CoCo's Corner

January has always been my least favorite month of the year.  It's cold.  The coldest month of the year as far as I'm concerned.  It's cold on day one, it's cold on day thirty one.  Because it's so cold, whatever snow you have that falls doesn't really melt.   Here in Utah, you have to add one other thing, it's gray.  We live in a valley with beautiful mountains on either side of it.  It's a very beautiful place to live.  But, in January, we get inversions.  It's like putting a lid on top of a bowl of soup and it traps the horrible gunk that is in the air in our little valley.  It's just a nasty, ugly, gray of gray smoky stink.  That snow that doesn't melt, it turns ugly gray.  It's not pretty at all.  The exhaust, the dirt, the smoke all attaches itself to the snow.  It's completely ugly.   I don't care what people say, February is cold - but, by the end of the month, it's so much better. This year has been amazingly strang

Ted and I have been planning to go to Honolulu, Hawaii for our tenth anniversary (or annual honeymoon) for the last couple of years.  Before I left my old life and began my new life, we had planned on going in May and spending about a week there.  When my new life started and I happened to work it out that I had ten days off, we decided that a quick trip to Hawaii would be a great way to go.  We had looked at Galveston Island and Orlando to do, but then decided to just throw caution to the wind and head to Hawaii. In order to go, there had to be space on a flight for us to get there.  Now, when I began watching the flights, the flights looked really, really good.  January is supposed to be a good time to go.  Then the last couple of weeks, they started to tighten up.  We started to look at going through Seattle or Los Angeles and finally figured LA was probably going to be the only way to get there. Thursday, the flights through Los Angeles started getting tighter and tighter.  I w

I survived my first "busiest travel season" which in the rest of the world equates to the Christmas and New Years holiday time.  I'm not sure how I did it, because when it all boiled down to it, I ended up pushing myself to the very, very limit.  I worked out some trades and somehow had myself working all but one day since and including Christmas day.  I ended up with some painful ankles and shin splints - the explanation on that to follow.  But, the biggest news is, I survived it.   I agreed to work Christmas day for someone who was offering to work two shifts in exchange for that.  Well, that worked out nicely in my favor, so I jumped on it.  I had intended to find someone I felt deserved it off anyway and cover it for them.  The selfish side in me decided that the two for one offer couldn't be refused.  It worked out for the both of us, she got to be home on Christmas and I now have two days off.  I then worked my four shifts.  I then worked my two days off, the