This post is long overdue! I have been incredibly busy with work, Heather's wedding, spending 3 weeks with family & trying to get resettled in Greenville again!

My apology goes to Chad. After years of mocking you for your "USB network", I finally had too many things plugged in to my laptop & docking station that I had to unplug something in order to download picts from my camera! :-) (I'm not quite ready to buy a hub though!)

I left for Heather's wedding on September 11th. It's such a small world. I ran into a couple at the Greenville airport that know the missionary I stayed with in Japan for a few days last November! I had a great time catching up with people at Northland! Heather & I stayed with the Ollilas and Charlene made me a milkshake for breakfast one morning. (It's a long story!) I realized I had forgotten my camera charger & we searched all over Iron Mountain for one to no avail. Thus, I wasn't able to take any pictures. :-( Heather & Jon got married on September 15th. We woke up to frost that morning, but it turned out to be a gorgeous day! Chris took a ton of pictures & Heather just sent me a copy of the CD, so here are some picts for those of you that have been asking!

After the wedding, I headed to Iowa with my parents. I stayed there for 2 weeks. Had a great time visiting with family, spoiling Aayla, hanging with cousins for Uncle Gary's retirement and Steve's 30th birthday. We got a little shopping in as well, but not nearly as much as previous trips home!

Mom and Dad brought me back to Greenville so they could see where I live and go to IKEA for some furniture! On the way down, we stopped at several Target Stores along the way. (It was for work.) I think we counted up about 15 or 16 we hit in a 3 week span! Good thing I love Target!

We did some sightseeing on the trip as well. On the way to Greenville, we stopped in Asheville, NC and toured the Biltmore mansion. It was very impressive! I could not imagine living in a house that big! (If you ever go for a visit, I highly recommend purchasing the self-guided audio tour.)

In Atlanta, we went to The New World of Coca Cola. They had a cook 4D theater and we were able to taste different drinks from around the world. Some are definitely an acquired taste! Unfortunately, the bottling line was down while we were there so we didn't get to see that.

What'll ya have??? Next it was on to The Varsity. Dad had seen a show about this on TV and wanted to try it. He loves unique hot dog restaurants, so we went! (I think the funniest named one he took us to several years ago was "The Flying Wienie"!) I had a "Slaw Dog". Your basic hot dog topped with cole slaw. Sounds kind of gross, but really wasn't too bad!

Next it was on to IKEA. It was kind of a bad experience. They were out of stock on just about everything I wanted. I changed my mind multiple times to be able to buy something in stock! We finally found a table & chairs that would work. The quest was over! Only to have our hopes dashed when we went to pick it up. They really were out of stock on that too! Ugh! Back to the drawing board. I ended up with a table, bookcase, chair (Alme natural) & stools that I'm using for end tables and extra seating at the table when needed. I don't have room in my apartment to store extra chairs, so we thought this would be a good way to get double use and not take up additional space! We didn't get any chairs because we couldn't find any in stock. They had a few floor models they'd sell us, but they were scratched up and they'd only take a couple dollars off. Not worth it. It was a long day & I even talked to the store manager about buying some off a display that were up high and looked like they were in good shape. It's company policy to not sell them & they wouldn't budge. We ended up with no chairs and we'd try to order them online.

The next day we were putting the bookcase together and the top piece was smashed in 2 places. Not good. We took a vote and as much as we didn't like paying full price for damaged goods, you wouldn't be able to see it and we didn't want to drive all the way back to Atlanta! However, when we opened box #2 of 3, it didn't contain the right parts. Guess we're going back to Atlanta! On the plus side, we were able to get chairs as well! We also found out they have an area where you can open all your boxes to check the contents and tape it all back up. We used it this time! :-) Needless to say, if this had been my first experience with IKEA, I would have been very disappointed and probably never go back. I stuck it out because I like their stuff - it's well made, reasonably priced and different from the norm.

The bookcase forms a partial wall to section off my office space. Eventually I'd like to get a curtain hung between it and the wall to hide my desk & stuff. For now though, it has lots of cubbies to store things! It's hard to visualize without pictures (those will come later!), but we put part of it in the kitchen and part in the living room. That helped give me extra storage space in the kitchen for my cookbooks and some of my kitchen things that are nice enough to display.

I've been able to cook a few "real" meals lately now that I have all my belongings back! It's nice being able to do that again after 5 months! I made Pollo a la Crema the other night for supper and had Guacachips with it. (I love Guacachips and searched high and low for a place that carried them here. Almost had to have my friends from Guam send me some! I finally found them at World Market!)

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The crate has finally arrived in Greenville! It's going to be like Christmas! After many phone calls back & forth to the shipper & Customs, I learned it was cleared and we are free to go pick it up! Now we just have to get the truck lined up & we're on our way to get it!

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I met J.J. a couple weeks after I arrived in Greenville. Here are some stats:

He's about 4 years older than me.
He's originally from Texas.
He's shorter than me.
We've been spending a lot of time together.
The first time we really did anything together, we went to Olive Garden with a group of friends after church.
We've been numerous other places too...Starbucks, Target (my favorite store!), downtown to the Reedy River bridge, shopping and numerous other errands.

Click here to see a picture and to read more about J.J.

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I got a call tonight saying my crate has been delayed again. Now it isn't going to be here until September 4th. How sad. I was kind of looking forward to having the weekend to unpack. Oh well. Maybe I'll work over the weekend and take time off next week. That's the beauty of being self-employed! :-)

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I got word the other day my crate cleared Customs, made it to Chicago and should be here on August 30th or 31st! Woo hoo! After 3 months without my stuff and almost 4 with most of it packed up, I'm ready to see it all again!

I've been getting pretty creative cooking with limited utensils and equipment! I have a pizza stone, crock pot, blender and a borrowed sauce pan. One must remember to buy only cans with pull-top lids since the can opener is not here yet! :-)

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My business website is finally up and running! You can check it out at www.progressivesynergy.com

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Jaime keeps hollering at me that I haven't updated my blog in awhile. Let me fill you in on the last few months!

On June 28th, I left Guam. sniff..sniff.. I arrived in Chicago on June 28th (I gained a day crossing the dateline). My best friend, Heather, picked me up & we did some shopping. Boy, did I miss Wal-Mart & Target! We spent the night in Chicago and I didn't have any problem with jet lag! That might be attributed to staying up for 48 hours straight and sleeping almost the entire trip, but that's another story! We did more shopping the next day, then continued on to Indianapolis, IN. We stayed at the Crowne Plaza Union Station downtown. It was a really cool hotel!


We continued on our journey and arrived in Greenville late at night on June 30th. We were tired & there was no furniture in my apartment yet, so we crashed at some friends, who graciously let us stay at their house while they were gone. For the next couple weeks, we ran all over Greenville & even up to NC one day to look for things I needed for my apartment. We got to see Chad & Kelly a couple days while they were here. (Funny stories & good times!) On July 13th, Heather dropped me off at the airport to fly home to Iowa for Uncle Gary's 60th & Aayla's first birthday.

From July 13th thru the 28th, I was at my parents. We did some shopping, but not as much as last time I was home! :-) For Aayla's birthday we went to the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines. Aayla LOVES animals and really enjoyed it. Mike borrowed a Nintendo Wii from a friend and my parents got hooked! They bought one last week. It was good to be home. I'm looking forward to doing it again in September!

I've been back in Greenville for about 2 weeks now. I'm pretty much settled except none of my stuff from Guam is here yet. :-( It was supposed to arrive in LA on August 8th. It takes 3-8 days to clear Customs, then 2 more weeks by train. Hopefully I see it all again soon!

Life has been pretty busy. I'm keeping up with work and finishing up my website (should be up early next week). I don't have a car right now, so I've had to be creative with my transportation. My bike is on the crate along with the rest of my stuff. I have gotten rides to church with friends, walk to a nearby grocery store. I've walked to Wal-Mart and Office Depot. Today I walked to the mall. I had planned to walk part way then hop a bus, but Greenville's public transportation isn't exactly the most user friendly for a first time user. Maybe I'll try again next week. I've gotten some good exercise out of this! Last week I logged about 12 miles. This week I think I did 13. On my walk today I felt like a camel. I drank 60 ounces of water and 20 ounces of Gatorade!

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After countless hours of thinking, researching, meeting with the graphic designer, getting input, and going back to the drawing board, we finally got it all put together today & I have a logo! Thanks to everyone who had input and took part in the voting!

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My birthday was actually on June 3rd, but I'm without internet connection at home right now, so I don't have as much time to do updates. You can see pictures of the celebration on Filipiak's blog.

Kelly made little cakes just for Brenna and I. Brenna's was decorated with fish & mine had a sea turtle. They were pretty cool. Thanks, Kelly!

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In the last several months as I prepare to move, I have seen God provide in many ways - my best friend just moved from Greenville last week and she left me some things she has duplicate of! Most of the money for my plane ticket was provided. I paid only a couple hundred dollars out of pocket. I have a buyer for my car and can keep driving it until I leave. Over the last week or so I have received a little extra money that I wasn't expecting and it will help with purchasing things I need when I get to the States. The biggest blessing so far was on Memorial Day & the day after.

Kelly called & asked if I wanted to go on a hike to Pagat Cave with them & Colliers then have a cookout afterwards. I had to run and fill out paperwork & pay for the shipping of my crate. While I was out, I needed to pick up some things for the hike & cookout. After leaving the shipping company, I turned onto the busiest road on island. (Would you believe we have a 6 lane road here!?) Right after I made the turn, my car started shuddering & I had no idea why. I quickly turned into the gas station driveway and it died. Thankfully I was not on Marine Corp Drive blocking a lane of traffic! The driveway was big enough that people were easily able to get around me. I called Chad, but he wasn't able to help right then. He told me to stay put & he'd call me back in a little bit. He got 3 guys from Harvest to come push my car into a parking space. They said they'd come back in the evening to tow it when traffic was lighter. Kelly came to pick me up & run to KMart to get the stuff I needed. We stopped at their house & I took her car home to get the things I needed for the hike. I got home & realized I did not have my keys. I search her car & my purse, but they weren't there. I knew I had given only the car key to Joe for when he towed it. That meant my keys were for some reason in my car or at KMart. Groan! My roommate was home, so I was able to get in the house. We went on our hike & had a great time! After we got back, I ran to see if my keys were still in my car. (I had a spare key with me so I could get in!) They had fallen down between the seats! Praise the Lord!

Cliff & Joe towed the car back. Originally, they thought maybe it was the fuel pump, which would be around $300. Groan! On Tuesday, a couple guys worked on it & determined it wasn't the fuel pump, but possibly a $600 part. Ugh, this is sounding worse! They had one more thing to try. It ended up being only the rotor that is on the $600 part. Grand total? $16.10! Praise the Lord!

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Whew! We made it through the last few weeks of school! I've pulled a lot of late nights since we had something going on almost every night & I had ordering for the container to finish, packing, cleaning my apartment for white glove. (We were the only one that passed the first time around! Woo hoo!) Makes me tired thinking about it! Thank goodness for the 3 day weekend we have now!

Today is the big event - I'm "packing out" this afternoon. Amazingly enough it all got packed on time! I'm actually updating while I'm waiting for the movers to arrive. All my stuff will sit in a warehouse here until the ship leaves. After that it will take 7-8 weeks for it to reach Greenville.

I'm getting close to having a logo done. I got the rough draft a little over a week ago & we're going to make some modifications with it & see where we're at then.

The movers are here now. Guess I better go.

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I wanted to get something to remember my time on Guam. I have a necklace, ring & bracelet with the Guam seal, but I wanted something a little different. Here's a picture:












In case you're wondering, it's not real. Actually my Mom bought it at the SPAM museum & sent it to me. I got some good laughs out of it at work the other day! Thanks, Mom! Guam is the #1 consumer of SPAM per capita. You can even get it at McDonald's & Denny's!

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I've been slowly packing what I can over the last few months so I don't have a mad rush at the end! At this time, I'm trying to arrange a crate to ship my stuff, but the guy that does the quotes is off island. :-(

Anyway, I decided not to pack the dead gecko that I found. My roommate asked me what I had done with him. I said, "Put it in your bed!" :-) She was not amused & said she might have to hurt me! Well, OK...I gave him a proper burial. I mean, I dumped it into the trash can. I like live geckos, but not dead ones. Yuck.

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A couple weeks ago at the grocery store, I scored a great deal! General Mills cereals are typically about $5.50 per box. I hit a sale - 2/$5. I had a coupon for $1 off two. 2 boxes of cereal for $4! Woo hoo!

On the business front, I am almost finished with the paperwork to register in South Carolina. My logo is in the process of being designed. I have a Greenville phone number now as well. (It's a little early, but I needed one to fill out paperwork.)

I am working with the principals here to save money on their order for school supplies for next fall. I went over last year's order and can save them over $2400! (That is assuming they buy the same quantities of items. We're still working through and refining the order.)

I have rented an apartment in Greenville. I'm working on getting furniture.

My plane ticket has been purchased. I leave here June 28th & arrive in Chicago June 28th (I gain a day crossing the dateline.) Heather and I are going to road trip to Greenville.

I am looking into shipping a crate with my belongings instead of mailing each box separately. I decided to do this for various reasons, but it potentially could be cheaper for me in the long run vs. mailing what I can and replacing what I don't ship.

I was really tired last night & fell asleep around 6:30pm, I think! A friend called me around 8pm & I fell back asleep before she called me about 20 minutes later. I fell asleep again, then she called again another 20 minutes after that! (It's OK. She was looking for something at the store for me & I didn't expect to keep falling asleep!) I got up for awhile, then went to bed about 8:45pm.

The Amazing Race was filming on Guam in December. The episode finally aired this weekend. I had planned to watch it last night (Everything airs a day late here.) Because I was so tired, I really didn't care. I don't really like the show, but wanted to see it since they were here. My friends recorded it for me, so I'll watch it later. Some people said it wasn't very good. It basically took place on the Air Force Base, Navy Base and Fort Soledad. It didn't really show the true Guam. My next door neighbor gave directions to one couple & he thought he was going to be on TV, but they got eliminated a couple weeks ago. The racers have to keep racing even after they've been eliminated!

Recently at the store, I saw Sugar Free Peeps. I thought that was funny! If you want to see some funny Peeps experiments done by some people that had too much time on their hands, click here. My favorite is Medical Miracle!

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Wednesday afternoon I was heading to the stairs for the hike up to my office on third floor. At the bottom of the stairs a bunch of kids were lined up & all the sudden one of the kiddos comes flying at me & gives me a big hug! It was Gaby. She's 5 & we give each other big hugs whenever we see each other. She calls me Auntie Jenni.

Before church, I watched Brenna for about a half an hour, then we headed to the nursery. (She'll be 2 at the end of May.) I had nursery duty so I stayed with her in the toddler room. They ended up needing me on the baby side & asked me to switch. Brenna was playing fine, but I told them if she got upset that I was gone, they could send her over because there were only 3 babies & 11 toddlers. A little while later she figured out I was gone. I heard from the other side of the door a little voice saying "Je-NEE!". They opened the door & she ran over & fell into my lap. She had been wandering around the toddler room saying "My Je-Nee", "My Je-Nee". When the toddlers went outside she decided to go too. Soon I hear a little voice on the other side of the door, "Je-NEE!" It was so cute!

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Life is busy as usual. The other night I packed another box to move. I'm slowly packing up stuff I can live without until I get back to the States. That way I don't feel so overwhelmed with doing it all at the end.

I went to the Harvest 7-12 grade art show tonight. One of the seniors had asked me to go. We have some talented kids in our school! I was amazed! All I can draw is stick figures!

Later tonight I worked on paperwork for starting my business. Ugh! One step forward & two back. Someone needs to write a "Starting a Business in SC for Dummies" book! I am registering as an LLC, which requires more paperwork, more steps and a "Registered Agent". Now, you're probably asking just like I did, "What in the world is that?" That is another company who you pay money to so if the state sends you registered and/or legal documents, they accept them on your behalf and forward them to you. I can't do it myself because a registered agent must be available at all times during normal business hours. Seems like a racket to me. I pay a company in case the government needs to serve me with legal papers at any time! One company I found is about $200/year! I shot off an email to the Greenville chapter of SCORE to get some help with this. Sole proprietorship is sounding much easier all the time! (There are various benefits to being an LLC, so that is why I want to go that route .)

Tonight I am staying up a little late to talk with some vendors in the States. I have called both of the ones I need to & neither one is in right now. I hate leaving voice mails because then they may try to call me back in the middle of the night! So I will stay up later and hope to catch them!

Friday night I'm going to Filipiaks' to help clean and put furniture back. They had some problems with their tile and have pulled it up & are carpeting the bedrooms. Removing the tile left a fine dust EVERYWHERE and all their bedroom furniture is currently in the living room. You can read more and see pictures on their site.

Saturday morning I am going to walk in the Harvest 5K. I'm not sure what I was thinking signing up to go walking at 6am on a Saturday! I have never done it before and decided I'd give it a try. Maybe I'll win the trip to Saipan!

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I finally am getting around to posting the pictures from our boat trip. I know, I'm a slacker. We had an awesome time. As usual, the food was delicious! Nothing beats BBQ short ribs!

Some of us enjoyed jumping off the top deck of the boat. I did it a couple times too! This is a picture of Pastor & Bryn jumping.


This video shows some of the dolphins we saw. There were probably around 2o of them total! (And yes, the water really is that blue!)

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

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Let me preface this post with a few things. First, I have occasionally been called a "geek". I take that as compliment. Second, I am starting my own business as an independent research/purchasing agent (my nickname "ertlnet" was given to me by a friend because I can find almost anything on the web). This post shows both my "geekness" and just what I can dig up when I go hunting!

My last post was about the mega yacht, the Octopus. Three days later, I got a hit on my site from a Google blog search for "Paul Allen". No big deal, right? Well... that hit came from a host name with the word "portable" in it. That got me thinking... portable? as in "on a yacht"? That led me to the ISP of the host name. Guess who owns that particular ISP? You guessed it- Paul Allen! Along the way I also discovered a connection to a fixed orbit satellite, thereby making me wonder if my blog was hit by Paul Allen himself or someone aboard his yacht! Now that would be pretty cool!

Paul, if that was you and you're reading this post also, thanks for stopping by my blog! I hope you enjoyed your time on Guam! Did you have a chance to go diving? And thanks for the adventure of tracking down all this information on who hit my blog. It was fun!

And if it wasn't Paul and didn't happen via the route I mapped out above, well, I can dream big, can't I? ;-) I did track down enough solid information to be pretty sure that it at least came from someone with a close connection to Paul Allen!

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Friday afternoon, we took 2 boats (about 45 people each) out for a BBQ and snorkeling. On our way out, we passed a HUGE yacht called the Octopus. Not the typical boat you see around here. I joked that it was probably Bill Gates' boat. I was close. It actually belongs to Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft.

This boat cost $200 million to build and has an annual operating budget of $20 million! (And Paul owns 3 of these big yachts!)

It has 2 helicopters, a pool, a sub, several boats & jet skis and a full time crew of 60. It was an amazing boat to see! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera handy to take a picture of it & we didn't realize whose boat this actually was until a couple days later.

You can read more about this incredible boat here. And see some additional pictures here.

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Spring Break has been great! I was hoping to go to Japan for the week, but it didn't work out. That's OK though. I've been able to rest and get a lot of things accomplished here. Right now I'm sitting at the Coffee Beanery relaxing and enjoying the change of scenery. This week I've worked on a website for my business. It's not up & running yet. I still have a lot to do, but it's coming along. This is the first time I've started a website from scratch. I'm learning Joomla! as I go. It's fairly simple.

Monday - I went for a walk at Asan Beach for some exercise & fresh air. Later I went to dinner with a Bob & his brother who is here visiting for the week. We tried a new pizza place. I thought the pizza was good, but the service & atmosphere were lousy. We won't be going back.
Tuesday - hung out with Filipiaks late afternoon, then we all went to McKinzie's to watch Facing the Giants. It was a great movie!
Wednesday - Jeremy's 12th birthday. We went bowling with the Colliers, then to the Food Court at the mall for lunch. In the evening was Watchcare Group at Paulins. Then the Paulins & I went to Subway to grab dinner. I stayed at their house for awhile, then stopped off at Filipiak's to snag a piece of leftover birthday cake since I wasn't able to be there when they had it. Chocolate cake with chocolate chips & chocolate frosting. Jeremy knows how to pick a good cake!
Thursday - got some things done at home in the morning, then headed to Coffee Beanery to work on my website. I not sure what I'm doing tonight. Probably making cookies for tomorrow.
Friday - I'm going on a boat trip in the afternoon. We have 90 people going on 2 boats! We'll have dinner on the boat, go snorkeling, etc.

I have had to put in some time in at work this week, but I've been able to do it all remotely from home! I think I'm going to like having a 2 second commute! I can do laundry while I'm working & if I need a break, I can stop and do housework for a change of pace!

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