You are going WHERE?

The lovely town of Coffeyville, KS.  You guessed it.  Coffeyville, KS is in the middle of nowhere and about 2 hours north of Tulsa, OK.

Map of Coffeyville, KS

You are probably wondering why I would ever go to a town in the middle of the US that has a population of  just over 10,000 people and even more why I am writing a blog post about it.  Well, I had to travel to Coffeyville for work and found a few interesting thing when I was out there.  (This is what I get for working for a company that just loves to buy plants in the middle of nowhere.)

Here are 10 things I discovered while on my trip:

1. Every single town has a Sonic no matter how few people live there. And if your town is big enough you have a Sonic with a playground and sand volleyball courts.

2. The Price Tower, Frank Lloyd Wringht’s only Skyscraper, is located in Bartlesville, OK.

3. Bartlesville, OK exists because of Philips 66 and is still the headquarters for the company.

4. Oklahoma has amazing sun sets.

5. Kansas is flat!  I am sure most of you already knew this but it really is flat and you can see for miles.

6. Oil pumps are everywhere.  If you own land in Kansas or Oklahoma, the oil companies will build and maintain the pumps and pay you for the oil that comes from your property.  Not a bad deal if you want to live in the middle of nowhere.

7. Independence, KS is the home town of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie books.

8. Did I mention the sunsets?

9.  There are a lot of farms.

10. Carrollton, Ga is a pretty good place to live.

Needless to say, I don’t think I will be looking for a job in Coffeyville, KS anytime soon.

The Windy City, Chicago!!!

Occasionally, I get the privilege to travel for my job and I love it.  Who wouldn’t though?  I get to leave the cubicle farm I work in day in and day out and explore the outside world.  I go visit customers, our plants, and even get to go to the occasional trade show.

This trip was for a trade show for the wind power industry. (So ironic that it is in Chicago)  But the trip was not all business, I did get some free time to explore the city one afternoon.

Excited to Explore Chicago!!

Our hotel was on Michigan Ave just south of Millennium Park, so I decided to walk  to the park and down the Magnificent Mile.  Once I got tired of walking, I hailed a cab to take me back to the hotel.  This was the first time I had ever hailed a cab by myself.  I felt such like an adult.  Well, since wind turbines and generators are probably only exciting to engineers, here are some of my favorite pictures from my afternoon exploring the city.

The tulips were in bloom and I had the perfect spring time weather.

Here are also some photos from the hotel we stayed at on Michigan Ave.  It was an older hotel but had so much vintage character.  I just absolutely loved it.

We went to for dinner one night at this amazing Mediterranean restaurant called The Purple Pig.   I know that Chicago is known for its food and not just it’s deep dish pizza, but I had not clue how good it really was.  We had appetizers of cured meats and cheese and then my entree was chicken kebabs with tzatziki sauce.  Yum!

The Purple Pig

Now I know this looks like all fun and games, but it is hard work.  Even though I enjoy getting out of the office every once in awhile, it is the most exhausting part of my job and I am always happy to get back home.

Oh iPhone, Where Have You Gone?

Yes, it is true.  I have lost my iPhone.  I always hear of people who lose their phone.  They leave it on a plane; they leave it in a restaurant; or they just have absolutely no clue where they left it.  I unfortunately am the later.  My iPhone is gone and I have no clue where it has gone.

So it all started on my business trip a few weeks ago.  I was traveling down to Douglas, GA where my company has a manufacturing plant.  The first day went well.  I made it to the plant around lunch time and spent the rest of the day at the plant until we went to dinner.  After dinner, I went and checked into my hotel for a good night’s sleep.  The next morning I woke up and decided to go down stairs to grab some breakfast.  I remember holding my cell phone right before leaving the room, but then I decided that it would be too hard to carry food back and hold my iPhone so I threw it into my suitcase.  I came back and got ready and headed to the plant to finish up a few things.

Finally it was time to go home and I got into my car and started looking for my iPhone.  It was nowhere to be found and the last time I remember seeing it is right before I went down to get breakfast.  Of course my first thought was “I left my phone at the hotel” so I went back to hotel to look for it.  Unfortunately the maid had already cleaned the room and the phone was nowhere.  I asked to maid on the floor about it and she said she found nothing.  Needless to say, I spent the next two hours searching the hotel, my car, and my suitcase.  Still no iPhone…

Fortunately, I do own two iPhones.  One is for work and the other is my personal phone.  For months, several people have asked me why I have two phones and told me countless times to consolidate to one phone.  Well, I hate to admit it, but they were right.  It was hard to keep up with two phones.  One phone always got rejected.  Usually it was my work phone that got dismissed, but that morning it was my personal one.

Now I know that several of you are going to give me suggestions or ideas about how I could find my iPhone or have it returned to me.  Suggestions about where I should have looked and how I can use the Find My iPhone app.  Well, I would ask that you would not.  I am tired of looking for it and feel like I have done everything possible to find the phone.  Don’t get me wrong.  I would love to have my phone back.  I would love to have all of the pictures I lost and text message conversations, but I have come to peace with the fact that they are gone.

Even though, I am thankful that I still have my work phone that I can use and that I am down to one phone.  In a way, I think this was God’s way of telling me to move to one phone.  It has made my life easier.  Now I only have one phone to check and neither my work life nor my personal life gets rejected.

The Lemon to Lemonade Attitude

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  Without a doubt, this concept is much easier applied to crafting than to our lives.  Life is hard and the last thing I want to do is to be happy about that fact.

As a child, I loved to watch old TV shows.  (Needless to say TV Land was one of my favorite TV channels.)  One of the shows I remember was The Brady Bunch.  The show was about a typical American family.  A mother with three daughters by one marriage marries a widower with three boys, a maid and a dog.  In every episode, the kids would get into trouble or something would go wrong.   But no matter what happened, by the end of the episode everything would work out perfectly and everyone would be happy.  Well, life is not like an episode of The Brady Bunch where every problem that arises is solved in 30 minutes and everyone is happy at the end.  Instead, life is filled with ups and downs and at times we are dealt a few lemons.

We can learn how to deal with these lemons by having a “lemon to lemonade” attitude.  The fact is the idea for this blog came from my enjoyment of crafting and turning ugly stuff into works of art, turning “lemons” into “lemonade”.  As I began to create the blog, I decided to extend this concept to my own life.  I hope to share stories of how I am learning to take the bad parts of life and make the most of them.

As in making lemonade, you can’t just use lemons; you have to have lots of sugar and water to make it delicious.  It is the same way in life.  We are given the lemons and it is up to us to find the sugar to add to it.  Sometimes it only takes a little bit of sugar and sometimes it takes the entire container.