Things that Make Me Happy

As the winter rages on here in Michigan (thanks Puxatony Phil for nothing), my mood deteriorates. There is nothing to do. I feel unsettled, blah, logy (a new word Scottie is using meaning sluggish) and just downright pissy. So as I try to cheer myself up, I decided to think about what makes me happy. Here we go (in no particular order) -

1) Sangria at Dominick's - even though a gallon costs more than a movie for 2, it makes me think of warm weather and the U of M students being gone for the summer.

2) Vacations - I love the planning, organizing and executing a vacation. It is time to start planning our Buenos Aires trip that is in a couple of months. Florida in 6 weeks is already well planned out.

3) Putt -putt - It just rocks! My goal is to play the semi-pro course with the longest fairways at Disney World in a few weeks. Did I mention that I am obsessed?

4) Dinner and Drinks Outside downtown - just don't stick me under a buggy tree, but the people watching is out of this world!

5) Baseball - spring training here we come! I miss you Derek, I miss you Tex, hurry back Swisher! I might be a little stalkerish in Florida, but I will get your autographs!

6) Wine Tours - going from winery to winery in Traverse City, singing "Papa Don't Preach" at Madonna's Dad's winery and eating way too much cheese!

7) NYC - We weren't there for JCI last year, but we will be this year, so I need to find the latest and greatest things to do. The city that never sleeps makes me crazy happy!

8) Flip-flops and Tank Tops - my summer uniform - need I say more?

What I don't like? Snow, Cold, having to stay indoors, no sun, all typical characteristics of Michigan winter. All things that have occurred in the last week in old Ann Arbor.

With it being Valentine's Day weekend and all, I probably should say my husband makes me happy, my family is cool, all that mushy stuff. While they do, I said I was focusing on Things that made me happy, so sorry you did not make the list! There will always be another list!

Top 9 of 2009

As the year comes to an end, news shows are looking back at the top stories of 2009. Since my life is more exciting than the news, I thought I would go through the Top 9 events in my 2009. Here they are:

1) Trip to Connecticut with Molly and Liz
No matter how long we have been apart, as soon as we meet up, it is like we are 19 and back at Marymount College. We spent the weekend doing our usual - pedicures/manicures and martinis. We stayed a cute beach side resort. We caused trouble at the casino when these 3 guys came over and tried to pick us - the fact that Molly was 8 months pregnant did not seem to deter them!

2) Las Vegas Trip
This was an awesome adventure with 10 other Jaycee friends. We drank, we sunned, we went to the see a f'ed up Cirque du Soleil show. We had frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity 3 and checked out a minor league baseball game. What happens in Vegas, definitely makes good stories!

3) Puerto Rico Trip
This combination JCI/leisure trip saw Tom and I drinking too many rum drinks, running around the hot city on a walking tour and being drenched at the rain forest. Tom got chased by a park ranger as he was in a restricted area, but what is a trip without a little excitement?

4) Balloon Ride
Whoever said 13 is an unlucky number, did not have our balloon ride saga! On our 13th attempt was a success as we soared 2200 feet in the air. We had to pinch ourselves that our anniversary present actually happened, albeit 9 months after our 1st anniversary!

5) Susie and Jim's Wedding
Busy weekend since both sisters live in Kansas. Besides dancing the night away at a beautiful wedding, we did some shopping, saw a movie, and went to a baby shower for my sister and the twins. We survived the menagerie (2 dogs, 3 cats, and a rabbit) and 1 bathroom for 5 people at my sister's while having lots of fun!

6) Yankees win the World Series
Despite the Tigers not making the playoffs and preventing me from seeing the Yankees in the playoffs in Detroit, I was glued to the TV. I watched every game, screamed at the TV and sent Tom running to another room numerous times. I wore my "I love Yankees" necklace for 2 weeks straight, whether it matched my outfit or not.

7)Election as Executive Vice President of JCI
World Congress in Tunisia exceeded my low expectations. I had the chance to go parasailing and ride a camel - both adrenaline rushes. I was also elected to serve the Americas next year and I just got back from a quick trip to Argentina to check things out!

8) Birth of Anna Michelle and Elijah James - My niece and nephew were born on November 30th and Anna is even named after me. How cool is that? I hope see looks and acts like me and KellieLynn also! Now, my chore is to find a free weekend to go to Kansas and check them out!

9) Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting - A work trip to NY that corresponded with the tree lighting and since I had never experienced this, it was time to check it out. Along with 100,000 of my closest friends and a down pour of rain, we saw the tree being lit, heard the Christmas show (but couldn't see it) and got to hear Rod Stewart sing about his "Christmas Train."

2009 has been a good year, full of adventure, new experiences and unique opportunities. Mix in a little drama, a lot of flair and it leads to one Glam Life! Here's to a great 2010!

Misadventures in Sporting

Sports are a passion of mine. I love, love, love baseball (Go Yankees!), dig the hometown Tigers and the Pistons and have been swept up in the mania that is U of M football. However, put some sporting tickets in front of me and it doesn't matter if my favorite team is playing or not, I am there! As we've previously discussed, my adventures at Dodger Stadium are always crazy, but at other times, I wonder, did this really happen?

Let's start when Murph and I decided to go tailgating for a U of M game. Neither of were married at the time so we decided what the heck? Off to the golf course to tailgate with the Volvo, 2 bottles of vodka to make apple martinis with and some martini glasses. Wow! We were sooooo under prepared. No chairs, no food, nothing to amuse ourselves with. As we stood there deciding what to do next, we saw Murph's ex-boyfriend and off to crash his and his wife's party. Let's just say we were a hit with the guys, not so much with their wives and were very tipsy before heading into the stadium!

Then it was off to go old Tiger Stadium. 9 girls packed into 2 cars to go see the Yankees beat the Tigers when Paul O'Neill was still playing. Sitting only 13 rows from the field on the right field line was probably a mistake. Stone sober, we stood up, yelled "Paul" and all threw him air kisses! I have never seen an MLB player so embarrassed! Another time, the girls went to celebrate the arrival of Gary Sheffield signing with the Tigers. Dressed in chef hats, holding wooden spoons and signs, we looked like a bunch of deranged Julia Child's running around the stadium!

Finally, Lambeau Field was awesome when the Packers played the Colts. Having never been there, I needed a cheese head. I wore this cheese head the entire game as I continually apologized to people that I poked, prodded and pushed anyone in my 360 degree area with this hat. I can assure you I was the only one on the plane on Monday morning with a cheese head as a piece of carry-on luggage.

Sporting events for me are never boring. I have worn Yankees apparel and cheered loudly in Atlanta as they were beating the Braves in the World Series, I have gone to play-off games between the Tigers and Yankees in Detroit and taken lots of ribbing, and I have been on ESPN when a home run was hit to the NYY bleachers. All in all, definitely worth the price of admission.

Customer Service - Does this Mean I have to Service the Customer?

For those of you who know me well, you know I don't stand by quietly when I get poor service. I actually can turn into quite a stark raving lunatic when I feel that something is not quite right. Who wants to pay good money for bad service? I don't and everyone knows about it when it happens. My first run in was when I was about 8 and I was at Chucky Cheese with the family. Another kid was not following the rules, and rules are there for a reason, so I said with all seriousness, I am going to call the manager to deal with you!

Let's take Northwest to start with. I fly over 75,000 miles a year and I think I am #1 in their frequent complainer club. One of my biggest pet peeves is waiting to deplane when I get back home to Detroit. Why does this happen? It is not like we have snuck in under the radar. We are not Special Forces. We are not invading a foreign country. The FAA knows we landed, otherwise we would be on the nightly news. Why does no one from Northwest know this? How hard is it to get 3 people to a gate on time to get us out of the tin can? How about the fact that there is no gate? Again, really? There are 76 gates in the A terminal. If they are all full, Houston we have a problem. No one would be going anyplace as there would be too much air traffic. And why, please tell me, do they always park us at the absolute farthest gate from baggage claim and our cars? After spending a long day flying, the last thing I want to do is walk 2 miles dragging my suitcase and lap top bag dodging vacationing families who travel once a year and do the stupid things.

Restaurants also seem notorious for bad customer service. One night I was out to dinner with my family and we were cold, I mean it's going to snow cold. We asked the waiter to see if they could turn the hurricane strength gust of wind above us off. They did that but the air was still colder than a freezer. Here we are trying to eat dinner and I am in my parka with my scarf! Finally, I figured out what was happening. The greeter kept opening the door to the area between the outdoors and the restaurant for no reason except to flirt with some young girls! I went over to tell him to stop, I could really care less if he ended up with some digits at the end of his shift, but as the meal progressed, it continued. This is when I lost my cool and snapped. I demanded a manager and started to gesticulate loudly as to why I was dissatisfied. Let's just say most of our meal was full (and there were 6 of us at dinner), my parents were embarrassed and had to stay away from the restaurant for 6 months, and I was still freezing cold!

Let me tell you about the baseball game we just tried to attend. I said tried. Apparently after this local team passed out hundreds of schedules to the public, they decided to end their home season early. How is that even legal? Can I call the MLB and tell them that this local leagues are giving them a bad name? What would possess them to leave fans standing outside a stadium with absolutely no sign even to tell you that there was no game? As you can guess, this team is know dead to me.

Customer Service means you actually provide a service to the customer. It means you don't inconvenience me, you don't irritate me, and you certainly do not stand me up, unless you want to hear about, unless you want to give me free services and unless you want me to write about it!

Dodger Stadium - Baseball Park or Comedy Central

I have only been to Dodger Stadium twice and both times were an adventure. The first time, I was with my friends, Wendy and Tim. We fought rush hour traffic in L.A. (similar to dodging and weaving through a military zone) to get there on time after work. As we approached the Stadium, the neighborhood started to get bad. I mean, really bad, like were we lost and in Compton by mistake bad. Once we safely navigated the crack houses and the broken down cars on the surrounding streets we payed our $20 for parking (nothing is cheap in L.A. either). We entered the stadium gates and were immediately given free posters of the team, which we spent the rest of the night hitting each other on the head with and yelling through, like every other 30 year acting like they were 8 was doing.

Then came our first problem. We were not sitting together! How could this be? We bought 3 tickets on Ticketmaster in the same transaction yet Tim was seated 2 sections away from us. Did the person stuffing tickets into an envelope sneeze while he or she was packing our tickets and just pick up 3 tickets from the floor and put them into the envelope without caring if the seats were together? After finagling a seat for Tim near us, we realized out of the 40 - 50 sections in the entire stadium only ours and one other section was full. Here we are squashed in like sardines fighting for some room and the rest of the stadium could occupy 3 chairs each. Argh!

Then it was off to the beer line where another drama ensued. Apparently the Dodgers think we are all drunken lushes and limit beer sales to 2 at time. Since we had sent Tim for 3 beers (1 for EACH of us), he had to stand in line twice. Expletives were dropped, an argument ensued with the cashier and a rant that included "you can buy crack a block from here but I can not buy more than 2 beers" was muttered.

The rest of the evening passed with no incident.

The second time to Dodger Stadium Wendy and I prepared ourselves. I put on my Yankee shirt (it really doesn't matter that the Yankees weren't playing) and off we went. Without Tim though, we were late and we were potentially going to have to park on in the back 40 and trek a good mile uphill both ways to reach the stadium. Given that I had just had a softball accident and my leg was bruised from ankle to thigh, we thought we would approach a cute parking attendant and see if we could get closer. As we approached Wendy told me to look pathetic. The parking attendant stopped us, let's call him Rico, and asked up what we wanted. We batted our eye lashes and said I was injured and could we please, please, please park closer.

He gave us access to the media area to park, but as we were negotiating our primo parking lot, Wendy and I started smelling a horrible stench. I mean this smell was like a dead corpse rotting smell (not that I really know what that smells like, but this is what I think it must smell like). We asked Rico what was that horrible smell and he said it always smells like this! And somehow this was normal and we proceeded into the stadium with our shirts pulled up over our faces like Michael Jackson in his mask days.

This game they gave us blue furry hats to wear so the Stadium looked like a Smurf convention had invaded. That wasn't bad, but after the game, in our fight and flight response to get out of the ghetto and back to suburbs we forgot to take off our hats. We obliviously wore these hats down the 405 as we cruised at 70 mph to get back to the hotel. We went into the hotel with these hats on, stopped at the bar to check the final score (as we had left the game early), went to the front desk to request a wake up call all while looking like aliens from Smurfville. Finally one of the staff members asked us if we had been at the game and we asked him why with a straight face. At this point, he nearly fell over laughing, couldn't talk between the chuckles and just pointed at our heads!

The moral of the story is always remember to take your blue furry hats off before leaving the stadium, and if you ever go to Dodger Stadium make sure you are prepared for some laughs!

Bucket List - Should I or Shouldn't I?

Most of you have probably heard of the movie "The Bucket List" with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. It's about 2 dying men who in their limited time left on earth, use the money and resources of one of them to do all the things they ever want to do. This got me thinking about what would be on my bucket list. I mean I hope to live for another 85 years years and be the oldest person in the world at 120 years old, but it is good to have goals ya know. So when I was hanging out in Seattle airport, I saw a book called "101 Things to Do Before You Die" so I decided to buy it and see if it would give me any ideas.

Well the first thing I realized was that I live an extremely boring life! Out of these 101 things, I have only done about 6. One of them was take a hot air balloon ride. My husband and I took one this July and it was amazing. We could see 50 miles and were over 2,000 feet in the air. What they don't tell you is that it is incredibly hard to actually take a balloon ride in Michigan - it took us 13 attempts before the weather cooperated! The 1st year anniversary present caused countless arguments, disappointments and my husband a 2nd anniversary gift for me before it actually happened.

Another one I am proud of accomplishing is shooting targets. In April in Las Vegas, we went to a shooting range and I got to shoot an Uzi! It was cool and I felt like I could then conquer any action movie that came my way. What they did not tell me was I would be so tense when I was shooting, that I would strain my chess muscles and hurt for 3 days. At first, I thought I had been shot with a stray bullet or was having a heart attack and started freaking out appropriately at the shooting range. Once I was checked for no blood, I decided that I probably could go to the hotel and take a nap.

Some of the things on the 101 list sound fun. I would like to swim with the dolphins, although I hear they are quite stinky. I would like to write a best seller, but let's be real, I just started a blog and I do not even know what directions I want this to go. I would like to visit Wonders of the World, now I just need to write that book so I have the time and money to be able to travel more.

But there are some things in the book that I would NEVER want to do. 1st up, storm chase a tornado. Did the authors of this book not see Twister? People die chasing tornadoes. No thank you. I don't even like the tornado warnings at work when they make people go into the bathrooms (since there are no windows) to wait it out. It seems I always have to go to the bathroom thenR and there is absolutely no privacy!

Next up, get arrested. Are you kidding? Remember, I watched Prison Break faithfully, nothing about prison seems fun. I know Michael Scofield will not be my cell mate. There will be no lattes, no cute clothes and talk about a perpetual state of bad hair? Get real.

What about seeing an exploding volcano? Maybe if I am 50 miles away and in an airplane. Remember, I watch too many movies. I don't want to be visiting Dante's Peak and get stuck in the acid lake or get stuck at the La Brea tarpits in L.A. like in Volcano. I am on to you volcanoes and I do not want anything to do with you!

So what I realized was that this book probably wasn't the best purchase for me. It made me question the excitement in my life and it made me believe these authors have a death wish. I think creating my bucket list is a better idea. While my list is not complete (remember I still have 85 years to come up with new ideas) I do know I want to try ziplining, I have lots more places to visit around the world and I have about 20 more MLB stadiums to go!

Rain Sucks

If I hear one more time "We need the rain," I am going to poke someone with my umbrella. Rain sucks. It is the destroyer of days, the harbinger of havoc, the monster of bad moods and just plain annoying in so many ways.

First, let's talk about my appearance. No matter how much goop I put in my hair, on rainy days, I never have a good hair day. Usually, I end up as a cross between Michael Jackson in his Jackson 5 afro day's and a poodle. Also, having to gear up with rain boots, a rain coat and an umbrella is something similar to suiting up to track across the Serengetti. No matter how cute the gear is, it is still a whole lot of extra stuff to put on and take off through out the day.

Then what happens to drivers when the rain starts? Rain takes seemingly normal drivers and turns them in to stark raving lunatics. A 45-minute ride home from the ballpark turned into a 3 and a 1/2 hour affair because some idiot decided to drive 20 miles over the speed limit, slam on their breaks on a slick patch of road and climb the embankment snarling traffic. I mean, this driving behavior isn't smart in good weather, what would possess someone to do this while dashing puddles, trying to see through windshield wipers that always decide to act up when it is down pouring and when other cars decide to drive 20 miles UNDER the speed limit? Really.

Rain also makes me mad when I am flying (which I do a lot). An easy 2 hour flight to Maine was turned into an 8 hour stay in the DTW airport while my house was a mere 20 minutes away. Can any one blame me for turning into a crazed lunatic when I am trying to fly 2 hours and could have been in Europe by the time I finally arrive?

Also known as the Spoiler of Summer Fun, rain really cuts into my social life. Picnics have been forced inside this year (which is just another excuse for my Guitar hero obsessed friends to break out the Wii again) and 4 baseball games were touch and go through the first couple innings. Even though the games did play, dealing the humidity, the stickiness and the wet seats did not improve my overall mood. Even a day at the pool is impacted by rain. Sitting their in my bathing suit does not preclude me from running like I am being chased from the pool at the first drops of rain.

So rain, you are kind of a pain in the a**. I sleep on average 6 - 7 hours a day and spend at least 10 - 12 days away from home each month for work, JCI or fun. At night and when I am out of town, go nuts! Otherwise, rain, rain go away, Michelle is a busy girl and can't take your delay!

Baseball Rocks!

I know the saying is Cleveland rocks (and I probably heard this phrase 20 times in the 36 hours I was in Cleveland last weekend) but baseball REALLY rocks! I am a die hard Yankee fan. I have a "I heart Yankees" necklace, a Yankees hammer, at least a half dozen assorted t-shirts and even Derek Jeter postcards. I love the YES network - I've been known to watch the baseball game, and then the encore presentation that starts 30 minutes later. My niece who was 4 at the time even knew my love for the Yankees when she asked "Auntie - are you watching the Yankees again?"


My obsession started when I was growing up in upstate New York. The summer of 1994 was poised to be the best one of my young life. I was interning at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and it is ~2 miles from the stadium. Just my luck, that was the year that major league baseball decided to go on strike and I only got to see 1 game.


Since then I have been an avid follower. I proudly wore my Yankees gear in Atlanta when the Yankees beat Atlanta in the 1996 World Series. I take countless ribbing from my husband the Oriole fan, my Ann Arbor friends the Tigers fans and any other baseball fan that feels the need to pick on the Yankees because they have been able to do what most other franchises can not - make $ and recruit top potential. I am past all that. From March - October, I live, breath and obsess over Yankee wins and losses, home runs and disabled players.

Luckily, I married another crazy baseball fan. When we retire, we have decided that we are going to get an RV and visit all the MLB parks in the country. I already have a jump on this - I love the new Yankee Stadium and the tradition, the ability to watch the boats in the bay at Giants Stadium, the fun Coke bottle at the Braves Stadium and the Ferris wheel at Tiger Stadium . I have yet to enter the stadium of my arch nemesis (the Boston Red Sox), but that day is coming. Will I wear my Yankees gear? The verdict is still out, depending on how brave I feel that day.

Since I am living in Michigan now, I now also follow the Tigers. I am getting my hat and shirt ready to head out to the stadium this Friday and Saturday. I can already smell the roasted peanuts and the hot dogs. Want to come with me?