Dear Dyson,

(an open letter to the Dyson Company)

Hello. I am a new customer of yours who just purchased a DC24 dyson ball vacuum cleaner. I just wanted to offer my services to you in case you needed a spokeswoman. I have editorial experience (see: Fallon County Times, August 29th, 2008), advertising experience (see: my office), and most recently I have pimping experience (see: 40milesSouth.blogspot.com August 28, 2008). I would love to pimp your product. Advertising tag lines could go something like this...

*Woman cleans house, discovers furniture is actually blue

*Woman vacuums rug, then floor, then bathroom, then chairs, couch, bed, pillows, dog crates

*Man vacuums house

*House clean for the first time in over 1 year

*Cats welcome on furniture!

*Man comes home to find wife vacuumed three times in one morning

The possibilities are endless! I would, like any good pimp, appreciate remuneration for all my hard work and yapping to friends and family. Also, I'd like to rent out my vacuum cleaner to people who are considering purchasing one of your products so they could see the wonders for themselves. Think about it, get back to me. Checks can be mailed to the address at the bottom of the blog.

Sincerely,
Anna Koruba
Wife, Satisfied Customer

"Picture 188"

Erin, you have to tell me soon if it bothers you that I keep posting photos of your baby. I hope it doesn't because...




So I pull this photo up on my laptop and the following conversation happens:

Me: She is SO CUTE!!

Him: She's looking more Polish.

Me: We're not Polish, we're Ukrainian.

Him: Same thing.

Me: No, it's not.

Him: If two countries use the same word for a toast, they count as one country.

Me: ...?

Him: Nostrovia! [glasses clink]

[loud noise as I drop the cooking spray into the pan of chili]

Him: Polack.

I Should Get Paid for This

Do you remember this? Well it's been one year and two days (really three since it was a leap-year) and we've finally solved the vacuum dilemma. I can't believe how excited I am to get a new vacuum.

Remember this?? Yeah, we didn't buy that vacuum. Not even close. I went out to Baker Furniture (do you guys have a website? I'll pimp for you if you do) and totally splurged on THIS!!! Yeah. Sweet. We vacuumed the carpet tonight for the first time in a year and wow. Seriously, we totally forgot it was an orange and yellow rug.

And, seriously... ??

Am I old or what? Getting this excited about a vacuum... tsk tsk tsk.

Clarification

A statement released yesterday by the United StatesDepartment of Justice details the conviction of Andrew Siemaszko, a former reactor coolant system engineer at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant. If you go on to read the entire release you will find one sentence at the bottom of the page:

"Special agents of the NRC's Office of Investigations and a senior reactor inspector from NRC's Region III developed the case and referred it to the Department of Justice."

The "Senior Reactor Inspector"? Yeah, that's my dad. As he said on the phone this morning, "that was 6 and 3/4 years of my life! That's like going to college and grad school!"

Gonna be Published!

I'm not sure when, but the Fallon County Times (who's website is totally not working right now or I'd link to it) is going to publish two articles I wrote about our trip to Honduras! If you read the newspaper, don't read the rest of this blog- I'm totally gonna spoil it for you. If anyone has any editorial suggestions let me know since I'll also be submitting these to the monthly Healing Touch publication, Energy Magazine, later this month.

Here's the first article:

Help in Honduras
Part 1
Global Medical Brigades

Day 1: Arrive after traveling for 21 hours. Sleep. Eat dinner. Pack Meds.

Stephan Koruba has a niece named Sahra who is a student at DePaul University in Chicago. In February she called him to share the exciting news that she was going to travel to Honduras to help support rural medical clinics. She also asked if he and his wife Anna would be willing to travel with her. Without much hesitation they both agreed.

They began collecting money, medicine, office supplies, vaccines (for themselves!) and medical supplies to bring along. On June 24th they boarded a flight at O’Hare Airport in Chicago at 2am. By 1pm that same day they were in Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras. From there, the group of 17 students, one doctor, one nurse and one massage therapist were taken by van to an orphanage about 3 hours Southeast of the capitol.

The first day was full of relaxing and touring the various facilities run by Global Medical Brigades. The hard work started early on the second day. The bus left at 6:30am and drove another 2 hours West. A makeshift clinic was set up in a three-room school: a triage center, treatment center, and pharmacy. In the next 5 hours 750 native Hondurans received basic medical care.

In the next two days the same team of people saw another 800 Hondurans from two different villages, bringing the total up to 1500. Most people came with their entire family. There were mothers with 5-8 children who all had intestinal parasites. Old men brought their grandchildren who had skin fungus. Old women leaned on each other to walk all morning to ask for aspirin to alleviate their arthritis and headaches. There were teething babies with fevers, pregnant women who needed vitamins, men with heartburn, diabetics needing insulin, and heart patients needing blood thinners.

This was the first time in 9 months that any of them had a chance to see a doctor.

There is a Swear Word in this Blog

This story happened on Friday night. It happened after I saw 7 clients (2 more than I'm supposed to), and Stephan sent me home after he realized that he would be very very late coming home (after two ambulances delivered his patients to him personally, and he was short staffed in the ER).

Here, I'll make it interactive... Go get two of the biggest rolls of generic paper towels you have in your house. Do it. I'll wait here.

...

Ok. Now unroll the paper towel rolls. Yeah, that's a lot of paper towels. Now, soak the paper towels in dog poo. Uh huh. Soak. Them. Yeah, that's a lot of poo. Squeeze the poo onto two small labradors and coop them up in their dog-crate for an afternoon. Make sure you close all the windows in your house, and leave to go to work.

When you get home the house will stink, and there will be poo everywhere. There will be poo in the water dish, food dish, poo in the dog blanket, and it will have spilled out of the crate, mushed into the surrounding dog hair, and made poo paste.

This was exactly the scene when I got home. Two labradors soaked in poo. The smell was... just ick. So I opened the door to the crate to get them out of the house. They were scared I was going to yell at them, and one of them really had to poo again, so they were a bit disorganized in their exodus. By disorganized I mean that they made the kitchen floor into a poo Slip & Slide brushing their poo-covered bodies against every cabinet, the refrigerator, the stove, and the door.

It took two hours to clean our tiny kitchen. Murphy's Oil Soap is my new best friend (sorry Melanie and Erin).

This story is a LOT funnier if you go back and reread it, substituting the word shit for poo, the way I originally wrote the blog in my head.

Small Towns are Great...

...most of the time.

But sometimes you just want to be mad at the person you're married to and tell him why using a voice that isn't quiet. Heck, we used to let it all out in the parking lot in front of our apartment building and no one would notice. Now, though, a "serious" conversation in a public place may elicit some advice.

Not that the advice is bad, don't-get-me-wrong. It was actually kinda nice to have people make suggestions. I'd like to post some, if you don't mind.

* Don't worry, men always come home when they're hungry or need money.

* Just buy yourself something expensive. That'll show him.

* When you've been married a long time like me you don't even notice these little things.

* Actually, I like it when mine isn't home; I don't care where he is.

The Fair is a Veritable Smorgasbord

(Stephan's been singing this song for three days straight. I thought I'd make you all listen to it too.)

8 pieces of pie later we're finished with the 2008 Fallon County Fair. Whew! I saw 40 clients for chair massages and booked 14 hours of massage in the next few weeks! I was really busy, Stephan loved the pie, now I'm ready to sleep. For a week. But work calls, and I don't think I'm gonna get away with not exercising this morning. I FEEL like Templeton right now after all the fair food.

Bad pun at the end of this story.

My first day at the fair went pretty well (the cats are fired, by the way, for letting the spider problem get so out of control). I have really been focusing on trying to make more money than I spend, which is hard when you're sitting across from a large booth selling purses and jewelry.

The owner of the purse booth is a woman from South Dakota. When I first got there she had left her husband in charge while she ran out to get something. It was pretty fun to watch this guy try to assist women in their purse, belt and jewelry purchases.

Well, I was laughing. It did give a new meaning to "honey will you hold my purse... booth."

BBBLLLEEEECCCHHHHKKKKKK

Remember the part where I was suspicious that the really big spiders were hiding from me?

I was right.

Where were they hiding?

ON MY MASSAGE CHAIR!!!!!

I'm supposed to load it into the car and bring it out to the fair grounds this morning to set up my booth at the fair. But I just unloaded 1/2 a can of Raid onto a spider the size of a mouse and it DIDN'T DIE. I don't remember if I was a thumb-sucker as a kid, but I'm happy to say I'm doin' it now.

Super Looper

Have you ever been in a situation where everyone in the room knows something you don't know? Or have you ever, as an adult, tried to learn a whole new physical skill that most people know as kids (I'm thinking hula-hooping or playing limbo...)?

Most people who live out here, at least the ranch-people, all know how to rope. It's something Stephan and I have watched and wanted to learn for some time now, but the opportunity hasn't been around yet. Last night was our first shot at it. We went over to a friends' house where they had the little hay bale sitting in their side-lawn with a calf head stuck to it (see photo above).

You may think we were lasso-ing the hay bale, or using a "lasso". That's city-talk. The noun is "rope" and the verb is "to rope" or "roping".

And we kinda suck.

Me: Stephan, what did you think about roping last night?

Him: I sucked worse than you did, but by the end we were both better then when we started.

Me: You have no sense of drama, theater, action... People want to hear the gossip.

Him: Ok, then tomorrow we'll try it from horseback on a live calf and see how that goes. That dramatic enough for you baby?


I'm SO glad Stephan has to work this weekend or that may actually have happened. As it is we're excited for Uncle Joe & Aunt Jamie's visit and don't forget, drinks on them!!

Keeping in Touch

For information about what's going on with my dad check out this article and this other article from Friday. There's also this one from Saturday.

For the whole story you can read the the Wikipedia article... but scroll down to the section about the "reactor head hole."

Paparazzi Not Invited

or...

FAQ: How's Fire Season going?

Answer: We've been gone so much this summer that Stephan's managed to miss every single fire they've had. That is, until this very afternoon. We'd just woken up from a Sunday afternoon nap and turned on Southpark when a storm hit, lightening flared, and the radio began squawking. It's about 4pm so at least I'm already wide awake and have plenty of things to do to keep my mind off of the fire. The rain has stopped which means they won't get that assistance any more.

I took a few photos of him in uniform, putting his shoes on, pacing around the house before the call came in, but he told me I'm not allowed to post them. However, I'm sneaky like this and I'd just like to remind you of this post from last year when there was a fire. It's a bad angle, he really doesn't have a beer belly at all, just the pooch of the shirt. Enjoy!

D-D-D Denver!

Our trip to Denver was SO cool. We left Sunday night, arrived in Sturgis at about 11pm, and Denver at about 8am. We hung out with Peg from Chicago, Mary Anne from Tennessee, Mark & Stephanie from Texas, Beth & Arnie & Jack from London, Wendi & Chad & Sydney from Denver, and Arnie's mom, Leiba from Denver. It was the center of the universe!

We stayed in Chad & Wendi's backyard in a tent one night (the second day it rained, and the tent got wet, so we slept inside), took public transportation to a Rockie's game, drove up to Evan's Mountain (the highest paved road in the US) and took more photos there.

There was lots of snuggling. We left Denver Wednesday night to drive up to Fort Collins and eat pizza in a hot tub. The next morning we said goodbye to our biker friends and drove the rest of the way home to Montana, stopping once at Devil's Towerand once because there were cows in the road.

Oh, we also ate Taco Bell and the dogs came with and helped navigate.

I'm Running Away

Literally, running away and away and away! Check out my first run!! Once the incision(s) in my foot healed I splurged on the Nike+ iPod gadgetry. I sewed a pocket on my running shoe (the right one, I figured it'd be symbolic) to fit the sensor, and plugged the receiver into my iPod nano. I signed up for the 10k run on August 31st, and downloaded a 12-week training program.

If you're part of this whole Nike+ thing drop me a line and perhaps we can keep each other motivated. I'll also be updating the internet to help keep me focused.

Back from Denver

Too many photos to upload them this morning. We arrived safely home last night at 9pm and Stephan left for work this morning at 5am. Ugh. I'm off to work myself, and I promise promise promise to post photos and stories of the crazy 4-day trip.

In the meantime, remember this funny story? It still cracks me up.

Pouting

There hasn't been enough traffic on my Flickr site lately, and not enough people have seen the great photos that Lauren took at Luci's baptism. So I'm gonna post 'em here. That's right, I'm forcing cute photos upon you all.

That's my mom posing for a pre-photo photo. I LOVE the expression on Erin's face as she watches this. We hadn't even had dessert yet!


This one I mostly like because of how thin I look, although I think it also shows just how thrilled I am to be holding that tiny little blessing in a long dress.

In this one we're listening to the priest tell us why choosing Baptism is such a wonderful gift for parents to give their children. I expect that the look you can see here on my face, the "listening" look, was seen every day of the 8 years of Catholic school I went to.

This one I like to call, "Everyone needs a short friend." It's the moment of Baptism, which, by the way, is one of my mom's seven favorite sacraments.

This one was taken by Erin & Pete of Luci's first bath. I'm including it because it's so cute it causes me physical pain and I wanted to share it. You're welcome.

Remember This?

This, right here?? That was July last year. Now it's August. You may have thought, from my calm posting, the way I just casually chat about this and that, that I'm not still terrified of my house. That the fact that the basement was a cool 36F all winter didn't sooth my mind because it meant that nothing without warm-blood could survive down there.

It's spider time people. Spider. Freaking. Time. People.

Two things are preventing me from showing any photos of what's currently living in my basement:

1. I sprayed enough Raid down there to keep all but the most hearty cats alive.

2. I suspect they're hiding from me.

Every time I go into the basement I have a laundry basket in one hand and the can of Raid in another. Sometimes this makes laundry harder, but it's me vs the arachnids, and I'm not backing down. I just sprayed a small one that was only about as big as a quarter, legs included. But I'm suspicious. And cautious. And I'm not signing for any packages sent to "Peter Parker."

Farmer Dan

We have a friend named Dan, and he is, surprisingly, a farmer. He grows things like peas and wheat. Thursday morning he was harvesting Winter Wheat, which is a grain that's planted in the fall and harvested... right now! He was driving a really large John Deere Combine and invited us to take a ride on it. It looked just like this! It had a little GPS-looking thing with an automatic steering thingie that, once Farmer Dan drove around the perimeter of the field, automatically drove up and down in perfect rows.

I learned a lot that day, none of which I wrote down, or took photos of. The most interesting part to me was that if a farmer puts $100 into an acre of wheat he may, after rent or land ownership, is $106. Geeze. With 200-1000 acres per farmer that's not a lot of income. You can see, then, why American farming is NOT growing quickly.

I also learned a lot about the difference between organic and non-organic farming, but I forgot most of it. Sorry.