Email Etiquette

I had an embarrassing snafu come up today. I use a Gmail account and even though I've had it for about a year, sometimes the layout is confusing to me. See, I've used Outlook for ages and in that program, whenever a new piece of mail comes in-whether a reply, forward, whatever-it will show up as unread and new.
With Gmail, new mail shows up like that but replies are a little different, they show up as a new piece of mail attached to the original...great idea right? It keeps all your conversations tied together, very cool, love it, awesome, yada, yada. BUT! Sometimes I'm not the best at keeping up on mail- I mean I let weeks go by sometimes without checking email (horrors!) and so there are times where the inbox gets full of (usually J.Jill offers) stuff and replies to older mail get lost. Are you following me? As my brother would say: it's user error and I take full responsibility for my careless email habits.
Very unfortunately though, the snafu came up in a business/professional relationship and while the other party involved was incredibly gracious, I still felt like a real heel for not staying up on my correspondence. How lame!
So, here's to being a little more responsible regarding my email etiquette.
Has anyone else felt my pain or am I the only one who has made this mistake? (Please say I'm not the only one...)

Top Three Baby Names

Last night, Claire, Laurel and I went on an impromptu "lost in the wonders of a beautiful summer's night" bike ride. After visiting briefly with friends Kenny and Sherri and seeing Dad on his motorbike, Claire and I went on to the O'Brien's to hear about some mutual friends' new baby.

As we looked at the baby pictures online at their birthing clinic's website, our eyes were drawn to other babies recently born at the clinic. From this, I compiled a list of my top three baby names; I leave you to decide if I am serious, sarcastic or silly.


#3 Faisal Stephen Hanna Hishmeh (the big question here: boy or girl?)
#2 Alekzander Apollo Knight (reminds me of that Olympic skater guy)
#1 Wambli Jeremy Barsano Bad Hand (this is just terribly awesome and defies all attempts to describe, explain or understand)

So what's your favorite of these three?

Fun memory

This morning, I remembered a particularly fun morning spent in Pieterlin, Switzerland with friends Esther, Elias and Elias' parents Martin and Barbara: Barbara made the most spectacular breakfast. Here I am inspecting it all and salivating!
We enjoyed croissants, cheese up the kazoo, meats, eggs, züpfa (like challah bread) coffee, tea and fresh orange juice.

Claire, Laurel and I ate heartily (as usual) and Elias' brother was impressed. He commented in Swiss German that he had never seen girls who ate so much. Of course we didn't know that until a few minutes later when Esther translated for us. We were embarrassed but it made a hilarious memory for a day like today!

The delightful, grand and frustrating: my last two months

My sister Claire informed me that I need to update my blog. Has it really been two months since I wrote last? Here are some highlights:

My list of students has grown to 14 from 2. Praise to God for this since I was really wondering if I would be able to get students at the start of summer. I have a nice mix of kids, teens and adults. They are a pretty interesting and fun lot.

Finished Spring quarter and that darn American Lit. Class -what a waste of time! I appreciate a lot of American authors (like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain) but in this class, we read and discussed more fashionably elite and politically acceptable writers whose works focused primarily on how their ethnicity, background, dysfunctional family and/or strange ideas of reality has left them damaged and unable to be productive and happy. Every short story we read dealt with the seamy underside of life in America: it distorted the country I know and love into a land of oppression, injustice and idiocy. I won't deny all absence of these things but sheesh- there are good qualities too! Argh. That class was frustrating.

Attended the Bradrick family picnic this past weekend! I so enjoyed meeting some new and old friends and hearing about their lives and dreams. There are godly young people out there who have character, intelligence and creativity- these people are inspiring! A low point of the day was when Sarah Cowles and I tried the three legged race and lost horribly- sorry Sarah, that was quite an embarrassment. The high point was when I tied for the grand prize in the pie contest. What a shocker! I had labored over a pecan chocolate chip pie (wish I'd taken a picture now) but more with the hope that I wouldn't be terribly put to shame by the other bakers. Imagine my joy to hear that I had tied for top prize! Claire took 1st place in the "other" category (non-fruit) for her lemon cream pie so we have two beautiful ribbons at home. Here's the truth though: I was pressed for time when I made the pie so I used a pie crust MADE BY CLAIRE from the freezer. Obviously, top prize really goes to Claire.

Here's to a productive summer! I am going to start posting some pics soon (wow, I am so high tech) since I've decided that pictures really make a blog more interesting. Kudos to Paige, Allison, Sherri and Claire for showing me the way to a better blog!