Tuesday, January 27, 2009

2009 Ft. Worth Stock Show


I had the chance this year to attend a little bit of the 2009 Junior Heifer Show at Ft. Worth. This was my first time ever to come to Ft. Worth and come to the Stock Show, so I was really excited! My husband is one of three ag teachers at Boling High School and he oversees the heifers so I was able to go with him and hang out with the Boling FFA!

Well, I couldn't go up right away with him, so he left on Thursday and I was riding up there with a family on Friday. Everything had been worked out and we were good to go. Thursday comes along and he leaves bright and early Thursday morning with the kiddos, the 8 heifers and a loaded down trailer! I'd get a phone call or text every now and then to see where they were at and make sure everything is okay.

About 2:00 or so that afternoon, I get a call from my husband and he says they have broken down in Cleburne which is about 30 minutes from Ft. Worth and his truck won't start. So here is a truck, a fully loaded trailer with cattle, 3 students and an ag teacher, stranded on the side of the highway. Luckily for them, there is an RV park across the access road and they are able to cross the access road safely to get a way from the highway and get some numbers for a tow truck.

So they find a number for a tow truck to come "tow" the truck but now they have to figure out how to get the trailer full of cattle to Ft. Worth and get checked in on time. While they are figuring this out, an 18 wheeler had a blow out and the truck is heading straight for the trailer of cattle. You can imagine what everyone is thinking at this moment. Luckily the truck driver was able to straigten up a bit and passed the trailer with out any problems. It was a close call.

Well, with the help of a gracious person, they were able to hook up the trailer and get up to Ft. Worth. I'm glad that everyone was safe and that they made it up to Ft. Worth.

You would think after all of that, nothing could go wrong and the worst is over. Wrong! I get a call that night from my husband after they had checked into the Quality Inn and Suites. They had originally booked two rooms with two double beds in them. Well, the hotel didn't reserve a second room, therefore, they only had one room with two double beds and had to resort to a room with a king size bed and have a roll away bed put in it. They were supposed to get another room the next night (so the hotel workers said). It didn't happen.

I got up to Ft. Worth Friday night and met them at the hotel. Everything was going fine until the family I rode up there with was trying to check into their room and were told they didn't have a room ready for them. Our first sign that something was not right about this hotel should have been when the trusty old Garmin took us through a lightless back ally of a road. But, did we think anything of it? No! The room they originally wanted to put them in was occupied and so they were going to put them in another room; but they had to check to make sure it was clean, because they weren't sure it was clean. We are thinking, this is not looking good.

So eventually everyone gets a room and things are okay. The next morning, everyone had stories to tell of things that had gone wrong in this Quality Inn and Suites. Here's a few of the stories condensed and maybe a big sign that this hotel should not be in business:

1.) When you go to the front desk and ask if your room can be cleaned because it hadn't been cleaned while your were gone, and your are handed cleaning supplies and told "go clean it yourself", maybe you shouldn't stay there.

2.) When you go to take a shower and see a used towel and used bar of soap in the bath tub, maybe you shouldn't stay there.

3.) When your room gets cleaned so you think; the beds made, fresh hopefully clean towels, and new shampoos and soap, but no trash taken out maybe your room really wasn't cleaned and maybe you shouldn't stay there.

4.) When you step off the second floor and it smells like sewage, maybe you shouldn't stay there.

5.) When you have to use a chair to prop up a night stand because it's coming apart from the wall, maybe you shouldn't stay there.

6.) When you walk to the front desk and there's no one insight but a little sign that says "We will be back in 10 minutes. Thank you for waiting", maybe you shouldn't stay there.

7.) When you try to get a reciept for school purposes and they tell you they can't give you a receipt because the computer is slow and it will take a while to print, maybe you shouldn't stay there.

8.) When you are about to leave Ft. Worth to come home and go back to get a receipt and they try to give you a copy of the check you gave them and you tell them, that is not what I need, maybe you shouldn't stay there.

As you can see, this Quality Inn and Suites has some major issues. I have never been in a hotel where the service was this bad. No one that stayed there was happy and the employees just didn't understand.

It certainly made for a long and interesting weekend. But everyone made it safely home. My husband's truck got fixed, the students did very well at the Stock Show and we now know not to ever stay at the Quality Inn and Suites in Ft. Worth, Texas. Besides all of that, I had a great time at the Ft. Worth Stock Show and would love to go back next year!

What a great first experience of Ft. Worth!!

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

15 minutes?

So I'm wondering...have I had my 15 minutes of fame thanks to cattle.com? For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I had the chance to help my friend Jeff Schroeder of Cattle.com with his producer interviews at Denver this year. So now, there are about 15 videos of me on the internet!

I should probably back up and state that I had the good intention of doing these interviews with Jeff in 2008. But.....due to my night at the Embryos on Snow sale lasting a little longer than I expected, I didn't quite make it out to the yards bright and early last year. So Jeff let me slide and he handled all the videos himself.

This year, I began planning WAY in advance and due to lots of self control, support of my friend Ashley Hueber, and the 5 voice mails my dad left me asking me when I was coming back to our shared motel room so he could go to bed....I called it a night by around 10:00 p.m. this year at the Embryos on Snow and I got up bright and early and headed out to the yards to get ready for the big day. Now as any of my friends know, I'm a meticulous planner. For example, I have tons and tons of "lists" and I'm almost OCD enough to the point that when I pack for a trip, I stick post-it notes on the clothes I pack labelled with what day I plan on wearing that outfit. In keeping with my preparedness, I began workng on some questions for people on my plane ride out there.

So Friday morning, complete with my handy-dandy notepad and all the questions I'd jotted down, I hit the Yards with Jeff and his brother Luke. We get to work right away doing a couple videos. Now I"ll be the first to say, I have NO experience whatsoever doing video work. A few years ago, I did an emergency interviewing job for NCBA's show on RFD-TV and I liked it. So I have a little interest in it but nothing like Brad Hook here. So all you critics will have to cut me some slack....I know it's not perfect!
I have to admit, I feel a little stupid starting out and saying "Hi, this is Rachel Williams in the yards with Cattle.com" on all the interviews. Every time we were videoing and I would say that, Luke would start smirking behind the camera. :) But hey, all good reporters have to introduce themselves...and you have to give publicity to your station!
When Jeff put the first video up, my mom gave me some pointers that the sunglasses looked good, but the combination of me being a blonde mixed with my signature "giggle" mixed with the wind blowing and me pushing the hair out of my face....all added up to make me look a little dumb-blondish. (Ask Catherine about this laugh, she says it's my nervous habit...that someone will call me on the phone and I'm like "Sure, I can do your ad ha ha ha ha ha" and she's always like -- "That's not even funny, why are you laughing!!" )

The one thing I wasn't prepared for was that man, after day 1, my arm was SORE!! I guess holding that microphone is a little different than clicking away on a computer mouse all day. Anyway, so even though I'll be the first to admit I'm no Katie Couric, it was really a lot of fun. I like helping people promote their stuff and I like bringing out the positive things. I tried to ask questions not just about the bull but also interesting stuff about each person.

So, check them out, the videos are at http://www.cattle.com/ and the section they are in are the Denver 2009 Interviews.

Thanks Jeff and Luke for letting me do this....can I get hired agan for 2010?

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The last days of freedom...

While most people prefer to start their diets on January 1st, here it is January 14th, two weeks after the new year, and I have not started my diet yet.

Of course, you may think, 'everyone fails on the new years resolution diet.' But, the interesting thing to note is, although it is coincidentally the first of the year, my dieting (or lack thereof) isn't brought on by the new year. You see, I have an upcoming wedding on December 12, 2009. That is a mere 332 days from now. 332 days of trying to convince myself to get on the treadmill. 332 days of trying to convince myself NOT to eat Larry's chips and salsa. 332 days of trying to keep my car from veering towards Milam Donut Shop in the morning before work.

The funny thing is that when I first got engaged in July, I consciously thought in my head that I would have a year and a half to gradually diet. Well I've successfully put off the diet for 1/3 of my total time I originally had. Now, we're in crunch time.

I know some of you feel my pain. Dieting is NO fun. But, I guess I am somewhat of a professional dieter. I have done Nutrisystem 2 separate occasions and each time have lost around 50 pounds. Do the math -- with that loss, you would think I'd be 100 pounds lighter than what I started out at. Am I? Heck no. I've gained lots of that weight back. I would give an exact figure, but that would involve stepping on the scale, something I am putting off!

Nutrisystem works great, I will make no bones about it. Rachel swears by it. She tells us that she actually LIKES the food. She just eats the food right out of the box and enjoys it. 2 inch pizzas are great, she says. Hamburgers, plain and dry, which arrive as hard disks that you have to reconstitute with water and then place on a tiny whole wheat bun, she actually enjoys. Chicken and dumplings, served in a 4 inch sized TV tray, are tasty.

At one point, I was a believer. Just ask my family. I'd spend so much time studying these web sites that had all these tips for making the food taste good, and I'd gotten good at it. I loved their oatmeal in the morning, after I'd added some skim milk and Splenda to it, of course. I never found anything I liked that they offered for lunch, but sometimes I could force myself to eat their lunch bars. At dinner though, I'd spend a whole hour "reconstituting" my hamburger patty with water that was all flavored up with pepper and worchestire sauce. I'd toast my tiny little hamburger bun, put some fat free cheese on it, melt it, and then enjoy my burger, that had the total diameter of a Coke can, probably.

The problem is, once you give yourself even one little taste of non-diet food, you realize just how much you're missing. When Luke and I got engaged, both of us abandoned our Nutrisystem diets, and we went full blown into non-diet mode. It started with eating all the chips we wanted at Larry's. Then we had several dinners where we told ourselves we were celebrating our engagement... again. Next thing you know, all of our hard work was literally down the drain. We were left with boxes of Nutrisystem all around the house, because of course, we didn't call to cancel our auto deliveries. We had to go back to our "fat clothes." The problem is, I'd thrown away a lot of mine and bought new smaller clothes. This is awful. I've had to buy new clothes AGAIN!

Well, the new diet officially starts when we return from Denver, January 22nd. This time we're going with another diet, not Nutrisystem. I can't go back to that food. In the meantime, I am a little embarrassed to say that Luke and I are going out with a bang. This past week, we've had breakfast at all of our favorite joints: Milam Donut Shop, McDonald's, and Primo's in Boling. At lunch, we've been to all our favorite places in town. Our dinners have been fabulous, and most of the time, we've shared a dessert.

But I'm fully aware that the diet starts again in just a few days. But at Denver, you can look for me at Texas de Brazil, the breakfast buffet at the Doubletree hotel, Del Frisco's steakhouse, and of course, Emilene's.

Then look for me at Louisville next year, just one month away from walking down the aisle, and hopefully, very much lighter!!

Friday, January 9, 2009

RHD's Top Ten of 2008

Drumroll please....this report in just hot off the press from our official Ranch House Designs statistician, Luann Williams.

One of Mom's job here at RHD is quality assurance on web site updates and keeping track of our web site updating performance. She monitors all the updates to make sure they are done in a timely manner and done correctly. This morning she just finished up the reports from 2008 and here are some interesting figures....

In 2008, our web updates division did a total of 2,468 web site updates for our clients! On average, web update requests are done in a 1/2 day turnaround. One of our biggest goals is accurate, timely web updates, and we've got a year's worth of data to prove it!

In our "Honorable Mention" Frequent updaters are:
  • Dismukes Ranch
  • Bryant Combine Parts
  • Brad Hanewich Cattle
  • Top Sires
  • Catching Tractor
  • Virginia Club Calf Producers
  • Tusa Cattle
  • Mid Texas Angus
  • Rolling Hills Angus
  • Mid Texas Angus Association
OUR TOP TEN UPDATERS for 2008:
#10 - Matt Lautner Cattle - 39 updates
#9 - Maternal Legends (Sullivan) - 39 updates
#8 - Lautner Farms - 44 updates
#7 - Aegerter Marketing Service - 45 updates
#6 - Stock Horse Association of Texas - 50 updates
#5 - Independent Cattlemen's Association - 52 updates
#4 - La Muneca Ranch - 59 updates
#3 - Washington County Fair - 62 updates
#2 - American Brahman Breeder's Association - 98 updates

And our #1 most frequent updating client is.....
#1 - American International Charolais Association - 115 updates

So, here is a reminder to our clients that if you haven't updated your site in a while, shoot us an email and let us know some news for your site! It pays to keep your site as fresh and interesting as possible!