mascot mayhem

"Here comes Peter Cottontail...hopping down the bunny trail..."

Yesterday was the Social Club's annual Easter Egg Hunt. I took the girls (Angelina and Teresa) with me on the Hunt this year. It was a good turn out - 180 people showed up. I was very impressed with Jo's organizational skills, she always thinks about the little details like coloring contests for the really little kids. :-) Takes a type-A to appreciate another Type-A's detailed work! Jo is one of the other super-assertive event organizers in our Club. She's sometimes hard to handle (too aggressive for the introverts in the group) but always reliable/dependable to take on large or unpopular events.

So on Friday I picked up my bunny costume from the costume shop. I've been fighting a cold for a week or more now and thought that I would have to enlist the help of Chicky for Sunday as I could barely breathe. So he willingly got into the costume Friday night to see if it fit. :-) It was too snug for him. Plus he was a SCARY bunny. Nope - definately not cute! I tried to convince him to wear the costume to surprise his parents - he refused as he didn't want them to have a heart attack.

If you've ever been a mascot then you can relate to the following. The bunny head was big and I couldn't see out of it. Knowing this well in advance - I enlisted a bunny-bodyguard. Her job was to keep the kids from stampeding me and keep me from killing myself as I "lead" the Hunt. The good thing about being a mascot is that you don't have to talk. Just wave in no particular direction, bob your head when told and try to look in the direction that your handler is telling you to. Some kids were freaked out by having a giant bunny staring down at them. Poor kids. I was having a really hard time with the head piece as it was too big and the apparatus underneath literally clamped my eyes shut. So I was bonking kids in the head as I have no spatial perception and tried my best not to molest them as I "felt around" for them. Half way through the gig I figured it's easier to just hold out my arms and hug whatever came between them. I think the worst part was that when I made my grand appearance - guess who happened to push their way to the front of the mob? The girls! And they were trying to pull on my costume to find out who was underneath. :-) I was unsuccessfully trying to kick them out of the way - hahhaha...what a bad auntie eh?

After 2 grueling (really hot) hours of picture taking, holding screaming kids, walking blindly around with baskets full of candy and trying not to knock over little kids or be beaten by the older ones (man...some big kids are just cruel to mascots!) - I was released from my bunny duties. It was a fun experience but I'm glad that I've put in my time and don't have to be the bunny next year! Hmmm...I might just pick up a larger bunny outfit for Chicky next year....

oh baby baby

I just wanted to extend my CONGRATULATIONS to:

Charlene and Scott who are expecting their first child this August. We wish them all the best and look forward to seeing the little one. Click here to read more about her pregnancy.

Art of Facilitation

I've spent the the last two days in a facilitation course. Basically learning how to lead meetings. :-) It was held at UBC downtown campus with the Sauder school of business. I enjoy "executive education" because it's POSH. For the price of the course (mucho mula), we got breakfast before class, a lounge with food all day long, a mini fridge in the room for drinks, lunches at the law court and great gifts. As you can see I'm all about the give-aways then the content of the course. Actually it was interesting as there were about 30 participants. Majority of which were managers, CEOs, team leads or some do some other type of leadership role. This course is part of a "leadership" series.

Day 1 of the course was centered around the Insights profiles. I've done a fair share of personality inventories in the past and it's always amusing to try the "newest" trend. There was nothing "new" about my personality revealed in this test. The results are consistent with those in the past - to summarize: I'm an extrovert, assertive and energetic. :-) The type to go-go-go-crash and repeat. I'm happy to have been able to learn, apply and challenge myself in terms of leading teams. The course taught me to be more aware of my leadership and facilitation style. With the tips and tricks provided by the instructors (we had a tag team of instructors) - I feel more comfortable with self managing my "red" energy. :-) The hands on learning was "Apprentice" style. One facilitator trying to manage a team. I volunteered to facilitate in Day 1 as normally with these courses - Day 2 tasks are usually harder! I got a team of people with personality types that were exact opposite of mine (greens!!!). That was the most challenging part - not the task itself - but the people management. There were many moments where I had to literally step back, be quiet and flip styles. I naturally want to be directive and push people to make snappy decisions. For some types of tasks/goals - this type of approach is all wrong. :-) Oh well - too bad for them! On a side note - a couple of the team building games were very familiar as I've done them in other management classes or have deployed them to my own department. So I found myself not volunteering for them as I know what the result should be and what the "lessons learned" are. Boohoo...itchying to be involved but standing on the sidelines watching. :-)

I'm hoping to be able to do more management/leadership courses to improve myself. Some day in the distant future - I'd like to play the role of a team lead or some other type of "official" leadership role. If your companies pay for training - I highly recommend this series of seminars.

workflow processes

Work has been quite busy in the last couple of weeks with projects coming up. There are days when I feel like 12 hours in the office is not enough. This feeling probably stems from the fact that I waste too much time in meetings. Aside from "real" work I've been trying to keep up with the Social Club event planning. I'm looking forward to being the Easter Bunny and the Dodgeball tournament. Lots of planning involved but as always - once the event happens - it's all worth while seeing the smiles on everyones faces. :-)

On the wedding front. Chicky and I haven't talked much about the wedding since the engagement last month. In the last couple of weeks we've been busy with family parties, etc. On the Sunday we went into Richmond so that he could go to work. Unfortunately his new office building was locked and we couldn't break in. So we took the opportunity to drive around Richmond and contemplate restaurant locations. We're going to do a Chinese restaurant reception so locating a venue is the top of our list of "to do" list. One thing we did decide upon was having the wedding this year. We made that decision last week after much discussion between a 2008 or 2009 wedding. Financially they would be equivalent. Seasonally - it's a whole other story. So we're aiming at a September/October wedding. I was hesitant about having a fall/winter wedding as the weather is unpredictable and frankly I like taking pictures in the park. A summer wedding would totally be out of the question for 2008. Too little time to plan. :-) I prefer to reduce "known" stressors when possible.

The last 2 days I've been in a Workflow Process Modeling course for work - should have taken this course when I first started my job last month...would totally have helped then! The material is dry so to keep myself from falling asleep, I would sometimes mentally visualize mapping out my wedding on a Visio drawing (with all the decision diamonds, swimlanes, etc). :-) Yes - I know...geeky!! My instructor loves post-it notes...makes me want to go crazy with post-it notes too. So many colors and sizes! Kay - back to my first thought.

Being unsuccessful at thinking of a restaurant to "pop into" while in Richmond. I convince Chicky that we should do something more productive - so we head down to Chinatown to look at invitations. :-) I'm not making my own. The one thing I learned from past experience with event planning is the "keep it simple & buy when possible" moto. If I have a September wedding - that leaves me 6 months to get all activities aligned. This is possible if I don't introduce any manual processes into the plan. :-) Ah...still in workflow process modeling mode...where's the critical path?! Anyhow we look went to 2 stores. One was run by a super old chinese couple - we weren't too impressed with their stuff. The other store had more potential. After 1/2 hour of sitting there we put together a design, selected various paper, layout, caligraphy, artwork and color scheme of the invitation we wanted created. After that we got the quote for the order of invitations - a bit more then what I budgeted for but still within scope. Because Chicky and I have a tendency to be "spontaneous" purchasers and often suffer from "buyers remorse" - we left our information and the design specs with the company and told them that we will confirm the order later. They only need a month to produce the product so we still have plenty of time to change our minds if need be. Plus we need a venue and date first! I'd prefer not to change our minds about the invitations as it's such a good feeling thinking that one thing has been "completed" for the wedding. :-)

Lily's shower

On Saturday we had Lily's baby shower at my house. Kim Anh did the majority of the planning - thank you!! I got the easy job of decorating, goodie bags, etc. My mom was in charge of coordinating the food. KA is pretty creative with her games. She even made Carol a cake of DIAPERS! :-) Here's a picture of it. I liked it - very creative.

It was fun having the kids and family over. The party started at noon but didn't end till 10:30pm. Wow - we weren't quite prepared (food wise) for guests to stay that long! It was mostly family left by that time at night so we played some RockBand and poker. What's a weekend without the family game of poker eh?

Next weekend is another opportunity to show everyone my kareoke skills! Lol...should be interesting. Here are the pics from the shower.