Women’s Group Paining Night
Posted on January 2, 2018 by Ching under Things to Do.
Speaking of Paint the Towne, our women’s group at work had a Wichita flag painting night recently. Kelsey just happened to be in town for the evening and was able to join us.
Here are a few pictures of our fun group.
Getting ready to paint…
In progress works of art…
Another fun selfie…
Group photo…
Happy New Year, everyone!
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ICT Millennial Summit
Posted on January 2, 2018 by Ching under Events.
As part of the Wichita Business Journal‘s Emerging Leaders program, I had the opportunity to participate in a couple of really helpful training/conferences last month. The first one was Your Leadership Edge (formerly known as You. Lead. Now.) training through the Kansas Leadership Center.
I was also invited to attend the first ever ICT Millennial Summit. Now, we all know that I’m not a millennial — I just act like one sometimes. I think it’s because I’m friends with so many young people.
When the term was first coined decades ago, the years weren’t as clearly defined and I was kind of in that gray area where Gen X ends and Gen Y starts. Today, almost everyone agrees that the starting year for Gen Y is 1981.
The interesting thing about me is that I can relate more to boomers and millennials than I can to my own generational group because of my work ethic and behaviors. However, I’m kind of stuck in no man’s land because the boomers often think I’m a millennial and the millennials think I’m ancient. LOL.
Anyway, being the joiner that I am with serious FOMO issues, I thought I better check out this summit. I mean, they invited me to attend and everything. If there was going to be valuable information disseminated and knowledge to be had, I wasn’t about to miss out on any of it.
The package that the conference credentials arrived in set the tone.
The box itself was a keepsake. I have never received materials quite like this before.
The only other thing better that I’ve received is the Home for Doc gala invitation.
The event was held at Distillery 244, a really neat event space in the heart of Old Town. I’d never been there before so that in itself was enticing.
Here’s the agenda for the event. Nothing too exciting but I didn’t know what topics would be covered until long after I’d already signed up.
Being a completely debt-free home owner with no car payments who sets an annual budget that gets revisited halfway through the year, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on the breakout session topics for the first day. I still managed to pick up a few things though, particularly in the area of investing. I’m a pretty aggressive saver in terms of my 401K so by October my take home pay actually increases substantially since I’ve maxed out the amount that I can contribute to my 401K by that point. I’ve just been taking it for granted and we usually just either spend the extra money on holiday stuff or BS and, if we’re lucky, there’s a bit left to move to savings after all is said and done. We’ve never been as purposeful about it because it’s never been part of our plan.
The first year it came as a surprise but it’s something that has happened consistently since so this year I’m thinking we should plan for it accordingly. I’m thinking that instead of spending it or just allowing that extra income to vanish into thin air we should set a specific amount aside each paycheck and then invest it at the end of the year. Who knows how much better off we’d be today had we been more strategic about investing from the get go?
Brian and I are doing pretty well financially for our age. I think we make really good choices and have developed responsible spending habits but you always want to learn more and get better. I think the better than we do for ourselves, the more that we can give back to the community and make others’ lives better.
In looking at the agenda, I was definitely more interested in the breakout topics of the second day. Still having been in the workforce for over two decades, none of the information was completely earth shattering. The one thing that I came away with is the thought that the young people of today are so lucky to have events and conferences like this summit. I was thinking that I have all this knowledge now but I had to learn it as I went. Brian and I had to learn by making mistakes and digging ourselves out of the mess. It would have been really nice if there was something like this summit for me to attend when I was in my 20s. Maybe we would have been able to avoid some of the suffering that we had to go through.
I found the summit helpful but I think it would have been even more helpful to me if I were someone in my 20s just starting my career. The summit lived up to its name. It’s definitely targeted toward millennials. I think all young people should go through it and so I’ve recommended it to our young professionals group at work.
Anyway, here are a few pictures from the summit.
We had the privilege of hearing Mayor Jeff Longwell speak.
Jeff Fluhr talked about the Greater Wichita Partnership and all of the great things that have happened and will be coming up for our city.
These are exciting times for our wonderful city.
Listened to an awesome keynote from Warren Martin.
One of his key points is that problems are a good thing. Problems help us learn and grow. Problems help us build character. I tend to agree. Brian and I wouldn’t be the people we are today if it weren’t for the challenges that we’ve had to overcome early in our marriage. Our experiences shaped the people we’ve become.
Here’s a short clip I found on YouTube of him talking about problems.
Mr. Martin was one of the mentors for the second day and talked to us about communication during one of the breakouts.
He also shared with us his formula/model for writing any kind of speech, talk, or presentation. It’s so brilliant, I wish I would’ve thought of it.
One of my favorite parts of attending the summit is that it gave me an opportunity to reconnect with friends I hadn’t seen in a while.
Raquel Reyes (above) and Jennifer Cole (below).
I ran into Joe Parten (Carrabba’s) who was the lunch sponsor for the first day.
I also connected with Jessie Sterling, owner of Paint the Towne.
She facilitated the flag painting “make and take” activity that we did at the end of the first day which was super fun.
Here’s a group photo that we took at the end of that first day.
On the second day, our table groups were tasked with creating a front page layout for WBJ in 2025. We had some really creative and brilliant minds on our team so guess what – we won.
Here’s our official group photo (above). From left: me, Jennifer Rost, Whitney Feltrop, Erica Brock, Sam Belsan, Christina Santiago, Erica Thomas, Raquel Reyes, and Josh Beckman.
This one is just a fun selfie we took with our winning poster.
At the end of the summit, I stuck around for a bit to visit with these amazing women. It was a really fun couple of days. The experience was truly worthwhile. I’m glad I got to participate in it.
You can read more about the ICT Millennial Summit in this WBJ article here and watch the highlight video below:
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Making My Home Smarter Than Me
Posted on December 31, 2017 by Brian under Home Ownership, Projects.
I have been wanting to add smart devices to our home for some time. I wanted a Nest since they first came out but my wife wouldn’t let me because the local power company had their own program and she felt since she worked for them, she should honor that program and be a part of it as well. This did get us a really nice Honeywell programmable thermostat, but it wasn’t a Nest!
Several years have now passed and we’ve gotten off the WattSaver program, but we got to keep the programmable thermostat and it’s worked very well for us. But, again, it’s not a Nest. So after visiting a friend’s house and seeing all of his home automation toys, I decided it was time to work on Ching and see if I could finally swing a Nest. It just so happened that Amazon was having a huge sale and I was able to get it much cheaper than normal and Ching finally caved (because she’s a sucker for sales) and I got my Nest.
This is a picture of me unboxing the Nest. It’s pretty simple when you get down to it and look at how they have everything set up for you. They even include pictures and labels. They offer a professional set up but, unless you are just really not handy (I’m close), I think you would be able to manage.
Here it’s all installed and working. I love that I can control it from my phone, laptop or even my watch.
After that, it was time to update a coupe of light switches that we have really wanted to have on a program anyway but could never figure out how to do it. Again, my friend showed me some of the things that he had and they fit my needs perfectly. Thanks to Amazon again, they were having a sale and Ching could not resist, so we got three plugs and two light switches.
The plugs are very versatile, they just plug into the wall and there are some instructions on the app and then bam, they are available to be automated and controlled through my phone.
The light switches were a little different. These involved a little help from my father-in-law and a friend of his. I needed expert advise and installation. LOL.
Here is a picture of all of us looking at the wiring and trying to plan the best way to install them without burning my house down.
Here we have initiated the plan and we are conversing to make sure that we all agree to the final installation.
Here is the final product installed.
And here we have it all covered up with a nice smooth face plate. I like these face plates because you don’t see any screws like traditional faceplates. I think going forward, I may use these on all of my replacement switches.
All in all, I like the way everything functions. I like how it is automated and how I can, in the near future, tie them all to an Alexa and just use my voice to control everything.
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Thanksgiving 2017
Posted on December 29, 2017 by Ching under Family, Food and Drink.
Brian’s parents came up from Oklahoma for Thanksgiving this year. It worked out great because the place where we normally get our Thanksgiving dinner form (Fresh Market) closed a couple of years ago. Since Brian’s mom enjoys cooking she offered to make Thanksgiving dinner. In exchange, we agreed to buy all the ingredients and have them ready for her.
Brian put together the most hilarious grocery list.
Brian usually gets ham from his work but Donna wanted a 20-lb turkey also. We have never bought so much food from the store. Ever.
This is where he tells me to brace myself. LOL.
Here are some pictures of our Thanksgiving feast.
Here’a picture of grandma’s plate.
It turned out to be just the five of us. Brian, his parents, grandma, and me. Brian’s parents invited another couple to join us but they canceled last minute. Brian and I also invited Eleanor, Peter, and Ella but Peter ended up falling ill and so they bailed as well. We appreciated him not spreading his germs to us, though.
Eleanor and Ella stopped by later that evening to enjoy some of the homemade chocolate ice cream that Brian’s mom made. We also sent them home with a bunch of leftovers. We still didn’t make a dent, though. We had leftovers for days. We tried to eat as much of it as we could but mostly ended up just throwing a bunch of food away, which is a complete departure from our usual MO.
I always feel so wasteful throwing food away. I think next year we’re going back to just having the right amount of food. You live and learn.
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Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming
Posted on December 28, 2017 by Ching under Life.
Things that happened last month…
I had the opportunity to take project management training at Wichita State University from one of my favorite Rotarians.
We formed a team and attended sci-fi trivia night at Aero Plains. Our team name was Red Shirts. It gave us the perfect excuse to don our Star Trek costumes from a few years ago. We didn’t win but we held the top place for a couple of rounds and we had a ton of fun.
We spent a Saturday afternoon with some awesome people from my work helping Child Start set up for their annual Polar Express Literacy Event. This is our second year helping with the event.
I finally caved and let Brian replace our WattSaver thermostat with Nest. He took us off the program over a year ago but we kept the thermostat because it was useful.
Brian had been begging for a Nest thermostat for years but I wanted to support our thermostat program at work. Anyway, we both decided it was finally time. He’s supposed to blog about his new Nest so stay tuned for that post.
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