"My Pleasure..."

Working for a Ritz Carlton for the last few months have been an *interesting* experience in many ways.

One of those ways is in the level of precision, professionalism and excellent that I have been learning to work at, and that is expected of you.

One way that the company measures each hotel/resort's compliance (?  If you will) of the brand's exceptionally high standards, is in the form of a "BSA audit;" think of it as a glorified, EXTREME version of a mystery shopper.

When a hotel narrows down the time frame of when the up-coming audit will be, all hell breaks loose everyone tries to find clues as to who it is, when it will happen, etc.

Long story short, after almost a month of stressing over it, our auditor finally arrived two days ago.  Luckily my intuitive co-worker picked up on it that she, the auditor might be "the one," and therefore my co-worker warned me and I was prepared for it.

Needless to say I was the unlucky lucky one who had to interact with her during her spa experience, and therefore was critiqued in every way on the execution of the experience and in my professionalism.

The hotel received the results back yesterday, and we did awesome!! Not to mention in the spa we got a near perfect score, which is unheard of.  What made me post proud of myself too, is that after the auditor "revealed" herself to the managers, she stated that I (ME!) was one of three employees in the whole hotel who stood out to her as doing the best job in my customer service and professionalism  :D  !! (I've used the word "professionalism in this post too many times, sorry...)

I have to say, I am pretty proud of myself.  I still have a long way to go, but this gave me the boost that I really needed.  It'll probably wear off soon, haha ;)

Dear "The Office,"

My Dearest show, "The Office,"

It's hard to believe that you are officially over.  The last 9 years just whirled on by!  Although I haven't watched you religiously for the last few seasons, you will always have a special place in my heart.

I have very fond memories of rushing home from classes in college to watch it with roommates, neighbors, and secret crushes,

Quoting one liners with friends,

Having the theme song as my ringtone,

Successfully using clips of episodes in several class presentations in my Anthropology classes (yep!),

Drooling over Jim,

Laughing hysterically and wincing during beautifully crafted and severely awkward scenes,

and even shedding some tears.

Last night's season finale reminded me of how much I love the show, and I feel like I now need to become a hermit and watch all the seasons over again starting from episode 1, season 1.

And I may or may not have teared up a little too watching the finale.  Don't judge.

With much fondness and love,

Me.

Tacos. Mm tacos.

Wow, it has been exactly one month since I blogged last. Weird!  That kind of is a long time for me.  But there really hasn't been anything really happening that I wanted to blog about.

Now don't get too excited, this isn't going to be the Bradley Cooper of blog posts.  Ok, so maybe that didn't make sense, but I'm currently more obsessed with B-Coop {made that up, I should copyright that nickname for him} than usual, because I watched "Silver Linings Playbook" this weekend, which was a gem, and also he was on SNL.

Ok, back to what I was getting at. We really like American not really authentic Mexican food.  So, we are all for celebrating pseudo holidays like Cinco de Mayo, extreme conservative-boring-anti-social-couple style. This means, we celebrated early a few days by eating Tofu (gasp!) tacos.

And it was deeeelicious.

Not going to lie, we are pretty dang good at making homemade tacos.  The tortillas aren't from scratch, but that doesn't bother me one bit.

We've really come to like tofu, but that will be for another day, another post.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

But Miracle whip is much better.

What's been up

Last weekend we had planned to go into DC to see the famous Cherry Blossoms, but knew that they were a little behind their expected schedule due to cold weather, so instead we went to the kite festival ad the DC Monument.

There were literally hundreds of kites, and thousands of people!  It was a gorgeous day in the 60s, and there was even "kite sport" competitions.  I loved watching the older men dancing around to make their kites soar, it warmed my heart.

And watched this kid go to TOWN on the snacks while the rest of the family nowhere nearby. Yes, I did take a picture of him. I'm a creeper like that.

After some time at the festival, we then walked over to the magnificent Jefferson Memorial.

And for Easter we didn't do really anything big to celebrate.  Just when I was getting over my cold, it hit hard again on the holiday, AND it was the first time I had a Sunday off from work in weeks. Boo!

However, we were visited by the Easter Bunny(ies)

And last but not least, Wolfgang had a true American experience: microwaving Peeps.  Because let's be honest, Peeps are nasty, so they were being thrown away anyway.

I'm still here.

Wow, it's been a while since I last blogged! I haven't been in the mood lately, and felt like there wasn't much to blog about.

I've been kinda in a rut lately, and I'll just blame the weather for that. Luckily today was a nice day, enough so to walk outside in a lovely little park with Wolfgang. We were SO entertained with the wildlife, it was kinda pathetic.

This past week has been kinda eventful, good and kinda bad.  Let's start with the good.

Just a little over a week ago, we went to P!ink's concert!  It was INCREDIBLE.  I'm so serious. She is a phenomenal performer.  I've always liked her, and it was so cool to see her live.  Unfortunately I don't have proof from this experience,  for the most part because we had terrible seats.  And by terrible, I mean terrible. They shouldn't have been selling our seats. Wolfgang felt pretty bad because this was my Christmas present from him, but it was still a blast regardless. Our goal is to see her again in he future, and pay better money for better seats.  It would be totally worth it.

This week has also been a doozy for us in terms of health too. I'm pretty sure a bunch of nasty sh-- has been going around church from all the snotty nose children.  Seems that everyone at church has been sick with the same type of things.  Needless to say, the activity for the youth kids this week, we disinfected lots of stuff in the church building- I think we should have fumigation the whole place.  OK, I know that is for pests, but they should have one for germs, right?

Anyway, Wolfgang was violently sick on Monday, but not hospital status, thank goodness.  Luckily I didn't get what he had, but I came down with a nasty cold myself.  Each of us had to take off a day from work this week.  Payday will remind us next week. ;)

Well, that about does it.  Have a lovely weekend!

How am I suppose to take this upcoming "winter storm" seriously when it's beautiful and sunny outside, hours before? Wolfgang has already been told to work from home tomorrow. Too bad you (I) can't work from home, when you work at a hotel....

Your tax dollars at work {play}

Since you and I {don't even get me started on Maryland's taxes. ugh!} are paying for the free fun things to do in DC, Wolfgang and I decided it was time to hop on the metro again yesterday, and head to Smithsonian's National Zoo.

It was nice to be outside, together, and away from work. Working on Valentine's Day week/weekend is hell, when you work in a spa.

Since it is the winter, quite a few of the animals were not outside to look at because it's too cold for them, or their habitats were being renovated.  However, we were still able to see lions, and tigers, and panda bears....and some other creatures.  We decided it'd be better to come back when it's warmer.

Here are some pictures of some of the animals we saw.

Bad A's.

 The little guy on the bottom was clapping! cute.

Cutie Patutie.