I thought I would share...

I absolutely LOVE watching videos. In my work, I'm always looking for good and funny videos to make points in my presentations. I also will search youtube sometimes when I'm bored looking for new and funny stuff. Since I'm bored right now and can't really come up with anything else to share, I thought I would share some of my favorites with you.

Since I also love David Letterman, let's do this in Top 10 countdown style, except I only have 5...

#5 - Mike: Grace Kelly:

This guy has been around for awhile in Europe, and I'm beginning to hear some of his music on the airwaves in the US. His music is upbeat and catchy and he happens to be brilliant at the keyboard. I absolutely LOVE this video and can listen to this song over and over again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPUpxIBkcjM

#4 - Dramatic Lemur:

I might be the only person on the internets that hadn't seen this video, but this little guy makes me smile (and a little creeped out at the same time :) ). I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've watched this, since I found this on Wendy's blog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPMaXuDVwSI

#3 - Blood:

Poor little guy...nobody is paying any attention to him. I'm pretty sure he's going to be scarred for life and his therapist is going to hear some fabulous stories! If I were his mom, I would have handled this the same way and laughed my butt off!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fVDGu82FeQ

#2 - Funny Cats:

I've always been a dog person. I just always had a dog growing up and LOVED all kinds of dogs. You name it...big, little, long hair, no hair, labrador, schnauzer, whatever. If it is of the "canine" kind, I love it. After my divorce, I was living in a cute little apartment with my son. Just the two of us, and it was nice. And then it happened....my son walked in the door with something in his hat. My sister had given him a kitten. After my shock and disgust, I realized that this was a pretty cool little creature. The picture below is my cat a few years later (and yes he was sitting like that, and no he's not as fat as he looks). The video is not of him, but he and his antics could be included if I had made this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUNmLuNdiL8

#1 - The Ultimate Practical Joke:
So, I love a good practical joke as much as the next person. Come to think of it, I pulled a pretty good one a few months ago, but that will make for a good post some other day. While I was planning this joke though, I came across this absolutely awesome video of quite possibly the best office practical joke EVER! I have an awesome job and work (with the exception of 1 - maybe 2 people) with the best group ever (seriously!). But don't you wish you worked for this company?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDHYvuUAPrE

That's all I have time for this week. Please enjoy!

Tata - K!

My Rules for Engagement....

OK - I've been through so many meetings lately, that I feel the need to lay out my new rules of engagement. I would love to say that if you want to engage with me in a business setting, you must comply!!! The reality is that I'm pretty much a peon.

Obviously, I spend way too much time in meetings. But since I've started facilitating and moderating as part of my job, I no longer have tolerance for painful meetings. When it's not my meeting, it's very hard for me not to say "OK - we're going in circles here, let's move on PEEPS"! I refrain (most of the time), but here is my wish list....

Take Note:

Rule #1 - After something has been stated 3 times, it's time to put it to rest.

Rule #2 - Speak only if you have something valuable to add to the conversation. You may agree with someone only if noone else has agreed with them. After that, you're speaking only to hear yourself speak.

Rule #3 - Agenda's are our friends!

Rule #4 - If only 3 people are talking during a meeting, the other 17 people probably should not have been invited.

Rule #5 - Meetings should last a maximum of 77 minutes! I swear to you that I read that 77 minutes is the most amount of time any reasonable person can stay engaged. Granted, I don't think I'm reasonable, since I tend to start losing it at 27 3/4 minutes.

Thank you for allowing me to get that off my chest. Now, if I could only set out to change the world, or my company, or maybe my work group, or I suppose I could just start with the people that sit in my cube (me and the weird looking caricature of me someone drew).

Tata - K

The love of my life

So someone asked me the other day what I love to do. I started to rattle off all of the normal things...knitting, reading, baking, reading, playing with my kids, etc. And then I almost forgot to tell her about the love of my life. You ready for this one? It's geocaching!

Here's a picture of my son after finding a cache hidden at the base of a tree.

Straight from geocaching.com..."Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online."

How nerdy and fun does that sound? I have to admit that I was turned on to this little gem of a hobby by 2 IT professionals (read nerds) that sat near me at work. I went with them to look for this tiny little thing (wasn't sure what I was looking for at the time) hidden in this stairwell on top of the tallest building in downtown Cinti. And it hit me...I was hooked.

The idea is that fellow geocachers hide their caches and then post the coordinates. You then follow the coordinates using your GPS and any hint they are nice enough to leave you with. It's proper protocol to sign the log and if the container is large enough there are sometimes trinkets. You take one and leave one for the next cacher.

Before long, I had logged 10 caches in the next week and even found myself staying up late obsessing about a particular cache (the dreaded Yellow Handle Communicator)! We organized a Wednesday caching crew of fellow cube-mates and went during our lunches to see how many we could find.

My husband and dog not paying any attention to the GPS coordinates.

Long story short, I can't wait for this snow to go away and for it to be a bit warmer. Fifteen degrees outside, does not make for fun caching weather.

Feel free to leave your caching stories, and be sure to visit http://www.geocaching.com/!

Tata - K

An Open Letter....

This is an open letter to two people that I have hurt in my life. They know who they are so I won't go into any explanations here. I have been thinking a lot lately about true friends and just how lucky you are to have them in your life. And then sometimes you do stupid things and they never talk to you again. These are two different people and two different events, however I feel very bad about what happened. Funny enough it's been over 5 years since I hurt friend 1 and 3 years since friend 2. Wow, do I miss them both. I've tried finding you on google, facebook, myspace, whatever. You probably know who you are. Please forgive me?

All the love in the universe - me

Random Things

So I created this note for Facebook and I thought I would add it to here. The task was to lay out 25 things about yourself, but I'm thinking I'd like to add some more to it. So here they are...

1. I absolutely LOVE music...rock, pop, classical, jazz, Christian, praise and worship, country, you name it. Except for maybe rap...I just don't get it, nor do I care to.
2. I get my love of music from my dad (obviously). He used to make me read the words and backstories behind all of the operas, before our elementary school trips to the Cincinnati Opera. I appreciate this NOW (not so much back then).
3. I am completely addicted to Twitter. You can follow me at @kelli1227 if you want.
4. I am completely addicted to geocaching. Check it out, I'm always up for a caching run. (again, i'm kelli1227)
5. I wanted to both major in Astronomy and be the first female NASA shuttle commander when I grew up.
6. My dad told me that I should start thinking of something else to do, because astronauts and astronomers needed to be able to stay up past 10 pm (which I still don't).
7. Given these first six, it's not a shock that people say I'm a nerd (and I consider this an honor)8. I am an internal thinker. I will answer you in my head, and have completely conversations with myself. Except, no words come out of my mouth. I get this from my dad too.
9. I am really good at math now, but almost failed it in highschool. Take that Mr. Manker!
10. I have a dog named Yolanda (yep - that's right)...and I didn't name her.
11. I was a complete band geek in high school. I played whatever instrument my dad told me too. I wasn't particularly good at any of them except maybe Clarinet and piano.
12. I swore I would have nothing to do with music after I graduated high school. I stuck with this until someone asked me to play last year for church....now I remember how much I love it.
13. I set up one of my guy friends on a date for our senior prom. It turned out the date was already pregnant by some other guy...needless to say, it didn't work out. (He just reminded me of this a few days ago)
14. I have a bachelor's degree in Biology and Chemisty, not that I've ever used this knowledge other than to answer Double Jeopardy questions.
15. I've only had 3 jobs since I graduated from high school and neither have had to do with science.
16. I will be celebrating 10 years with Procter& Gamble in April.
17. I plan to retire from P&G by the time I'm 50.18. I was given a birthday cake for my 33rd birthday that said "I LOVE LAURA DRESSMAN". (there are a few people only who know the back story on that one).
19. God has blessed me with the most beautiful, precious son ever!
20. I never wanted to be a mom when I was little, but he has definitely changed my mind. What an awesome kid!
21. I absolutely love to cook and bake, but I'm really bad at making cookies (not sure why).
22. I did not vote for Obama, but I do have hope.
23. My mom is my best friend and hero.
24. I'm committed to fundraising for the American Cancer Society. I believe we will find a cure for cancer in my lifetime.
25. I LOVE having an awesome job where I can work from home 2 days a week, however with the snow I'm completely stir crazy and can't wait to see my office mates tomorrow (hopefully).

Just checkin in!

Howdy everyone! Or probably noone!

So, I've made it to the end of a pretty long week. I facilitated a 3 day workshop at my work. The first 2 days completely rocked and I met some really awesome people. The third day was a little weird because it was the core team and they were doing an action planning session. Wow - so glad I'm not on that team! Those people really like to agree with each other only so they can here themselves talk! Enough already!!! And if I hear "I violently agree with you" one more time I'm going to puke!

OK - rant over. I really just wanted to let everyone know that I lost 5 pounds last week!!!!! Go me!! I'm not sure about this week as I really didn't stick to my food plan and I'm pretty sure I have a friend coming to visit early next week!

So that's it - I'll check in soon!

Tata -
K

Burning Questions

I'm on to day 3 now, and I'm feeling a bit more into the swing of things. I am feeling pretty good about my eating habits. I haven't been all that hungry yet between meals, so we'll see. I'm really a little bummed about not having the energy to work out just yet. I am purposefully saying no "energy" rather than "time". The reality is that I could have left the office 2 hours ago to go work out. I have my workout clothes here in the office, so I guess that's a start.

The other thing that's beginning to irk me a little bit is that I'm not really all that into my work right now. I am feeling unmotivated and that's not exactly a good thing. We're under a lot of pressure to "produce" a lot of output. That's not very inspiring or creative. I'm facilitating a workshop next week. I'm excited to take a step away and use it as an energizing experience. I think some times that if I wasn't where I was right now, that I would facilitate full-time. I need to give that some more thought.

I have a burning question that I'm really struggling with. I'm thinking that if I blog about it than I might be able to come to some fantastic self-awareness. So here it goes.

Why do I overeat?

Yep - that's right. I feel like if I can figure that out, than I might be able to really lose weight once and for all. So far, the answers that come to mind are:

• Because I like the taste of it
• Because I'm bored

I'm not sure that I'm the type to get all upset about things and eat and eat and eat. I eat crap because I like the way it tastes. I had a pretty good lunch today: a Thai Chicken salad. It had lettuce, broccoli, red peppers, chicken, lo mein noodles, peanuts, and a bit of Peanut Sauce Salad Dressing. I was a little worried at first because it didn't have a lot of salad dressing, but you know what? It turned out to be delicious. And it was only 11 points. I need to find more recipes like this that fill me up and make me feel fulfilled.

OK - that's it for today. I'm going to continue to give the exercise and the eating question some more thought. I'll share back when I can!

Tata - K