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| | Subject: | YEY!! | | Time: | 09:07 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif) excited |
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| Very quick update before I head out the door. Feeling a lot better, was just down due to the holidays and being away from family and such.
Got some good stuff! Thanks to Sasha for the gift card, need to go to Bestbuy so I can spend it :P *hugs tight* Thanks Husky!
Got HALO ODST from JC, it's the first time I've played it, but it's awesome! Patcher and I were killin aliens last night! LOL THank you bro, love ya tons!
About to head over to the Fiat mechanic to do all the fun work on the car. That's my gift from Patcher ^^ Thank you bro!! Love you tons too!!
Gonna go have some fun, if I remember, I'll try and get some pics of the work being done.
Laterz!!
=^.^= | comments: Leave a comment   |
| Hmmm well Christmas definitely went well today I felt. I spent the morning getting things ready and just relaxing a bit....had the TV flipping between the endless loop of "Christmas Story" and the endless loop of "Home Alone". Luke arrived shortly after lunch and we hung out and watched home design shows...then he got energetic and decided my place needed christmas decorating. So he got out all my xmas tree decorations and adorned my plant stand as a christmas-y tree and also put decorations around the living room, library and kitchen and hung the wreaths on the front door. Definitely looked more festive, though I am going to have a hell of a time putting all the xmas balls back in the packages since he arranged them in bowls on the tables.
Got rolling with dinner around 4 and Tody arrived soon after. Dinner was on the table at 6:30 and came out well imo...I made a pot roast with potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, green beans, salad, and gravy. mmmm. :-) So the three of us sat down to a nice little xmas dinner....then a surprise for Luke DJ showed up around 7:30 hehe :-) he and I had kept it quiet but ya know Luke was happy to see him! So we fed DJ some dinner and then had cheesecake for dessert yum! DJ had invited another JC (skipperwannabe on here) over since he was in town and he showed up after dessert. We opened presents...DJ loved his mini-usb monitor (Iso do I, I got one for myself too hah!) and I got Luke a copy of the painting that we found for the library that he liked so much he kept threatening to steal it! Oh and I got Tody a new set of hair clippers so he'd stop needing to borrow mine heh. I got some very nice and thoughtful gifts in return from them :-).
Then Luke and Tody had to get going, but soon after Peter stopped by so it was still a full party evening. The last guests left just after midnight and boy was I beat! Left the cleanup for tomorrow morning but it was fun. I'm glad that I was able to spend Christmas with good friends and share a little christmas cheer (and good cookin!) with them.
Merry Christmas! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays to all my friends, family, and LJ readers! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Cuz it sure feels like work heh. Saturday-wednesday I feel like i've been going and going; trying to get christmas cards and presents sent and/or bought, yes i left things to the last minute again. I wanted to get a tree and decorate the house and put up lights outside but I just didnt have the energy for it; trying to pull gifts together and run errands and get everything out was bad enough. Oh and this also has turned into a bit of a working vacation. I got on the usual monday morning conference calls just because I had to update some issues from the previous week, then got pulled into an additional call monday afternoon which led to me having to work up a demo wednesday night so the sales rep can order the reagents so I can work on it the first week I go back to work. And I also had to do calls to set my january schedule so Yeah I've already worked about 7 hours this week (which I will put onto my timecard my first week back so that its not free labor). good news is I'm spending the first week back to work in Orlando so I dont actually have to fly until Jan 11 :-). Oh and at some point I also have to sit down and write my annual review cuz my boss hit me with that right before break and its due as soon as I get back. ughh.
What else...hmmm I'm getting caught up on little things around the house that i've been putting off. like sewing a button on a shirt. Calling to cancel my bellsouth.net dialup account that i've had for like 12 years (and that only took 45 min and 5 different people!). Monday nite I went out for drinks with Chris, Maffew, Peter, Mark and JohnM. Wednesday I went food shopping cuz I invited some ppl over for Christmas dinner because they didn't have anyplace to go. Lots of time running out to run errands and I've been to the post office every day so far this week! I am definitely liking the being home and being able to cook kick-ass meals for myself instead of eating out in chain restaurants every night!
Thursday I mostly spent relaxing...I needed a "rest day" before the christmas madness strikes! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Hmm so yeah got up monday morning for my conference calls and jeez was I tired. Luckily I got a call at 1:15pm just as I was getting ready to go to the airport telling me that my flight had been cancelled. WTF?! meh, probably weather. At least it said I was rebooked on a 5pm flight so I went and took a nap. Left for the airport at 3:30 and oh the hell began. Even when I got checked in the flights were already being further delayed, bad weather/fog in Atlanta and well when Atlanta goes south it usually gets really bad. I ended up having dinner in Orlando airport and my plane finally took off for Atlanta at like 7:30pm. So we make it to Atlanta and I get off and check on my connection to St. Louis, Missouri...15 minutes until departure. crap! I hoofed it from T terminal to B terminal and make it with minutes to spare, of course then we were delayed in takeoff. Got to St. Louis at 10:30pm (11:30 pm EST)but of course my bag didnt, but I knew there was a later flight so I went to the bag office and yeah there was a flight coming in at 12:45CST but that Delta didnt deliver after 11pm at this airport. WTF?! I've been in much smaller airports than this one that delivered later. So crap. I didnt have a car cuz I was staying at the airport hotel and meeting an engineer in the morning and he was driving. So I had to take the hotel shuttle to the hotel, check in and hang out in the room for a few hours. Went back over to the airport at 12:45am (thankfully the shuttle runs 24 hours), get my bag and hop back on the shuttle. Got into the room, unpacked, ironed, etc and got to bed around 1:30am cst (2:30 my time) but of course couldnt fall asleep right away. meh.
Tuesday I slept until about 8 (I had called JohnS and asked him to move our departure time from 8am to 9am) and we went over to the hospital and did our call, which was a fairly easy one but man did I crash about lunch time...def needed to stop and get caffeine. But it went ok. John dropped me off at the airport around 4 and I took a much needed nap on the flight from St. Louis to Memphis. Got into Memphis and dammit I booked myself back into the hotel I stayed in last time I was there which is near the airport but has no restaurants around it. Luckily there was a Marriot next door so I went and ate at their restaurant. Oh yeah I almost forgot I spent alot of time on the phone both at the account and in the airport, OSU hit the fan as well as a couple other accounts. when it rains it pours.
Wednesday I slept in a bit but got up and spent the morning teaching myself/practicing on our new analysis software cuz after lunch I was going to an account to teach a fairly high profile customer how to use it. Nothing like pressure to get ya workin! Luckily the afternoon went very well and she was very happy with how it went, which meant I got good Kudos from sales. I had a 7:30 direct flight to Orlando so I managed to get home by 10pm and I was already at 38 hours so I knew that was it for the year!!
Thursday I slept in and then took a 3 hour nap in the afternoon too; guess I really was beat from the last few weeks of work. Friday I couldn't do much either cuz I was waiting on a furniture delivery and then had to go pick up another piece in person, plus finish up a bunch of work paperwork but finally it was done and Yesssss vacation until the 4th of january! woo! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I think things got worse not better this week heh.
Monday morning did the usual conference calls and then fly back to Columbus Ohio. Tuesday went back into Ohio State and walked into a nightmare...the first sytem was in an endless windows boot cycle and wouldn't start up. I managed at first to get it to boot in safe mode but even that eventually was not working. Looks like they did some windows updates over the weekend (which we tell them not to do!!) and it screwed it all up. I spent most of the day trying to get into windows to back up the validation data and finally did after having to repair windows, then I had to reimage the system and reload everything...and of course this happens on the day the sales rep AND my boss are there. So that ended up sucking up most of my day, I did manage to partially get systems #2 and #3 up before I had to scoot for the airport for my evening flight...took the boss along and we got caught up.
So tuesday night I flew down to Atlanta, got a rental car there (brand new HHR with 7 miles, which I did not like, just didnt sit well in it!) and got over to the hotel about 10:30pm or so. Woke up Wednesday morning and went down to the hotel lobby to do another sales/service breakfast meeting with the southeastern people. Then went with the Atlanta sales rep...we were going to do 2 quick "courtesy" visits in Atlanta and then drive on over to Augusta. yeah. The first visit turned into a 5 hour nightmare; they had problems we just couldnt figure out AND things were breaking as we were there. I even had to call the engineer back over to fix something on one of the systems. oh and again no lunch break. We finally got out of there at 4, cancelled the second visit and drove the 3 hours to Augusta. Got into the hotel and Cathy (sales) and I had a nice dinner, which we felt we deserved! Especially since I was at 39 hours already this week!!
Thursday we went into a lab in Augusta that has been one of my problem child accounts...silly stuff with reporting and Michael had come in from California to set up some ms-XL macro's (which we normally dont do) and I was asked to go in and tweak them and fix some bugs. Which meant I was, as usual, learning on the fly. Took me the entire day (and cathy helping for the first half) but I finally got it all working right. Then drove back to Atlanta, had dinner and got on the plane and flew back home to Orlando. got in after midnight and collapsed into bed. Yes, this time I managed to get to 60 hours by thursday!! However the 40 hours (between last week and this week) in my next paycheck is gonna look awfully nice.
Friday afternoon Luke came by again and we went furniture shopping for my place. 3 tables, a bookcase and a chair for the living room, 2 paintings for the hallway. Glad I made all that overtime cuz I think I just spent most of it. Then had to run down to South Orlando to meet with the doc. Saturday morning I felt like I had not slept well so I didnt do much during the day; Sunday I felt better after I slept in. Had to run back down to south orlando to do the Give Kids thing which at least there I usually get to see some of the gang.
then at 2am I finally discovered why I had not been sleeping well...there was a medium size frog that had gotten into the house and was jumping and bumping around the office/bedroom end of the house and giving me the willies. I finally caught him and ejected him to the backyard at like 2am monday morning...yeah and i've gotta be up at 7 for conference calls meh. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Wow this week turned out to be much worse than I thought. Monday morning did the usual conference calls and then flew up Pensacola via Atlanta, delays as usual but got into hotel at a decent enough hour. Got up early on tuesday and got over to the account, did what I had to, had lunch with the sales rep, finished up at the account and then went over to the airport and flew up to Columbus Ohio, got in there at 10 and had to stop and get food cuz I missed getting any dinner because of the connection timings. Rental is a 2009 or 10 civic and I'm really disliking it. Gauges are weird.
Wednesday got up early to make 8am breakfast meeting with the sales and service teams, including my former boss. Most of the sales ppl didnt show of course. We had like a 3 hour breakfast and then went over to Ohio State where the one clinical lab there had just bought 6 new systems oy vey! It was looking to be really complicated because they had existing systems and they wanted each new one brought up, validated and then swapped out in place of an older one, plus half the systems were going in a new research lab. I kinda took a chance when I set up my week that the instruments would be there when I got there, only 2 had shipped before thanksgiving. So Galen, Erin (salesperson) and I got there around 11 and the other 4 instruments had arrived, so while Steve (service) set up the first one Galen, Erin and I helped some of the lab people bring the other 5 up from the loading dock and uncrate them and get them lifted onto the counters. ughh...manual labor. and we didnt take a lunch break meh. We finished up at 5 and we all went and had dinner but I was already at 35 hours by wed night.
Thursday and friday morning I spent getting the first system set up and validated in the lab, the lab supervisor and I had some technical differences that slowed things down but by the time I left for the airport on friday after lunch it was running fine and he was happy. I finally got back home around 11pm on friday and boy was I beat...and once I recovered on saturday and calculated I did indeed crack 60 hours, which does mean 20 hours of overtime.
Saturday I spent the day recovering but in the evening Matthew called me and invited me to go out for drinks (mistake!) so I went and picked him and ryanS up and met up with Chris and Peter and a few others at the Ale House. After the week I had I needed it and ended up downing 5 draft Bass Ales...which meant I spent Sunday pretty much hung over and recovering ughh. And tomorrow I head back to Ohio to set up the second sytem. joy, more cold and rain. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| This week was pretty quiet all things considered. I worked monday-wedneday but did it from home; basically noone wants a visit on a short holiday week unless its a real emergency so I was covering for the team in case something came up, but nothing did. Thursday I drove over to Tampa and had a quiet Thanksgiving meal with my Dad, stepmother and stepgrandmother....yeah just the 4 of us but we managed to put away the usual 2 bottles of wine and bottle of champagne (well only 1/2 on the bubby cuz it exploded all over the kitchen on Dad when he went to open it!). Dinner was good, I carved the turkey as usual and we had a long slow dinner around the table just catching up on things. My stepmother has adjusted very well to retirement and she hasn't tried or wanted to kill my dad yet heh.
Otherwise I spent the holiday weekend at home just relaxing for the most part...it was quiet on the social front but I needed some down time and it looks like the next couple of weeks are gonna be rough work-wise...I think I may have over scheduled a bit.
Oh yea and the strange new thanksgiving phenomenon is....when all your relatives find you and friend you on Facebook!
Whoops I almost forgot...Luke came down on Saturday and we went artwork shopping for the house; got 2 paintings for the living room, one for the library, one for the guest bedroom and another one that we liked but didnt know where to put, but it ended up looking great at the end of the hallway. He also helped me organize all my degrees, certificates, etc. for one of the walls of the library. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So, just a quick update. I'm doing well. ^^ been working a lot, which is a good thing. keeps me busy, plus it's money! they are talking about bumping me to full time sooner because my sales are the highest in the store. that makes me happy. I'm part time and doing better than the full timers. =P
I've had a couple of rough days though. Every once in awhile I get that feeling that I don't belong. Doesn't happen often, but I just feel out of place sometimes. I guess it's because I'm so used to being the one leading the way when it comes to work and home, but things are different now. I'm still trying to find my place I guess. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy up here, but, I'm still trying to find my place. I have a different mentality than most up here. Blame it on my "southern roots". It's a different way of thinking and acting up here and I'm still not used to it. Just gonna take me a bit to find my corner. I do feel alone sometimes, more so than I expected really. after 5 years of being in a relationship, the transition to single life isn't that easy. But, that's something I don't want to discuss here.
Had two setbacks on the car. I finally got the new alternator in, but it wasn't the right one. So I sent it back and hopefully will get the right one next week when i go in for the engine work. Also got the weather stripping in. I began to install it yesterday when it decided to rain. The old weather stripping was just falling apart in my hand, so I had to work quick. Upon getting the new stuff in, I realized it's still not the right stuff. And, because it's a cut to fit product, I can't return it. I think I've found the right stuff, waiting to hear back from a couple of folks on it, but looks like it's going to cost me another 60 bucks for the right stuff. Not to happy about that. And it's going to have to wait because I've got the ex's car payment coming up as well as child support, so that's going to tap me out for funding.
Not much else to say right now. I'm home today so I'm just gonna clean house and stuff. I might be online a little later. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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