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Title: LifeBooks : Creating a Treasure for the Adopted Child
Author: Beth O’Malley
Summary: Simple and easy-to-follow; just what I needed to get this project started.

This book addresses a task which is fairly simple, but extremely emotional: make a book that describes your child’s life from birth through finalization of adoption into your family. A lifebook is like a scrapbook, only not focused on photos; like a baby book, only covering the tough topics with honesty; like a timeline, only in child-friendly terms. The thing which complicates this process is that you, the adoptive or foster parent, have to think about things you might rather avoid: birth parents’ importance to the child, incomplete information about their life before entering your family, and tough topics like abandonment, abuse, or neglect.
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Popularity: 1% [?]

If you haven’t heard of pet insurance and/or you don’t have a pet, you may think it sounds crazy. I know I did! However, our veterinarian’s office had a brochure for VPI Pet Insurance, and after looking at the costs, we signed up for this when we first got our labradoodle, Abby. I am about to renew for the third time, as we have really found their services beneficial. They do not pay as high a percentage of overall costs as “people insurance,” but we have appreciated that we get some reimbursement for minor or routine things (shots, exams, etc.). Plus, we don’t have to worry so much when the unexpected injury comes up – for example, when our toddler threw a fast ball at Abby’s eye from about three feet away. VPI allows us to use any vet, so there was no problem when we had to take Abby to the emergency vet after that little fiasco.

When we first got the policy, some fellow pet owners were asking me if the reimbursements kept up with the policy costs, and I was wondering that myself, so I did a little comparison, and I thought I’d share it with you.

As you can see, we have never made our money back, but I also didn’t realize until 2008 that they covered flea medication and some other handy things (included with the preventative care rider). Costs vary by breed and age of the animal, but I have so far found the extra money (i.e. premium costs that we didn’t make back in reimbursement) to be well worth the peace of mind in the event that Abby has major medical issues at any point. If you should decide to get their insurance, make sure to tell them Krista Ehlers sent you… and I’ll try not to spend my $5 all in one place.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Location: Snoqualmie, WA

URL: http://www.salishlodge.com/

Price: $$$$

Summary: Expensive, but you’re in the lap of Northwest luxury!

We first went to Salish Lodge on our wedding night, and so far, we have gone back every year on our anniversary. We really love everything about this Northwest lodge – from the beautiful setting (overlooking Snoqualmie Falls), to the decor, excellent service, the relaxing spa, and the fantastic food. In fact, I hardly know where to begin extolling the virtues, so let me depart a bit from my normal “review” style and just tell you about a typical stay for us.

Look for deals: There is no denying that this lodges is on the upper range of costs, so we try to look for specials. We are part of their email mailing list, in which they offer great packages, but the best deal we’ve found over the years is the Costco gift certificate, which includes 1 night stay, breakfast and massages for two.

Arrive early: In order to really get the most out of our time and money, we always arrive early. Upon request, they can usually accommodate an early check-in, and if not, they will store our bags until the room is ready.

Pay the Resort Fee: There is a $15 resort fee – this used to be optional, but we still paid it. For this relatively small fee, you get free valet parking, but the real benefit is that you can use the spa pools as long as you like! (see below)

Hang out in the spa: We only have massages if we have bought a special “package deal,” but we always spend a long time relaxing in their spa, because they have a public area with two large jetted tubs, many comfortable chairs, a steam room, and a sauna. All of these can be used whether you are getting a spa service or not, so we take our reading materials and relax for hours together.

Enjoy the room: We always have a room overlooking the falls, often with a balcony. The rooms all come with a fireplace and jetted tub, and the tub has a window so that you can look out over the room. The rooms and lodge are all decorated in a contemporary hunting-lodge style, and they outfit the bed with fluffy pillows and comforters. By request, you can also try out their “pillow bar” – I like the lavendar-scented pillow filled with barley hulls.

Try the Country Breakfast: Salish has been in business since 1918, and they are famous for their 5-course farm breakfast. I think it’s impossible to finish, and you certainly won’t need lunch after! They start with a full coffee service: cream, whipped cream, chocolate shavings, sugar, and coffee that would taste great all by itself! That’s followed by fresh-squeezed juice, pastries, steel-cut oatmeal, and pancakes. Then, just when you feel like you need a bigger pair of pants, they bring out eggs, bacon, ham, sausage, country fried potatoes, and a biscuit with “honey from heaven”.

Check-out late: Yes, even though we came early, we always try to stay late, and they are so accommodating to us! We recommend this hotel in every way – it is a great romantic-hideaway with a perfect combination of outdoor activities (hiking, biking, rafting available) and luxury, and it’s only a short drive from Seattle. We have never had bad service here, even after all these visits, and the food has always been delicious.

Popularity: unranked [?]

On a lighter note… We recently went to Anchorage, Alaska and we ended up switching hotels. It wasn’t any big fiasco – we were checking out anyway to go to Mt. McKinley Lodge, we just didn’t go back to the first hotel. It did make me think about my criteria for a good hotel, though, and since I post my reviews here, I thought it might be valuable to know what I look for.

1. Good natural light – can’t stand it when I feel like I’m in a cave.
2. Separate shampoo and conditioner – now that the airlines have cracked down on packing liquids, I use whatever the hotel provides, but I have to draw the line at the “2-in-1″ shamp-ditioner.
3. Cable with Versus and USA – we only watch two things on TV these days, and it stinks to miss the Tour de France because we are on a tour de Alaska…
4. Free breakfast – bonus points for something beyond dry pastries and red apples.
5. View of something besides the parking lot – it doesn’t have to be a fantastic panorama, just pleasant and lacking oil spots.
6. Suite with a door – no door = toddler won’t sleep = no fun. Enough said.
7. Free Wi-Fi – so many hotels offer this now, that I actually am a little offended when they want to charge me for it. Ironically, it seems to be the ritziest hotels that end up charging. Hmm…
8. Clean – this almost goes without saying, but I have seen some strange things in my day. (cherry pits on the bed, open soda in the bathrobe pocket, even broken glass stuck in the bathrobe!)
9. Good service – I don’t ask for perfection, but if something goes wrong, I expect courtesy and apologies.
10. Luxurious Decor – Paint and bed linens are relatively cheap, but classy design goes a long way to feeling like I am really living it up.

So, there you have it. Did I miss anything?

Popularity: unranked [?]

Title: Sanity Secrets for Stressed-Out Women
Author: Sue Augustine
Summary: I judged it by the cover: a book recommending bubble baths had to have good stress-relief tips, and it did.

This book begins with the quote: “Some mornings it seems hardly worth the effort to take the cat off your face,” and I could tell it was the book for me! Sue Augustine approaches stress-reduction with practicality and a sense of humor, and I found many useful tips in this book. She certainly hit the old stand-bys (eat right, exercise…) which I usually find singularly unhelpful. That is, when I am stressed out, I don’t have time to exercise and cook, so I tend to do fast food and skip workouts. Thus, when I hear these recommendations, I just think, “Come on! Give me something I can use…”

However, her book is designed for people like you and I – people who may be so stressed, they can’t read an entire book: we need relief and we need it now! She organized the book around 25 “secrets” to reduce stress, with one chapter covering each secret. This way, you can skip right to the chapter that makes sense for you, whether it be “simplify your life” or “celebrate the joys of aging.” If a whole chapter feels like too much, skip to the end of the chapter and read the bulleted list of tips for that topic: you will still get the benefit. In addition, she wrote a number of sections called “the first resort,” in which she points out how to rely on your faith in God to reduce stress, and not as a last resort.

The last section of the book provided a new way to look at stress, and was very valuable. Augustine notes that stress is often caused by how we perceive circumstances, and describes a cycle of stress: (1) Event, (2) Thoughts about the event, (3) Self-talk, (4) Emotional response, and (5) Physical response (i.e. stress). Thus, we can interrupt the stress cycle at any point after the event occurs. She offers a formula called “CPR” – Circumstance + Perception = Result. If we challenge our automatic perceptions, manage how we talk to ourselves about events, and give our emotions only the appropriate amount of weight, we can actually reduce our stress even in the same circumstances that normally cause us problems. (more…)

Popularity: 5% [?]

My husband and I just saw this play last night (opening night) at Taproot Theatre in Seattle, WA. We thoroughly enjoyed the program – even more than I expected! The play is based on a novel of the same name by Jules Verne, born in France in 1828. Verne, in some ways, was one of the first science fiction authors of our time, as the inventions he came up with in his imagination have become reality today.

“Around the World in 80 Days” is known as one of the most realistic of his plays, in that he does not feature these futuristic inventions. Rather, he features a wager: Phileas Fogg, a bit of a stick-in-the-mud who prides himself on precise estimations, bet that he could circumnavigate the world in 80 days. The play follows Phileas, as well as his French man-servant, Passepartout, around the world via steamship, rail, and various other modes of transportation employed on the spur of the moment.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the play was watching four actors and one actress play over 20 individual characters. In addition, they did not employ CGI, mechanics, or any other trickery. Rather, the players successfully used a few props and their ingenuity to give the play life. The play was humorous – almost slapstick, with a bit of Monty Python tossed into the mix. We both found it to be great comedy, and I felt inspired to go back and read the book. If you go, we can recommend Olive You, a casual Greek restaurant and Wild Mountain Cafe (get the fried chicken – yum!) for a great dinner. Let us know what you think!

Popularity: 8% [?]

Location: Bellingham, WA

URL: www.thechrysalisinn.com

Price: $$

Summary: Great romantic hideaway close to home!

We happened across a lodging + spa package for this hotel in our local newspaper, and it was the perfect place for us to enjoy an early Valentine’s Day romantic getaway. The hotel is relatively new (under 10 years old) and attractively decorated in the “Northwest Chic” style – lots of exposed rafters and soothing neutral tones. The room was large and overlooked Bellingham Bay to the west, so we enjoyed a beautiful sunset from the spacious window seat. Each room also features a jetted tub that opens into the room, so you can actually enjoy the view from a bubble bath!

We both scheduled massages for the morning, and they were fantastic. We always appreciate a spa like this one: as a hotel guest, you are welcome to enjoy the spa’s lounging room and steam room, even if you are not scheduled for a spa service. We relaxed in the steam room and then the lounging area both the night before as well as the morning of our spa appointment. We were treated to heated neck pillows, a warm fire, a calming view of a stony brook, as well as delicious hot tea and spa snacks.

Their continential breakfast was excellent – fresh fruit and some hot entrees as well as cereal, oatmeal, juices, etc. The hotel is within easy walking distance of Bellingham’s Old Fairhaven, so we walked and shopped. We recommend Avenue Bread for fresh, natural sandwiches and home-baked desserts. We also enjoyed Village Books where we found an old favorite: Harold and the Purple Crayon, the 50th Anniversary Edition. (egad) Though we did not bring our labradoodle this time, both the hotel and the area are “dog friendly.”

Popularity: 13% [?]

Location: Vancouver, WA

URL: www.heathmanlodge.com

Price: $$

Summary: Fantastic business hotel with perks!

We stayed at the Heathman because it was close to the Blue Lake Triathlon course, in which my husband competed, and we couldn’t have been happier. They upgraded us to their business floor for free, which includes a daily reception with food and beverages. Another benefit of the business floor is that they will bring exercise equipment TO YOUR ROOM – wow! We did not try this service however, as someone was a little sore from a triathlon… However, for the same reason, we did have a chance to try their pool and hottub. Both are in a brightly lit room with floor to ceiling windows which look out on some greenery. I liked it because of the natural light and also because it didn’t smell too strongly of chlorine.

The staff was very courteous and helpful, and the hotel itself was decorated in a pleasing rustic, hunting lodge motif. Our room was very spacious, with a desk, a big comfy chair, and a flat-panel LCD screen. This was our first time sleeping on the Tempur-pedic mattress, and we were very impressed with that – the mattress is similar to very thick memory foam and it truly doesn’t move when your bed mate gets into or out of bed in the night. A warning though: if you send away for their marketing information, you may never hear the end of them!

We had a nice dinner at the Hudson restaurant, as well. In fact, we really loved everything about the hotel, except that there wasn’t a great view from the room (freeway on one side; mall on the other). However, that was easy to overlook (so to speak) and we look forward to staying there again.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Title: The Cluetrain Manifesto
Authors: Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger
Summary: Not a light, easy read, but the philosophies are pertinent and valuable.

This book was written based on the phenomenon that started with the www.cluetrain.com website in April, 1999. The authors posted the manifesto comprised of 95 Theses – presumably a combined allusion to the Communist Manifesto and Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.

The Communist Manifesto, among other things, bemoaned the fact that the worker has been alienated from the results of his/her work, resulting in a lack of joy and satisfaction from a job well-done. Luther’s 95 Theses, demanded direct access to God (a Biblically sound request, I might add), without having to go through the “middle man.” The Cluetrain Manifesto begs companies to put the worker back in touch with the result of the work, as well as give the consumer direct access to people inside the company firewall.

The point? Our society used to have open markets – loud and noisy street fairs with vendors hawking their wares, villagers bargaining for price, and most importantly, everyone talking to everyone. Over time, things like the industrial revolution, the assembly line, and the advent of mass-marketing caused a huge divide between craftsman and customer. No one talked anymore, and if they did speak it was some amalgamation of “corporate speak” and glossy marketing lingo.

The advent of the internet suddenly freed everyone to speak in their own voice, but corporations have been (and still are) reluctant to jump on that bandwagon. In some ways, we have revived the boisterous open marketplace online – via forums, chat rooms, social media sites and so on. As consumers, we can get the straight skinny on the products or services we want to buy from people who have actually bought those things and posted about them. We like it, and signers of the manifesto are asking for more of it.

The book expounds on these concepts thoroughly, starting with the 95 theses and going on to talk about how they apply to companies and people today. This book was actually written in 2000, and you can tell that some of the information is dated. However, the core philosophies are quite valid, even today. Namely, that people yearn to hear “real” or “human” voice on the internet – drop the “corporate speak” and marketing lingo, and also drop the attitudes behind them. It was written in open, conversational style, but even so, I found it strangely hard to read – it was like reading a 190 page blog-post. Of course, I am used to either straight fiction or more technical books – this was neither: more of a philosophical treatise. Decent.

Favorite Quotes:

We know telephones are for talking with people, televisions are for watching programs, and highways are for driving. So what’s the web for? … We don’t know what the web is for, but we’ve adopted it faster than any technology since fire.

Try snipping paragraphs of text from press releases and a few pieces of printed person-to-person email. Shuffle the paper slips. Hand the pile to your office-mate, your spouse, or your next-door neighbor. Can they sort them? Of course they can, in short order…. Talk is cheap. The value of our [human] voices is beyond mere words.

That’s the awful truth about marketing. It broadcasts messages to people who don’t want to listen.

Popularity: 17% [?]

I have recently been taking steps to learn about trans fat and remove it from our family’s diet. I know… kind of jumping on that bandwagon a little slowly. What can I say? I love fried foods! A few weeks ago, I was meeting family for lunch at Great Harvest Bread Company in Lake Forest Park, and we happened to run into the proprietor. Since I am a bread maker myself, I wondered how they were handling the trans-fat question, so I asked what they were doing or planning to do about fat in their breads.

To my pleasant surprise, he said, “There isn’t any.” Talking further with him, he mentioned that not only is there no fat, but very little sugar, (usually none or honey) and they use whole grains. What impressed me even more is that I have tasted many of their breads, and they do not taste like cardboard, as many whole grain breads can. I was so thrilled with all of this, that I wanted to share a big “Way to go” for Great Harvest Bread. You can find one near you with their bakery locator, and if you stop by, they will always give you a free slice of any of the fresh breads on their menu that day. If you go to the Lake Forest Park branch, I recommend the Cinnamon Chip… not completely healthy, but it’s only one slice, right?

Popularity: 22% [?]