How Great Am I?

Well, pretty great, according to Xta. She has written an incredible tribute to me at the close of our nearly 4 year period of running the show together at the pool. You can read it here.

She's said some pretty awesome things, and the more I read them, the more they make me teary eyed.

Christa, in short, is the craftiest lady I've ever met. Not in the neat and tidy Martha Stewart-esq way in which I strive to be crafty, but in a wild and crazy 'ooooh, I can melt glass with fire!' kind of way. She has huuuuge boobs. I have tiny tits. She is the yin to my yang. We made such an awesome team, saw totally eye to eye (for the most part) on how things should be done, and earned praise from high up people in the aquatics community for shaping things up. Our boss is an IDIOT and still doesn't think he was the reason she left, and ultimately, he'll be the reason we ALL leave, but I don't think he'll ever be aware of that, so I shall plug on, keep my head down, keep going to school, and one day get the hell out of there and move onto other things too. Christa is moving on to the next phase of her life, which is the self-supporting with her arts phase, so . . .

check out her incredible glass beads at www.christagiles.com

and check our her latest passion, hooping, at www.christahoops.com

Buy a bead, take a hooping class, heck, buy a necklace to wear to a hooping class (hoops and beads and jewelry can all be shipped, ya know)

Christa made a comment in my early days at the UBC AC, that she wondered how many Head Guards she would last through. 2 I suppose, since I'm still there. Now I'm wondering how many Head Instructors I will last through, 1 so far, and the new one hasn't started yet, but I feel very uneasy about it. I am aware of a bit of a wall I already have up, and that is mainly due to anger I have at my manager about not being included in the interview process for someone who is going to be MY partner. I am doing my best to take this wall down, and be unbiased, so I can be warm and supportive of the new HI when she starts at the end of the month. I wonder how many Head Instructors I'll last through . . .

I am very sad about the end of my working relationship with Christa, but she needed to move on, and in the end, I needed her to go too. It's been great - I wouldn't be so sad about it if it had been crappy, and now we can start a new era of being 'just friends'. Wow.


And . . . Speaking of self supporting arty friends, my friend Harmony Trowbridge now has her CD 'Amoraphobe' in music stores all around, both east and west coasts. Check it out now! I have 2!

And shout out to my cousin Katherine, who reads my blog after all! Howdy Darlin!