “free food” in the office, it might be good to stop and think about the calorie count – and whether it’s worth it!

I learned how to French braid my hair when I was in college.  My roommates and I all had shoulder length hair and living in an all-girls dorm, it was the most natural thing in the world that we all experimented with different hair styles.

Since college, I’ve gone through a progression of hairstyles – with most of them being too short to braid.   But I’ve settled into a bob and about a year ago, I saw a picture of a side French braid and decided to give it a try.  With the summer weather, the side braid has become my go-to style because it keeps the hair off my face.  I laugh at humidity – and the style is great for the gym too.  Want to learn to French braid?  Try this tutorial:

While not my first time fighting it, this is the first time since starting this blog that I have nothing.  I don’t have a single idea for a “first” topic today.

Normally, my weekend or Google provide me with my “first” topic for the week – but today Google didn’t serve up anything that caught my interest and this weekend was really quiet.  Why?

I went for a long walk Thursday night and ended up with blisters on the balls of both feet.  So I took my shoes off for the last half of the walk to try to minimize them – and the blister on my right foot popped.  I washed it and put a bandaid on it right away when I got home – but by Friday afternoon, I could barely walk on it!  So my weekend consisted of regular soaks in hot water with Epsom salt.

Part of me says don’t complain – it was a beautiful weekend to sit out on the deck dangling my feet in a bucket of water and reading a book.  And blisters are rarely fatal – just annoying.  So here’s to a weekend lost in a book and a great week ahead.  I’ll get myself back on track and we’ll be back to a great “first” next week!