Beware!

My baby, who is nearly 17 years old, has his drivers license and a vehicle! BEWARE!!!!!!!

Trevor is a pretty good driver for a 16 year old. He is now looking for employment. If any of you have any leads, please let me know. He is great with wood work, he has been a busser at Margarita Villa, he teaches CPR, First Aid, and PHP. He LOVES animals and would do well working with dogs. He refuses to work fast food. He is applying at VONS, and maybe even Joe's Crab Shack...really if any of you have anything, let me know.

On to other topics:

What an amazing couple of weeks! I have been with my new job for 8 weeks! I feel completely integrated into the company and LOVE the work. All of the people at work are simply wonderful! I feel so blessed to have found a place the hires talented, generous, dedicated people. I have heard when a company lacks in any area, or the company just 'stinks' that, "The fish rots from the head down." Well in this case the fish grows from the head down.

While I love this position, I am going to have to do something to keep up my energy level for this busy pace. I worked my usual week, worked with a client for a couple hours on Saturday morning, then Saturday afternoon drove to Fresno with a co-worker for a 2-day intensive training. Got back around 8:30 last night and will be going in a teeny bit late today. I feel whipped! So, I'm dragging a bit today, and still loving life. The trainees were talented and grateful, which makes working long weeks a lot easier. My mom was one of the trainees and we had blast doing girly time.

There is one funny story out of the weekend. We had made reservations at the Ramada Inn in Fresno. This hotel is in very close proximity to where we were doing the training. When I pulled up there were 2 cop cars and 1 armed security car blocking the pull through area. The entire parking lot was filled with very loud latino music. Since I don't speak spanish I don't know the songs...they were just really really loud. There were a number of people hanging around smoking in "formal" attire. Heather (my co-worker) & I just start laughing. WE are already so tired we're punchy. So we decide to stick together and get out of the car & go the the front desk to check in. There is a "professional" portrait studio set up in the lobby. Think of prom photo set ups, big green sheet as the back drop and two lights...the whole thing just looked so out of place.

We begin trying to check in. "Do you have a reservation?" "Yes, DNA Health Institute." "We don't accept reservations under business names, what is the name of your reservation." "Uh, Patricia Coash...C-O-A-S-H" "Miss CoHash, I don't see any reservation under your name." "Please try DNA" "I see a reservation under DNA, what is your name?" (OK, Not the brightest bulb in the bunch....) This goes on for 5 minutes, they have the rooms wrong (Ooo, BIG surprise!), we get our key packets and go to the car. The music is louder, a cop is meandering about outside and we go to the car to get Heather's luggage, her room is 5 doors away from the lobby (and the chaos).

We get into the room and I swear this is the absolute TRUTH! There is wall paper to the wainscoat level and again as trim at the top of the walls. The "decor" is early 1930's cabin-esque with 1980's accents! Oh baby hold me back. There is a plastic POT plant on the shelf...I sh!t you not...a plastic one. Considering the badly patched walls and ceiling, the stained carpet, moldy floor in the bathroon, a tub the size of a kitchen sink, a sink the size of a small cooking pot, and the cacophonous decor, the PLASTIC pot plant is a really mean tease! Seriously, if you are going to offend that many of my senses at once, make the plant real so I can smoke it and not care how hideous the room is. At this point Heather is hysterically laughing and nearly crying at the same time. She takes a picture of said pot plant on her digital camera for proof. Then we notice the remaining 'decor'....black and white photos of long dead people from the 1800's. Heather is sure the room, the hotel, and possibly the entire city is haunted and we leave. We don't even try my room, which is a quarter mile hike!

We drive to the Courtyard by Marriott and BEG them to let us get rooms. No rooms, "Didn't you know that it's Fresno State's graduation weekend?" GREAT! The very nice woman calls a few other hotels. Finally we find 1 non-smoking and 3 smoking rooms at the Four Points Sheraton! We drive over there.....Longer story shorter, we get 4 Kings, all non-smoking! Yeah! We call the boss...well actually we have called the boss about 27 times, his phone didn't have reception... He calls us, "What the F(*K? Who booked the Ramada?" I ask him if he has check in yet. "I just pulled up to fu$^^)(g party central." "Leave NOW, check us all out and get over to the Four Points Sheraton, STAT!" It's now 12:15 am. All 5 of us are at the Four Points. We have clean rooms, with running water, and surprisingly NO dead people on the walls, or fake pot plants. The only down side is that there are no REAL pot plants either!" Mom & I fall asleep about 1:30 am stilll laughing/crying over the whole thing.


Oh, I have started a new garment...I even figured out how to take the pattern from printed word to actual stitches!! This is a BIG accomplishment for me. I have had very little time for knitting lately, but will keep stitching away.