Archive for June, 2009

Traveling jitters

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

I’m dealing with some anxiety today.  The cup of coffee this morning probably wasn’t the best idea ever.  I’m awake, but now I’m a little bit jittery.

We’re flying to Vermont tomorrow morning.  Our flight is around 11:30 out of Jacksonville, Florida, so we’re leaving home around 7:30 so we have plenty of time to navigate our way there and check in and navigate our way around the airport.

I don’t like airports.

They’re big and loud and confusing.  There are people everywhere, rushing around, waiting around, running, sitting, talking on cell phones, typing on laptops.  Garbled voices on overhead speakers make announcements from underwater, decrypted only by other employees of the airport, but they’re not telling.  Planes are late, delayed, routed to different gates.  Stone-faced security people run wands over my limbs that beep at the underwire in my bra, they pull everything out of my luggage, they examine the bottoms of my feet.

Flying doesn’t bother me.  Once I get on the airplane, I’m better.  I have a seat, I have my luggage, I’ve accomplished everything I needed to accomplish to complete my part of the deal.  All the other people in the plane have their own seats, have their own business, and we can all sit there, neatly organized in rows and columns, and wait.  There’s no chaos.  No rushing and waiting.  Just sitting and watching the familiar routine of the flight.

And I am getting much better about it.  There was a while there when something would happen to me every single time I went to the airport.  Usually I was pulled aside for extra security checks.  Because a short, blonde chick is apparently a security risk.

This will be my second flight with Justin.  Flying with someone is so much better than flying alone, except I tend to worry about both of us, then, instead of just me.  And if I don’t watch it, I’ll let myself get worked up because I know that he’s there to handle everything.  When I was traveling alone, I had to hold it together because no one else was there to help me.  I very much prefer flying with Justin than flying alone.

So, once we navigate our way to the airport, get to our plane, fly to Vermont, and collect our luggage from the Burlington airport, the next several days will be spent with Justin’s friends, family, and family friends.  There’s the graduation and the parties, rubbing elbows with people I know pretty well, kind of well, and know not at all.  And I know that, really, it’s all going to go perfectly well.  I get along with his friends and his family, and I can mingle with strangers just fine.

I’m just dealing with pre-travel jitters.

My computer is lying in pieces on the floor of my office.  Justin is trying to get something working and it’s not been going very well.  Yesterday, I went into my office and my computer was running in loops—turning on, booting up, starting to load Windows, freaking out, turning off . . . turning on, booting up . . . .  In the end, it should run much better, but it’s going to wait until we get back from our trip.

We have one load of laundry sitting in the dryer and one more load going in today so we have full drawers of clean laundry to choose for our luggage.  The luggage is sitting on my trunk in my office, pulled out from my closet yesterday evening so I could look at carry-on and purse options.  The purse options left me sitting on the bed reorganizing my purse to see if the wallet-insert would work well, while the carry-on bag sat in my office with a magazine and a couple books waiting to be packed.

Today, I have to make sure that everything I need to accomplish gets done before I leave at 6:00.  The biggest project, a document out for review by the guys for the project completion on Tuesday, is out and waiting for comments or signatures of approval.  I have to review a document that’s up for discussion at a meeting I’m going to miss tomorrow and hopefully pass on my comments.  I’m supposed to find information for an article for the department newsletter.  I need to find information about a Lean project I’m chairing so I can get started on that as quickly as possible.  And find out information on an expense report that I need to get submitted.

When I get home, I need to:

  • Unload the dishwasher
  • Load the dirty dishes
  • Water the plants
  • Unplug my fountain because it’ll dry up and run on empty and that’s bad
  • Fold the laundry in the dryer
  • Ask Justin to wash the last load of laundry
  • Dry and fold the last load of laundry
  • Charge all my electronic devices
  • Pack
  • Remember to pack Jessi’s card
  • Remember to pack the stuff Rose wanted from the attic
  • Find a way to print off the directions and travel stuff
  • Eat
  • Sleep
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Grace in small things

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

8 June 09

  1. Delicious-smelling lotion on freshly-shaved legs.
  2. A coworker’s stapler encased in green Jell-O. With a Kaizen worksheet attached.
  3. My fabulous gentleman of a husband taking out the new girl to lunch because so far no one else at his office is treating her with any respect.
  4. Being recognized because my face was on a 5S presentation.
  5. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog

9 June 09

  1. 10 more days of work before my 4-week long vacation (counting today).  Yeah, so it’s a mostly unpaid vacation and I’m kind of freaking out about money that I won’t be making, but hey!  FOUR WEEKS of vacation.
  2. Making good progress on multiples projects at work.
  3. An unexpected (to me) check from our state taxes.  Apparently Justin knew about it, but I didn’t think we were getting anything from any of our taxes.  So I’m pleasantly surprised.
  4. Clean laundry
  5. Sorting out the detritus from my purse
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Grace in Small Things

Monday, June 8th, 2009

1 June 09

  1. Getting back into the office and *not* being totally overwhelmed by mountains upon mountains of work.
  2. Oodles of unexpected quality fun-time with my husband, playing games and laughing like a crazy person.
  3. Opportunities that could be really fantastic, if they turn out like we hope.
  4. Aloe vera spread lovingly across my burnt shoulders.
  5. Homemade baking powder biscuits that taste a whole lot like the biscuits you’d buy from a fast food place like KFC.

2 June 09

  1. A totally unexpected refund check from our federal taxes.  We were happy to not have to pay anything.  We were astonished to get money returned.
  2. Balancing the checkbook and seeing that we’re still coming out ahead, for the most part.  I mean, sure, we were in the red for May, but we spent almost double that amount on airplane tickets and car registration.
  3. Yummy pasta for dinner.
  4. NCIS
  5. Curling up and reading in bed with Justin.

3 June 09

  1. I have a beautiful new nephew named Isaac!  Yea!
  2. I was 30 minutes early to my doctor’s appointment for blood work, so I sat in my car, windows down, reading a book, enjoying the cool freshness of the early morning air.
  3. A fresh box of facial tissues.
  4. Apple crisp:  The perfect solution for slightly overripe apples, minimal budget, and minimal preparation time.
  5. Laughing at geeky jokes with my husband while curling up to go to sleep.

4 June 09

  1. I got a silver award from my boss for my hard work in the 5S program in our area.  It comes with $50 to use at the Walmart across the way from here and another plaque to hang on my wall.  I’m so pleased!
  2. Justin haggled our way into a really great birthday/graduation present for his sister, that isn’t going to blow the bank and lets us get her something really, really useful and nice.
  3. Cool summer rainstorms with sporadic rain and thunder.
  4. Sitting in my favorite chair in Justin’s office reading while he pokes at his computer.
  5. And then having him wake me up and put me into bed because I fell asleep while reading.

5 June 09

  1. Happy anniversary to Mom and Dad!  I love you both so much!
  2. Spending $50 that I got as an award on fun things at Walmart, including an outfit for the graduation coming up.
  3. Scattered rain showers in between clear blue skies.
  4. Singing along with the car radio as loud as I like.
  5. Justin, driving behind me, laughing at me singing in the car.

6 June 09

  1. Sleeping in and eating sweet rolls in bed while watching TV (Stargate: Atlantis).  Is there a better way to start the day?
  2. A balanced checkbook.
  3. Exploring calendar options and other organizing things on my computer.
  4. Cheering up my husband by spending time with him making and eating dinner together.
  5. Deciding last minute to catch the last showing of the day of the new Terminator movie.

7 June 09

  1. Knowing more and more people at church and being able to chat with them.
  2. Finding the perfect graduation card for Jessi.
  3. Finally hiding the garden hose at the front of the house inside an unused oversized flower pot.  It looks so great!
  4. Watching my husband wash off the back of the house because it’s getting more and more green with mold.  Knowing that he’s doing it because he feels the need, now and then, to do chores and activities that improve the house and don’t involve my participation.
  5. Getting into discussions with the small group I’m in about the sermon series.
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Office reactions to my trip to Atlanta

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

I’ve been answering a lot of questions around my office about my trip to Atlanta.   A lot of it is just casual interest, wanting to know where I’d gone and what I had been doing and how it all went.  They’re not terribly interested in what I was doing, just typical office chit-chat.

David, my manager-boss, the guy who volunteered me and sent me up there, actually hasn’t asked about it at all, but I suspect it was because he was heading out of town yesterday afternoon and had a lot to take care of.  He’s out for the rest of the week, along with several other guys from the office and it is crazy quiet around here.

My director, however, did ask about it when I passed his office to make sure he’d been able to find a document.  He seemed pleased that I’d been able to help out and hopefully manage to get the people I worked with to get a little bit ahead.

What gets me really confused is the attitude that I feel from people around my office toward the people who I went up to help.  My director’s comment was that they are so unbelievably slow.  Another coworker described the office where I was visiting as “the lion’s den” where I should be careful because they’re likely to grill me about what we’re doing over here.  He was joking, and the director’s comment was light-hearted, too, but I’m struggling with it.

I understand that the office where I went last week is a government office with oversight responsibilities for our company.  As such, they’re known for picking on what we do to make sure that we’re doing it “by the book,” so to speak, which is precisely what they’re there to do.  And the people I spoke with were both incredibly overwhelmed and buried underneath the massive amounts of paperwork that we send to them on a daily basis.

My suspicion is that people down here have no idea what’s happening up in Atlanta.  But it’s “the Man” and they’re not going to just sit back and take it.  They’re going to say little insidious comments and jokes and complain about it and look at the whole situation as an Us vs. Them situation.

I just don’t get it.

Now, part of the reason why they’re so slow might be because they’re buried under mountains of paperwork that they haven’t found ways to effectively corral.  Part of what I did while I was there was to try to make headway into that problem.  I didn’t get nearly as far as I would have liked, but we made some progress.

And now that I’m back here, I’m trying to work with people here to make things work better for people up there.  There are small things that we can do that make things easier for the people in Atlanta.  And, coincidentally, easier for a handful of people down here, too.

In Atlanta, I never got that Us vs. Them feeling about the situation.  What I got was enormous gratitude for my willingness to help and the sense that they were trying to do something similar for us—that their position in their office is to help my company succeed.  And they’re working as hard as they can to make sure that’s possible.  What do they get from us in return?  Complaints and bitterness.

Why is that?  And what can I do to help change that?

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My Atlanta trip

Monday, June 1st, 2009

So, where were we?

Last week I went to Atlanta to help out a couple people who work alongside my company, i.e. we send them lots and lots of paperwork.  I won’t go too far into depth, but I’ll give a few highlights:

Atlanta is not my favorite city.  I was fortunate enough to have a hotel room directly across the parking lot from the office where I was working, but I had to go out to get meals and every time was a challenge, both to get somewhere and not get lost, but to also find somewhere where being a woman sitting by herself wasn’t going to get me into trouble.  I’m probably oversensitive and prone to being more fearful than I need to be, but I’d rather be safe.

Thank God for AAA and for rental cars.  My office sent me up in a rental car and on Wednesday I had a flat tire.  AAA showed up at my hotel to put on the spare tire and Hertz let me exchange the car for another one so I could make it home.  And the clerk here was actually at the desk when I got home at 10:00 so she was able to tell me that the man at the counter in Atlanta airport was going to charge me for a tank of gas.  And she believed me that he had it wrong and didn’t charge me for it.

I was able to really give some help to the woman I worked with for most of my time in Atlanta.  I sorted through 3 boxes of paperwork and identified problems in folders, indexed 4 boxes of files, and gave some recommendations and tips on how to tackle the organizing of the rest of her space.  I also helped a gentleman sort through a stack of papers and get him started on getting those organized (10-year old pieces of paper = ridiculous) and gave him recommendations on how to handle incoming papers that would generally end up on that same stack.  You’d think that so much of these papers could just get thrown into the trash, but no!  The nature of the business requires that they get saved and filed and recorded.  Stacks and stacks and stacks of papers everywhere.

But I think I was able to introduce the idea of 5S enough that they might be able to get it started in their offices.  And that would be a huge step because that place is being held together by paperclips.  The papers filling those offices could outweigh a couple elephants.  It’s absolutely absurd.

Friday, after resting away the morning after traveling home late into the evening, I got to help the children’s pastor at my church organize her office.  That was a crazy amount of fun.  We got through the first stage of the process in the few hours we had:  We tidied up the place and found everything a home.  When I go back in July (scheduling around camps and traveling is so much fun) we’re going to dig into her filing cabinets and storage spaces and work out how exactly she’s going to be able to stay organized in the long run.  At that point, we’ll look at how her office is actually organized as a whole, too, and figure if there’s a better way to do it.  I’m fairly comfortable with how it is, but I want to explore it a little anyway.

And then I relaxed the weekend away, getting a brilliant sunburn on Sunday by weeding my flowerbed and going swimming.  You could roast marshmallows on my shoulders.  Poor decision-making in action!

And now I’m back home for a relaxing week of working and catching up.  Next Thursday we fly to Vermont for my sister-in-law’s high school graduation.  We’ll get back Monday afternoon/evening.  I’ll work that week and the week after that and then I’m off for the month of July.

I’m looking forward to it more and more.  I’m ready for a break!

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