Goodbye 2007, Hello 200Awesome!

Well, hello!


As I sit hear reading the title for this post - my attempt at positive thinking - I've decided to scrap positive thinking as a new year's resolution. It just doesn't suit me, you know? To thine own self be true...


Perhaps a more Lori Holliday True title would be, "Goodbye 2007, Hello 200I Wonder If This is the Year I'll Finally Lose Weight?".


The one and only resolution I'm making this year is to take at least one picture every day.


That's it.


Nothing big. Nothing heady. Nothing that involves deprivation or analysis.


I'm just going to take pictures.

Oh, and exercise, lose weight, get organized, pray, take a voyage of self discovery, volunteer, reconnect with old friends and get married.


I wish you all a wonderful 2008 and seriously hope that your wildest dreams come true. Wouldn't that be great if all of our wildest dreams came true in 2008? I mean can you even really imagine?


Hey, did you have a good Christmas? I sure did. I spent one whole week with my folks at the Last Stop and had a terrific time doing some serious relaxing. It was wonderful.


I thought it would be fun to show you some of my Christmas presents.


These potato chips with added caffeine, B vitamins and Taurine are super tasty. Enjoy them with some Mountain Dew and you're sure to get that house cleaning finished in no time.

Yeah, I've told you before how much I enjoy the ole iPod...

Because nothing's too good for the Dotopotamus!

Just because these aqua dots are coated with a chemical that when ingested acts as GHB - the date rape drug - doesn't mean they aren't super cool to play with !

An electric martini shaker...because shaking my own cocktail is just too darned taxing.

JUST KIDDING!

But you wondered if I was serious, didn't you? That's why I decided to write JUST KIDDING here at the end. Because I guessed enough of you thought I was serious that I had a crisis in confidence and decided I'd better let you in on the joke. (Oh, and this year I'm going to therapy to work on self esteem issues...)

Peace and goodwill to all. Happy New Year!

Christmas Cactus in Bloom

Baby It's Cold Outside

Four days in freezing temperatures without electricity in a drafty little brick house makes for a grumpy Gus! I take daily conveniences for granted... like my lights! And my heater! And my blow dryer! Not to mention extravagances like a computer and TV.

I'm lucky that my power was only out four days. Today was day five and many are still without.

I've mentioned before that growing up in Montana and Colorado means that I'm plenty familiar with winter storms. But these ICE storms are so bad because we don't have the infrastructure to deal with them.

This storm was particularly hard on the trees...so many are down, and OKC doesn't have a lot of trees to spare.

Brrrr!

Taking the Good With the Bad

I had a pretty tough few days at work. A project I'd been working hard on launched...

and crashed...

and burned.

There were no survivors.

I've been thinking about it non-stop since Thursday and have decided that there are some things I could have done better. And there are many things that others could have done better.

I like to do everything myself, because I can better control a situation. But this project required a big, diverse team of people, most from outside my shop. Together, we used words like community collaboration and strategic partnerships and public/private model. We met. Lord, did we meet. We talked and planned and debated and plotted. I felt like we had done solid work - turned over all of the stones, so to speak.

I was excited. This was new and interesting stuff. We had the attention of many.

But then key players went gonzo and did their own things, unbeknownst to me. Things that ultimately jeapordized the project. Things that I didn't know about until the zero hour.

But I'm so proud of my inner circle - we rallied and did everything we could to make the situation better. We were a team. A little team fighting a big ugly beast.

Yet I'm left feeling defeated and angry at those who chose to call their own shots.

Ultimately, I've decided that it all boils down to egos. Overinflated egos. It's hard for big egos to be part of a team. Giant egos want to call their own shots. I don't work well with these humongous egos. Because in the end? My little ego ends up feeling bruised and battered.

So on my walk with Dot this morning, I knew I had to start shifting my thinking or this was going to eat me up. I realize that I did the best I could in that I helped create a great plan. I could not control those things that went wrong. Many people are calling the project a "success" because parts of it worked. Many are saying that we should feel great because we took a risk and tried something new and with what we learned, we will hit a home run next time out. Some are saying that I'm over-sensitive and need to just get over it because I'm the only one who's really worried about it. So, I'm trying to do those things.

I also started thinking on my walk this morning, how much I'm using the word "hate" these days. "I hate him because he didn't listen to me", "I hate this trainwreck of a project", "I hate big egos", "I hate the guy who cut me off in traffic this morning", "I hate onions on my hamburger". Stop it! Enough! I've always hated haters, and I don't want to become one!

It's Christmas, right? I want to be more lighthearted and merry and jolly! Damn it, I want to be more jolly. So today, I am burning my "I heart Scrooge" t-shirt and, as the song goes, I'm donning more gay apparel. More. Gay. Apparel. Fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, laaaaa,

So, I'm working on it...

In that vain, I am now going to perform an exercise right here in front of you, my friends. That's right, in public, with all eyes watching. It's one of those "gratitude" exercises. Because in truth? I have so much to be grateful for.

In pure stream of consciousness mode, with no over thinking it, I'm going to see how long it takes me to list 100 things that I like. These don't have to be monumental things. These don't have to be in any kind of order. These don't even have to be things I love. I just want to flood my brain with things I like, instead of things I hate.

Ready?

GO!

1. Family
2. Nieces (they get a special nod)
3. Friends
4. Dot
5. Home
6. Public Televsion
7. Coffee with cream
8. Plants
9. Colorado
10. Magazines
11. Camera
12. Creativity
13. Movies
14. Art
15. Texas
16. Good lighting
17. Nature
18. Travel
19. Accessories
20. Antiques
21. Decorating
22. My mom's sense of style
23. My dad's sense of humor
24. Music
25. Singing
26. Pizza
27. First kisses
28. Second kisses
29. Football
30. Blogs
31. People with senses of humor - who can laugh at themselves
32. Pretty clothes
33. Red
34. Flowers
35. Flea market floral oil paintings
36. Small towns
37. My brother's ability to make a friend of whoever he meets
38. Mom Jo stories
39. Piano
40. Romance
41. Rain
42. Montana
43. France
44. Mom's meatloaf
45. Babies/children
46. Memories
47. The Blues
48. Love
49. The Last Stop
50. My iPod
51. Doing good work

I'M 14 MINUTES IN AND COMPLETELY STALLED OUT! This is proving difficult...so now I'm really going into stream of consciousness. Good must prevail! Positive must push out negative! Come on brain... Come on heart...people are watching...

52. Losing weight
53. Dreams
54. Tennis
55. Good stories
56. Color
57. Dancing
58. Bed and Breakfasts
59. Taking pictures of signs
60. Freshly fallen snow
61. Guerro's maragaritas
62. Live music
63. New Orleans
64. Christmas Eve church service
65. When Beth gets me laughing
66. A completed home improvement project
67. Technology (I don't get it all, but it amazes me and makes me curious)
68. Riding on snowmobiles
69. The mountains
70. Oklahoma
71. Inside jokes
72. Any scene from Urban Cowboy...come on, it's a classic!
73. Musicals
74. Shopping
75. Happy endings
76. Over-the-top western cut shirts with emroidered roses, fringe and pearl buttons (see #72)
77. Pedicures
78. Wildlife
79. Boat rides/river rafting
80. Being the only granddaughter
81. University of Colorado
82. Mom's brownies
83. The Sunday paper
84. Crisp, clean sheets
85. A good hair day
86. Taking walks
87. A well-run system
88. Finding the perfect gift for someone
89. Tall men
90. Paris perfume
91. Refrigerator magnets
92. The moment you know you've made a new friend
93. Having enough money
94. Old photo albums
95. Eclectic style
96. Food cooked on the grill
97. Cartoons
98. Hard wood floors
99. Bargains/A good deal
100. Peace on Earth

WOW! That exercise took 27 minutes, my friends. Should it take that long to make a list of things you like? I don't think so. I need to do more work on shifting my thinking and being more positive.

I'll work on it...

Crossing the Mississippi