DawnTom

Test Craigslist Listing

2010-08-31T15:21:00.001-07:00

Dawn Shrum | Trailblazer Property Management | (509) 710-5691

E. Trent Rd., Spokane Valley, WA

2 acre fenced lot and office building equipped to support your construction/labor industry needs.

Retail/Commercial

$1,300/month

Sq Footage

3,500

DESCRIPTION

Blah blah blah blah blah blah

see additional photos below

RENTAL FEATURES

- 2 acre fenced lot

- 3 bedroom/2 bath office space

LOCATION FEATURES

- Less than 5 minutes from I-90

- Near Trent & Argonne

LEASE TERMS

First and last months rent required upon lease signing.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS

Trent Rd. Frontage

Contact info:

Dawn Shrum

Trailblazer Property Management

(509) 710-5691

Equal Opportunity Housing

Posted: Aug 31, 2010, 2:02pm PDT

Our Last Spring Break

2010-04-01T11:22:00.000-07:00

Tom's getting down to his" last's". The last first day of new classes, the last big paper, the list is going up daily. While I'm jumping up for joy for many of them, I'm also using them to my own advantage.

"Ok Tom, this might be the last Wednesday I can go out the bar til' the wee hours of the morning, I guess I can rough it."

Last week was the last time he'd have a spring break so I decided to take a full week off (which I've only done one once before). I think its safe to say we both might be a little more at ease with all these "last's" if we had some more first's. Like, Tom's first full-time job or...well that's pretty much it. But for the time being I've decided its my job to come up with distractions from our reality of not really having any clue what we're doing.

We put 3,400 miles on the Scion in 10 days and somehow managed not to kill each other. Spending the majority of our time in Colorado and Utah, we checked out Denver, visited friends and family, and hit a couple of National Parks along the way.

Please go to Arches- this place rocks! (Get it) After being snowed on throughout Colorado, our last part of the week made it all worth it. I wish we could pack up on little car and go on a road trip around the US right now to visit all our National Parks and write a blog or book about them (totally lame, right). But for now, I hope you'll enjoy some of our photos from the trip. Click on the Flickr stream in the right column of our blog for all the photos, I've only included a few here.

About Our Blogroll

2010-03-09T15:33:00.000-08:00

To the right of our posts, I'm sure you've noticed the list of blogs we follow. After about two seconds, you also probably figured out that these blogs are ones that I follow, and as usual, Tom's just along for the ride. On a weekly basis I read a lot more than these blogs, but I thought I'd take a couple of minutes to explain why I've put these blogs on our public list and why think you might be interested in giving them a look every once in a while.

Go Cougs
WSU Football Blog- Pretty self-explanatory. Not the official school blog.
Talkabout- Fun blog by my old friend Sarah who just completed a trip around the globe.

Randoms
Mashable- Updated with many articles a day highlighting social media tips and the latest innovations.
Drink Nectar- I'm getting tutored in the art of Washington wine from this Spokane native.
Confessions of a Young Married Couple- Random blog I started following by a mater-blogger on the East Coast.
Life At Law- Its fun for me to read how miserable law school is for Tom's classmates.

These blogs may be random, but they give me a laugh everyday so I hope you get a kick out of them too. Enjoy!

Nothing To Blog About

2010-03-09T11:31:00.000-08:00

We've been bad bloggers. Moreover I've been a bad blogger. But now that Lent is upon us, I hereby vow to do better. If I'm ever going to get around to writing this book that's been on my bucket list, I've got to start flexing my muscles on something other than ISTE member benefits and exciting member-only contests. I digress..

So here are the cliff notes of 2010 so far...

2010 is a huge waiting game in the Shrum household. Tom's staying as upbeet as can be expected even though his hunt for a job hasn't been fruitful thus far. All he needs to do between now and July is pass the Patent Bar Exam, Bar Exam (state yet to be determined), graduate, and find a job.

At ISTE, I'm shifting into high-gear as our conference in June begins to take shape. Denver here we come!

Speaking of Denver, Tom and I will be road-tripping down to Colorado this spring break to visit old friends, take in some scenery, and check out a new part of the country. (Can you believe Tom's never been east of Montana, or south of Utah?) I thought I haven't globe-trotted enough yet, but geez, we've got to get this boy some miles under his belt.

Shout Outs!
I selfishly left Tom at home this January so I could use my hard earned summer frequent flier miles to visit my best bud from Sunday school, Chris Bart down in San Diego. It only took me two months to come to the realistic realization that we can't move down there after Tom graduates.

In February we made another trek up to Spokane for the Heimbigner nuptials and a great Johnson-style feast. Congrats Kurt and Leah! Thanks Mom for lasagna that doesn't taste a little off like mine does.

My college friends Spanky and Sarah graced us with their presence in Eugene last weekend as part of their West Coast road trip. They just got back from a 7 month trip around the world (and naturally they knew they couldn't die without seeing Eugene, Oregon). Check out Sarah's blog if you need some travel inspiration. I loved reading her posts each week!

Save The Date- Tom graduates May 22nd!
We are excited that our families are making the trek down to Eugene to join in the celebration. We've promised tie-dye sightings to all!

Look forward to next week for something a little more fun!

Happy Halloween

2009-11-01T21:00:00.000-08:00

Tom may have won the Superhero contest, (he's the SuperShrum on the right), but my pumpkin on the left is the only one that made it to Halloween. We discovered that pumpkins in Eugene have a tendency to mold, and that slugs think they are yummy.

It came from Spokanistan...

2009-09-24T18:26:00.000-07:00

Hello all, this is Tom. Just wanted to post a review of life in Spokane this summer.

So if you all didn't know, I worked at Sadler, Breen, Morasch, & Colby this summer doing software patents. This means I dissected the details of new software inventions that Microsoft and others are working on. Basically, this is how a patent gets accepted by the US government: a person applies for a patent on their invention, and then the US Patent and Trademark Office rejects the invention 2-5 times. I was writing the responses to those rejections. Honestly, I had a ton of fun doing this kind of work. Call me a nerd, just don't call me a nerd without a job this summer.

Other than that, I lived with Dawn's wonderful aunt and uncle Mary and Steve Llewellyn. They let me live in their basement, which is actually as big as our apartment here in Eugene. In return I watched their house as they traveled the world, to Sweden to visit their son, or when they headed out to the lake. I would like to think my pithy conversation was also payment, though that's up for debate. Other than that, I hung out with the rest of Dawn's family and took it easy.

Now I'm back at school in Eugene. Law school is a lot more relaxed this year, which is a function of knowing what to do and having fewer classes. I'm studying for the patent bar exam and the ethics test, both of which I will take this semester. My classes are interesting, and Family Law is especially fun because I'm one of the few married people, and probably the only Catholicly married person.

Sorry I'm not as interesting as Dawn. She is the spice in our marriage.

You Want Me To Ride On That Thing...

2009-07-06T20:14:00.000-07:00

Dawn's insights on regional airline travel

In the past 30 days I have had the pleasure of riding on 11 different airplanes. Instead of pointing fingers at the people who make it necessary for me to ride these puddle-jumpers around the Pacific Northwest (Thomas), I've decided to make a list of my top 5 tips for surviving "commuter flights" (EUG-SEA, SEA-GEG, PDX-GEG...you get my drift).

1. Make sure you are ready to chug the complimentary wine offered on Horizon
They pour you a glass, and come back 5 minutes later to make you throw it away before they prepare for landing. (The flight attendant will try to glare you into downing your glass. At the same time, I'm sure they're thinking "Just drink already! They don't pay me enough to put up with you enjoying yourself."
I have yet to find out what harm holding onto my wine will do to the aircraft upon landing.
2. DON'T FLY UNITED
Let's see here. United does not have a direct flight from Portland to Spokane, or Eugene to Seattle (and vice-versa). I'm not saying those are critical cities, but none of these...really? Why did I sign-up for a United mileage card again?
3. Go to the bathroom before sitting down in the Seattle Airport
Some interior designer thought it would be a cute idea to have a glug glug sound each time someone touched the drinking fountain button. Problem is, all those screaming kids from your flight think its fun to push the button about 50 times each. I've tried...and failed to last a layover without running to the ladies room at least once.
4. Wireless Internet Access
Portland=Free, Eugene=Free (but not an amazing signal), Seattle & Spokane= You'll be shelling out some dough.
5. Food
Seattle wins. If you want some Clam Chowder, always go for Ivars over Anthony's. Hit the restaurants in Portland for some great local brews, bring your own lunch in Eugene, and David's Pizza wins in Spokane.

NECC 09' In Washington, D.C.

2009-07-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

A Dawn Update
The past few months have been very busy for me as I prepped for my company's annual Conference, NECC (National Educational Computing Conference), which was held in D.C. this year. The unofficial word on the street is that we had a record attendance of over 18,000, and I think its safe to say that our Membership events were very successful. I spent a lot of time with our photographer taking photos of events and members, and I also worked a lot on our Member Welcome, which was hosted by Mario Armstrong from NPR. I also was happy to see such a great attendance at our first-ever Young Educator Network event which was a cell-phone scavenger hunt at the National Portrait Gallery followed by a meet-up at an awesome Tapas restaurant around the corner.

I'm sure I could write pages and pages about all of the great people I met, and new technology tidbits I learned, but I'll spare everyone here.

My sightseeing was limited to a couple of morning jogs to some landmarks and a trip to the Neuseum (which I highly recommend!). I always love D.C. and am already looking forward to going back for an actual vacation with Tom after he graduates and takes the bar exam next year.

Planning for next year's conference is already underway, Denver here we come!

Eugene Photo (Video) of the Month

2009-05-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

After a brief hiatus, Eugene Pics of the week are back. Now brought to you monthly, we're back on the streets bringing you new entertaining photos from our hippie life in Eugene.

Here is a video from the free concert at Cuthbert.

That's our own Tom Shrum examining produce at the Saturday Market.

Spring 2009

2009-05-19T13:23:00.001-07:00

We haven't been up to much this Spring besides school and work, but here are a few highlights.

Our 2-3rd grade Boys B-Ball season ended in March, and even though we didn't keep score I think its pretty safe to say we were awesome. In addition to weekly practices and games, we also had a kick-ass LaserTag party and went to a local college game. We also are happy to report that we only had one kid cry during the games (Dawn's fault) and only one kid who faked injuries.

We think we'll coach again next year if Dawn's temperament can hold-out. By the end of the season she had the little guys running lines when they weren't paying attention. Tom was the kids' favorite (mostly because he didn't have cooties).

Here's Tom accepting his LBA (Legal Ballers Association) award for being on the worst team ever to play in the league. The LBA is a law student b-ball league that plays twice weekly at 7am.

At the end of the season we attended a pizza party where the league commissioner gave out a plethora of awards. Tom didn't make the MVP list, however we both got to ref the All-Star game.

John and Lisa were nice enough to score us tickets to the GU Sweet 16 game in Portland. Ohhh man do we owe them big-time for these seats. :)

Nerdy Techie Stuff

2009-05-19T09:02:00.001-07:00

If you like learning about new technologies (or you just want to see the kinds of things Dawn does all day) check out some of these links below.

ISTE Vision is our video portal where we host educational videos. Click on the photo to the left to watch one of the videos submitted to our Digital Storytelling Contest now featured on the ISTE Vision Network.

ISTE Eduverse Talks
If you haven't heard of Second Life yet, prepare yourself because you might think its a little funny watching cartoon-looking characters interact with each other, but ISTE has over 5,000 members in SL so its a very effective medium for us to help our educators continue to learn about the newest Ed Tech trends and professional development opportunities. Dawn is the Production Manager for the show which is filmed and broadcast LIVE every other Tuesday night. Click here to visit show's blog or here to watch a short clip of an episode.

Below is a cool new tool we call ISTE Connects. This badge can be posted to any web page and aggregates content such as blog posts, news stories and tweets into a central repository found here. It is a very good tool for companies that have a lot of online activity. Now that you've seen it here I'm sure you'll see it around a lot more.

More fun techie stuff to come...

Tom's Entry Into Blogosphere

2009-03-25T19:58:00.000-07:00

Hello all. This is Tom. I'm going to start dropping my thoughts here because I need a mental outlet. This may sound odd from someone who is in law school, which should be a constant mental outlet. Surprisingly, this is not the case. The entire experience is completely controlled and meant to break down and rebuild your thinking model into one of a traditional lawyer.

Anyway, I just want to lay out some background for my thinking. I listen to two podcasts regularly, the BS Report with Bill Simmons on ESPN and Talk of the Nation on NPR. These two podcasts frame the issues I'm thinking about, mainly because they are the media outlets I make time to be aware of. Other than these, I will occasionally read the Washington Post opinion section online, and most of the ESPN site, especially anything having to do with the Portland Trial Blazers or the Gonzaga Bulldogs.

With that introduction aside I'd like to briefly tackle a hot topic from both of my major media outlets: how to monetize the internet, specifically when tied to newspapers. They both floated out a simple idea that makes sense to me: subscription fees. There were two basic models suggested, the per use subscription fee and the package subscription fee. The package subscription fee is similar to how cable television does subscriptions. You would pay a subscription fee per month to gain access to the most popular sites. This makes more sense to me since in this way you would be paying for the sites you use, rather than having all your money for the internet go to the utility company. With cable television, your monthly subscription is funding content and the utility. With the internet, your monthly subscription is only funding the utility. How does this make sense? Subscription fees would encourage competition between ISPs in a different way, on a programming level rather than exclusively on a technological level. I just chose to stay with cable television, even though my promotional period ran out and I could get a better deal, because they have a channel that broadcasts all the Blazers games. If ESPN only provided its online content to people had a legitimate subscription, I would sign up with an ISP that had this access. It's worth $.50 a day to me to get this site.

I think this revolution should start with the sites, not the ISPs. They have control of the content, and they should be able to fund their content creation through subscriptions. There is currently an economic illusion going on with most websites, such that other parts of organizations have to pay for the content creation on the websites. Newspapers are suffering the most from this illusion. People want the content and would pay for it. Let's take out the middle man funding the content we want. Just think, we could have all the content we wanted without the advertisements we don't want.

This may lead to more monolithic media structures, but not necessarily. I think it would force media outlets to focus on what they are good at, reporting on the areas where they have better access than other outlets, and thus could provide better content. It's a specialization argument, which is an essential part of a capitalist structure. We don't need local papers to report on national stories. We need them to report on local stories because that what they know.

Anyway, that was long and I didn't even get through all my thoughts. This is not something I pulled out of thin air, but I think it's fun to put things together. Thanks, check back for my next round of thoughts.

Dawn's New Gig

2009-02-20T11:43:00.001-08:00

Dawn changed things up a bit this year as her New Year's Resolution. In January she began working at the International Society for Technology in Education - ISTE as a Membership Program Manager. She gets to play around a lot with new technologies and helps advocate for the effective use of technology in K-20 classrooms to improve student learning.

Check out this website to learn about the talk show she is the production manager for in Second Life: www.iste-eduverse.org. She is also looking forward to helping to plan ISTE's yearly conference which will be held in Washington D.C. this year and has an attendance of over 15,000 teachers. Go figure.

Her favorite perk of the new job is riding the bus to work downtown with the college students (and hippies). More updates on the new job...and hippies to follow.

Yelp...Yelp Yelp Yelp

2009-01-27T13:57:00.000-08:00

Allison Druffel has been trying to convert Dawn into a Yelper. Yelp is fun online community where you can write reviews of your favorite stores and restaurants and share them with other members. Great way to find new places to go and see. She is nowhere close to approaching Allison's status, but you can follow her quest to put Eugene Yelp on the map.

Recent reviews by Dawn S.

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Sunriver Trip

2009-01-20T13:12:00.001-08:00

We took advantage of a very sunny 3-day weekend to head up to Sunriver with a group of Tom's law school buddies. Sunriver is the little touristy spot between Bend and Mt. Bachelor. We had a great time learning (well, sort of learning) how to cross country ski and exploring another chunk of Central Oregon. Unlike our last mountain adventure to Mt. Hood, we didn't manage to get lost for half of the day, but we did almost venture down a black diamond trail which would've been quite interesting.
Now that we've checked this one off our list we'll attack Sisters sometime this summer.

We Made It For Christmas

2009-01-13T08:57:00.000-08:00

After a stressful 11 hour drive (usually 7), we finally made it up to Spokane for a wonderful Christmas filled with Guitar Hero, shoveling snow and eating copious amounts of Christmas Cookies. We had a great time seeing most of the Clift/Johnson clan as well as friends, and Tom realized how spoiled he is to be a New Years baby. The weather also cooperated enough for us to spend a couple days with the Shrum's who were also dealing with snow (thats right, somehow The Dalles got a few feet of snow too).

Now that we are back to normal (mid-50's and clear skies thank you very much), we are able to laugh about our journey.

Luke, Kaitlin, Emma, Gabe, Elle and Tom

Tom blowing out 24 candles

Kaitlin and Dawn with the SCC Sasquatch.
We ended up with a lot of photos of the creepy Sasquatch, but none of Luke playing basketball. But we did watch them pull out a tight victory.

Polaris Website Finally Updated

2008-12-01T13:17:00.000-08:00

Nobody else probably cares about this one, but Dawn was relieved when her company finally refreshed their website (it was pretty outdated). Go check it out and see what she does all day.
Polaris Website

More Wedding Photos

2008-11-18T21:34:00.000-08:00

Due to popular demand, here is a link to the rest of our amateur photos from the wedding festivities.

http://photobucket.com/dawntom

Cheers!

Wedding Photos

2008-11-11T13:16:00.001-08:00

Since we still haven't gotten around to getting our professional photos yet, we figured we should post the compilation of photos our friends have so graciously sent to us. If you really want to see some more, just send us a note and we can send you to an online library. (PS- you can click on each image to make it larger.)

Fall 2008

2008-10-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

After getting married in August we tried to stay close to home this fall, and have had some great times in Eugene and taken a couple of quick getaways to keep us from getting too bogged down with school and work. Highlights included going to Lauren & Peter Fischer's wedding in Monterey, CA (and going to the Monterey Aquarium which was the highlight of Tom's whole Fall) and making a trip back to Pullman to go tailgating with Dawn's family. Click below to see photos from these trips and the wedding.