Howz it goin'?

The more blogs I read, the more everyone apologizes for their negligence in not keeping their blogs updated regularly. UM...to whom are we all apologizing to? The Internet Blogging Police? Give me a bread! Oops, I mean BREAK! Did you get that? Bread was put in there for Break since I work at the Bakery.? Anywho, howz it goin'? Pretty good, and you? Not bad. Gosh its been some time since I've been here. Its fun to look at others blogs and see what they do and don't do as they update them. For me, well, late at night (like right now) when I think about getting online and updating my blog or surfing the web, I am just too tired to do anything.
Karla went to an ALL-NIGHT scrap booking crop with her sister-in-law Maria last night. So Keith (Karla's Brother) and I held down the fort for 24 hours until the real runners of the household returned. I think that there is a reason that I go to work all day and Karla stays at home with the kids. She is fantastic at what she does, and I'm good at working out of the home. All in all, somehow the kids survived in mine and Keiths care.
Last week, we took a much needed and long planned vaca to So Cal- to visit my sister Linda and her husband Dave in Simi Valley, Ca, and to have some FUN! We left on Saturday 9/22/07 and stayed the night at Karla's moms house in St. George, Utah. We also stopped and chilled with Robyn and Brian for a little bit that night too. Then on Sunday we road tripped to Simi. That was a bit of a long ride. Never stop in Bakersfield to get gas! Just drive the extra 20 miles to Victorville. Its like almost $0.50 less per gallon. Price Gougers! Monday we went to an aquarium which was really cool. We got to pet aneminities, sting rays and sharks! Slimy. The next day we went to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Ca. That was a really cool and somber experience. You could easily spend all day there learning about what a tremendous person, leader and president individual he was. He really did a lot for not only the American people, but also the world. It was cool to see the old Air Force 1 and Marine 1.
Then from Wednesday thru Friday, we spent at DISNEYLAND!
It was really a lot of fun! McKay and Karli just took it all in and loved it! Kamree was absolutely THE best baby ever! She hardly made a peep the entire week. Its amazing a baby could be so good. So, if they all are that good, we'll have like 7 or 8 more. Karla's really excited about that. We went to Disneyland in the middle of the week. Its off season right now, so we literally walked onto each ride on Wednesday and Thursday. Each sign said like wait time 5 minutes, but I think that must be a default. Just as fast as you could walk up to the actual ride, you got on, sat down, and had a terrific time! On every ride except for Indiana Jones, you have to be 40" tall to ride. Well McKay is 40 and 1/2" tall, so he got to go on everything and loved every second of it! It was so fun just to watch him and Karli absorb the magic, the wonder, the amazement and awe as they saw their tv characters come to life in the happiest place on earth!
Yes, we did get to ride on the Finding Nemo submarine ride. It wasn't really anything to write home about. We I guess it actually was since I am writing about it right now. But, I wasn't too impressed because ALL of the voice-overs were not the voice-overs from the original movie. So I was disturbed by that the whole time. Actually disappointed. It was probably only about the all mighty dollar is why, I mean the voice-overs on the ride were all from India!
Karli just dreamed about seeing Cinderella and having here pick her up and give her a big hug. Well, on Friday, we got a special pass to have pics taken with Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Karli loved that, and McKay just roared at them like a fire breathing dragon. It was a good thing we left in the middle of the day on Friday because the lines were more typical with HUGE waits and we had all just about had it. Tired, out of routine and worn out. It was so much fun, but time to go home. We started back and spent the night in St. George at Karla's moms again. On Saturday we ate lunch at SF Sourdough with Robyn and Brian in St. George. They're a lot of fun to be around. Then we headed home.
While driving home in flip-flops, shorts and sunburns, much to our surprise, we were met by SNOW in Beaver, Utah! It was just about freezing by the time we got back to Lehi. Being away for a week was really nice. Now we just need a few days to have a vaca from our vaca to unwind and get back in to our regularly scheduled programming. Oh, I also grew a goatee while away and still have it- going on 2 weeks now. I look much older and act much more mature I'm sure. Wouldn't you agree?
Well, that's the latest, on the Family side of things I guess. The bakery is going well. I've been working very hard on a lot of different projects and they will all be finished and executed here very shortly. Watch out for Great things from Granite Bakery coming soon to taste buds near you! TTFN!

Out with the New, In with the Old

Greetings everyone! This has been a long time coming, an update to my spectacular blog. My life long blogging goal would be to try to hold a single tiny birthday cake candle to my former co-worker, Aimee Heffernan's Blog. Well, back around April, I stopped by Granite Bakery to purchase some cookies for Cynthia, another former co-workers birthday. Little did I know that would change my employment and career a few months later. Here I was, happily employed at ADA Intelligent Dental Marketing. This is a new cutting edge marketing company that only markets practices in the dental industry. I started out there as a customer service manager, which evolved to being called "Marketing Coach". At first, I was the only person in that position, and now there is 4 people doing that same job. After about a year and a half of marketing coaching, I bounced into a sales position with ADAidm, working closely with Dentists and their teams in identifying strategies to actively market their practices. Our company's relationship with dental practices go together like peanut butter and jelly. I was with ADAidm almost 2 years, and was there long enough to know pretty much all of the ins and outs of the everyday operations of the office. From updating our own on-hold message machine to networking the printer, and from setting up webinars to calling the right building maintenance personnel which allowed me to aid in playing one of the best practical jokes in the office EVER! Needless to say, I loved my job. So, that was the "Out with the New".

Now, on to "In with the Old". Way back in the early nineties, I was a kid who learned from an early age from my dad that a great work ethic is important. One of my biggest frustrations of being preteen to young teenager, was that No One will hire you because you are just a kid! Not that I needed money for dates (yet) but I did have my first pair of Lightning Rollerblades , which cost me a whopping $125. I actually modeled for 2.5 hours with my buddy Spencer when we were like 12 or so by sitting in front of a huge bowl of Idahoan Potatoes and made that money. It was the easiest $125 I'd ever earned. I've beat that since. Anywho, I finally found a Job when I was 14, working at the Heritage Dry Cleaners on 905 East 2700 South, cleaning up all of the lint on the floors and getting burned on all of the hot clothing presses. After about 9 months of cleaning, and like 5 third degree burns, I decided that I needed a change. So one day, while taking out the trash, I looked across the street and saw another school friend of mine, Andy Peterson, in the parking lot of Granite Bakery. Over the next few weeks, I hounded him at school everyday to get me a job there as anything! Finally, I got my wish and started as a floor scraper and dish washer. I worked really really hard, constantly asking the owner if I could do anything more before I left each day, I went the extra mile. I would have never guessed that this little extra effort that I put in would have consequences that would significantly bless my life later on.

I started working at Granite Bakery on September 16, 1994. Nine months later, I became a baker for the first time and worked from 12:00 am midnight to 8:00 am or so in the morning. I worked closely with the baking team, and my job was to put the chocolate on all of the donuts. We cranked out 2,000 donuts and cookies each night so people like you could have them fresh in the morning to eat. I worked graveyards that summer, and back to afternoons after school started. That fall, I washed dishes again and also aided in the initial stages of a company called Pasta Perfect, which later became Pasta Partners. I used this huge funnel machine and stepped on a peddle that put 42 grams of pasta seasoning into a little bag. I worked with other kids that I went to Highland with as we sealed, labeled, and boxed the packages for shipping. Also at about this time, I hired a great person to help me with washing dishes. He worked there for 3 weeks, and then one day in the middle of his shift, he took his time card, wrote a note to the owner stating that it wasn't for him. He left a $5 bill stapled to it for the person who finished his shift (me!). We still joke about it to this day.

Up to this point in history, there had NEVER been a male behind the front counter of the bakery to wait on customers. That all changed as I worked hard, and nagged the owner to allow me to do so. The girls behind the counter could flirt with all of the old men that came into the bakery. So I took the approach of being every one's favorite grand child. I would refer to the elderly ladies that came in as "young women" and they just loved it! I even got a $1 tip every now and then. It was great. Well, more graveyard shifts during the summers and holidays came and went, and before I knew it, I had been graduated from High School for a year and it was time to serve my mission to Utica, New York. The owner of the bakery had a great impact on some of the things that prepared me for my mission. I served my mission from August 1998 to August 2000, and came right back home, to the bakery.

I stared school in 2001 at LDS Business College, thanks to the little push from my wife Karla. I worked at the bakery until March of 2002 when, it seemed like it was time for me to explore other career opportunities. I first went to RC Willey, where I was trained by one of the best in the industry, the legend, Mr. Ed Teal. As Stephen R. Covey's neighbor, he was practically Stephen R. Covey. I sold electronics at the 300 West 2300 South location for a year. It was there that I met a great co-worker, whom became my next "Dad", Mr. Mark Damron. He had worked outside sales for Car Concepts years and years before, and went back. He later called me up and I left the Willey to work closely with him. As we did outside sales to car dealers, the sales men would always ask if I was Mark's "Son". What a great compliment to me and how young I looked, because as most of you know, I'm pretty old!

Mark's dentist started up a company that marketed dental practices. That's how it all came to be, and Mark was hired by them to be their VP of Sales while I continued to work outside sales at Car Concepts for another year. I was there almost 3 years all together when out of no where, Mark called me up and offered me a job working with him at ADAidm. Coincidently, it was at about this exact same time that I had just graduated from the University of Utah with my Bachelors of Science in Business Management. Are you still with me? So, when I say "In with the Old", I've left the new way of marketing dental practices to got back to my roots, temporarily. Only this time, I'm the General Manager of Granite Bakery. My goal is to build from what it already is and really grow it even more by serving the needs of small business to Corporate America for a while, just to get things rolling in that direction.

Making this decision was no easy feat. It actually took Karla and I over 3 months to decide. However, I feel very fortunate to be in this position and look forward to the challenge. Now, for any of your baking needs, just let me know how my baking team and I can help.

Over Populating...Me?

I received this sign today in the form of an email. I'm not quite sure if it is an inspired work, or if the words themselves are the inspiring part??? I think it is pretty much self explanatory. But just for the record, I still don't know where babies come from. My wife tells me its just something in the water in our neighborhood.

Mr. Fix It

Last Saturday, I finally got around to doing the annual ritual of messing around with the sprinkler system. I've got a bunch of brown spots on the yard. Being that I live in a town that was once part of the old west, our sprinklers are still on the irrigated watering system. Every spring when I turn them on, they tend to spray at about 73% capacity as to what they should, thus resulting in brown spots throughout the yard. On our front parking strip, the sprinkler head has sunk and tilted so it only sprays half of what it should. So I turned it on, and started pulling on it to bring it up out of the ground. Well, the water pressure went down on all of the other sprinkler heads all of the sudden. So I pushed it back down, and the pressure went back up. But after a minute or two, the grass I was standing over began to swell up like a balloon. I hurried and shut it off, and then tapped on the grass like I would tap on my belly to watch it jiggle. It jiggled. Great! Now I've got a broken sprinkler, something that I have never messed with in all of my Mr. Fix It events in my life. Crazy I know... this was a first for me. Could someone call a plumber??? Anywho, I took a round headed shovel and made an incision from the sprinkler head to the swell in the grass. I cut out almost a U shape, and folded it over. MUDDY MUDDY. This was a dirty job. I even had to us an empty can of Lays potato chips that I pulled out of the garbage can as a tool to emppty the water from the area. Thats prettymuch a Macgyver move. Fortunately for us, we ran into some members of our ward over at the Wal-mart earlier, and at about this time, they rolled up to our house just-in-time for me to ask them if they were plumbers. They weren't. But, they gave us a huge box of baby diapers that they intended on giving to a family member of theirs, but never did. Thanks! Plus, they saw my dirty dilemma and aided in the fixing of the sprinkler. The original pipe had simply slipped off, and needed to be glued back on. They borrowed me the glue. Thanks! I put all of the dirt back in, packed it down, sewed up the incision in the grass (basically laid it back in line from where I cut it with the round mouth shovel), and that was it. I'm now officially Mr. Fix It! The attached glorious photos were taken by the Lovely Karla with my cell phone. There is a in the middle of the mess and after the mess photos here. Enjoy...If a picture could only talk.......

Back To The Future Marathon!

The other week I was minding my own business at home flipping through the channels. I came across a Modern Marvels episode which featured the DeLorean. The car was way ahead of its time. I went online and found the official DeLorean of Texas website. I have downloaded 2003-2006 calendar images of the sickest DeLoreans you've ever seen to my desktop and screen saver. You should come sit at my desk and check them out! You can still buy these cars made in brand new 1980s parts that were leftover from the fall out of the original factory. It failed due to the financial drama of Mr. DeLorean as you learned in the video clip here. In no celebration of the DeLorean, today is Back To The Future Marathon here at work. We are playing the trilogy all day long today. Each DVD will be and has been played in its proper order. I just hope that our design guys don't come out and turn it off or something. Marty McFly, Doc Brown, the lovely Jennifer...who doesn't think that this is the greatest trilogy ever?!?!?! I hope you have enjoyed our modern marvel production found on the utube.com.

Pregnated Bellies, Labor Pains!

Here is a picture of Diana and Karla with their 38 week pregnated bellies. I took this photo at Micah's house in the back yard in American Fork, Utah. Both these women are pretty much done with the pregnancy! Now with the heat wave here, misery is complete misery. We went to Micah's house for baby Riders 1 year old birthday. Cake, ice cream and good times were had by all. Well, except for Dixie, she was with her main squeeze up at a Burly place in Idaho.
Karla and I went to the Dr.'s office yesterday to have a check up. He said he was shocked that Karla has not in labor! She was at 3-4 centimeters dilated. After the appointment, she had contractions about 5 minutes apart or less from about 12 noon until about 10 at night! We made a trip into the hospital at just after 4 pm. Pop came down and hung out with McKay and Karli for the afternoon. They loved every minute of destroying the house! Pop loved it too. Karla's mom also drove up from St. George. Well, back at the hospital, still had contractions, but didn't progress since the Dr.'s office. Went home and still had them until she went to bed. Karla was just exhausted! So was the baby, so once we went to bed, the contractions pretty much subsided for the night, only rolling 1 or 2 off. I went to work this morning and Karla called and said since I left at just before 7:00 am, she has had contractions every 5 minutes since! She is going to start a new baby campaign today "Shop til the Baby Drops!" Hopefully she will be in an area that will allow for her to get to the hospital soon enough if the baby decides to come. That's about the latest, I'll keep you posted...

McKay & Karli's House

Every time we do dishes, McKay and Karli climb under the door of the dishwasher and call it their house. They will stay under there and hang out until all of the dishes are done and we close the door. With child number 3 coming to join our family at any time, we'll see what happens to the little two-some. I think that Karli will have the hardest time adjusting. We can tell that she knows that something is about to change, but she is not quite sure about what it is. She will offer food to Karla's pregnated tummy so that the baby inside can eat. Its a lot of fun! We are excited to enter this new chapter in our lives and welcome this child into our family and home with open arms. We feel very fortunate to have such an awesome opportunity and responsibility.

Strategic Colors for my Blog

Have you ever wondered as to why I would have chosen the color orange for the dominating color of my blog? I wondered that when I created the monster. The reasoning behind this is to match the colors of my pest control company Termite Ant & Spider Control, LLC. As you will see with the company logo, it matches the orange perfectly. Now I just need some gray to accent it and I'll be set.

Subaru with Bug Trailer

This is what I was talking about in my previous posting. I've had to practice this so that when the time comes, and there is only parking for side-by-side, I'll be able to go anywhere with my little bug trailer and the Subaru. With my skills; parking skills, bug killing skills, balancing skills, minivan usage skills etc, I will be able to back the trailer in to the end of a parking stall, taking up one and a half spaces. It was great yesterday to watch peeps after the entire parking lot was full trying to pull in and then realize that my trailer was there! I could just hear the frustration put into stepping on the gas peddle as the sped away in complete anger! All this from the window of my plush corner of the office office.

My Redneck Minivan

Hey, Karla is the one that wanted a Minivan. I wanted a Tahoe. Well, we needed some floor board trim last summer, so I took the Redneck Minivan to The Home Depot. The cheapy Toys R Us stroller works out well in many situations. In the first photo, the trim went from the front driver seats between the kids car seats, over the 3rd row and over the stroller for extra support. I didn't have a red flag, but I drove really carefully.

The other photo is just the other weekend. I needed one more piece of drywall to polish off my basement bathroom. Once again, the redneck Minivan miraculously came in handy. I put the drywall in as for as it would go, then placed the stroller under the drywall ontop of the bumper. I took my tiedowns and linked the two rear seat belts (those come standard) and hooked them to the stroller. The customer parked next to me in the real Tahoe laughed as he got his kid into his car. Then, he came back and said "Do you mind if I take a photo of this? My father-in-law will never belive me!" Thats when I said "My wife wanted a Minivan, not me!"

Trailer Parking

I recently purchased a small trailer for my Pest Control business. It tows behind my subaru nicely. Here is a photo of it after I personally installed a tow hitch all by myself. As my little girl Karli frequently says "I do it myself like this!" So, today at work, I parked the car with the trailer taking up 2 parking spaces side-by-side. It is a tricky feat to accomplish, but only someone like me could do it. I'll post the photo of it some time. It was really funny cuz when we would watch it out from the office window, after the parking lot was filled, people would try to pull in and then realize my trailer was in the end of the parking stall. Then they would get mad and aggressively drive off. It was pretty good. There is another funny thing that happened here at the office that I am compelled not to talk about until a future date and then people will think that it is funny. But bringing it up now, it wouldn't be funny. I'll keep you posted.

The Jessop family before #3

The other month we had photos taken of our family at Thanksgiving Point. I took a photo of the real photo with my cell phone. So, I hope its not too fuzzy. This of Me, Karla, McKay and Karli. We'll post photos of #3 child here pretty soon, when it decides to arrive. I can call it "it" for now only because it is a suprise. We have no clue as to what it is. TTFN!

Re: Old Email Subject Lines

I'm sorry its taken me to get back into my blog. I just haven't had anything that I truly felt was worth while to add. However, I the topic just came up. Look, I'm not purposely using my blog as a venting tool, but maybe I should. Perhaps sometime I will add a happy entry in the future.
OK, now to the meat of it- "Reply Emails" are very convenient. Someone sends you a message, and you simply hit reply, and send a message right back. This might sound like Jay Leno, but how lazy are we as a society when we can't take a half second to start a new email, enter the recipients address and put in a short, simple fresh subject line? My case in point- I can't stand it when peeps email me, as a reply from an email that I sent to them weeks or even months ago. On top of that, their message has NOTHING to do with the info found in the lower portion of the email. I'm pretty sure its safe to say that pretty much every email program out there will remember someone's email address after you have received just one email, or sent just one email to that person. So to start a new email, alls you have to do is start typing the persons name and the options magically appear for you to choose. WOW! Was that too difficult?
I have a peeps that frequently send me emails, replying to one that I sent to them a long time ago. They can't seem to just go start a new email and subject line...no. They reply to an old email, with a subject line that has nothing to do with what they are inquiring about. So, unless I change the subject line in my reply to them, there is no way of tracking the communication in an effective way. Just today, I had someone get all confused about my reply to them because I purposely didn't change the subject line in my reply because I was playing them at their own game. And guess what happened? They got all confused because my reply didn't match the subject line that they originally didn't change in the reply to an old email that I originally sent to them about something else. Please be considerate of information and subject lines in emails, and don't just reply to an old one because you are too lazy to start a new one. I think that we will all be a lot happier, or at least I will anyway.

Finals Schminals!!!

I've been needing to get this off my chest since the spring of 2001 when I finished up my first semester of college at the LDSBC! I don't see the big deal about Finals Week at the U of U, or any other higher education institution in the world. The thing that really bothers me, is that most students buy in to it! Look, just because at the end of a semester, the last test of the class held on a special date and has a longer window of time, there is no need to freak out and also tell everyone you know that it is finals week! Most of us could probably count on one hand, or even one finger, how final tests we had that was comprehensive and covered course material from day 1. Its just another test! Seriously. I was talking with my office mate, Keith (name has been changed, and then changed again to protect the innocent so you don't really know if that is his real name or not), and he said that a study group person he once knew put it this way- "...If you have attended class, and done what you were supposed to do throughout the semester, then you should consider the final as a Pay Day. Its like going to work for two weeks. You've done what you were supposed to do, so you should expect to enjoy the paycheck you have just earned. Likewise, the final should be revered as just another test..." Chances are, if you've done your homework like a good little student, then the score on the final will be in line with the other test scores you have received up to that point. And don't most teachers drop the lowest score anyway? Don't a lot of us only take the final only because there is a chance we might get a few points higher than a previous test, but it is really pointless if take it for the most part?
Wow! That felt great! I feel so much better now, and the fact that I graduated from the U like 1.5 years ago so I haven't had to worry about a final since then. Thank you! Oh and, good luck on your final. I hope you study for weeks to prepare. But seriously, are you really going to spend more time studying just because it is the final than you did on the other tests? Give me a break!
Bye. Bye.

Jessop Has Arrived!

Ok, I'm officially welcoming myself to by very first blog. Inspired by Aimee Heffernan, a dear co-worker of mine (www.aimeeheffernan.blogspot.com), has motivated me on moving forward to joining the online super club. Except for, I wish with this super club there was a McDonalds inside so I could enjoy a delicious meal like the 2 cheese burger meal that is not on the menu anymore, but you can still special order it. Anywho, I must also give a little bit of credit to my good friend and pest control idol, Archie Egbert (www.archieoman.blogspot.com). I owe the past year of a fantastic side job of being a licensed Pest Control Officer (PCO) to Archie for simply up and leaving Utah and leaving to me the awesome responsibility of purchasing his existing company (for an undisclosed amount of money). I wish I could get my hands on one of those bumper stickers found on a cab drivers car that says "Live the Dream", only, make reference to it as a PCO.
Thank you for taking the time to allow me to offer a little bit of my pearls of wisdom, leaving a valued impression on your mind. I'm excited to be here. I'll see you online. Oh, and don't forget, everything found in a forwarded email and on the Internet is true fact.

Danny Jessop