Why I made up my "No Surfing in the Winter" Rule...

That's Ryan there, in the middle of a pretty brutal impact zone. I tagged along to take some pics. They came out so drab and dreary (because it was so drab and dreary), so I had to jazz them up in photoshop a bit. I put that, because you'll notice the complete contrast differences in the below pics.



Ryan and Rollins were pretty worked. Ryan said it was probably one of the best workouts he's gotten while surfing in a long time. Every time they came out of the water they were panting.



There wasn't much to catch. Unless you went all the way out, if you could get there. Then you'd have to battle overhead waves that were actually tubing and pounding.

Caught one of Rollins' best rides. Yup, this was one of the better ones!

Ryan pushing himself up

Probably Ryan's best ride of the day...

hence his complete frustration

I then tried to get artistic

And just for Christy...

Birds

It's a Small World

Talk about a small world.

18 months ago, my dad first started having periodic episodes of pain and throwing up. On our first trip to the ER for this, we spent about 11 hours there. 3.5 hours in the waiting room, then another 6 or so in the ER. Given my dad's history, they wanted to do a catscan of his abdomen. Long story short, we had a pretty cool nurse the whole time. When we were all done and waiting for the discharge papers to be signed by the doc, we begged the nurse to get us the heck out of there. He pulled through for us, so the next day my mom dropped off cookies for him.

Anyways, in the subsequent trips back to the ER since then (way too many of them), we started recognizing a lot of the staff members. Sometimes it would be like - that's the nurse that helped us this time. That's the nurse we made cookies for. Even one of the doctors recognizes us. "Hi Dr. Noone, nice to see you again. Yes, that was us a couple months ago. You have a great memory!"

Fast forward to last May, when my dad had another episode. We ran into a childhood friend that my family has known since kindergarden, but that we hadn't seen or talked to since high school. She was now working at Good Sam, working toward becoming a RN. We then became friends on Facebook. She's been dating her soul mate and for a few months I've been looking at his picture, thinking "this dude looks so familiar!" It dawned on me this morning. He's the male nurse from 18 months ago, who got us out of ER hell and was rewarded with cookies. It was like a freaking Claritan Clear commercial. And more hilarious - our childhood friend asked, and he remembers us and the cookies!

Weirdness! And cool. It's a small world afterall...

Hard Work Pays Off!

How much do I love my boss right now?!

This is part of the email that I got tonight:

This year since only two LO’s officially made the presidents club, we recognized the top 10% producers, and we are going to treat them to a nice weekend at one of those uppity spas in Calistoga.

"You three are working so hard, and are such a critical piece of Princeton, that I would like to invite you (and a guest if you choose) to join us for the weekend. It will be the weekend of April 24th and 25th at Solage in Calistoga. Check it out www.solagecalistoga.com. Thanks for all you are doing to keep Princeton going day in and day out."

AHHHH!!! OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so stoked. And so grateful.

Hooray!