Of Babies and Butterflies, Busy Days and Books

Much has happened since my last post. Time to play catch-up.

Dalton James Mortensen, the cutest little nephew I have (being the only one, time will tell), was born January 27th after a long, hard delivery on my sister's part. Here are some pictures of the happy family, along with one video I received just a few moments ago:

This one is Dalton the day after he was born, shortly before going home from the hospital.

Here is the happy family the day of Dalton's birth :)

Courtesy Michael's cell phone

As I have Wednesday's off, I have the great privilege of babysitting Dalton every Wednesday starting next week, as Lisa will be going back to work. More updates there to follow :)

About two and a half weeks ago I brought home something I never thought would enter this house-butterflies. Well, caterpillars to be exact. We carry a product called "Live Butterfly Garden" by Insect Lore at work and recently placed an order so that we'd have it in stock for the spring. In the catalogue it stated that a free live butterfly garden was included for display with an order of twelve or more. We placed our order for twelve, me suspecting that the display would only include some sort of set-up of the kit and information on getting the butterflies. That is until we received a package stating "Live Butterflies Open Immediately." You can imagine my surprise. I thought that there were actual butterflies in there, though how someone could ship them is beyond me. Nate and I cautiously opened the package in a closed room to discover the caterpillars in a nicely sealed container. Our boss would not allow live butterflies, and so I brought the package home in excitement.

As cute as they were to begin with, those caterpillars got huge! After about 10 days or so they formed their chrysalids (cocoons) and are now hanging on the side of the net, where they shall remain for a few more days (the stage lasts between 7 to 10 days) before becoming Painted Lady Butterflies. I confess I'm at something of a loss of what to do with them after they emerge-you can't release them until the temperature is above 55 degrees. Maybe I'll give them to Michael...

More pictures will be posted soon :)

Work continues to be busy. Not that we have a lot of guests every day, but there is much to be done in my department and only a handful of us to do it. This last weekend was President's Day weekend. Most people see it as a break-and so as something of a tourist destination we of course were rather busy. I worked from the Thursday before all the way through Tuesday, including all three days of our busiest weekend. Saturday, courtesy a snow storm in the morning and Valentine's Day in the evening, was not as busy as we had anticipated. We were able to get a fair amount of cleaning in, particularly in the office. I now have a much more efficient way to store the paperwork I process next to the computer I always use. Yay! It does make it much easier to organize myself and keep track of what I'm working on.

Kim called me on Sunday morning, asking to trade shifts with me-her Sunday for my Friday. I haven't had to work a Sunday in about four or five months, and so agreed. Jessica, Morgan and I were able to sell 20 memberships that day-a rather impressive number for a Sunday, if I do say so myself. Still, it took its toll. Monday, President's Day, was about as busy as I had anticipated it would be. Not as busy as last year, but definitely busier than normal. We processed more admissions and memberships in the first two hours than we often do on an average weekday. We had a total of 2021 admissions and sold 45 memberships that day. Fortunately we were adequately staffed, if a bit tighter than what I would have like. Oh the joys of working in a recession. Still, I know that I have learned a great deal more in taking over many of the tasks that would not have fallen to me had we still had a manager. I process all of our department's paperwork, as well as the orders from our online store, among other things. As most of you know, I have applied for the Retail Supervisor position, along with Nate. No word yet, but I believe it will be resolved in the next couple of weeks.

Not to be outdone by her new young cousin, here is a video I just received of my niece, Jane. Forwarded to me by Michael, who got it from our sister Laura, Jane's mom:

I dare say she's the cutest niece I have ;)

So after having a very long week, I decided that today would be a good day-a day I could relax and do whatever I wanted to do and not worry about work. I slept for around 9 hours, had a leisurely morning, and then took myself to two movies-Inkheart and Taken. Inkheart was very cute, one that I will most likely own someday. I then had almost an hour between movies, during which I called my dad and then relaxed in the food court of the Jordan Commons' food court..plaza..area.. and read a new book. Quite an interesting place to read, I dare say. But then I've trained myself to read in any number of places and situations by virtue of much practice ;)

Taken was a rather more extreme version of the movie I thought it would be. Five years ago it would have been rated R. Very testosterone-driven, it is about a retired spy who's daughter gets taken while she is vacationing in Paris. Using all of his incredible talents, he hunts down not only the ones who took her, but the ones who later bought her from the female-traffickers who took her to the people who bought her, leaving the wreckage and the dead in his wake. This movie had a much more "real" feel to it than other spy/assassin related movies and shows I've seen. Despite it being very well made, I will nonetheless probably never watch it again.

Not quite yet ready to make my way home, I decided to go to the dollar theatre and see what was playing there. Not being interested in waiting over an hour for either of the shows I was interested in, I went to the Century movie theatre in Sandy instead. Not wanting to wait for any of those movies either, I ended up spending a bit of time at Barnes and Noble. One of my favorite places :) I wandered around a bit, finally purchasing a novel-writing kit by Chris Baty, founder of Nanowrimo, in anticipation of my participation this upcoming November. I also purchased the newest Trudi Canavan book-a bit of a stretch for me, but as the cover and actual book were both done in purple and white, it was obviously meant to be. It also helps that it's set in the same world as her Black Magician trilogy, of which I am a fan. After stopping in the cafe for a hot chocolate and a fresh chocolate chunk cookie, I finally made my way home, relaxed, refreshed, and ready for tomorrow.