Bea Joins the Family

Henry has a new friend, and regardless of what he may think, she's joined the family. We officially adopted Bea (short for Beatrice) today from the SPCA. Henry came from the SPCA with the name Prince Henry, so we thought it was only fitting to add Princess Beatrice to the family. (Of course, we don't use the Prince or Princess.) Bea's name at the foster was Beanie . . . and since she's not a football player for Ohio State, and we don't want to be taken for OSU fans, Bea she is. She is also a Pit-mix and between 6-7 months old. We've had her for the last 2 weeks on a trial basis and she's been a fun addition, adding all kinds of shenanigans to the mix. Right now, we're working on breaking her of litter-box snacking (ugh!) and of cat wrangling. She hasn't actually really seen a cat, but she's poked her nose under all the beds trying to see what they are. They protest violently, and sooner or later she'll get a swipe on the nose. That may not stop her, though!

In other news, glamping was great fun (see previous post) and both more and less rustic than I thought it might be. We were in a lovely spot north of Santa Barbara, CA in a canyon between some very rugged hills full of chaparral and poison oak. I managed to see both a bobcat (racing away from us as fast as it could go) and the fattest skunk I've ever seen. We were also bedeviled by very tame raccoons who wanted our s'mores fixings. We also got a lot of work done and finished 30+ new product concepts that will go for testing in a few weeks. Sometime after the beginning of next year our team will get to see some of the ideas we'll be working on for 2010 and 2011. We do work that far in advance! What I didn't have, however, was reliable Internet access. Very frustrating, because now I have to spend time this weekend catching up on my email and other work stuff.

Next week I'm off to CA again. Lucky me! (Can't quite figure out how to convey sarcasm in a blog post. . . anyone have an idea to share?) It's a bit late in the game, but suddenly we need to find a different co-manufacturer for the new product that I'm working on for 2009. I'll be gone the majority of the week, so Tim has full dog duty again, bless that man!

Labor Day and other goins' on

Check out Mom, me and Katie kayaking during Labor Day weekend. Mom had never been kayaking before and did great . . . I'm sure we can convince her to go with us again. Katie's been out on a kayak a couple of times and looked like a pro. We saw some awesome turtles, including a pretty big snapper and some blue herons, but not much else on this trip.

Both Katie and Mom visited over the holiday weekend and we had such fun. Katie came out first and we went camping at Yankee Springs State Park on Thursday. We took Jake (her dog) to see if he was up for camping. It was busy at the park and there were lots of people and other dogs, but Jake did great. He didn't like the rain at 4 am on Friday, but settled down after a while. Yankee Springs is on a Gun Lake, a beautiful and pretty big lake so we wandered along the shore line with Jake and hiked in the wood for a couple of hours. We all had fun and it started the weekend off right.

Mom joined us Friday evening and the famous kayak trip on the Kalamazoo river was Saturday. We made sure to get some good ice cream at the end of the trip too! Mom went to church with us on Sunday and Katie got on the road for home later that afternoon. She hung out for a while because we were waiting for a special delivery. Yes, we are trying a second dog again. She's a cute 6 month old pit-mix and we're pretty sure this one is going to fit our family. We are having fun so far and can deal with any of the challenges she brings. It's always an adjustment when someone new joins the family, so we expected to have to make some changes. I'll let you know more when we decide to officially welcome her.

Now I'm off on another fairly heavy travel schedule over the next few months. Of course, some of the travel will be fun, like Joshy's wedding (only 5 more weekends!). I'm off to Santa Barbara, CA all next week for work. My flight tomorrow is at 6:50 am -- way too early and I get back Friday evening. We're staying at a cool resort -- where they specialize in Glamour Camping, or Glamping as my co-workers are calling it. We'll do creative ideation for new ideas for Kashi for 2011 and beyond. If you have any good ideas, be sure to let me know!

Finally, a few updates from Sarah & Tim!

Apparently we've been having so much fun, I didn't have time to post our adventures. So what have we been doing?

Well, I've been traveling for work. In August I traveled for two solid weeks back to back -- with a stop at home in between. First I went to Ohio and did a test at a bakery. Wow, it is hot next to those ovens! Then I went to NJ and did a test at a 3rd party blender. They will make a raw material for my new cereal for us. Then I went to Lancaster, PA where Kellogg has a cereal plant and worked on a new Organic shredded wheat project for Kashi. If you live near me or come to visit, I'll try to have a box for you to try -- but the rest of you might have to wait a bit before I can let you in on the secret! The sales samples (samples of the food the sales force takes out to it's customers to pitch the new product) are typically made 4 months before the launch. This new cereal will be shipped to stores in January 2009. It's surprising to most people that new products are complete so far in advance of getting them to the consumer.

This new cereal has been the craziest project I've ever been on. The biz decided in June they needed the new product and we've developed it and gotten it to launchable state in about 10 weeks. This is amazing because we should have started this project in January -- 6 months earlier! I had such great support from other team members and from our suppliers, but it was (and continues to be) crazy. More stuff to do, of course, but we managed to get it done and to meet (most) of the cost hurdles.

The only real fly in the ointment was that coming back from the NJ trip, I had some really scary side affects from the D&C. I was so sick by the time I got back to the Detroit airport, I couldn't drive myself home. I ended up getting a car service to drive me the 2 hours back to Portage. Thank goodness this was a work trip -- the ride cost $370!

Tim finished his second summer session class in mid August. Yeah! The summer sessions were hard, as anyone who's taken them knows. They are intense and condensed with very little down time. These past 2 weeks with no classes have been wonderful because he has time for some fun stuff and projects around the house. School starts again right after Labor Day, so the break didn't last long.

Where in the world are Tim and Sarah?

Really, the title should be, Where in the United States are Tim and Sarah? Sorry for not posting in so long, but we've both been gone, and not at the same time.

I traveled for work earlier this week and managed to be in 3 states in 3 days. We went to Ohio and North Carolina and back to Michigan to look at potential places to manufacture a new product I'm working on. I hadn't traveled in a while, so it wore me out. Not to mention that I had to do my own shot each day. The travel times didn't always fit well with the shot times. One night I even gave it in the bathroom of a nice restaurant. I only got a few stares from other patrons! I got back late Wednesday night, just in time to high-five Tim as he was on his way out the door early Thursday morning.

I had a note from the doctor's office to carry the needles and syringes on in my carry on. I thought it might be difficult to get 1.5 in long needles through security, but they never even called it out for checking. I checked the TSA website and it doesn't mention needles on their lists. The airline had said to make sure the Rx info was on the medicine and needles and that they were sure I'd have to explain it. I don't know whether to think the screeners missed them, or if they are considered OK.

Tim is now gone -- off to Fort Meyers, FL for a trade show. He won't be back until Saturday night. (So I'm continuing to give my own shot -- sound a bit obsessed here, don't I?). The nice thing is that he'll be able to catch up with his Stepdad, Stan and Stan's wife Karen. They are great folks who live on a river East of Fort Meyers, on the way to Lake Okeechobee.

So Henry and I will have a nice weekend to ourselves. Let's see what kind of trouble we can get into without Tim around!

Jucing -- the end

Day 3 update: It was good! Lots of energy and I felt great. No issues with digestive system and the fog from day 2 was gone. I wasn't even all that hungry. Actually, I was kinda tired of the juice. The novelty had worn off.

I ate brown rice cooked in broth and Activia yogurt for dinner that night (Wed. night) and then oat meal for breakfast. You have to ease back into solid food -- nothing that will make your tummy upset. All was good and it was great to eat real food again!

My oberservations about all this . . . I'm now much more intentional about eating. The juicing helped me pay attention to how my body felt when I was hungry. I also get full more easily. My stomach probably shrunk a bit, but I think it's more that I notice when I'm full. And, I lost three pounds during the week. However, I think that will go away as my digestive track fills up again. We certainly proved that everyone really is full of s**t!

Katie and I are going to buy a juicer together and every couple of months we'll take turns juicing.

Juicing, Day 2

Grumpy, headache, fuzzy brain -- it's difficult to be articulate. Great team building activity and we're having lots of good conversations about intentional eating and awareness of how food affects our bodies. More than half-way through! AND pretty sure that I don't really want to do this again any time soon. :-)

Veggies are good for you, right?

The Kashi group is detoxing! After one work trip that involved a lot of toxifying, a couple of people I work with decided that we should give our bodies a rest. This has evolved into letting our digestive systems have a break from processing lots of rich or fibrous food. (And you know us Kashi folk, we do love our fiber!) So, a group of us at work has embarked on a 3 day juice detox.

Now, this isn't your standard orange juice or V8 splash. We are making our own juice using a juicer and focusing heavily on vegetables. My dinner included one stalk of broccoli, half a large cucumber, 4 organic carrots, organic baby spinach, and one organic orange for sweetness. This made a dark green concoction that I diluted with water to make about 3 cups. Yummy! Actually, it was pretty tasty. Take my advice, though, don't use raw eggplant. It makes things taste pretty bitter.

I'm actually doing quite well. I'd like to eat some real food, but I'm not hungry or calorie deprived. I've had at least 3 big glasses of veggie juice and one glass of a nice fruit blend for a snack. Caffeine and alcohol are out. I've been cutting back on the caffeine dramatically for the IVF, so that wasn't so bad. We are allowed green tea and I've had that hot and cold today. Since I've almost eliminated Diet Coke, I'm not craving that either.

It is early, though so I'll be sure to post on day 2 and 3. I think tomorrow morning is going to be very hard.