The Sewing Mom

Have you ever thought about your dream job and wondered how you could ever find it?  Sometimes, opportunities arise when you least expect them to. 

In all the 20+ years my husband and I have been married he has changed jobs many times. Each time it was done to further his career. As the years have gone by he has moved his way farther and farther up the corporate ladder to the point he is at today. At this point in his career he finally feels he is in the position he’s always desired and no longer feels the need to move up.

Mind you, whatever position he has held with a company he has always had a lot of work to do. He was never able to spend too much time doing job searches. Lucky for him there are [tag]financial job recruiters[/tag] who did all that leg work for him. In fact, the position he currently works in he wasn’t even looking for. A recruiter called him and told him about it. That was last December, in January he had the job. Now, they don’t always call with your dream job, but isn’t it nice when they do?

This is a fun Friday meme that was started by valmg as a fun way of getting to know fellow bloggers. She’s kind enough to give anyone participating a linkback, so have a go!

#1. What are your favorite toppings and condiments to put on a hamburger?
I like cheese, mayo, lettuce and tomato on my burger

#2. Applesauce. Chunky, flavored, sweetened, unsweetened. How do you like it?
I prefer unsweetened applesauce and can eat chunky or regular and I do like it plain or with cinnamon.

#3. Rice. What is your favorite way to make rice?
I like to make boiled rice (I don’t own a steamer). I prefer to eat fried rice.

#4. Coffee. Is buying beans and grinding them worth the extra expense over ground coffee?
We buy whole beans direct from a coffee distributing company in Vermont. We keep the bags in the freezer until we’re ready to grind them. This keeps them fresher. We only grind about one weeks worth at a time. I think the coffee tastes fresher. I don’t think I pay any more for whole beans, if I do, it’s minimal and to me worth it.

I’m not going to tag anyone but feel free to do this one if you’d like, after all, who doesn’t enjoy talking about food?

When we lived in Chicago we loved visiting the various museums, in particular, the Field Museum. The Field was definitely our favorite, not only for Sue the Dinosaur, but also we loved seeing the Egypt exhibit, climbing down into the “ancient” pyramid, and the exhibit that showed the man-eating lions, I can’t recall the name now. We also saw the King Tut exhibit when it was at The Field, it was amazing.

No matter which museum we’ve gone to, one of my daughter’s favorite things to do is visit the museum store. We’ve always allowed her to do this at the end of our visit. I never wanted to carry the shopping bags around while we were looking at exhibits. Once inside the museum store we try to encourage her to buy something that would be a memento of what she’d seen at the museum. She has a stuffed Sue the T-Rex from The Field, a book of butterflies for the Museum of Science and Industry, and several other items I’m sure.

I also enjoy looking in the museum stores. They have some of the coolest fun stuff  like gadgets, books, and toys. Even though I have no place to put it, I’ve always wanted to buy one of those plasma lights. I think they are so cool, they respond to voice and touch, even music! There is a really big one of these at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum that is so cool to touch. The kids love it and so do I! A light like this would look pretty strange with my decor, but maybe if I bought one for my daughter she would like it in her room and I could still enjoy it!

If we ever make it back to Chicago I know we’ll want to revisit The Field.

My daughter’s school PTA hosted a Doughnuts with Dad this morning, 1/2 an hour before school started.  My husband flew in last night from his business trip and my daughter was excited that they would be able to attend.  She was so excited that she was up and dressed an hour early this morning!

When she brought the flier home on Tuesday I noted immediately that it didn’t ask confirmation or sign up so I had to wonder how they would possibly know how many doughnuts to purchase.  We even talked about it this morning and suggested they arrive right on time so as not to miss out.   We all know how much dads enjoy their doughnuts, so it wasn’t surprising to me when she called shortly after leaving the house to tell me that they ran out of doughnuts!  Apparently the turn out was huge and they’d had no idea (how could they?) that there would be so many attend.  Might I suggest that if they do this in the future that they at least have some method to rsvp so the event planners can purchase the right amount of doughnuts?!

My daughter was disappointed, but she was still happy that she got to spend the morning with her dad.

Since my husband was out of town last night, my daughter and I decided to order a pizza for dinner. I called in the order and then we headed off to pick it up. The sun was just beginning to set while we were driving to pick up the pizza and suddenly my daughter said she saw a “big balloon”. What she in fact saw was a huge hot air balloon. It’s not unusual to see hot air balloons in this area, but it was a somewhat chilly evening, low 60’s, and it was beginning to get dark, so I was surprised to see it none the less.

I noticed right away that it was so low it must be on the ground and that it must have been on the ground at the local park. By now we were only a few blocks from the pizza place but I felt like it was too good of an opportunity to miss, so I headed for the park. Sure enough, there it was, in all it’s glory. There is just something magical about hot air balloons. We’ve seen many of them over the summer, but always in the distance. This was the first time we’d been able to see one up close and a definite first for my daughter. She was absolutely thrilled.

I parked and we were only about 50 yards from the balloon itself. We couldn’t really figure out what was going on, there were 30 or so people around the balloon, a few holding the ropes, and a few in the basket. They seemed to be giving very short rides to some kids. A young child would be handed to an adult in the basket and then the balloon would go up about 20 feet and come back down, just long enough for a picture to be taken.

To my chagrin, I had cleaned out my purse in the morning, removing my digital camera from my bag. So, not to miss the photo op all together, I handed my daughter my cell phone and told her to take some pictures which she gladly did. Now comes the problem, I have no idea how to get pictures off my camera to do anything with them! I do know that I could purchase a memory card for my phone and then save the picture to the memory card and then transfer it to my computer. That’s basically like a digital camera, something I’m familiar with. Unfortunately, right now, I don’t have a memory card for my phone.

I might have to go shopping for [tag]cell phone accessories[/tag] and ask someone what I will need in order to be able to use any photos I take with the phone. I’d like to transfer them to my computer. I would love to be able to post a picture of that hot air balloon right now but I can’t, sorry.

Anyway, it was an unexpected show for us and we both enjoyed it, almost as much as we enjoyed our pizza afterwards!