• Finish getting R—’s trip to Denver set up with the travel department
• Get the food set up for A—’s lunch presentation to the big-wigs
• Finish linking the cells in the Excel workbook with the source document
• Work the math out to figure out the hours spent per department on this project last week
• Follow up with several people regarding deadlines for projects due this week
• Figure out how to ship that box back to the supplier
• Get a hold of S— in finance and get the right account charged for that event
• Get the standardized template out to the guys for updates on their tasks
• And more…

My hand is doing much better.  All the symptoms from yesterday are gone except for a little tenderness around the wrist joint and the burn actually hurt today — it didn’t yesterday and maybe that should have told me something…  Anyway, it’s much better today.

Mom, please feel free to call whenever you’d like!  I usually have people over one evening of the weekend, so you’d need to call before 6 on the weekend.  Otherwise, call after 7 and I’m usually home by then.  I can email you a more detailed example of my schedule if you’d like.

The biggest part of my day today was spent coordinating a lunch for the directors and VP over the project I’m working for.  I set up the meeting last week.  I ordered food for it yesterday.  The meeting was scheduled from 11-12 and lunch would be provided.  At 9:45 this morning, my boss told me he thought they were going to move the meeting up from 10 – 11 and did I already order the food?  Oh.  Well, he’d call me in 1/2 hour and tell me what to do.

Half an hour later, the meeting was back on schedule and I went to Zaxby’s to pick up the food.  Three trips back to the car and a hefty charge on my corporate card and I was back in my car and on my way to the building with the meeting.

I am very thankful that I ran into someone there who helped me unload everything from my car and then the woman who was helping me get this organized told me where to set up the food.  My boss was already in the meeting and didn’t know where the food was going to be set up because there was a last minute change about where that was happening, so I had to step into the meeting and motion to my boss to let him know where it was.

And then I waited to make sure that everything would go smoothly and that no one would steal the food and that people would know where to find the food.  And I waited.  And waited.  And watched the food get cold.  And waited.  And listened at the door of the meeting to make sure they were still in there (2 doors to the room).  And waited.  And an hour later, they made it out of their meeting.

I’m running the math on how long I think all those things took and I’m off somewhere, so maybe it wasn’t an hour, but it was definitely long enough that the food got cold.  And that was not the impression that I wanted to make on the VP and all the directors.  Not that I had anything to do with how long their meeting took at all.  But, like I told Justin when I called and ranted to him about this, it doesn’t matter one bit whether or not it was actually my fault.  It matters if the directors and VP think it was my fault.  If they think I could have done something to keep the food warm long enough, then that’s the impression that they’re going to have, accurate or not, and there’s nothing I can do about that.  And it’s very frustrating.

Anyway, the important people got their food. And then  I got my food.  And then the rest of the people who were in the room where the food was set up got to eat anything they would like because it’s just rude to make them all smell Zaxby’s for a couple hours and not let them eat any.  The directors/VP came back through to grab a final cookie.  And then I cleaned up the mess and took the leftovers back to my desk, where a handful of people were made very happy at the opportunity to eat the leftover salad and cookies and cold fries.

From start to finish — I left my desk at 10:30 and made it back to my desk after 1:00.  Nearly 1/3 of my day was spent fussing with food.

And yet I still managed to get almost everything done off my list I wrote up yesterday as well as a bunch of things that weren’t on the list.  And that might just explain why I’m so stupidly tired when I get home sometimes.

I haven’t felt like writing much lately.  I feel kinda bad about it because I know some of you come here every day to check if I’ve put up anything new.  But I just can’t get myself to write anything lately.  And it’s not that things are quiet — things are pretty busy, actually.  I have plenty of things that I could write about.  I just haven’t felt like I could open up the website and put anything down in words.

Are we done with winter yet?

Okay.  Update.  Randomness one paragraph at a time.  In no particular order.

Yesterday I accidentally burned my arm while doing my ironing.  I have a burn about 2 inches long on the outside of my right arm.  And when I went to bed, it was rubbing on the bedding, so I asked Justin to help me put an Ace wrap around it, covering the cotton swabs, covering the aloe, covering the burn.  (Don’t blame him for anything that comes after this — it was my stupid idea).  I woke up this morning and discovered I’d cut off circulation to my hand overnight. My hand was numb and tingling and swollen up so much I couldn’t make a fist and the knuckles on the back of my hands were little dimples.  It was possibly one of the freakiest things to wake up to see attached at the end of my arm.  I removed the wrap and started rubbing my hand and making fists to try to get the circulation going and by the time I got to work, it was considerably smaller.  Now, this evening, it’s back to normal size.  It’s not redder than my other hand anymore either.  But it is still a little tingling.  I went to talk with the nurse over lunch and she said there’s no permanent damage and it’ll right itself eventually.  But when we get to the store next, I’m buying gauze and medical tape and not wrapping my arm like that ever again.

Now that I’m working this job and I have more flexibility with my schedule, I’ve gone back to the four 9-hour days and 4-hours on Friday.  This means I get out of work at 4:30.  This means I can make it to the yoga classes held at the other building on Monday and Wednesday.  Which means I’m going to FREE yoga TWICE a week.  And it’s wonderful!  I missed yoga.  I find it interesting and humbling how much I remember about the poses and how much I’m not able to do them compared to when I was doing this more often and how I can do some poses without too much trouble but others are completely impossible for me right now.  Case in point:  Half Moon pose, modified so my hand is on a block instead of on the floor, I can do almost without falling over.  But Cow Face pose?  I can’t even get one leg over the other, not to mention trying to get my hands to grab one another.  Just getting seated to do that pose is impossible.  But I’m getting better and I’m getting stronger and I just have to give it time and keep working.  Plus, on days when I’m not doing yoga, Justin and I are trying to get out to go running, which will also help.

I’m irritated at my doctor and my pharmacist.  I called in early last week to refill two prescriptions.  One of them I got without much trouble.  The other one was out of refills and had to get called in by my doctor.  That was Tuesday.  They finally did that today.  And when I went to pick it up, the insurance won’t cover it until she calls in to explain why I’m taking it.  It’s for restless leg.  I’m taking it so I don’t kick Justin out of bed at night and cover his legs in bruises.  So I paid full price for 5 pills and I’m calling my doctor again tomorrow.  I actually went over to my doctor’s office on my lunch hour today to hand in paperwork to get my prescriptions moved to an online pharmacy, which will (I hope) make this whole thing much more streamlined.  I tried to get her to fill out that paperwork BEFORE CHRISTMAS but she didn’t get it done in the 10-day window that the paperwork required.  So I had to do it again, take it over, talk with the receptionist who told me that they could do it for the prescription that they renewed today (done before the current month’s pills are gone) but they’d like to wait until the other prescription is out of refills.  The whole thing is such a mess.  But at least we got Justin’s meds on the online thing and set up with automatic refills and hopefully won’t ever have to deal with him having to threaten malpractice to a doctor for not renewing his antidepressants.  That was not a fun day.

I have friends over every weekend now — we make dinner and watch Dr. Who.  It’s WONDERFUL.  The friends thing.  Dr. Who is good, too.  But mostly the friends thing.

We had a bunch of people at the house on Saturday a week ago.  Another game night when we open the house to whoever on the game group website would like to come over.  We had 8 people over, I think?  We played Apples to Apples and introduced 4 people to Munchkin for the first time.  It was a blast!

Things that are on my list of things to do at work tomorrow:

• Finish getting R—’s trip to Denver set up with the travel department
• Get the food set up for A—’s lunch presentation to the big-wigs
• Finish linking the cells in the Excel workbook with the source document
• Work the math out to figure out the hours spent per department on this project last week
• Follow up with several people regarding deadlines for projects due this week
• Figure out how to ship that box back to the supplier
• Get a hold of S— in finance and get the right account charged for that event
• Get the standardized template out to the guys for updates on their tasks
• And more…

Things on my list of things to do at home:

• Write thank you notes to Mom/Dad and Grandma.

But for now?  TIRED.  And going to bed.

The sun is rising earlier in the morning tomorrow than it did today and that makes things just a little bit better.

Also, there are windows in the building where I work now.  I can actually see the sunlight!  The windows are all northern facing so there’s no actual direct light at any point of the day, but there’s LIGHT.  And that is so much better than working in the white-walled, grey-cubicled, florescent-lighted box where I used to work.

The guy I used to work for contacted me yesterday to do a quick document review because he was seriously under the gun and needed help.  So I took an hour to look it over and get it all set except for the signature he’d have to get and the actual finalization of the physical document.  I work with his wife now (have I mentioned that before?) and she told me today that he was so thankful for the help.  She mentioned (to him) that I seemed really happy and that she thought that I enjoyed having more to do.  (At which point he got concerned that he shouldn’t have bothered me, which was silly because I wouldn’t have helped if I didn’t have time.)  But it made me happy to hear that she thought I looked happy.  I am happy!  It’s just good to know that it shows.

I am thoroughly enjoying my new job.  The days go by so quickly!  (Except for the meeting today from 9 – 11:45.  That was long.  And I didn’t understand half of it because they kept using acronyms that I didn’t know.)  My boss wants me to be there on Fridays so I’m back to my 9 hour days on Monday – Thursday and 4 hours on Friday; for this week anyway, while he decides if that’s going to work for him.  It’s either that shift or I’ll do overtime every single week to put in time on Fridays just because he wants me there that day.  We’ll see.  It’s tricky for me to actually excuse myself from my work at 4:30 (getting there at 7am) because there’s so much to do and people aren’t expecting me to be leaving at that time.  But I LOVE leaving at 4:30.  I get home before I’d usually get off work previously.  It’s still light out!  (Are you sensing a theme?)  Justin and I have gone for walks in the afternoon/evening because there’s time and light (LIGHT!).  My evenings are so much longer with just the addition of that one hour!  If I can talk my boss into this, it’s going to be AMAZING.  Plus, there’s a yoga class at work on Wednesdays at 5:00 and if I leave my building by 4:30, I can get to the main plant, change clothes, and get to the class.  Did I mention it’s free?  And that some of my previous coworkers (who I miss) are also in the class?

Of course, tomorrow I might have to go to a meeting from 4 – 5pm so I’d not make it to the class, but hopefully that won’t happen all the time. I went last week and it was SO FUN and I hurt for days.

My tailbone still hurts, by the way.  Guess how much fun that was in my 2 1/2 hour meeting today?

But other than the hours and the windows in my building, the work is just so much more interesting.  I still have so much to learn, but I’m starting to get the hang of things and starting to get these people organized.  They’ve really gotten disorganized, especially since their admin left back in November (November?  It’s kind of ab blur… ) and there’s been a lot of catching up to do for everybody.  Today I got people to start scheduling the overtime they’re planning to do over the weekend (if any) and start working on the reports about what they’re working on for the boss.  I learned how to order food for a big meeting that’s happening next week.  I found a ton of information for a bulletin board that I’m supposed to maintain.  I learned a lot about a schedule that we’re going to build and I’m going to maintain.  I sent a bazillion emails about a bazillion different things.  I sorted out items for a spreadsheet that will need to get tracked to make sure the items get done on time and reported to the right people.

I don’t sit still all day!  I get to help people.  And organize people.  And, okay, some of it’s annoying (trying to schedule a meeting with 14 people for 2 hours when there are only 3 conference rooms that really work for that many people, unless I want to put them into rooms that hold twice that many or make them stand the whole time, is SUPER ANNOYING) but most of it is interesting and challenging and I’m happy to be doing something that matters to people instead of staring at drawings and editing a book of information that no one cares to read and has the same information over and over and over again for each airplane.  My replacement started yesterday — she had orientation so I haven’t heard anything about her.  But maybe I’ll drop her a line tomorrow.

Anyway, today was a mix of hectic mixed with patches of “so what should I do now?”  Calling to get someone to fix the copier, emailing someone else to get toner cartridges for the printer, calling to get my phone number transferred over to my new desk, calling again to ask why only people in my building were able to call, setting up a meeting and calling people to make sure they’d be able to come to the meeting, and then getting an email saying that another meeting is being held at the same time involving most of the same people.  I’m going to let the boss figure out that one.  But I should probably still set up the coffee he asked for.  So far, it’s a lot of administraive assistant-type work, but I’m confident that it’s going to be a lot more than that.  Super admin plus!  I can order coffee AND plot all your tasks into Excel and Project and explain all about your resource issues!

I have a lot of tasks to learn:  they’re tracking a lot of information in a lot of different places and I have to figure out all those places and who needs what information and by when.  Having the boss away this week is actually going to be really helpful in that since I get to focus on what everybody else needs in the quiet of his absence.  After his return, things will pick up pace a lot.  So everything I can figure out this week will make next week so much easier.  Which is obvious, but still.  I’m glad it seems like I’ll get a quiet week to roll into this job.

Here’s hoping that my cold will finally go away so I can concentrate on the work!  And it’s be really fantastic if my tailbone would let me sit down on a chair like normal instead of sending spikes of pain up my spine.  Sitting without pain and not coughing up a lung, doesn’t sound like too much to ask, right?

Good luck on your first day tomorrow, Nathan!

Justin is blowing his nose a lot, but not really coughing (yet).  He’s also exhausted, but that’s partially because (a) when he woke up last night I was snoring so loudly it was hard to fall asleep and (b) when he closes his eyes sometimes, he feels like he’s falling.  That, obviously, makes it hard to fall asleep, too, so he’s been waking up and sitting in his office until the dizziness goes away and he’s able to fall back asleep.  I think his ears still feel weird, too, like they’re blocked up or won’t equalize, but I’m not really sure and I don’t feel like asking him right now.

Short and long of it is that we’re still sick.  I took an expectorant this afternoon, so hopefully that’ll help with my cough.  We both took a nap this afternoon.  We’ve been following Dad’s advice to “take it easy and drink lots of fluids.”  Hot chocolate counts, right?  We’re almost out of orange juice.

My hands are already much less chapped than they were on Tuesday.  It’s amazing to me how quickly my hands react to the change in humidity.

I used my new coffee maker this morning.  It was awesome!  We picked up coffee and filters at the store yesterday afternoon.  It’s so easy!  I mean, not as easy as Erica’s spiffy Keurig machine, but still pretty easy.  I’ll try to take pictures or something tomorrow morning when I do it again so I can show you.

We’re pretty sure that what hit me on Monday wasn’t the flu, mostly by the fact that Justin hasn’t had any stomach troubles at all.  Generally, he’s going to catch whatever it is that I’ve got, if it’s contagious.  It’s surprising that I got sick first this time, actually, with this stupid cold.  But my immune system was already taking a hit, so that’s probably how that happened.

I’m already frustrated at being sick.  My nose is sore and flaking and my head hurts.  It’s annoying and I’m ready for it to be done already.  I have stuff I wanted to do in the handful of days between getting home from our trip and going back to work.  But “the best laid schemes of mice and men” and all that.

You know, I just looked up that reference.  Did you know it’s from a poem from 1785?  It’s nearly impossible to read about half of it (link) because of the changes in English, but it’s a man talking to a mouse scampering away from the nest he just plowed up in his field.  (Wikipedia has a translation here.)  I find that interesting.

Anyway, I hope you’re all doing well.  I think I’m going to try to drag our luggage upstairs and try to get some semblance of tidiness to this place.  Or find another anime to watch and drink more hot chocolate…  Decisions, decisions…

This morning, I had to drag myself out of bed for a 9:00 dentist appointment, which I was late to because I set my alarm to ring at 9:30 instead of 8:30, so I woke up at 9:00 and ran out of the house.  I didn’t even brush my teeth!

And then we had a chiropractor appointment at 2:00 where I got to tell about falling down the stairs and get all the kinks twisted out of my neck.  So many kinks!!

Other than that, and picking up a bunch of stuff from the grocery store, we’ve been incredibly lazy.  Our luggage is still on the floor of the dining room — sprawling open because I dug through there to find my glasses at 9:00 and then pawed through there again to find my new tea infuser this afternoon.

I’m feeling miserable.  My tailbone is still kind of sore, especially after all that sitting on hard airplane seats.  But mostly my nose won’t stop dripping and I’m sneezing.  I keep getting chilled and my sinuses are raw.  It’s probably just a cold, but it’s not any fun at all.

Between the tailbone, the cold, the bruise I got from running into an armrest on the airplane, and the mild case of food poisoning I dealt with on Monday that’s still lingering a little bit, I’m just a mess.

I’m assuming that was food poisoning, anyway.  It lasted all Monday afternoon and evening, but I’m feeling mostly better now.  I got a little green in the grocery store for a while this afternoon, but I haven’t been having the stomach cramps since yesterday.  (Tim, Erica, Luke, and Krista, did any of you also eat the stuffed mushrooms at the Chinese buffet?  I’m trying to pin down what it might have been…)

I miss you all.  It was wonderful getting to see everybody!  And I am happy to be sleeping in my own bed and lounging on my own couch watching TV.  But I’ll be honest:  I almost started to cry several times between Sunday and yesterday evening, saying good-bye to everybody.  It sounds like everyone made it safely back to their destinations, even though several of us are still sick.  And I know we’re all ready to get back into our own routines and prepare for everything that 2012 is going to bring.  It’s going to be an exciting year!  And I can’t wait to see you all again in November!

I love you all!

I hope you’re all having a fantastic day!  We’ve got the turkey in the oven here, the cranberry dressing chilling in the fridge, rolls rising on the stove, and all the rest of what we’ll need sitting out and waiting for the time when we’ll start putting it all together.  We’ve got somewhere around 5 or 6 people on the way over sometime in the afternoon to share dinner with us.  It’s an “Orphan Party!”  All our local friends who have family too far away to go visit for the holiday were invited over to spend the day.  There’s going to be card games and lots of food and it’s going to be a fantastic day!  I’ve got hot cider simmering in the crock pot and cheese and crackers for munching between now and dinner.

I’m excited!  It’ll make up in a big way for Monday and Tuesday of this week — I had to work through a migraine on Monday and  the remnants of that headache on Tuesday.  Not sure what it was that set off my headache, but it HURT, even though I took a ton of meds for it.  And I couldn’t go home because there was just SO much to get done!  And even more to get done on Tuesday.  It was Not Fun.  So when we finished everything late Tuesday, I asked if it was really going to be necessary for me to work on Wednesday, and since my boss said “no,” I stayed home yesterday — slept in, went to the chiropractor’s, picked up a few things from the store, made a cheesecake, and started getting ready for today.  It would have been nasty to work yesterday and then have to do all of that today instead.  So I’m really thankful for the day off yesterday.  :)

And I’m thankful for the free turkey our friend got from work that she gave to us to use for the meal today.

I’m thankful for my wonderful husband who compliments me so well — I make a mess putting the turkey together and he cleans up the mess!

I’m thankful for all our friends who are going to come over today.

I’m thankful for the job options that I’ve been given, even though they’re giving me headaches.

And I’m thankful for all of you!  I love you!!

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Anyway!  The point was that it was cold!  And maybe I would have handled the temperature better if two days ago it hadn’t been in the 80s.  I mean, we went from highs in the 80s to highs in the 60s in the course of an afternoon.  It was warmer yesterday at 6:00 in the morning than it was at 4:00 in the afternoon.  That’s just not right!

So, obviously, the only solution is to make a trip up to the cold northern climes to reacclimatize myself to the temperatures, so yesterday Justin and I got tickets to make that trip.  I put our information about that on the forum on Erica’s website so interested parties can see that.  I’m looking forward to the trip!

Part of that excitement might be because it has been absolutely insane around here lately.  I don’t even have the time to go over how crazy it’s been, but trust me – crazy.  And my back is killing me.  And my addiction to the Layton franchise is going strong.  And I’m starting a new diet in order to lose a little weight before our trip up north.  And all of these things I should write about, but I don’t have the time right now because things are just so darn crazy.

But I’ll try to do something soon.  Like maybe I’ll actually take a Friday and not work!  Maybe . . . .

On the other hand, Justin is helping the church move the equipment from the high school to a storage shed near the movie theatre on Friday and that would be miserable to do in the rain.  The school, where we have been meeting in the auditorium, was struck by lightning the week before last, I think it was, and it knocked out their fire alarm system.  The school worked out an evacuation plan so the kids are safe during classroom hours, but extracurricular activies and other people who rent the building are out of luck.  So we’ve moved to the movie theatre down the street.  All our kids ministry and music equipment is stored at the school, though, so the church has to move it out and down the street, but during hours when the school will let us in do to that.  So, Friday afternoon, hopefully, is when that’ll happen.

And the on Sunday, after church because Justin is on rotation to run the computer and projector and I’m on schedule for singing, we’re helping a couple of our friends move from Beaufort to Bluffton.  It kind of works out well that we can’t help in the morning because they have a cat that sheds like a maniac.  With any luck, they’ll be at the place in Bluffton by the time we get out to help and the cat will be safely tucked away somewhere and we’ll be able to help without dying from allergies.  But, again, it would be miserable to do that in the rain.

In other news, I hurt my knee a little bit running.  I landed on it wrong and hyperextended it just a little bit, probably.  It’s been hurting on the calf-side behind my knee.  But ice and Advil and rest and a really annoying knee brace and it’s doing much better already.  We took a rest day yesterday instead of our regular running schedule and it was GOOD.

Honestly, the rest day was only partially because of my knee and also because we’ve both been having  a heck of a week and we both just needed time to do absolutely nothing.  It’s been really crazy and we’re both feeling the strain.  So we ate leftovers for dinner, I folded the laundry that Justin washed during the day, and then I sat downstairs watching TV while he played computer games with friends online.  I finished off the bottle of wine, which really only meant I had a glass and a half, but it made me giggle.  And then we had ice cream cake that we found at the grocery store on Tuesday.  It was perfectly relaxing and wonderful and NEEDED.

Today we’re back at it, plugging away.  It’s going to get better eventually.  We just have to slog through a couple more week of this, hopefully, and then we’ll be out.