enjoy the second quarter of 2008 by having one new and fulfilling experience in April, May, and June. Woo Hoo!

The first half of the year came to a satisfying close today, with piano lessons, lunch with friends, a great sale at the bead store, and take-out for dinner so I didn’t have to cook. I even finished a challenge I had set for myself to finish by today. Woo Hoo!

I made THIS.

OK, making jewelry is obviously not new to me, but I had already used about half these beads to make another necklace that just never looked the way I wanted it to. I finally took it apart and made this one. I have never taken apart that much work before, so that made it new. The end result here is highly fulfilling as well.
=D

I have two friends who don’t particularly get along with one another, although I think they would like to have a better relationship. I am going out to breakfast on Wednesday with the one I hardly ever hear from, to celebrate our birthdays which are only a month apart.

The other one has her daughter and grandbabies in town and wanted me to come over to see them before they leave. So the Dearest and I went over there Sunday afternoon for their little get-together.

What do these events have to do with each other? Well, these two friends of mine are sisters who live 40 miles apart and hardly ever see each other, yet I am seeing both of them within a few days time this week.

The new and fulfilling part will be my handling of the two encounters. In the past, each of them has spent long periods of time complaining to me about the other. I am friends with both of them and have repeatedly told them to work things out instead of venting at me.

Last night, I guided the conversation toward looking at old family pictures so that the younger one would feel sentimental about her sister. It worked great and was very fulfilling.

Wednesday will be more of a challenge because that one is naturally prone to complain more, but I will be segment-intending my way through the morning. This will put me in charge of the conversation and I can easily guide it to the positive.

Perhaps my influence can narrow their divide after all.

And surprisingly fulfilling!

I didn’t realize how excited I would be about this, but I have been awaiting the 2008 release of the Arizona quarter. I went to the bank today and the teller was talking about how they had come in this morning but she hadn’t actually seen them yet. I wanted one, so she went to “the back” and got me one.

I am only the second person ever to have touched this coin! How cool is that! And wholly appropriate, too, since I am a 4th generation native here.

Was entirely taken up by CLEANING MY KITCHEN. Not fulfilling you say. Au contrare! Very, very fulfilling! This was not ordinary cleaning. It was more like ferocious Spring Cleaning gone berserk. I emptied all the cabinets (except the ones in the new pantry that I just filled), scrubbed everything down and made it all look great, just like in Spring Cleaning, but then I also got rid of tons of stuff out of the kitchen. All good stuff and it all went in the giveaway box.

Not new, you hope. Au… well. No. Having a clean kitchen is not new to me, but doing all that work at once IS and I hope I won’t ever get a stockpile of junk going again to where I have to do all that work at once. Still, it does feel like quite a great accomplishment.

And look! It’s pretty. =]

Busy from the minute I woke up this morning until I went to bed about an hour ago. I had to get back up anyway, so here I am.

NEW & FULFILLING stuff: Got two giant flower bouquets; went out to dinner at a place I didn’t like the first time I tried it, but this time I was treated like Hera, Queen of Everything (so the waiter got the memo—good =D); and I got complete cooperation from my littlest tutoring client, who has issues with sitting, talking, reading, writing, and paying attention. Plus, when I went over to visit my mom, I ended up solving a problem with the water company for her whole neighborhood. I even stopped by one of those home-shopping parties at my friend’s house after dinner, and about 60 people sang happy birthday to me.

It was quite a memorable day. :)

My Dearest has taken up calling me Trophy Wife.

It got me thinking—all wives should be considered “trophies.” I mean, look how hard a man will work to get one, then for as long as he has it, if it gets “polished” regularly, it has the outstanding ability to make him look good.

We have always waited until the last week in July to escape the heat here, but this year we had a small window when no one was in school or had to work, so we just got back from a lovely week in Florida.

I’ve been THERE the last week of July twice before and I like the middle of May WAAAAY better! We took all of our girls and just had a wonderful time.

We had done DisneyWorld both times before and considered doing it again, but ended up at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure instead. This was both NEW and FULFILLING. Boy, I must congratulate the park designers for doing their research at the right place. It was so copied from Disney that every single ride we went on, we could immediately compare it to one at a Disney park. This is not a bad thing! We love Disney parks.

We also got to see Blue Man Group, which was very FULFILLING for me, since I’ve been a fan since their inception. I actually gave my Dearest the tickets for HIS birthday.
_{(And check this out . . . I’m making him a $40 replica of a $500 necklace he wanted to buy me in San Francisco for MY birthday next week—ooo, I’d better get busy making it! I’ll post a picture when it’s done)}

A daytrip to the Tampa side meant 4 hours of deep sea fishing and a fun trip to the beach. This was also the NEW part. I had never been to the Gulf side of Florida. We usually go to Daytona to recoup from our week in Orlando.

Then to round it out, we hit GatorLand on our last day there. That was my favorite day. I caught a glimpse of what Florida was like before Walt & Mickey showed up.

Got the converter box up and running this weekend.

It causes a 2-second delay.

Still, the picture is fabulous, so even though I don’t watch very much television, I think this rates as new and fulfilling.

I had two pieces memorized that I played ALMOST flawlessly.

NEW: Boy, I’ll say! I’ve never played in a recital before, let alone playing in public without music in front of me to protect me. My teacher even put down the little music holder-upper, so everyone could stare right at me. Scary, yet satisfying.

FULFILLING: Everyone HAS TO clap at a recital—it’s the rule, but a lot of the parents and grandparents of the kids in the recital came over to me afterwards and asked me how long I had been playing. When I told them I’d only had about 10 lessons, they acted amazed. It was nice to get compliments from strangers! All my hard work paid off. :)

Woo Hoo!