Rachel's Favorite Things: December 2007

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

The Best Weekend

I'm being dragged kicking and screaming back to the real world after the most lovely weekend.

It was a white Christmas here in Colorado! Beautiful...(note the thermometer....0 degrees!)

We celebrated Christmas on Saturday with my family. Dad got an ipod...

mom this beautiful platter....

and Adam received a banjo!

Brian gave Adam his first banjo, so now, hallelujah, we have two banjo players in the family!!!!

And I got a new pair of shoes from my loving husband....(one of the reasons I married this man is that he buys me shoes....how lucky am I?)

After a delicious Christmas dinner prepared by my mom (including this giant prime rib..)

we went to visit our dear friend Steve. And what a surprise we had for him...a new car!!

After a nice visit with Steve, Brian and I headed for the hills. We spent two nights at the Peterson cabin near Leadville with our friends Kevin, Marjorie and Camryn.

Look how amazed Camryn is by Brian's banjo!

Overall, it was completely and utterly relaxing. We did a lot of this....

Monday afternoon we headed back down the hill to Colorado Springs to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas day with the Petersons.

Here are Doug's new binoculars...

And Brian's new vest. (by the way, check out his new glasses!!)

Chris prepared the most beautiful Christmas feast

and we were so pleased that my family survived the treacherous drive to join us for dinner.

We managed to make time for our favorite family game...Catchphrase! All I'm going to say is that we've officially had our first Catchphrase-related injury. But because I'm in the Christmas spirit, I'm not going to post any pictures of it.....hee hee.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Five Years!

December 4th, 2007 was officially my five year anniversary at the company I work for, A.G. Wassenaar, Inc.! I can't believe it's been that long. So much has changed for me there since I started. I was just a kid, fresh out of college and Alaska. I didn't know a thing about being a preofessional. I actually used to write out exactly what I was going to say for every phone conversation with a client because I'd get so flustered I couldn't even remember my own name.

As I reflect back on my five years, I thought it would be as good a time as any to summarize what I do, since many of you friends and family may not really know. I've come a long way in five years, thanks to my great boss. He has allowed me to take on as many challeneges as I want to. I'm now working as a project manager for the environmental group within the company. My duties include the organization of project teams; planning, scheduling and coordination of geologic and hydrogeologic investigations; drilling, sampling, and testing programs to identify soil and ground water contamination; underground fuel storage tank removal assessments; operation and maintenance of active remediation systems; risk assessment modeling; negotiating with government agencies; preparation of Stormwater Management Plans; and asbestos building inspections.

On most days I love my job. I recognize that I work for a great company who has treated me very well. I think I get to have more fun than many people do in their jobs. The best part is that I'm never doing the same exact thing two days in a row. My time is split pretty evenly between field and office work, which suits me very well.

Sometimes I'm out in places like this...

Or this...

Or doing things like this....

Or pulling big tanks like this out of the ground....

Or sometimes I'm investigating and/or cleaning up sites that look like this....

I've also started doing some marketing for the company, most notably through a national organization called CREW, which stands for Commercial Real Estate Women. They have a very successful local chapter which I just became a member of. Commercial real estate professionals (real estate agents, brokers, lawyers, and developers) are our main clients, so this is a great place for me to market our services.

In appreciation for my five years with the company, I was presented with a really nice jacket with the company name. It has a gortex shell and fleece liner...three jackets in one. Nice, eh?