Weekend

Wow. Had a whole actual weekend for the first time since what, April or so? Went to a concert in IC on Friday night, slept in on Saturday, went to a friend's house and decorated cookies, went to a play, slept in and went out for brunch Sunday, had a friend over to play music and went to some neighbor friends for dinner and to share Peru experiences.

Not that my days really would be that much different from a weekend lately, but everyone around me is on a week/weekend schedule, so all the fun stuff happens on the weekends I guess. Working Saturday does cut a dent in that hangout time. But I do like cooking for people. So I guess I can enjoy the break for now.

I'm hoping to make enough stuff this week that I would have a decent amount to sell at the indoor farmer's market next Saturday. There will be a lot of competition, but if I'm sharing a table with my brother, it won't be much money down to try and make back. We'll see how it goes.

Got the Christmas tree up, I think it's going to stay. We used some fishing line to tie it to the curtain rod. Sigh. I know an artificial tree would be easier, but I do love the real ones. So far it's just lights, want to make sure it really will stay up. The first time my brother and I thought we had it, I came home and it was leaning against the window. At least it was the window and not the floor!

Snow

It's hard to conceive that just yesterday, YESTERDAY, I walked up to the civic center for a Christmas concert in my fleece and a hat and gloves and I was fine, and today the ground is all covered in snow!

Between the awesome concert and the white landscape, it's got me in quite the Christmassy mood, which is good. I think the snow without the concert preceding it would have had me mopey.

We're supposed to get a crazy winter storm tomorrow and for the next day too I think though, so let's hope the concert is powerful enough to keep spirits up through that! :) No pressure.

Sigh

Feeling kinda down/overwhelmed today. G is done with the trade show and is now off to Colombia till the 17th. It's such a difference knowing he's not in the next room or downstairs or something.

Feels like I've been utterly flaking out the past week. It's not entirely true, but it's definitely partially true. So hard for me when there's nothing set to actually get anything done.

Went to see Twilight in Ottumwa today with friends. Had the yummy veggie burger at Roe's and told them to hold the second burger. I ordered it before and it came with TWO burgers on one bun and that is just toooo much food, but at the time I was horrifically nervous so I ate the entire thing and felt way too full for way too long afterward. I'm still kinda full from just the one, so I'm really glad I didn't get two!

Twilight was pretty good, not as good as the book, and they compressed/changed several of the scenes/events from the book, which is to be expected for a movie I guess, but I think they still did a pretty good job of hitting on the main bits. Funny, probably the shortest amount of time between reading a book and seeing the movie for me in a long time if ever, so the book was very fresh in my mind.

Been running into things that my laptop cannot do - like video chat in Google. It's not really THAT old, but in technology land, well... 3 years is a long time I guess. Also wishing for things like a video camera, and an iPhone, but wondering, if I HAD a new laptop, or an iPhone, would the video capabilities in those things be enough for my purposes? And so again, what's the most efficient investment of financial resources?

Need to kind of sit down and figure it out really, because I have the feeling that I'd like to ask for one or two "big ticket" items for Christmas and just have people chip in for that, rather than get a bunch of little things I don't really want/need. If it was really big it could possibly even go over into Birthday as well... that's the advantage to a January birthday, not so close to Christmas that people automatically give combination presents, but close enough that if a combining is needed it works. heh.

Topsy Turvy

(another MySpace cross post)
So yesterday they re-routed our phone lines to the people taking over in Florida - in the middle of the day. When we were still working. After a bit of confusion (my trainee IM-ing me to ask what she should tell the Account Exec on her phone line, "Why did she call YOU already?" "She didn't, she called YOUR number and got me.") I called MY line from my cell phone to check what was going on, and rather than hearing my own desk phone ring, I hear "Oh crap!" the trainee on the other end of the line...

I go storming through the office (my trainee still on my cell asking questions and offering suggestions about what would be ideal for the phone situation) muttering things like "We're still working here!" to the first person I can find, which is our General Manager and say "They transferred our phones already!!! The Florida people don't know how to answer our calls!" and he says "Well, they're going to have to." and asks if I checked with our IT lady. I bashfully say no and ask if she's even here. (Legit question, she's been running back and forth between the office and the factory the past few weeks.) Luckily not only is she here, but the phone guy still is ("They told me to do it today!" "Yeah, for the people who ALREADY LEFT."), and we're able to get him to switch our lines back and ask him to come do it later. Apparently he doesn't work on Fridays so it'll have to be Thursday. We're like "fine, but can it be as late as possible on Thursday?" So we'll see.

And Friday the computers are coming down, so really tomorrow IS our last day of productive-ish type work, if you can call it that amidst all the packing up, cleaning and throwing out of stuff. It sucks being the last ones because we have to deal with all the little tiny leftover crap of the people who already left - paperclips and blank CD's, old files, etc. Can't just leave it there!

Today K finished packing up his office and said, "Well... uh.... I'll be working from home tomorrow, so I guess this is it... have a nice, uh... life..." It was so depressing. People almost cried at that point. I don't know what's going to happen over the next two days. I'm not sure if it'll hit me then, or later when I'm home alone and lonely. If feels like the last days of school, but without the yearbook signings.

We found a string of Christmas lights and tinsel while cleaning out some shelves. L flung it haphazardly over the cubicle, plugged it in and I said "Merry frickin' Christmas!" which struck us as particularly hilarious. J came in later and we tried to explain it to her, and she said, "Well, no offense, but I thought it was in the process of being taken down..." Pretty much.

I keep waiting for that moment when I let go of the reins and say "This isn't mine to worry or care about any more." I have flashes of it, but mostly I'm galloping full speed ahead, fists clenched tighter and tighter, praying I don't drop anything important, because Lord knows if I do it'll only be found again through sheer luck or absolute necessity...

Weekend of Progress

Cross post from MySpace. Because sometimes one blog a day isn't enough.

Progress of Sorts
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Life

So while I haven't done nearly everything I've been wanting to do for ages now, I do feel like I made a lot of progress and did a lot of good things this weekend.

Friday
- Company Christmas party. Kept my white shirt clean through tomato soup, ravioli sauce by intelligent napkin placement, and scored a $50 massage gift certificate.
- Caught the second half of Arthur Lee Land's show at Cafe P

Saturday
- Set up a table at the Indoor Farmer's Market, made somewhere in the neighborhood of $25
- Slept from about 2:30 - 5:30
- Went to a Christmas Party with a bunch of the MUM Latino's and understood a bunch of Spanish

Sunday
- Over the course of the day, G and I changed the sheets, cleaned up the clothes on the bedroom floor and vacuumed and did 4 loads of laundry
- We also throughout the day made tremendous progress on the dining room table: filing, sorting, recycling, shredding mail, magazines, receipts etc.
- Took the dryer exhaust tube off to discover it was ENTIRELY packed with bird nesting materials and lint. Cleaned it out. Our dryer now dries clothes in one cycle, and damp air doesn't exhaust out into the laundry room to keep all the line-dry clothes wet.
- Saw "The Skaters" ballet at the Civic Center, including the Generation NOW show choir opening. Talented kids! I so want to perform on that stage sometime!
- Watered the plants
- Paid bills
- Activated new credit card, cut up expired ones
- Talked to Sarah
- I've also managed to START thinking about Christmas. Which feels good because i was starting to freak out that I hadn't done anything about it AT ALL yet.

If I'm really lucky, I might even order some of my online presents before bed, and/or my plane tickets to Colombia.

The Saga of the Teeth

(Excerpt from a letter to the girls)

Apologies to everyone if I'm slacking in responses and also Christmas-y type stuff in general. This end of work wrap-up is taking so much out of me! Just yesterday I was on the phone crying to my mom because usually Christmas is one of my favorite times of year and this year I just don't have the energy to do everything I usually love to do. She encouraged me to look at the stuff I usually do and see if I can do a less intensive version of them or something. G said today we'd work on finally unpacking from our Thanksgiving trip so we can get a tree, I think that will help a lot.

Our last day at the office is the 21st, and I'm taking the week of Christmas off, so maybe then I'll have some time to do more, even if it's after Christmas, although I may spend a lot of time sleeping, which is what has been happening on my weekends!

I just got NINE cavities filled in 2 days!!! My friend at work encouraged me to use my dental insurance before it ran out on Dec 31st. The closest dentist to take our insurance plan is in Ottumwa. So I went in for a cleaning and found out I needed a lot of fillings. Unfortunately, they did not have any openings until January, so I asked them to put me on the list to call if there were any cancellations. Then we had an ice storm and lots of people were canceling! The big roads to get to Ottumwa were pretty clear, but people were iced into their driveways and such. So I got 3 done one day, and the the next day I went back for 3 more. They said they'd been having a lot of no-shows, so they could probably just keep going and finish up the rest if I wanted. So I spent from about 2:30 - 4:45 in the dentist chair, and had 3 sides of my mouth numbed and 6 cavities filled. argh. But at least it's done. Except I'm a little worried about my bite, when I first got home the left side was hitting before the right side. A couple days later it seems to be settling, so maybe my jaw just had to get back to normal after being cranked open for so long... If anyone has any tips for recovering from the stress of dental work, I'm all ears!