San Diego Trip, Part I

As Lauralee mentioned in the previous post, I was in San Diego all of last week on a business trip. First of all, kudos to her for maintaining her sanity while caring for Emma all week without my capable help -- she also prepped and painted the ceiling in the bathroom and [gasp!] took the garbage out. (Side note: I've been assurred many times that taking the garbage out is a "man task" -- much like grating cheese and killing spiders -- and that her taking the garbage out is a non-negotiable item.)

The purpose of my trip was to get the training to become an RABQSA Certified ISO 13485 Lead Auditor. I won't bore any of you with many of the details. If any of you are dying to know what ISO 13485, or RABQSA, or, for that matter, a Lead Auditor, is, let me know. I'll tell you as much as you want to know. On a scale of excitement, from "Waiting for the Mailman" to "Space Shuttle Ride", I'd put it at about a 2, or roughly equivalent of "Finding a Dime in Your Pocket."

The class was 40 hours long, or 8 AM - 7 PM Monday - Thursday, with a half day, including a two-hour exam, on Friday. We had a PowerPoint presentation of 631 slides (no joke), plus about 125 pages of 'homework' reading to do. We also had 11 hands-on excercises in front of the other members of the class. It was a lot of work.

There were 20 of us in the class. Most were from California, there were a couple from different areas of Washington. It was quite an interesting group of people. I didn't get any pictures of them, so I got on the Internet and found some pictures that *sort of* look like them. Close enough that you'll get the drift.

This guy was from (can you guess?) California. He was the one who embarrassingly made a Mormon joke without knowing that I'm Mormon. Someone in class -- not me -- mentioned an investigation technique commonly referred to as "The Five Whys" because it involves asking "why" several times to determine the root cause of a problem. Somebody misheard "The Five Whys" as "The Five Wives." As soon as that happened I thought to myself: "Countdown to Mormon joke in 5...4...3...2..." and sure enough, this guy stepped up with "What are you, Mormon?" A few of the folks knew I was from Utah and I guess they assumed that I was Mormon because one of them leaned over to this guy and whispered something in his ear, afterwhich he threw up his arms and said, "Of course -- it figures!" Ha ha ha ha! You can't avoid the Mormons! We're everywhere!!!


This guy used to be a paratrooper in the Army. Now we works for a cryogenics company. He was also very prematurely grey. The only possible explanation: secret government testing and cover-up.


This is the guy who sat next to me. He was a nice guy, but he laughed to much. Then he'd turn to me as if to say "Why aren't you laughing?" For the first few days, I indulged him with courtesy laughs, but by the end of the week I just gave up. He also had the habit of whispering stuff to me during class that I could NEVER hear. At the beginning of the week, I'd lean over and ask "What?" but again, by the end of the week, I just gave up.


There was an old, leathery, Italian guy that looked more or less like this. Native New Yorker with an attitude. Once we did a hands-on excercise where you had to make up some document numbers. His made up document numbers all started with the letters "FU". And that was not a coincidence.


What I liked about this guy is that he had kind of a business mullet. He also had an inner ear problem. I thought that 'inner ear problems' were just made up diagnosis to describe someone nerdy. This guy had honest-to-goodness inner ear problems. He showed me his medication.


I'm not sure how this lady ended up in our class. She was a CPA and an aerobics instructor. She didn't have any experience in Quality and she was a new Manager of Manufacturing at her company. She also wore PG-13 tops to class.


This guy sat behind me. He had a ton of experience auditing, and tried to use our classtime to get questions specific to his job answered. He tried really hard to make the questions generic, but it became really obvious that he had a mental list of questions he wanted answered. Example: "What would you say to someone in management if they felt that your auditing techniques regarding competence verification were unduly strict." Really? REALLY? Did that question just HAPPEN to pop into your head, or is there a member of management at YOUR work who feels that YOUR auditing techniques regarding competence verification are unduly strict? This guy was really nice, but he was in my work group and would rather talk about the abstract aspects of the universe than actually complete the assignment we were given.


This is the guy that drove our teacher crazy. He already had a ton of experience auditing ISO 13485, and he was the only one gutsy enough to call out our teacher when he didn't agree with something. He actually made it a point to mention that he wouldn't need to study for the final exam. At a few times, I thought our teacher would go over there and box this guy's ears. Not a good move, though, since this guy was ex-Marine and probably would have punched our teacher right in his 104-year-old face.


This guy was the class clown. Once the teacher said something like, "I'm not going to make you finish this excercise tonight, but..." and before he could finish the sentence, this guy says "THANK YOU!" in an overly loud voice.


This actually might be the guy that sat in front of me. If not him, then at least a close relative...


Our instructor was old school auditor -- a gabillion years in the industry. Everything was his way or the highway. His word was the law. You could try to pursuade him that you had an answer to a question that was correct, but if it wasn't his answer, it wasn't right. "That's not wrong... but if you put that on the exam," he would say, "I'd give you maybe half a point."

There was one guy that sat in the back of the room. The funny thing about him was that he sounded like this guy:

but he looked like this guy:


And the rest...


So that was how I spent most of my time in San Diego: holed up with these characters for long stretches of time. On the plus side, our drill-instructor teacher prepared us so well that when we finally opened our copy of the exam, we were relieved at how easy it was. Now I get to wait six weeks to see my exam results. If I passed, I can apply for Lead Auditor status, and thereafter you can all address me as:
Quinn Lavender
ASQ CQA
RABQSA Certified Lead Auditor

Next time: a critique of San Diego.

Whew!

Well Quinn has been out of town all week. He left Sunday morning for San Diego for some training for work. I'm not too envious because Mon-Thurs he is in class from 8:00 am till 7:00 pm. That is a very long day and then they gave him reading to do at night for the next day. And then today he had to take a test on everything they learned. When I talked to him afterward we said he felt pretty good about it. He will have a little bit of time for some sight seeing but I'll let him tell about that.

Emma and I have missed him very much, I've had to change every poopy diaper! We haven't done too much this week except take lots of walks. There is only a few more weeks till Carly's wedding and I was hoping to have the last of the baby weight gone. Here's hoping.

Well it's Friday night, Emma is exhausted having missed her afternoon nap because I needed to go visiting teaching. So we went for a walk, feed her bottle, read some stories, and finally got her down for the night. All week I have been doing little things here and there to get the upstairs bathroom ready to paint and I told myself tonight is the night. We are redoing it because we have to put in a new toilet. The one we have is not working so well. So, if you're going to put in a new toilet you might as well replace the crappy linoleum floor and if you're going to replace the floor you might as well paint the walls too. So that is what we are doing. Quinn didn't know a new toilet was going to cost so much!

Okay Emma is down, so I start on the ceiling with my paint brush, cutting in the edges. Then the phone rings, its Quinn. He is calling to tell me he is at a Padres game and that he got in for free! I'm happy for him and I happily go back to my painting. Two minutes later I hear a loud piercing beeping noise. The smoke alarm. Don't worry, I forgot to mention that I am also cleaning the oven. Something spilled and for the last couple of times I've used it the smell was bad and a little bit of smoke would fill the room.

I drop my paintbrush, run downstairs and try to fan the thing so it will go off before it wakes up Emma. All the windows were already open and I thought that would be enough. Apparently NOT. I get the battery out, I know a big no-no but.... I run back upstairs to grab a fan to place by the oven to draw the smoke outside and guess who was now awake and screaming. She was already a little jumpy/clingy today for some reason and now she was letting me know she was not happy. But I needed to get back to the painting before what I had already done dried. So she cried, I painted. The ceiling is small and I knew it wouldn't take me long. Luckily she fell back to sleep after a few minutes and I got my painting done for the night. Whew!!

The house is not longer smokey, the painting stuff is clean, the dishwasher is going and I'm sitting here with my diet coke and granola bar wishing I was at the Padres game with Quinn. I hope he is having fun. I think I'll go watch a movie and fall asleep. Sorry for the long post but I hope you find a little funny, I know Quinn would tell it better :)

(No pictures from this week - Quinn has the camera - but Emma's top front teeth finally came through, Yeah!)

What a Week!

Well, last weekend was Labor Day. I really wanted to go to Bear Lake like we normally do, but Emma has not been sleeping very well (she's teething and wants to play not sleep) and both Quinn and I were exhausted. I thought we could be tired at home or we could be tired at Bear Lake. So I decided we should go at least for one night maybe two and Quinn will just have to go along with it. So Saturday morning we packed the car and headed to Bear Lake. Emma did great in the car and was happy until the last ten minutes. We spent the afternoon at the beach until the wind came up. It was fun and Emma enjoyed the water again but was not able to go for a boat ride. The last I heard was that Dad was not going to take the boat and so I didn't pack Emma's life jacket (our car was full enough), so we missed out on that because he did take the boat. But we still had fun. As you know a storm was headed our way that weekend. We were lucky enough to stay in Grandma and Grandpa Moore's small trailer, we figured we would only be there one night and it was not worth it to set up the tent. In the end we were very grateful to be in the trailer because the wind blew so hard that night. We didn't get any rain but the wind rocked that little trailer for several hours and lucky for us Emma slept through the whole thing. The wind stopped blowing about 2:30 am. Quinn and I were not lucky enough to sleep through it were still awake at this time when Emma decided she had had enough of her playpen. She wanted to join us on our bed which was already a tight squeeze for Quinn and I. If we had been smart we would have put her play pen away and one of us could have slept on the folded down table and the other with Emma on the bed. But at 2:30 am you don't think that clearly and so we toughed it out the rest of the night with out much sleep and a crying/restless baby.

Our Beach Baby!

The next day, Sunday, Emma finally crashed for some good naps, but was still not her happy self. We decided to pack up and head home. I'm sure glad we did because the real storm came through just as we were packing the car. It got cold fast and all the way home Quinn drove through a down pour. I wouldn't know because I just could not keep my eyes open. Thanks you Quinn for getting us home safe. As we pulled into the drive way Quinn said there is someone in our house. It was his parents, the storm had knocked out their power and they were tired of sitting in the dark so they came over and were watching a movie, not expecting us until the next day. They stayed for a little while to play with Emma before we all collapsed into bed exhausted and thank goodness Emma slept the rest of the night.

Emma and Her Daddy at 4:00 am.

Our tired girl!

We finally got a smile out of her though.

Not our normal happy girl.

Well we did recover and Emma had her 9 month check up on Tuesday. The doctor said her night waking is probably just a bad habit and not her teeth so much and said we probably just need to retrain her. So that night when she woke up at midnight I went in to make sure she wasn't stranded standing up which she was and laid her back down after a quick love and walked back out. She then proceeded to scream at the top of her lungs (she was used to being rocked back to sleep because we thought she was in pain from the teeth). She would scream for a few minutes and then stop and wait and listen to see if we would come in and scream some more and then stop and wait and listen. She did this for an hour and then finally went back to sleep. And since then she has only woken up a few times but cried for just a minute before going back to sleep all on her own. Yeah! I hope we fixed the problem. Well see.

Thursday was my 27th birthday. I took the day off work, because you never work on your birthday. That night Quinn took me to dinner and to see the movie Mamma Mia. You have already heard his review but I enjoyed it very much and thought it a fun movie. Thanks for putting up with it Quinn, you are a great husband. Quinn gave me a new stereo for my car. My CD player has been broken for the last few months and I'm tired of the radio and the one CD that was stuck in it. The new one is great. He also gave me all four books of the Twilight series, I had been borrowing my sisters before and I'm very happy to have my own to read whenever.

The Birthday Girl!


Friday was our monthly Mommy and Me play date. We headed to Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake. Most of us had not been to the zoo in ten years so it was really fun and the kids all enjoyed it. Emma was able to see some of the animals but she really enjoyed the carousel.

Eating lunch.

A white alligator, one of only ten in the world.

The Elephants.

The baby giraffe was so cute.

The carousel.

Saturday we celebrated my birthday with my family after a bike ride on the the Ogden River Parkway. Even though it was my birthday celebration we still had to watch the Utah football game for everyone else. Go Utes!

Then on Sunday we celebrated my birthday and both of Quinn's brother's birthdays with his family. We ate way too much but are finally catching up on some sleep. Thanks you Emma.

What a Week!!

Quinn Reviews Mamma Mia!

It was okay.

Our funky punkin'

Out of all the produce we planted this year, only our pumpkins have done well. If we're not careful, the vines grow out of the garden and onto the lawn or through the fence into the neighbor's yard. So occasionally we have to go out and 'redirect' any vines that have strayed from the garden. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a pumpkin growing in a very precarious position. Here are some recent pictures:




Quinn