Halloween 2011

The hand-on-hip automatic pose cracks me right the hell up!










Yes there is a fine line between Hooker Transvestite Barbie, Lady Gaga, and the Good Witch Glenda. My getup came after what was a hilarious scene of the Scarecrow trying to zip me into an old prom dress, with Anna looking on in her Dorothy costume. I prayed for darkness to come quickly!





This year's fearless candy crew! So stinking fun! I can remember when Anna and M were small enough to share that wagon as we took them to go look at Christmas lights through the neighborhood!! No way now! I don't remember it being that small!

What great memories we made Halloween night! We are so lucky to have such good friends to go with. And the weather was just perfectly cool and clear!



And finally the aftermath!





Love!

Slow trickle and a fire hose

Here's the slow trickle part:
The orders for the Grocery Station have been super slow. Totalling only 3 now. I suppose I made the rookie mistake of thinking somehow my idea would be SO FANTASTIC that word would spread and I'd be overwhelmed with orders :) HAHA. Well...

We get about 5-12 new visitors at our website everyday that I can see. We have about 6 new customers signed up and we've totaled just 3 orders. What this tells me is we need to advertise more outside of just the Kroger and also we need to offer coupons off of orders. So here we go! I just look how far Paul has come with his client base and all that he's done to get there. We're just a few weeks in. This is going to take time. OK it's slower than I'd like but I also work full-time during the day and I have no budget to pay someone else to promote it. As such, we shall be grass roots! Besides I'm not sure I could handle an influx of crazy orders at this time. My head would very surely pop off.


The fire hose part:
My NASA ('real job") has been so fun and exciting still! I've been doing tons of speaking, and scaling back my travel too. Last week I got to speak at a leadership seminar of big wigs from Fortune 500 companies, which was so darned cool. I got to meet a CIA trainer, and leadership representatives from AT&T, Verizon, and Aetna, just to name a few. They all thought that I  was cool but I was keeping my own excitement down! My talk was at Space Center Houston, and afterwards I got to join them for dinner in the Starship Galaxy room. This is a neat room with stars on the ceiling and actual Apollo era artifacts. I'd been there just once as a visitor but I have to say it's the coolest place I've ever eaten dinner! Plus free wine :) WOO-HOO! I was invited by the coordinator to speak at a Women's Leadership conference in NYC in April. I hope it all holds because that would be amazing!

Tomorrow I give my first ever astronaut briefing to the Expedition 33/34 crew on ISS Science. Julie usually gives this and I have just observed but now she's out of town and so it's my turn! I'm totally game these days, feeling comfortable with the material, after having had to answer the oddest questions on all of my speaking events. One of the astronauts is a flight doc I worked with back when I was in Engineering, before he became an astronaut. So this is pretty neat.

Anna is hilarious these days. She does have her moments of whininess that we'd like to beat out of her but otherwise she's just growing up! She is giving us "Are you CRAZY" looks that I thought was funny and then I caught myself doing it at work today and realized then where she must have gotten it from. Yesterday in the car she asked what a "soul" is. And she is recognizing the sight words she's learning in class everywhere we go. She's excited to read whatever she can and that one caught me off guard!

Tonight is Trick Or Treating, SO FREAKING FUN! The weather should be rocking! Anna will be Dorothy and she's talked me and Paul into make-shift Good Witch and Scarecrow costumes. This will be half-assed rigged from the best products we could find last minute, but for me includes a blonde wig and a pink dress I wore at a wedding once (I was pleased to see that I fit into this pre-baby dress...SCORE!) Oh and Anna's princess crown. Stay tuned for rediculous pictures!

Overheard...

At dinner last night I overheard a conversation between Anna, L (4 yrs old), and M (6 yrs old).

L: "God is in my HEART!"
M: "God is up in SPACE!"
A: "Noooo, my mommy said that God is EVERYWHERE!"

HAHA, I think they covered ALL of the bases! Is this what typical 4 and 6 yr olds are talking about? Oh man, I LOVE IT. Totally tickled me!

Keeping Up!

Ok I can't possibly keep going at this rate. Sleep is elusive, TV unheard of, and thank God I am comfortable with the teaching material finally because I have zero time to immerse myself in it. My running schedule is certainly taking the biggest hit, with no energy to give much speed or miles. Also waking up that early after just 4 hrs of sleep, well....
The 3 hour sliver I get to spend with Anna between 5:00 pick up and 8:00 bedtime is golden and mostly protected. The problem is that my brain doesn't stop and neither does my body. This level of intensity is potentially damaging and I am a pretty hard worker as it is. The week has been a roller coaster non stop, the details dizzying and this morning the 3 of us made for one exhausted household. I think Anna has the most exhausted parents in her class right now. By the way. Yesterday Paul spoke to her class about physical therapy, which I heard was really cute.

At any rate my exhaustion right now is just seemingly the infinite amount of work to be done regarding the Grocery Station. Now that we for the website ready forte customers, my shopper retention has been too low. The good team I built up in September has since moved on to other things that actually pay them money NOW (who wants to wait for a new start up to ramp up?). I have a few left but now the hiring is back sucking up my time so much so I haven't been able to focus on advertising. These things I think need to happen in parallel but there's only so much time I have available to work into the evenings to try to pull it all together. I'd pay someone to handle it but that's over budget! It's like energy in a system: you can't possibly get
Something from Nothing.

This is me whining. This means I need to make some changes in my processes, which I'm about to do. Just like anyone else who is starting something new, I just need to identify the efficiencies. Next will be a more restful week.

Our first order!

Yesterday we had our first order at the Grocery Station. A real, live person we'd never ever met before signed up for an account and placed an order of groceries of around $190 online. Plus an $11.50 tip and the shopping fee of around $35. Wow! I took off lunch hour at work to help Pam shop since it was our first one and I needed to be sure the wacky operations concept I came up with actually would work from beginning to end.

It was a bigger order than we had allotted time for, so it's a good thing I was there so we could tag team it! We were dashing through the store like it was one of those Grocery Game TV shows! The folks at Kroger were saying something to us about how exciting, our first order, but we were dashing too fast to take that in :) We made it within the designated timeslot, though, with really no hiccups.

How about that?

If the biggest flaw is that we need to allot ourselves more time for larger orders, that's not bad at all.

It was cool to meet the customer, too. Her reason for using this service? She hates to grocery shop, period. Just two nights before, she was telling her husband she'd PAY SOMEONE to just GROCERY SHOP for her! this woman has two kids, both in school, she stayed home all day, but she still hadn't shopped in 4 weeks because she dreaded it.

Interesting to see what the stories will be. We have so far about 5 customers who have created an account but not yet placed an order. I think this might be because all of the fabulous shoppers (but a few) that I hired the first go round have since bailed and moved on to real paying jobs, so now there aren't many openings for customers to place an order. So I've done another round of hiring, and will be doing group interviews weekly. I can't keep up with the individual interviews anymore! I want my nights back at home!

I actually know that when more shoppers sign up, thus opening more customer timeslots available, then more customers will order. And so that's how it goes...our web site gets anywhere from 5-20 hits per day (around 5-10 being "new" visitors).

And Customer #1 says already she'll be a repeat. And her grocery cost, fee, and tip are the EXACT target market we're looking for. Here's to more like her!

After I got back from that crazy shopping trip, I took a minute to reflect on what the heck just happened as I sat in the parking lot at NASA. I said thank you out loud, acknowledged how crazy, insane it was that we just pulled off for REAL, with someone's trust, a concept that started in my back yard a few months ago, and if for nothing else, that later I can say "I totally did that."

That's completely nuts.
Wooooo-hoooo!

I am $30 closer to paying off my student loans ;)

Anna's been up to...

She's been asking a whole lot about death. I had mentioned to her that our old cats had died before (Tiny and Omega) when she was a baby and that set it off. I'm trying to be just matter-of-fact-in-a-nice-and-caring tone about it all to calm her a bit.

Mommy, will I die?
Yes, baby, we'll all die.
REALLY? I DON'T WANT TO DIE!
I tell her there's nothing to be afraid of with death, and that everybody dies and she says she's scared to go to Heaven! (In her mind, that's where her teachers say we go when we die, of course. Public school will be so much easier in this respect. No offense to the traditional Believers).

Anyway it seemed to be a topic of conversation for a few days and lately she's lost some interest in it at least.

She hates violent (Disney) movies (and Wizard of Oz freaks her out but she has to watch, like a train wreck). She's becoming pretty sensitive to the children's movies that kill your parents (Disney) or likewise. Oh how I miss Yo Gabba Gabba, when it was almost easier to explain what the hell that Big Red Muno was (I'll stop short of the description). She doesn't like bad guys.

She doesn't like to not be the winner, too. Maybe it's an only child thing, or maybe it's her dad's inhereted competitive nature. We just had a 5k and a children's half mile "race" this weekend and she couldn't believe she was obviously not going to finish first! It's not her first "organized kids' run" but it's the first in a long time, especially since she's become aware of "winning". I told her to look around at ALL of the kids in this race! Only ONE can finish first. If you want to finish first, you have to train and train! Practice! Or else you can be like mommy (and just pray you finish without looking like you're about to puke). I reminded her that REALLY it only matters that she crosses the finish line. In the end that's really it. You can be first if you train and that's your goal, don't get me wrong. Otherwise, what works for me is competing against myself to get better and better. Anyway, she got a metal in the end (all the kids did, where's MINE!?) and that pleased her! As for me, she waited like forever for me to finish my 5k, and ran in the last leg with me over the finish line to help "pull me in". After we crossed she said "Mommy, you didn't win first!" And I told her no way, but I finished, see?! She told Paul while waiting for me that "Mommy's slow!" but then when she saw me coming she shouted that I looked fast :)

Today when I picked her up from school she was in the best mood I've ever seen this kid in her whole life. I mean for real. I wondered just WHAT THE HELL was going on so I could get a daily repeat. I asked what she had for a snack and she said "Goldfish". Noted.

On the drive home she told me she learned about Guatamala (perfect pronounciation by the way!). The child proceeds to tell me every detail about the poor kids in Guatamala who have dirt for floors, only one shirt, no toys (their toys are just playing with bugs), no stairs in their house, and no cats. In addition, they have no bath tub and no door handles! And tiny sidewalks! Detail upon detail as if I was talking to a really big kid, and it was apparent that she learned from her (missionary trip) teacher that Guatamala was in dire straits and it had a real impact on her! Down to where she recalled every detail. WOW. FLOORED WAS I! At the end of the conversation she told me she was going to pray for Guatamala. OK.... I told her that would be a great thing to do. Then she said when she gets bigger she wanted to go there to help them and I told her that I'd go with her.  WOW. Seriously. The details...I wish I recorded that conversation because that was really darned cool.

At any rate, she's getting big. And super smart. And sweet and nuts and all of it! I didn't even document that she had her first school field trip to the hospital on Oct 6, which was really cool (Paul and I both went along)! I have pictures to post but I've been crappy at keeping up because my evenings are consumed with Grocery Station stuff. And I'm also still teaching (which thank goodness has become turn-key for me).

Also, She likes Lady Gaga music.

Good night!

Woo-Hoo! Our First Order!

This weekend we finally pulled everything together and got the Grocery Station website up, running, and functional after some major glitches. I lost a few shoppers now that it's really time to ramp up, so I've been having to go through more interviews this week, which is only painful because it takes up my time I'd rather be at home! But I've picked up a handful so I think we're right at around 10 shoppers or so. I still need more, so more interviews next week for me!

But TODAY we got our first official order! We'd had customers create accounts, which is very cool, but today was the first time we actually got an order. And not from a friend, from a total stranger who says she saw the advertisement in Kroger. Her order was huge! The end results is a take-home of $30 for me, and $22 for my shopper (after a nice tip!). Not a bad deal :) I am $30 in the black now. HAHA!

It's really exciting to see other people I don't even know put their faith in us. WOW. I'm meeting my shopper tomorrow to help her out since we've never actually done this end-to-end yet! Good thing my calendar at work is pretty empty tomorrow. Here's hoping for a nice flow!

Windy

This weekend we finally moved her out of her Britax Decathlon (with 5 point harness!) into a big girl booster seat. With that came a move from the center of the back seat to a window seat. My boss gave me the two boosters her daughter outgrew. I guess it was time to make that move in my truck but I just never processed it till now.

The results:
















Windy fun and "floating arms"!

We have viewers!

Woo hoo! We have stats collected on the viewers to the Grocery Station website! People are looking.

Just a few kinks to work out over the weekend and get this thing functional. Fingers crossed for next week GO TIME! I want to see CUSTOMER ACCOUNTS GETTING CREATED, PEOPLE!

Dance class canceled

Anna has decided she wants to go back to gymnastics rather than stick it out in dance class (no we are not doing BOTH for the sake of my own sanity. Call me selfish). That's fine because getting her into those Effing tights were my biggest life challenge of the week. Also it's fine because the shoes, leotard, and stockings I bought her for the class were still cheaper than one single gymnastics suit, which for her sake, I hope she can still fit in.

And I know she LOVES gymnastics. But I hate the fact that the Acrosports gymnastics place is a filthy disgusting sewer drain. Actually it's not really a sewer drain but it's pretty filthy all the time. Ick. Ick. Yay.

This is mine...

I thought this would be easy. It has not. Nothing worth doing has been easy.

EAR came to visit in June and told us that her grocery store offered online ordering and then you could come to the store and just PICK UP YOUR GROCERIES.

Really? Yes. And so, we've created this.

http://www.thegrocerystation.com/

Not "we" as in me and EAR. "We" as in me, Dad, Paul, and the team of 8 people I hired as shoppers plus the guys who actually built this site. Oh, and also the Kroger General Manager who is AWESOME and excited to get this thing going with us.

I have lost sleep, exercise, time with Anna, and money, and some sanity was also lost in the process. I fortunately didn't know what I was getting into when I started this.

Also, the irony is not at all lost on me that I created this service so I could spend less time in the grocery store, yet I have spent countless hours there since July. I have put myself out there: my ideas, my time, and money. I have taken risks I don't usually take, personally and monetarily.

I honestly can't say where this is all coming from. Have you been driven to just do something? Compelled? I can't say what's up with this exactly. Something directed me to do it. And I was fortunate enough to have the advice and business guidance of my husband and my dad. Lucky me!

This is my path to paying off my student loans in two years. Incidentally, when they're paid off, I'll tell you how much I owed to begin with.

The website is not entirely functional yet. There are some tweaks we need to fix. Hopefully we can begin taking orders as early as next Monday. I have shoppers standing by. We are advertising in Kroger with banners and fliers.

It's a risk. But it's not THAT great of a risk that I can't swallow it. It's good to push myself outside of my comfort zone.

I've been busy. Very. Stinking. Busy.
Now bring on the customers. Spread the word, y'all.

Well this is interesting fine red print

I stumbled upon this when looking for crew bios on some astronauts I'm going to have to brief in Nov. Looks like they're quietly planning to take new astronaut applications this fall:

http://astronauts.nasa.gov/

Well, how about that?

Landmark Education Forum

A coworker told me about the best Leadership courses she'd ever taken and since it worked so well for her I immediately signed myself up. Did not read the website, did not check reviews, went straight to the registration page.

I showed up to the Landmark Education Forum in Austin 2 hours late after dealing with an unexpected fever from Anna, who came with me to stay at my mom's while I attended this 3 day, 13 hrs per day, course.

I walked in and realized I was in the wrong room. But it turns out I wasn't. Here's a summary for my $495:

Day 1: I am a jerk and a liar. Also the cause of problems in life can be summed up with circles.

Day 2: I am dead inside. Resigned and cynical. No don't deny it. It's true. I should call my parents and tell them how sorry I am for being a jerk my whole life or else I will never truly have what I want in life.

Day 3: The punch line. I would tell you what this is but I'd have to charge you $495.

Oh look a break through! Perhaps I AM really cynical! Well, money well spent. :)

On top if this all, my mom and sister would totally benefit from the class. It's about perspective, people!

Now on to Denver tomorrow where I am giving 3 talks on ISS science. One will be at Colorado State University on my birthday! Paul happens to be in Denver for the same weekend and will finally get to see one of my presentations. Though Anna won't be with us, this will be a neat birthday!

36 here I come :)

How's it Going?

Lately, about like this

No more Arm floaties!

I should have posted this 2 weeks ago but she then finally decided to ditch her arm floaties and is swimming in the pool like a little fish! She's been trying to sit on the bottom, playing underwater games, and going down to pick up stuff off the bottom of the pool. She's so excited and proud! It's fun to watch her every day try something new in the pool!! Woo-Hoo!

Also the cats are starting to tolerate each other. The use of the squirt bottle has gone down significantly! Blackberry is doing well.