A Very Very Very Fine House

For the next few months I'm living with my in-laws-to-be... and, while I appreciate the time to get squared away and on my feet again, it's quite the challenge to eat my pride and give up my independence and own way of doing things.  I'm not saying that how they do things is bad just that it's different than how I have done it in the past.  And that can be physically and emotionally uncomfortable at times.  Living in someone else's home means you adopt their standards and schedule even when they are vastly different than how you've become accustomed to caring for yourself.  It's a big adjustment no matter how positive a spin you try to put on it.

One example on my mind the past few days is toilet paper.  That's one thing I've never been terribly brand conscious about and only looked to get something 2-ply and substantial enough to do it's job.  Imagine my surprise at a long discussion on 'lint' or those little fibers that low quality TP leaves behind on your oh so delicate lady parts.  I'm not offering up any arguments whether or not Charmin Ultra Soft is the most lint free, I'm just going along with the idea that it is (for now, anyway) the toilet paper that must be purchased.  And doing my best to make sure that there's always a spare roll - my priority, not my future family's - in the bathroom because having to drip dry is just simply not OK.  And within the last couple of days I've been caught in just that horrifying scenario in 3 different bathrooms...

If you're imagining a little grimace of disdain here, you're not too far off my actual reaction.  Except that the grimace was not little.  And it was accompanied by several off-color words spoken, mostly, under my breath.  Mostly.

At the same time I recognize that in the grand scheme of life these adjustments are pretty minor.  I'm safe.  I'm happy.  I have beautiful accommodations and lots of support while I get myself oriented to a new place and back to a self-sufficient point in life.  Those are wonderful blessings and I am thankful beyond words for them.

And nature has been awe inspiring.  The natural beauty of the area is much different than either Idaho or Utah, but it is so very beautiful!  As one friend said when thumbing through some photographs of the area around Kennesaw, "If you can't live in Idaho, that looks like a good substitute!"

And it is!

A winding road through the area as photographed through our car window one afternoon last week. There are individual houses or the entrances to subdivisions/neighborhoods all along the road. The trees serve to provide a little buffer between people and traffic.

Kennesaw Mountain.  Friends had cautioned me not to make fun of the mountains here... because comparatively they are tiny, unlike the soaring 6,000+ foot granite peaks surrounding the Salt Lake Valley... but so far I'm enjoying the rolling terrain and finding the hills challenge enough for my screwed up knees to walk.

On the grounds at Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield, a National Park and the site where a Civil War battle was fought.

An Open Letter to Ben Baldanza

When I recently moved from Salt Lake City, UT to Kennesaw, GA it was followed up by an almost immediate vacation cruise with my fiance through the southeastern Caribbean.  The vacation was beyond wonderful!  In fact, the sole black spot to mar the memory was the flight home.  And it was so awful that I still say the high point of November 12th was visiting with the Custom's agent about the duty tax owed on some jewelry we bought.  Our cruise originated from (and returned to) Fort Lauderdale, FL and we chose to fly Spirit Airlines as our connector there from Atlanta.  The flight to Fort Lauderdale was uneventful and left both Derek and I wondering what all the fuss was about... why was everyone complaining about the service on Spirit?


Sadly, on the trip home we found out.

Following is my letter about the experience to the President, Chief Executive Office and Class II Director, Ben Baldanza.  I found his name and contact information under Investor Relations on the company's website.


Dear Mr. Baldanza:

November 12 was already a day we weren't completely thrilled with knowing that we'd be spending the better part of it waiting in the Fort Lauderdale Hollywood airport for an afternoon flight home to Atlanta because of your company's sparse scheduling on that route.  The only choices we had were appx 9:00 a.m., a time when we would not have completed the deboarding process from our cruise, or 4:08 p.m.  Obviously, the only choice was the later flight even though we would be arriving at the airport around 11:00 a.m.

On arrival at the terminal, we followed the signs directing us to the counter for luggage check only to be reamed by the agent there for not checking in at the kiosk first.  I'd say she had reason to redirect us if there had been any posted directions pointing us that way but there wasn't and I found her attitude and disposition completely disagreeable.  After so very curtly directing us toward the kiosks she told us to come back once we had the boarding passes.  We tried.  But we were physically stopped by another agent roaming the area in front of the roped off lines and pushed to the opposite end of the counter to the "Fast Line" where we stepped up to the back of a full line just as all but one agent left for break.  With just a single person back there checking bags, the line could have been generously renamed the "Slower Than A Snail Crawls Line."

Finally, with bags checked and boarding passes in hand we navigated through the TSA checkpoint and headed for the gate only to learn that the flight had already been delayed two hours.  Initially we were told it was due to weather delays in New York... that our plane was stuck at La Guardia and couldn't leave there on its trip to Florida until the weather cleared.  Later that story changed to there was no plane to take us to Atlanta because of a mechanical problem until another could be scrambled out of the fleet and brought to Fort Lauderdale.  The delay was pushed back to 6:35, then 7:05.

Boarding was begun for the 7:05 time point and when approximately 1/3 of the passengers were onboard, a problem was discovered with that plane and they were asked to get off, walk across the terminal to another gate and get on a different plane where boarding was uninterrupted multiple times to clear the walkway for international flights to deboard.  Our 4:08 p.m. flight eventually pulled away from the gate around 8:00 p.m. with the captain apologizing for the "unacceptable delays."  Yes, those were his actual words.

What troubles me most is not that there were problems with the flight but your employees' response to them.  And that is a terrible thing to say because your people had so many chances to shine, so many opportunities to wow us with great customer service, so many times they could have won our loyalty instead of leaving us angry, alienated and vowing to use another carrier for future flights.  You see, we are pretty laid back and reasonable people.  We fully understand that things happen.  But we do expect to be treated with honesty, kindness and professionalism as the problems are worked out.  Our anger comes from that fact that none of those qualities were evident in our contact with your employees.  We were treated very badly and are very interested to know what, if anything, you are going to do about it.


That's the body of my letter.  Now we wait and see what happens.  I'd like to hope there'll be some response but after experiencing the way Spirit's front line employees treat customers I'm not exactly counting on it since customer service is usually a trickle down trait in corporate culture.

Farewell to Utah

The famed Wasatch Front on the east of Salt Lake City

All my life I've lived in the mountains of the American West.  For my adult years thus far I've been cradled, feeling safe and protected, in the high peaks of Utah's Wasatch Front.

Sometimes called the Great Basin (because of its scooped-out round shape) or the Great Smoky Bowl (because the mountains hold the cold air down in the valley in the winter creating a horrible smoggy inversion), Salt Lake City sits in a near-enclosed valley high in the Rocky Mountains.  The Wasatch Front is east of the city and the Oquirrh Mountains are on the west.  Ancient Lake Bonneville once covered the area in water with just the tops of these peaks showing above like islands in a vast sea.  The Great Salt Lake you see on today's map is just a small remnant from that time.  The mountains themselves arose from a combination of volcanic activity, earthquakes and erosion.  Geologically speaking, they were formed quite violently.

Oh, how I'm going to miss these soaring mountains!  And the comfort and security they represent...

I've loved living in Utah and I will miss it so very much but it's time for a new chapter of life to unfold.  And that chapter opens in another place that I can hardly wait to start telling you about!  In just a few days I'll be heading off to my new home:  Kennesaw, Georgia.  These snowy peaks I'm so familiar with will be replaced with softly rolling and very green hills and stories of Mormon pioneers seeking religious freedom with the history contained in civil war battle sites.  Stick with me and share the adventure!

Another Return & Report Update

For the past week, my tasks were:

1. Details and agreements to sell/lease house completed.
2. 30 minutes of exercise each day.
3. Spend 8 hours on off-line pursuits like drawing or crafts.
4. Decide garage sale days, begin advertising it and finish getting stuff packaged up and ready to sell
5. Research pricing for furniture to be sold and place ads on KSL.com and craigslist.com.
6. Work on the big pre-move goal.
7. Unclog the bath tub drain.

Task 1 is on track.  The details and agreements are ready to move forward with the lease-to-sell option as the folks who want to buy my house got a sad/sick appraisal on theirs.  I'm looking a huge loss but I still have equity.  They're upside down.  This real estate market is all around painful right now.

Task 2 went a little better this week.  I think I still missed a couple of days getting the full 30 minutes in but between going up and down the stairs getting stuff packed and ready for a garage sale this coming weekend and getting out to walk every day and doing some stretches specifically to help with flexibility I'm getting the time in most days.  I'm feeling pretty pleased about this, but I want to keep it on my weekly list for awhile longer so it becomes a solid habit.

Task 3 is another tough one.  Life circumstances left me with too much idle time to play around online and it became a hard habit to break!  I may have got the 8 hours in, but barely.  This one needs to stay on the list indefinitely!!

Task 4 is done.  The garage sale is going to be Friday and Saturday, September 21 and 22.  I'll have quite a bit of stuff ready to go out but (shudder) may have to have another in a few weeks to get rid of straggler items.  I advertised in my Ward's RS Newsletter and will be placing ads on KSL,com, craigslist.com and Facebook as well as making posterboard signs to place around the neighborhood on Thursday morning.

Task 5 is a rough one...  Pricing, generally, should be about 1/3 of what you paid (can you say financial rape?) but people here in Utah are so tight they could back up to a wall and suck a brick out.  The brown sectional and coordinating area rug upstairs, for example, cost me around $3,400.  I've been asking $1,100 and get treated like crap for it.  No one wants to pay more than $100 for anything.  I wish I could just donate it for the tax write off and be done and not have to deal with rude, horrible people!

Task 6 is more personal than I want to share on the internet, but it's coming along right on track.

Task 7 is done.  After major plungering, the bath tub drain is unclogged.  That kind of stuff happens now and then in an old house.

Other things I accomplished this week, in addition to the above, include:

• Went to the first goodbye lunch with Marcy and Brantz.
• Finalized which mover to use.  The truck will be here on Oct 25.
• Got my flight to Atlanta booked for Oct 31.  Hehehe... does Derek get a trick or a treat?
• We made the plans for our first big adventure together - a 10 day Caribbean Cruise leaving Nov 2.

My 7 'must accomplish' tasks for the coming week are:

1.  30 minutes of exercise each day.
2.  Spend 8 hours on off-line pursuits like drawing or crafts.
3.  Hold the garage sale on Sept 21 and 22.
4.  Research consignment arrangements to sell furniture.
5.  Make significant progress on the private big pre-move goal.
6.  Start the liquidation process on all remaining assets so there's cash to cover car purchase, Oct mortgage and moving related expenses.
7.  Make a list of what I need to pack for the cruise so I can hold it out separately.

And though I've given up expecting anyone to follow up with me that reinforcement would still be helpful and welcome!

One Day That Defines Us

Every generation has it's day.  The day that lives on forever in our collective memory.  The day we will always know exactly where we were and what we were doing when an event unfolded that changed each of us.  Changed our perception, attitude, outlook and often our very way of life.

For our parents (and some grandparents) that day is December 7, 1942 - the day that will live in infamy - when Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor and brought World War II to America in a very much more personal way.  I remember my parents stopping, even 50 years later, to reflect on what had happened that day and to recall friends and family who died on ships just off the Hawaiian coast.  And it's right to remember.

As awful as the event was, so many good things happened as a consequence.  Young adults of that era went on to be the innovators with the dead-on hard working ethics that drove America to newfound prosperity.  They become known as 'the greatest generation' because they earned that title by sacrifice and doing things that had never been done before.  They set the stage for the accomplishments we enjoy today and we owe them a debt of gratitude so huge that it can never be repaid.  With so many of them now passed on it's right and good for us to pick up their torch, to remember and to mark this solemn day even if it is not part of our own memories.

My generation, so called baby-boomers and younger, have a different defining day.  For us September 11, 2001 is when our world changed.  That's when we can each recall with near perfect clarity where we were and what we were doing when news broke that terrorists had flown planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington DC and if not for the heroic acts of passengers onboard another hijacked flight, the White House.  Agents of hate brought their war to our own soil.  For many of us, it was the first time we really tasted the fear and horror of war.  And still today, those emotions are raw and so near the surface.

Events were happening as I was getting up and ready for work.  It was a day like every other at the bank when I walked into the office early that morning.  Then almost immediately I was called over to the reception area where a television usually played market news and a continual stock ticker tape.  As I walked up to the desk to see why everyone was huddled there I saw the second plane crashing into WTC. There was a moment of utter disbelief and denial and hope that it was some kind of hideous accident but it soon became clear that the planes had been flown into the towers purposefully as an act of war.  It was stunningly chilling to realize that America was now in a war at home.

Some of my next thoughts were for the members of my work team who were in training meetings in Boise.  They should still be at breakfast... Did they know?  What did this mean for them personally and as far as continuing on with the training?  In the end, their flights home were cancelled.  They rented a car and drove back to Salt Lake a day or two later.  Luckily everyone I knew, and their families and close friends, had escaped being touched directly by this event.  No one close to me had been killed or injured in the initial attacks or when the towers fell.

Yet, emotionally and mentally we were dazed and confused and angry and hurt.  And some combination of thousands of other emotions ran through our minds.  But there was no physical connection.

Or so I thought.

Yesterday, for the first time, I read this account of the day by my friend Mashell Jolley Anderson:  http://www.squidoo.com/911-changed-my-life-forever.  Mashell's husband worked at the Pentagon and was there when that plane was purposely crashed.  I bawled reading her account of the day.  I cried for the suffering and distress her family experienced and then I cried for a whole different reason.  Out of all this horror, Mashell has found something so positive that she can look back and call it a good day for her family. She learned lessons that we all need to know about what is truly important.  I encourage you to read her message, let its poignancy touch your heart and then make changes in your own life so that 9/11 is a good day for you, too.  I know I am.

And I know it is a day I will always remember.  Amid all the messages telling us to 'never forget' I think we sometimes lose sight of just why its good and right to remember.  The past can be an amazing catalyst for the future if we learn its lesson and do what is necessary.  So now it's up to us to make the consequence of these horrific actions something worthy of our collective memory.