can you say workers comp?

I still hurt. Yesterday, my department (mortgage) had an all day retreat at Layton Park. The theme was "Recipe for Success" so they had put together a cookbook with recipes we submitted, we all got matching aprons, we had a team chili cook-off (all they gave us was a picture of the chili we were supposed to make and we had to guess what ingredients/how much to put in), we played the Price is Right (I know, that has very little to do with recipes), etc.

The painful part was a game we played at the beginning of the day. We were split up into teams and each team was given 50 strips of paper with different words (people, places, things). They would read a question and we had to find the right answer and run to a line of chairs about 15 meters away. Each of the chairs had a point value from 1 to 8 and the goal was to get the most points. I'm sure you can see where the pain came into play. I can be too competitive for my own good at times. I took out several people to get to the chair with a higher point value. My boss (the senior executive over the mortgage department) full-on tackled me at one point and the chair didn't fair so well. In fact, I don't really think you can call something a chair when it is no longer sit-onable. He claimed he only saw me out of the corner of his eye and thought I was someone else who was wearing a shirt the same color as me and also has dark hair. I tried not to take offense for being mistaken for a 40 year old man. I broke a nail in the process of being tackled and almost got a black eye. I'm bummed about the "almost" part. Later, I jammed my left pointer finger quite thoroughly. Needless to say, everyone learned not to mess with me pretty quickly. I battled over one chair for about 2 minutes at one point until the guy (who just happened to be the one I was mistaken as being earlier) thought I was going to let him have it. Little did he know that when he moved I would pull the chair out from under him and claim the 8 points.

The best part of the day was winning an electric griddle in a drawing, and being paid to beat up on senior management. It's all in a days work! I love my job.

ahhh the wonders of nature

I'm in love with the Mt. Ogden Exercise Trails above WSU. I ran there a lot in high school, thanks to Coach Fletcher who ran at WSU in his glory days, and I never get sick of running there. My neighborhood doesn't make for the best running, so I count myself blessed to have this treasure within a short drive of my apartment. There are several different places to run on the trails making it easy to put in serious mileage if I want. I never find the trails overcrowded but I have experienced the occasional entertainment of a golf attempt gone awry. There is one spot on the upper trail that has become "Wendy's special place." The trail bends around the mountain and there is a bench overlooking the Mount Ogden Golf Course with a breathtaking view of the golf links and all of Ogden. Just before sunset is the best with the sun skimming the tops of the trees surrounding M.O.G.C.

Yesterday provided an especially eventful jaunt in nature during my run at the trails. I chanced upon a cottontail hopping across the trail (Dad assured me it was "Budgee Budgee" himself) AND I was stung by a bee. Or a wasp. Whatever it was, it was huge and meant business. I screamed. I'll admit it.