12 posts tagged “work”

Five day weekends are a glorious thing.

Christmas: I had a lovely time visiting with my family.  And because it rained on Christmas Day, 99.9% of the snow was gone by the time I came home.  That was an awesome Christmas gift :o)

Work: More of the same.  At least we have an organization chart now.  Hopefully priorities will be established shortly and I'll have some idea of what else I'll be working on.

Home: I went through the papers and boxes in the office and threw out five full black bags plus set aside a full shred box.  All the stuff in the hallway was taken to Goodwill.  So I'm ending off the year with less stuff than I started with.  Always a good thing.

Hobbies: Haven't made much progress on either the crafting or reading.  I probably should start turning off the computer earlier.  And sad to say flute seems to be the first thing pushed aside.  Which will make my next flute lesson very pathetic.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season.  Happy New Year!

I'm still in a bit of a shock that's it's already Thanksgiving.  When did that happen?  Wasn't my birthday a couple weeks ago???  I plan to spend a couple days with my family and then a couple days at home.  The perfect Thanksgiving in my mind.

Work: No change from September.  Which means it's still chaotic and unorganized and no one knows what the hell going on.  Add in the fact that there has been discussions of those of us at the capital to the other building (which is a good 30 mins away from the capital) and I'm frustrated and incredibly disappointed with certain people.

Home: No progress at all beyond cleaning out the craft room closet.  And all of that stuff is still sitting in my hallway *eyeroll*

Crafts: I finished the holiday gifts last month.  So I made this cute scarf for myself.  I just need to finish up the green socks I started a while ago so I can start on some newer larger projects.

Flute!: I finally got around to contacting a flute instructor and had my first lesson last week.  I've decided one hour biweekly lessons is the way to go.  And it's coming back to me despite it being 2 years since my last lesson.

And Car:  And I will keep it clean.  Some idiot (who lives several doors down from me) decided he could not wait for me to turn left into my driveway and decided to go around me.  On the left.  Which means my car is now sporting a large dent above the driver's back wheel.  Needless to say I was beyond pissed.  That he got charged for following too closely is the only bright spot.  I'm waiting to hear from the insurance to get the fixing details worked out.

I hope everyone has a marvelous Thanksgiving! 

Seeing how I can't curl up in a ball and take a nap . . .

Work

• Between the state fiscal issues, the new CIO, the reorganization due to the new CIO and general division nonsense, things are all over the place.  I'm kind of wishing I had applied for a local job I saw though it would have involved a pay cut (via more expensive benefits).  We'll see.
  

Home

• I had a small cookout for my birthday and so everyone could see the house.  It was a lot of fun.  I ended up having a dessert table and got chocolate from a number of family, friends and co-workers.  They know me so well :o)  The weather was suppose to be perfect but it rained after everything was cleaned up.  Annoying but the timing could have been a whole lot worst.
• Other than cleaning and normal maintenance for the party, nothing has changed since the shutters.

Crafts

• Started a few things and haven't finished anything lately.  Given I have 17 books checked out of the library the past couple weeks and another 2 are waiting to picked up this weekend (as I just *had* to research 2 topics at the same time), I think things may be on-hold for a little bit . . .

Other

• Babies, babies and more babies.  One friend just had her twins.  Another friend is having twins at the end of the year.  Another three friends plus an acquaintance announced pregnancies in the past month.  To complete the set, all I need are a call from my best friend and emails from two other friends . . .

So I've been on vacation since July 2.  Needless to say I am not looking forward to next Tuesday which will be my first day back.

So far I've:

• Cleaned the house
• Went to Home Depot once and Lowe's 5 or 6 times in 3 days.
  
• Trying to take the damn shutters down so I can paint them.  All of the metal screws have gone to pot after 48 years of element exposure.  $30+ later and the damn things are still up.  So they are next on the "Dad, I need help!" list.
• Repainted the cabinet in the bathroom so it doesn't look as grungy
• Cooked garlic chicken & pepper kabobs and corn on the cob on the grill
  
• Knitted
• Saw Up, which I enjoyed
  
• Saw the butterfly exhibit at the botanical garden.  It was nice but in no way did it compare to the awesomeness that is the Butterfly Center at Callaway Gardens.
• Spent 3.5+ hours in a new-to-me used bookstore and brought a bunch of books
• Checked out the new JoAnn and had a smoothie
• Read
  
• Took my car for an oil change, alignment and getting one new tire.  It so should not have taken 3 freakin' hours to do. 
  
• A couple days later I took the car to get the annual inspection and the tech did my car first since I was waiting so that only took an hour instead of the 2-3 hours I was expecting.  So I guess it evens out in the end.
• Mowed the front yard
  

Other stuff:
Work -- we're finally finished with the build.  Halle-freakin'-lujah.  Our agency merged with a larger agency; so far this has been pretty much a non-event.  Things are still up in the air, though, about what we will be doing long-term.  So much for state gov't stability.

House -- I finished the front flower beds and think they look oh so much better than the boxwoods and azaleas.  I'm planning to redo them this fall/next spring as I want to make a flower bed near the driveway (so I have less to mow :o) and plant some dwarf azaleas, some dwarf crape myrtles and some hyacinths and maybe crocuses.

Crafts -- I finished both pairs of teal socks.  Holiday gifts are up next.

Other -- No ALA annual conference for me this year, which is sad as I enjoyed Chicago last time and will miss seeing everyone.  But next year is in DC, so I'm planning to crash that one (seeing how I let my membership lapse).

Work
*sigh* I'm still working on the same damn stuff that was originally suppose to be done mid-April.  Now it's looking mid-June.  Add to that the number of unknowns related to my agency merging with another agency and things are becoming incredibly frustrating. 

At least my coworkers are a bright spot.  Nothing like seeing one take a cane Office Space-style to a piñata. :o)

House  
The only progress inside is a ceiling fan in my bedroom and rehanging things in the living room.  

Progress outside is at a crawl.  Dad helped me get rid of the boxwoods and a privet bush.  I chopped down the azaleas the other day and got rid of the branches in my car (which of course made a mess I had to clean up).  I finished moving the damn landscape rocks out of one flower bed and am slowly clearing them out of the other one.  Once that's done, I need to till the beds and buy some plants to plant.  Hopefully it'll be done in the next few weeks.

Crafts
I haven't made much of any progress on the navy & teal socks and actually made negative progress on the other teal socks when I had to rip out part of the heel to redo the sizing.  

Other
My trip to NYC was a lot of fun.  The highlights: Thai food, Indian food, marvelous gelato, yummy cupcakes, the Staten Island Ferry, Central Park and the musical Coraline, which was absolutely amazing.  

Work:  As irritating as usual and it looks like the agency isn't taking over the application.  Grrrrr.

House:  Slowly making a bit of progress.  I took down the bathtub doors and painted the ceiling and walls.  It looks 100x better.  The shower curtain I brought was so not the color they said (damn Bed Bath & Beyond) so I need to sew a couple of curtain panels together.  The high point of the month was the all encompassing spreadsheet of what I want to do.  I'm also taking a 4 day landscape design class at the botanical garden.  I'm halfway done with it and it's interesting.  We'll see if it helps any when I actually get around to doing something with the outside.

Crafts:  I started a pair of purple socks that I had hoped to finish by the end of February but life got in the way. Also the purple sweater I'm crocheting has been neglected due to life. 

But I have a snow day today (6+" of snow! and it's still coming down!).  I probably should make an attempt to dig out once the snow stops but otherwise I haven't quite decided if I'm going to be productive or to blow everything off.  Decisions decisions.  In the meantime, pictures!

Work

• More of the same plus frustrating, irritating and annoyingly chaotic.
• But the agency that owns the application my group supports will be taking over the support.  This will free my group to do other things.  I've started working on some of those things but I will be so glad when the transition is complete and I no longer have to worry about election stuff.
• Speaking of elections, we watched the Inauguration in the conference room on the projector with sound coming from an old tv.  Less than ideal but it worked.
  

Holidays

• The ballet was interesting.  Oddly I think I preferred the Columbus Metro Ballet company version I saw a few years ago.  To me it just makes more sense that the Sugar Plum Fairy & Prince dance a lot instead of Clara & The Nutcracker.
• One of my best friends ended up coming up New Years Eve to hang out.  It was nice.  I made her go to many furniture stores with me on New Years Day.
• Between two days off (for Lee-Jackson Day and MLK Jr Day) and a sick day this month, I haven't worked a full five day week since mid-December.  Next week is going to be rough. :o)
  

House

• Since I had two days off , I made progress on the little painting stuff.  Still have some things to do (like the kitchen ceiling, the attic door and some trim in the utility room).
• I also got some things that had been lingering done like hanging the blinds in the utility room, removing the adhesive on my failed window film attempt, and putting up the middle bracket in the dining room (which required shorter screws).
  
• I've decided I need to do *something* with the bathroom.  So in the near future it's going to lose the tub enclosure (I hates it muchly), gain a shower curtain, and be painted the same color as the rest of the house.  I'm hoping all of that will also make it less white and icy.
• I need to spend some time figuring out what else I need and want to do.  Replacing all of the interior doors is high on the list; I'm just not sure I can do them without help.
  

Crafts

• I finished the sweater and very much love it despite the two rows I complete screwed up.
• As I needed something to counteract all that lace knitting, I'm now knitting a simple white shrug to wear with a brown & white sundress I got on clearance last fall.
• I also finally crocheted the hat my coworker wanted.  She's wore it every day since I gave it to her which makes me happy.
  

Work

• Thanks to the Governor giving us extra time off, I'm only working 2 days this week and 2 days next week.  It would have been immensely nicer to have the two weeks completely off but with two co-workers out, I'm making do with what I have.
• Otherwise same old stuff.
  

Holidays

• I'm heading down to my mom's for a few days on Christmas Eve.  I still need to make plans with one of my best friends.
• On the 27th, I'm going to the ballet with my aunt.  The Moscow Ballot is presenting the Nutcracker.  It'll be my second Nutcracker, which isn't so bad for someone who is pretty meh about ballet.
• No plans for New Years Eve but that's the way I like it.
  

House

• I finally organized my 3rd bedroom (aka craft/guest room) yesterday.  And because it was all clear, I went ahead and painted.  It was a relief to finish.  I still need to paint trim so I can move all my craft stuff back into the room.
  
• After that I'll have little relatively things to paint (e.g., doorways, a wall in my utility room, ceiling in the kitchen). 
  

Crafts

• Having finished my last Christmas gift, I'm finally making progress on my sweater.  I'd like to finish it by Jan 5, so we'll see. 
  
• I also started a pair of socks to work on while at a friend's winter commencement.  They're purple :o)
  

I brought a Tillandsia for work.  It looks like a tribble so my coworker has decided his name is Trouble.  Then she and my manager thought it was necessary to put googly eyes on him.  :o)

* I'm fairly settled into the apartment.  My bedroom teeters between clean and a complete disaster.  The office stays a disaster.  At this point I think I need a couple days of nothing else going on to get things straighten up.  Don't see that happening anytime soon . . .

* Work is work.  Last Friday was the one month mark.  We had the annual conference and second part of training on the application last week.  Both were interesting but exhausting.

* I saw some of my relatives this weekend while at home for my best friend's birthday party.  We went to the beach.  I'm pretty sure I hadn't been down to the beach since I worked at Arby's between freshman & sophomore years of college.  It was crowded and the sand was hot.  I wasn't in the right mood to enjoy the beach so it was more of a hassle than anything else.

* I saw Stardust (based on Neil Gaiman's marvelous book).  While I loved the 2nd part (starting when the unicorn appears), I wasn't as enamored of the first part -- it seemed slower than necessary to me.  The changes they made I think worked well.  And Robert De Niro was a hoot.  It's on my "DVDs to buy" list.

* When I saw Transformers I was quite unimpressed with the movie previews they showed (with the untitled 1-18-08 movie being the exception).  I think I want to see almost all the moves they showed this time including The Golden Compass and The Spiderwick Chronicles.

* I have tickets to see Wolves in the Walls (based on another of Neil Gaiman's marvelous books) in NYC in October.  I'm very much looking forward to it and hanging out with hollychrome again.  As I saw the adaption of Stardust a couple years ago in Chicago, seeing Wolves was high on my Want! list.  I'm still miffed the Neverwhere adaption in Louisiana closed before ALA New Orleans started.

* I saw a local professional production of Into The Woods last Thursday.  I loved the first act.  The second act didn't seem to fit with the first one so it was jarring.  I wasn't also expecting so much death in it.  Not something I'm likely to see again.

* I had ice cream with a friend I met at a summer program between junior & senior years of high school.  We had kept in touch but hadn't seen each other since that summer.  It was nice to catch up on each other's lives.   I also had dinner with a high school friend I hadn't seen in 6 years.  Being closer has its perks and disadvantages.

* The VA Opera is doing a production of Pirates of Penzance.  While I love it, I've already seen one of their productions of it (it was set in WWII London and Pirates was a play within the play -- it was good but not what I was expecting).  The upcoming production is suppose to be traditional.  The Opera Columbus production I saw a few years ago was just perfect so I'll probably pass on it.