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October 13, 2005

Wheeee!

This week has been going by so quickly. I spent most of the week testing and integrating a new search engine for a couple of our sites. We launched our new Chinese mini-site for the Options Industry Council. It's pretty nifty. :o)

Yesterday Chris and I met up with Darcy at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas for their Lunch & Learn event, "You Earn What You Learn: Thriving as a Young Professional." They had a big buffet lunch, which was really cool. The President of the Dallas Fed introduced the speaker, Dr. Michael Cox, who's the Senior VP and Chief Economist. He spoke on the importance of education. Pretty cool. After the event, we went up to visit Darcy's cool desk on the 10th floor. Hee hee.

Posted by alpha at 06:08 PM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)

September 30, 2005

Funk

It was a pretty laid back day at work today. Did some regular updates on the sites, etc. We had a catered lunch to raise money for our charity project. Also had a movie lunch thing where we watched a part of "Matchstick Men." I wish I had gotten to watch all of it...might have to rent it some other time to watch. The afternoon was fairly uneventful in spite of being pretty busy towards the end of the day. Then all of a sudden I noticed that I was in kind of a funk. Dunno why. Nothing happened or anything. Just felt...defeated. It was kinda weird. :o/

Tonight Greg and Paul went to the Mesquite/North Mesquite game. I stayed home and straightened up a little bit in preparation for the party tomorrow. There's more cleaning to be done, but I don't really feel like doing that right now. :p

Oh, and today my boss and I signed up for the luncheon at the Dallas Fed, "You Earn What You Learn: Thriving as a Young Professional." Darcy recommended it to me, and I sent the link to my boss to see if she'd want to go with me. :o) She paid for the registration, and I get to drive. Ha ha. It'll be a good time. Can't wait. :o)

Anyway, I think it's time for bed for me. Too-da-loo! :o)

Posted by alpha at 10:46 PM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)

September 28, 2005

Follow Up

To follow up my entry from yesterday, I had my 1-on-1 with my manager this afternoon. She does this before she writes our yearly reviews. I wonder if my VP said anything to her about the whole resume thing...but she definitely hinted that they want to do whatever they can to keep me happy. She basically told me that she wouldn't be able to do her job without me, and that I'm the informal lead for the group. That's kinda cool. Then she said that she's going to try to put in a promotion for me. No promises, but I think it's still a nice gesture. Basically, she said I can get into any projects that I want to do because I had earned it. :o) And I can go find classes that I'd want to take, etc. I'm pretty excited. Things are looking up, whether this is a fallout of the resume incident or not. It's nice to know that you're valued in the company. :o)

Enough about work...we're throwing a BBQ party on Saturday. We had originally planned on going camping, but the receptionist from the campground that we were going to called and said that they wouldn't be able to accommodate us this weekend because they're hosting a bunch of evacuees. :o/ So we just decided to stay home and throw a party instead. Hee hee. Wheeee! Crazy fun times!

Posted by alpha at 06:42 PM | Friends , Fun Stuff , Work | Comments (0)

September 27, 2005

The Result of Monster

When I got my current job, I never removed my resume from Monster.com. I get job leads every once in awhile. Then yesterday, out of the blue, I got 2 calls in 1 day. I called both of them back, graciously thanking them for their interest, and asked if I could pass on the opportunities to my friends. I got to thinking that perhaps I should go ahead and update my last name and the resume in general. So I did that last night.

Little did I know, our HR (or somebody else) keeps a very close eye on Monster. This morning I got a call from my VP (!!!). She sounded worried, and she asked...are you happy with your job? Turns out she saw my resume on Monster and was worried that I was looking to leave. After reassuring her that I wasn't looking (I mainly use it as a tool to help my friends find jobs), she asked if there are things I'd like to change about my job...whether I like my boss...whether I need to be paid more (???)... It was super bizarre. Then she told me that if I ever have any issues or concerns, I can always go to her and tell her about them...that she'd keep it confidential.

I felt soooooo bad that I sent her into a frenzy just 'cuz she found my resume on Monster. :o/ I ended up making my resume unsearchable by employers 'cuz...what do ya know...I got another job lead today. It's so freakin' weird. I guess it's good to know that companies are hiring again.

Does anyone need a job?

Posted by alpha at 07:18 PM | Work | Comments (0)

September 22, 2005

Showtime!

We launched our new site tonight! Check it out. It's super-cool!

Options Industry Council

Posted by alpha at 10:10 PM | Work | Comments (0)

July 21, 2005

*Whew*

Man! I've surely been super duper busy lately at work. I don't even have time to eat or read news or anything! We found out last week that one of our contractors is leaving to take on a permanent position at GE Financial...after having been here for 2 years working to set up our WebSphere members portal. Anyway, a wee bit of panic set in within our group...and our managers quickly assigned portal management roles for some of us, so the contractor could impart his great ball of knowledge onto 3 of us. Long story short, I ended up with the Web Content Management (WCM) administration portion. We've been meeting 1-2 hours each day so I could learn about all the stuff that WCM would do. This drains serious brain power. After each meeting, I feel like someone sucked all my energy out of me. *Sigh*

Good thing is...stuff like that is hard to learn, and when you find a company that uses it, you need to take advantage of the situation and jump on the opportunity. It's a valuable skillset.

Other than that, we planted our herbs and watermelon and such in the garden over the weekend. We saw some sprouts yesterday! :o) Yey!

Note to self...need to get some cilantro seeds...

Tomorrow we're going to visit Diane and John at the lakehouse. :o) It'll be a fun time, I'm sure.

What else...oh Greg and I used our Williams-Sonoma gift card and bought a grilling book...with lots of different recipes, etc. So far, we've tried 4 recipes, and every single one of them is just awesome. He made pork chops last night, and it was just delicious. Mmmmmmmm...I think we might have created a grilling monster! :o)

Posted by alpha at 03:26 PM | Family , Work | Comments (0)

May 09, 2005

1 more week!

Oh goodness...I've been so busy that I haven't gotten a chance to write lately. Last week was bad at work, 'cuz my boss decided to pick on every single thing we were doing and insisted that I didn't work enough (even though I work on average 42-43 hours a week)...so it was a pretty miserable week on the workfront.

During my non-work time, I spent most of it ripping my CDs to put on to my iPod. :o) Very time consuming. Hopefully I'll make some headway on it this week 'cuz I'd like to have most of my CDs done by the time we leave for Jamaica.

Last Friday I had my 2nd fitting for the dress. :o) It fits! Ha ha. My parents both came for it, and then we went to have dim sum with my sister. It was a Mother's Day thing. Hee hee. Was fun. Took my parents up to Plano Centre to pay for the reception. The lady was late coming back from lunch, so we didn't have a chance to stop by the golf course. Oh well.

Saturday Greg and I stopped by the bike shop (to fix the tire on Greg's bike) and the scuba shop (so I can get a wetsuit). Yup. Then I left to go to my sister's at 12:30 to have lunch with her, and to do some reception planning. We went to the Galleria to meet up with Luci and Jodie for our make-up training class thing at Stila...only that the lady at Stila didn't bother calling us to tell us that the class was rescheduled to next weekend. Ugh. We ended up just going shopping at the Galleria. It was fun anyways. :o)

We all split for a couple of hours to run errands, and then met at 7 at the Hampton Inn in Addison for my bachelorette party. :o) Austin got us a couple of hotel rooms for the party using his hotel points (thanks Austin!!!). The party consisted of Luci, Jodie, my sis, Beta, and my friend Raechel from high school. We went to Antonio Ristorante in Addison Circle for dinner. Had a great time and some tasty foodness.

After the long dinner, we went to the Londoner for drinks. Jo exercised her assertiveness to get us drinks at the bar, since we were completely ignored by the wait staff. Not a single one of them came by to check on us the whole time we were there. It was pretty amazing. Anyways, after a couple of rounds, we went back to the hotel to hang out some more. Called it a night at about 2:30 or so.

A thunderstorm rolled through sometime that night and woke me up. Then, for some strange reason, I wasn't all that tired...and woke up at about 8. My sister got up at about 9:30 and left to go to church. I slowly got ready...called Greg to say hi, and then went over to wake Luci up. :p Hee hee. We cleaned up the room some, and loaded up the cars to go home. :o)

Greg and I went to Target to do some shopping for the trip. :o) Bought sunblock and stuff like that. Also bought food for dinner Sunday night 'cuz Katie & Tony were coming over (Katie's keeping an eye on the kitties while we're gone). We made fajitas from scratch, which ended up tasting pretty good. :o) Hee hee. Yum! We had a good time. They left at about 8 to go to the hockey game...I didn't end up going 'cuz it was too late and I had to be at work at 6am today. *Grumble*

1 more week until we leave for Jamaica!!!

Posted by alpha at 09:39 AM | Fun Stuff , Wedding , Work | Comments (4)

April 28, 2005

Super Busy

Man, I've been super busy at work this week. Monday through Wednesday, I was stuck making phone calls to people at various exchanges who post memos on our website. Had to walk them through a software token installation procedure, and show them some new screens for the new application that we're rolling out on Friday. It took 3 full days to get a hold of all these people and get them all set up. Ugh. So my week has flown by rather quickly...

Tuesday afternoon I found out that Paul had managed to snatch us 5 tickets and a parking pass to go to the Rangers game that night. I gave the 2 extra tickets to a coworker, but she didn't end up coming. Anywho, Greg and I ran home to change, and came back over this way to meet Paul. I brought my camera with me to take pictures since we got really good seats (13th row behind the owner's box, looking straight down the 3rd base line). I spent a good amount of time taking pictures...kept me busy until about the 5th inning. :o) Good thing too, 'cuz I get bored with baseball rather easily. Hee hee. The pictures turned out pretty well.

Posted by alpha at 04:25 PM | Family , Photography , Sports , Work | Comments (2)

April 15, 2005

Work From Home Day

Today I'm working from home. Hours are a bit funky, 10am - 7pm...'cuz I had to cover a memo that comes out later on in the evening for expiration. But that prob doesn't mean a whole lot to most of you...

So this morning, I brought my car in to get the oil changed and tires rotated. Took about an hour. Then I went over to my parents' house to pick up this present that got sent there. I called my Dad while I was there, and he mentioned that I could pick up the reception gifts that they had gotten for us. So I got those too. My sister and I can get working on them soon. :o)

Greg stayed home from work today. He wasn't feeling very well last night or this morning. So he's resting in the living room while I'm slaving away on my computer...

My sandals arrived in record time yesterday. I had ordered them at around 7:30pm on Wednesday night, and they were delivered at 11:30am Thursday morning. Ridiculously fast. They're awesome too. Very soft and comfy. I like. :o)

Posted by alpha at 12:04 PM | Family , Misc , Wedding , Work | Comments (0)

April 11, 2005

Long Time No Blog

So...it's been awhile since I last wrote. Plenty have happened since then...fasten your seat belts...

On April 2nd, we had our wedding shower at Jo's parents' house. It was the first time I had seen it since they remodeled everything. Looks really really nice! :o) Lots of our friends showed up, and we had a great time hanging out with everyone. Presents were opened, food was had...fun times. We got home at around 5:30ish. Paul was already over and was watching basketball games. We unpacked and organized all of our new loot. Hee hee. Yey!

We went to Chris & Beta's crawfish boil on Sunday, April 3rd. :o) It was great fun too! Their doggie Spunky looks bigger than the last time I saw her...Katrina & Trevor brought over their dog Hobie, and Mark brought over his dog Skyla. It was a doggie playground! My parents came and joined us for the boil, which was cool, since they never really come to hang out with us and our friends. I think they enjoyed themselves! I got home kinda late...prob about 8:30 or so.

Last Monday, I went to Jo's after work to pick up a cake that was made by one of her co-workers, Marina. It was delicious!! :o) Greg and I (and my sister and Matt) were all very satisfied with that. So Marina is going to make our wedding cake for our Dallas reception! It's gonna look something like this, but instead of the sugar calla lillies, we're gonna have fresh red roses and petals put on it. :o) It's gonna be so gorgeous. I can't wait. And the best thing is that she's doing all this for $150!!! She's gonna show up at around 4:30 or so on the day of the reception to put the cake together, and to put the border around the bottom layer. Yey I can't wait!!!

The rest of the week was kinda blurred...it went by really fast...and our new person was in town for training, so I had to make sure that he's okay and stuff. We all went out for dinner at Dickey's Thursday night, and that was fun. They had free beer at the Coppell location 'cuz they don't have their liquor license. Hee hee.

We went to the driving range after we got home from Dickey's...worked on my driver quite a bit since I just had the grips changed on my driver, 5-wood, and 7-wood (they were too big). I'm hitting 'em much better now. :o) When we got home, the garage door wouldn't open...turns out that the spring had snapped. :o( We decided that it was too late to worry much about it that night, so I took the info of the repair company that I had used the last time with me to work the next morning to set up an appointment.

Unfortunately, I found out that the garage door repair company that I had used went out of business. :o( It really was too bad, 'cuz they were really nice and helpful in showing me to fix the minor things. Anyway, I had to look for another company to fix the door. I ended up calling Action Garage Door 'cuz they had a good record with the BBB. They sent a guy out Saturday morning to take a look at the door...and then he gave me a quote of $259 to change out the spring!!! WTF!!! I flat out told him that I got it fixed 4 years ago for $127, and that I had a receipt to prove it. It just didn't make sense that the price could have doubled in 4 years. The repair guy disgruntally called the guy in the office to "see if there was anything he could do." The guy splattered off some sales pitch (they must do this often since it sounded rehearsed), and I told him to just give me the price. He called me on the phone and told me that they'd do it for $165.50, which is a whole lot more reasonable that $259!!! What a ripoff. I can't even imagine how much money they're making off of the unsuspecting public. Anyway, the repair guy got to work...banged around in my garage, showed me the rollers that needed to be replaced (he said it was gonna be $12/piece to change them out), and went on his way. I was so glad to get him out of my house. Later on, I looked up this company that sells garage door parts to do-it-yourselfers, and I'm buying some rollers for $1.99/piece + shipping. Good thing I didn't tell the repair guy to change them.

With garage door fixed, I quickly had lunch and then went off to meet with Luci & Jodie to go shopping. We stopped by the Stila counter, and the make-up artist there fixed me up with some make-up. I think it looks really nice...not too overly done, since I don't usually wear make-up. Anyhoot, $120 later, I think I'm pretty much all set with that for the wedding. There's 1 thing though that she had forgotten to ring up...the Sheer Color Tinted Moisturizer...I'll pick that up next time when we go for this workshop class thing on the day of my bachelorette party. :o) The workshop itself costs $35/person, but we get it back in make-up, so it's a good deal. Hee hee. It's my gift to the bridesmaids for helping out with everything. I think it'll be a blast. :o)

After the make-up adventure, we went to look for a shirt for me for the bachelorette party. We ended up finding this blue button-down one at Express. :o) It's pretty nice.

I got home at about 5:30 or so, then Greg and I went bike-riding. We went down to the (small) lake that's near my house. We rode probably about 4 miles or so. It felt nice. :o) I had to get back in shape for hockey on Sunday! Hee hee. Afterwards, Greg grilled this perfect ribeye steak for dinner. Yum!!!

Sunday we slept in, I took a shower and then started cleaning the house. We got a lot of stuff done in the kitchen...consolidated some of our duplicate spices and things...cleaned out the pantry, etc. etc. The kitchen looks much roomier now. :o) Yey! Then we watched the Masters pretty much all afternoon. It was pretty exciting! Left at 8pm to go to my hockey game. We played against the Mantis...lost 0-1. They got this new girl who's pretty good...she played in the Charity Challenge. I think we played pretty well. :o) I ended up getting the "Game MVP" award for my team. Ha ha. I didn't think that I played *that* well. Anyways, the prize was awesome...it was this pillow with "Red Hot" stitched into it. :o) Hee hee.

Posted by alpha at 10:51 AM | Biking , Friends , Golf , Hockey , Wedding , Work | Comments (2)

March 18, 2005

Brownie Points - Part 2

So these brownie points that I was talking about in my last entry...apparently they also come with a $10 Gift Certificate to Blockbuster. The VP printed out the "drop" on the color printer, enclosed the certificate, and sent it to me via interoffice mail. That's pretty cool. :o)

Posted by alpha at 11:17 AM | Work | Comments (2)

March 17, 2005

Brownie Points

Yesterday some people from the Project Office needed help to launch something quickly on their intranet page. I was busy with a bunch of stuff, and finally got around to it at the end of the day. It really wasn't anything complicated, but they didn't have time to work on it themselves. Anyway, I told them this morning that the updates had been done...and the VP in the Project Office was sooooo happy that he sent 2 different emails thanking me for the work. One of those emails was actually a "drop"...it corresponds with the book that we had to read for our Mentor Program last month. It's pretty cool. In it he said:

"Christine, I really appreciate how helpful you have been with the Internal Control Reporting assignment. I realize that you had many other things on your plate, but you were able to do this assignment in an expeditious manner. The turnaround was great. The results are spectacular. - Bob"

What's cool is that he also sent it to my supervisor, my Director, my VP, and the VP of Accounting. :o) Talk about major brownie points!

Posted by alpha at 10:32 AM | Work | Comments (2)

March 16, 2005

So Busy!

Man I've been so insanely busy at work lately! It's quite exhausting. After I get home I just want to lay on the couch and watch TV. :p

We're chugging along with the wedding stuff. Haven't really done much since last week. We finalized the reception guest list (which had grown quite a bit, actually), and I sent it to my parents to review to make sure they didn't forget anyone. Next up would be to go to my parents' to print the mailing labels and maps on their laser printer. Yep yep. Fun stuff.

Our new Internet Producer (ie. graphics designer) started on Monday up in Chicago. So Bettye has been busy training him to do updates and stuff. I don't think she has gotten to do much of her own work at all this week. I know I haven't. Hopefully he learns quickly and we can share some of the workload, so we can all work on the stuff we're supposed to be working on. :p

This Friday, Greg and I are leaving to go to San Antonio right after work. Diane (Greg's sister) is throwing us a wedding shower for Greg's family in San Antonio. Should be fun. :o)

Posted by alpha at 09:14 AM | Wedding , Work | Comments (2)

March 08, 2005

2-0

My hockey team went 2-0 this weekend for our Friday & Sunday games. Friday night we even scored 3 goals to earn us an ice cream party after the game on Sunday (it's a team thing). :o) Greg said Sunday's game (we won 1-0) was probably one of the best games he had seen us play. That's quite a compliment.

Oh, Katie, Tony, Greg, and I went out for Chinese food after the game on Friday too. It was mighty tasty. Sing Kee redid their interior so it looks much nicer now. :o) Good times...

Saturday I had to come in to work. They were running a system test so we had to come in to test and make sure that everything we need is up. Took a couple of hours. After that, I went and ran a bunch of errands...stopped by Babies 'R Us to buy some baby shower gifts for this lady on our hockey team, and went to Hobby Lobby to buy some card stock for work. Greg stayed home and waited all morning for his birthday present to be delivered. Hee hee. He was so giddy when he got it. It was funny. We tried to stop by Tom Thumb to meet with the cake decorator, but she wasn't there. So we went on to the driving range while I wait for my sister to get back from Allen (she went shopping with my parents) so we could go shopping for wedding stuff. We didn't end up going 'cuz she didn't get back until about 5...by then it was kinda late and we were hungry.

Sunday we went to church, then out to lunch at Olive Garden. I hadn't been there awhile. Tried one of their new dishes, and that was pretty good. Went to look at some rings at Jared, but Greg doesn't really wanna get his from there 'cuz of their oober-annoying commercials. Greg did find one that he liked a lot though. We'll see. Maybe he'd have to deal with contributing to those annoying commercials. :p As for me, I found one that I liked, but then found another that looked better on Bile Nile (plus it matches my ring). I'm gonna sit on it a few days to see if that's the one I want. :o)

Think that's about it for now. More updates later. :o)

Posted by alpha at 08:12 AM | Hockey , Wedding , Work | Comments (0)

March 04, 2005

TGIF!

Another week has flown by...

Today has been pretty nice. Had lunch with my mentor today...we went to this sandwich shop in the building next to us. It was really good, and it's within walkable distance. I need to go there more often. :o) Anyway, we brought the food back, grabbed a conference room, and planned out what we need to do for our presentation in the general meeting on the 18th. :o) It should be fun.

Tonight I have a hockey game. We're trying to finish up our season before Easter weekend, so we have to double-up one weekend and play both Friday night and Sunday night. :o) After the game, we're going out with some teammates for Chinese food. Mmmmmmmm...

Tomorrow I hafta be at work at 9:45am. Yuck. Hopefully it won't last more than a couple of hours. I get a full comp day for coming in to do the test. Ah well. After that, Greg and I need to go to Tom Thumb to meet with the decorator to see if she can give us a quote on our wedding cake. Then I'm off to go shopping with my sister for reception stuff. Fun fun. :o)

Sunday I think we're gonna go visit a jeweler to get Greg's ring size, so we can order a wedding ring for him. That should be interesting. I don't quite enjoy going to jewelry stores...maybe it's just too much "bling" for my liking. :p Hee hee. Then of course Sunday night I have my game. Yup...s'bout it!

Next Wednesday is Greg's birthday. His birthday present should be arriving tomorrow. :o) Yey! He's taking off next Thursday to go play golf, and then I'm taking off next Friday to use up that comp day that I'm earning tomorrow. Hee hee.

Oh, and next weekend we're going camping at Purtis Creek. We were gonna go this weekend, but all the sites were booked! Ha ha. Oh well. Next weekend is better for me anyways. :o) This will prob be the last time that we'll get to do it before it gets super hot.

Posted by alpha at 02:00 PM | Camping , Hockey , Wedding , Work | Comments (4)

March 01, 2005

Space Heater = Good

Haven't really felt like writing lately. Have had too much to do wedding-wise that I just hadn't been in the mood to write. :o)

Ended up having to work Friday night, for about half an hour at 1:30am. Yuck. It completely threw my weekend off 'cuz I didn't get enough sleep. Saturday morning I had to get up early to go cake tasting at Frosted Art with Greg, my sis, Jo, and Luci. It was a fun time, but I wish I wasn't so tired. And yes, 9am is way too early to be having cake. I spent most of the rest of the day sleeping 'cuz I was so tired. :o/ Greg went to perform at his MSO event at about 5ish. We hung out for a little while when he got home.

Sunday we went to church, then came home and chilled. I was still tired, so I was watching TV most of the afternoon. :o/ We went out to Oshman's to try to buy a birthday present for Greg's brother Paul but ended up buying some clothes for ourselves. Heh heh. Had my hockey game at 7:30. I didn't feel like I skated all that well (prob 'cuz I had been so tired all weekend. Blah.

Yesterday I had to be at work at 6am. Good thing was that there was no traffic, and I got to go home at 11:30am (that was for working Friday night). I ended up running a bunch of errands until about 1:30pm. Stopped by the dress shop to check on my dress, and the lady there said that it should arrive any day now. I scheduled my fitting for Good Friday while I was there. This way my Mom can come. :o)

Went to Tom Thumb to inquire about their wedding cake situation. The lady who was there told me that the decorator wasn't in yesterday, but that they do make wedding cakes. I need to go back to inquire about the prices, etc. No way I'm gonna spend $600+ on a wedding cake when I can probably get one for $150 that works just as well. It's all gonna be eaten anyways... :p

Also spent quite a bit of time standing in line at the post office. What I don't get is why out of the 5 available counters, only 2 people are working at them...while the line goes out the door. I never quite understood that about the post office. And then they complain that they aren't getting as much business. Well I wonder why. Duh.

Other than that, just worked on getting the files for the invitation labels and watched TV. Nothing real significant. Just the usual. Wish I wasn't so tired so I could have gone to the driving range with Greg. Oh well...

Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention...it has been FREEZING in the office the past few weeks, especially for those of us in the back corner of the office. So we've been wearing our jackets at our desks, and it apparently paid off for me, 'cuz a space heater appeared on my chair when I came in this morning. I've been much warmer today. Hee hee. Yey!

Posted by alpha at 08:58 AM | Hockey , Wedding , Work | Comments (0)

February 23, 2005

Profit Sharing Rules!

Woohoo!!! :o) We all just got a letter from HR saying that they had made a profit sharing contribution into our 401(k) accounts last week. I got a little over $2000! Pretty awesome! I didn't even know that they did profit sharing. Ha ha. :o)

Posted by alpha at 10:53 AM | Work | Comments (0)

February 11, 2005

Tra la la...

Hum dee dum...I'm bored...2 hours left until I leave to go to my hockey tryout. Then it's 2 hours' worth of skating my bottom off. Fun fun. :p

*Yawn* Let's see...what else...my department's Director was here visiting yesterday and today. He just left to catch his flight back to Chicago. It was nice to have him around....we all went out to Jason's Deli for lunch yesterday and that was fun. Then he had 1-on-1 meetings with each of us. Yeppers.

Tomorrow we're going out to lunch (dim sum) with my parents. One of my Dad's friends is coming into town from Calgary, so we're all going out to eat together. Afterwards, Greg and I are prob gonna go look at biking equipment (helmets, gloves, water bottles, etc.) and go to Bed Bath & Beyond to add more stuff on our registry. Yep. Bridesmaid dresses should be arriving next Tuesday. Yey! :o) My wedding dress should be in soon too. Perhaps I should call and find out.

Posted by alpha at 01:14 PM | Family , Hockey , Work | Comments (2)

February 04, 2005

Friday Update

Okay an update on the W2 fiasco...I think Dennis and I have finally agreed on the figures for the W2. Ugh. Most annoying.

At work today, we have a "Chilithon." We get to wear t-shirts, sweatshirts, jerseys, hats (but no jeans!) for our favorite sports team. So I have my Texas sweatshirt and Rose Bowl hat on. :o) Hee hee. We also got chili (and appropriate fixin's) from Red Hot & Blue. Mmmmmm...

Posted by alpha at 01:24 PM | Work | Comments (6)

Underrated

I think paystubs are underrated. We get them, toss them in a folder in a filing cabinet, and forget about them. They're taken for granted until you don't get any, and have to rely on your bank statements to figure out how much you got paid for 3 months a year ago.

The saga with the PRE bookkeeper continues. Got a new spreadsheet from Dennis this morning. He was a little bit closer with this one. The final net pay is still off by $30 (as in, I got paid $30 less than what they said I did). What the heck. Why is it THAT difficult?

So I edited the spreadsheet, sent it back to him, and told him the exact numbers that I got. We'll see what happens. Hopefully my taxes aren't all screwed up. How annoying...

Posted by alpha at 12:29 PM | Work | Comments (0)

February 03, 2005

Oh so busy...

I've been super-busy at work this week. Ugh. They really need to hire somebody soon to replace our designer...'cuz I'm getting so much stuff to do that I don't even really have time to eat lunch. So annoying.

Well at least today I'm supposed to go to lunch with my mentor...but that also means that I'd have an hour less to do the things that I need to do. Blah.

Since I've been so busy at work, I'm just pooped when I get home. So all I've done all week is watch TV. I'm sure Greg thinks that I'm the most boring person by now. Poor guy.

Katrina suggested that we go do a cake tasting at the Black Forest Bakery off of NW Hwy. Greg knows of the place, and said that they have a really good German restaurant. So maybe we could go try it this weekend or something.

Oh, got the W2 forms from PRE yesterday. Not to my surprise, none of the number match what I had been paid. I really wish that they would quit screwing around with important stuff like that. I'm just glad that I don't have to deal with them anymore after this tax period. Ugh. Anyway, I vented my frustrations to Joe & David, and then Chris gave me Dennis' contact info (the guy who actually handled the payroll) so I could forward the email to him. He said he'd have an answer for me by morning. We'll see about that.

Okay well, that was a pretty boring post...but it's been a pretty uneventful week. Ah well. Just waiting for the work week to be over, so I can actually rest and go have fun.

Posted by alpha at 08:07 AM | Work | Comments (10)

January 28, 2005

TGIF!

This week seemed to have lasted forever. It was weird. So I surely am glad that it's finally Friday. :o)

Not a whole lot has been going on. We finally watched "Spiderman 2" the other night. It was pretty good. Hee hee. I may have to add that to my wish list. :o)

Yesterday I found out who my mentor (for our mentoring program at work) is. It's one of the Directors that we have down here. She's really cool. I'm looking forward to it. Hee hee.

Oh I found out today that one of my friends that I played hockey with a few years ago has joined my women's team. :o) Yey!!! She's a great player...we can surely use her.

Ummm...what else...still 2.5 hrs before I get to go home. Next Monday & Tuesday I'm working the 6-3 shift. Yep.

I'm not sure what all we're doing in Austin this weekend, other than dinner and the game. I'm sure we'll go hang out with the team and Greg's family a bit. Should be a good time. :o)

Posted by alpha at 02:35 PM | Family , Hockey , Work | Comments (4)

January 26, 2005

Most interesting

I'm reading "How Full is Your Bucket?" for the mentoring program at work. It's quite an interesting book, and a quick read. I'm about halfway through it, and I just really started reading it today. It's a book that focuses on positivity and the study of the effect that positivity has on the workplace.

I highly recommend. :o)

Posted by alpha at 12:48 PM | Work | Comments (5)

January 24, 2005

Yey!

I found out today that I got accepted into the Mentoring Program at my company. What they do, is that they select a certain number of "staffers" (non-managers), and they pair the staffers up with the big-wigs of the company (ie. VPs, Directors, etc.). Throughout the year, the Mentor/Mentoree would meet on a regular basis to discuss various business/career-related topics, and the whole group gets together once a month to have a lunch/presentation/discussion on more business-related topics. It's a pretty cool program. I've heard lots of good things about it. *Excited*

So basically, if you develop a good rapport with your Mentor, chances are that it'll be very helpful career-wise down the road since all the big-wigs talk to each other. It certainly would help if they have something good to say about you. :o)

Posted by alpha at 02:46 PM | Work | Comments (2)

January 19, 2005

Business Thought of the Day

Our Director decided that he's gonna start discussing various business-related articles during our staff meetings. So he sent us this article on "Managing Yourself." It was pretty interesting. Here's an interesting excerpt from it...

"Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person - hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre - into an outstanding performer." - Peter F. Drucker

Posted by alpha at 01:13 PM | Work | Comments (0)

January 18, 2005

Back to Work

Ya know, I really don't enjoy working. It's not necessarily me not enjoying my current job (although there are aspects about it that make me enjoy it less), but I don't enjoy the concept of having to work. I think my 3-day weekend spoiled me. I enjoyed waking up whenever I felt like it...doing whatever I wanted for the day... So, today I declare that work is highly overrated.

Anyway, nothing really has gone on at work today. Kinda slow. I'm pretty much in meetings all afternoon. Fun fun. Hopefully I'll get to leave on time today.

I signed up for the girls team tryout (the one on Feb. 11 in Farmers Branch) for the Charity Challenge on Ice VIII. The Ticket is holding 2 preliminary tryouts of 30 skaters and 6 goalies each. Honestly I don't think they're gonna get that many, but who knows. Should be fun though. If nothing else, it's free ice time. Hee hee. :p

I sure am mighty tired. Hopefully this afternoon will go by quickly. :o)

Posted by alpha at 01:43 PM | Hockey , Work | Comments (6)

January 11, 2005

A New 24 Addict

I think I have created another "24" addict. Hee hee. Greg actually watched last night's 2 episodes with me, and was quite into it. Yey! :o) The first 4 episodes have been pretty intriguing so far, so I'm looking forward to the rest of the season.

I was mighty tired this morning when I woke up. I was kinda on call for this morning's volume duties 'cuz supposedly Chicago had an ice storm last night...and Jeff didn't know if he'd be able to make it in safely. But since he didn't call at 5:30am, I assume that it was just fine. My body kept waking up all night in anticipation of the call though. It was weird. I think that's why I'm tired today.

This morning Gary brought in some chocolate chip cookies that his Mom had made. :o) His Mom makes great cookies, and she always gives some to Gary every time he goes home to visit...and he always brings them in to share with us. Mmmmmmm...

Today I think I'm gonna go out to lunch with the guys. I'm gonna need an hour-long diversion if I want to stay awake today. Hee hee.

Chatted with Chris for awhile last night. We're gonna go help him shop for hockey equipment Wednesday night. :o) Wheeeee! His first lesson went well, and he didn't fall (always a good sign). Hee hee. I'm so excited!!!

Posted by alpha at 09:37 AM | Family , Friends , Hockey , Work | Comments (2)

December 30, 2004

Almost Happy New Year

Happy New Year, everybody! :o) I know it's early, but I won't be in town this weekend to wish y'all a happy new year. Hee hee.

Tonight we're having some people over for a Pre-NYE party. Greg was sad that we'd miss Luci's NYE party this year, so he decided that we should have some people over beforehand anyway. We're doing a "Build Your Own Pizza" night. What happens is that we'd have our own personal sized pizza crusts, add toppings, and Greg would grill it on the smoker. It is sooooo tasty. We haven't done it in awhile, so this will be fun.

It has kinda been a quiet week...not much really happening. I'm really enjoying the drive to/from work though, since a lot of people are on vacation, etc. so I can actually save 10-15 minutes in my usual commute. Pretty nice.

This weekend we're going to San Antonio for Greg's Dad's 75th Birthday/Rose Bowl party. Should be a blast. We're staying at Diane's, and it's always a party there. Hee hee. Can't wait. :o)

7 more hours of work to go...

Posted by alpha at 09:20 AM | Family , Friends , Work | Comments (2)

December 27, 2004

Christmas, et. al

Continuing on from last Wednesday's post...it started snowing at about 11am. It was no wimpy snowstorm either. Everybody was just gathering around the windows to watch it snow. Shortly thereafter, I found out that there were gonna be a bunch of late memos that I would have to post that night (last time it happened I was at work until 7pm). So in an attempt to avoid having to drive on the icy streets in the dark during rush hour, I got my boss' boss (my boss was out of town) to let me work from home in the afternoon. I left at about 1:30pm and the roads weren't too bad. Greg got to drive in the nasty traffic when he was coming home, and he said that people had to stop at the top of the High 5, wait, and then slide down the ramp. It was ridiculous. I was very glad that I got to come home early that day. Later on I heard that Galveston & Corpus Christi & Houston got a ton of snow. Ha ha. How weird is THAT!

I spent most of Thursday cleaning the house. Nothing too terribly exciting. Greg got to come home early from work, so that was cool.

Friday Greg was up early to start smoking the ham. I think he ended up smoking it like 6 hours or something. More cleaning was done. Went to the Christmas Eve service at church. Then soon after Paul arrived with their Dad. They had to make 2 trips back to the car to get everything 'cuz they had brought so many presents along with them! Ha ha. We went to Desperado's for dinner...hung out awhile, and called it a night.

Saturday everybody was up kinda early. Paul told us that Jerry was up Friday night playing with a bow that he had gotten off of one of the presents. Hee hee. We hung out for a little bit, before Greg and I started to prepare Christmas lunch. The lunch was a great success. The ham was awesome, the mashed potatoes and green beans were great...and my Dad really liked the fresh pineapple for the ham. My sister said that it was the best ham she has ever had. Hee hee. :p After lunch, we opened presents. I got my sister a coffee/cappucino/expresso maker and this Yorkshire Terrier calendar...and it just so happened that she had brought Mak along with her to the lunch. Ha ha ha. How funny. Everybody had a great time. My sister and Matt had to leave soon after 'cuz they had to go to Matt's parents' house for Christmas Dinner. My parents stuck around for a little bit...we had apple pie and cheesecake. It was pretty fun.

Sunday morning we brought Paul & their Dad to our church. It was cool. Greg's Dad really liked our church and our pastor. We took them out to Steak Kountry (in Wylie) for lunch. Then we drove around and showed their Dad Southfork Ranch...and drove by Pecan Hollow Golf Course to show him our reception site. Came home, watched some football, and then Paul took their Dad back to Laura's Mom's apartment in Oak Lawn so he could meet up with Marshall & Laura to go back to San Antonio.

Greg and I just hung out for the rest of the day...we were pretty exhausted from all the entertaining. :p But I would declare our first holiday hosting a success. :o) Hee hee.

Posted by alpha at 07:38 AM | Family , Work | Comments (0)

December 14, 2004

Oh oh there's one!

Was busy as hell at work yesterday. I was also very tired for some reason. Maybe it was just a Monday thing. Anyway, we had Luci over for dinner last night. Made some queso and we grilled hot dogs (enhanced with chili on top) outside. Greg made a big fire in my old Charbroil grill (those round charcoal grills). It was a lot of fun! We had the food inside the house, and then came back outside to sit by the cleverly portable fire pit to watch the meteor shower. :o) Saw a few meteors streak across the sky, and called it a night. It was really fun. Wasn't all too terribly cold with a big jacket on and sitting by the fire. :o)

Kind of a slow start for me this morning. More awake than yesterday though. Hee hee. Took me like 50 minutes to get to work this morning 'cuz of a wreck that I didn't know about until I was already sitting in traffic for 10 minutes. Yuck. Hopefully it'll be a slow(er) day for me today so I can get some of the recently neglected stuff done.

Tonight we're going over to Katie's for a fajita dinner. :o) We've been talking about it forever, and now that she's done with school, we finally have time to get together. Wheeee! Mmmmmm fajitas!

Oh oh!!!! My Lord of the Rings - Return of the King Special Extended Edition DVD has already been shipped!!! I'm so excited! I wish it had shipped via UPS or something though 'cuz that usually takes less time than USPS. Oh well. What the hey. :o) Yey!!!

Posted by alpha at 08:11 AM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)

December 09, 2004

Doot doo doo

Yesterday I was hella busy at work. I had the pleasure of updating a PowerPoint presentation for one of the VPs, who just absolutely loved the end product. Kudos and brownie points were given. Made me happy.

There's also no better way of starting out your day with your boss' boss calls to give you your bonus for this year, and raise for next year. This year my bonus and raise were prorated because I started with the company at the end of March, but he said that if I had been around all year, the percentage would be at the high end. :o) So, all things considered, I'd end up making about $54k this year including the bonus and stuff. Pretty cool. Also got a 3.2% raise for next year. Wheeee! I like companies that give you a raise when they say that they're gonna give you a raise (*Ah hem!*).

Other than that, I've been pretty busy today with site updates, etc. We have our company Christmas party tonight, so I won't get home 'til late. *Yawn*

Posted by alpha at 12:52 PM | Work | Comments (0)

December 01, 2004

28 Degrees

Brrrrr! It's 28 degrees out right now. Cold...

It's been hella busy at work this week. I had to cover a 6am-3pm shift yesterday. Bleh. But it's kinda cool that by lunch time, I had already worked most of my day. The only bad thing was that I still hit traffic when I left at 3pm 'cuz there was a wreck. :o( Lame. Why can't people just be more careful...

Anyway, I ordered my camcorder on Monday. It shipped on Tuesday and will get to my house on Friday. I have a day off, so I'll be at home waiting to sign for it. :o) The new SD card that goes into it (the camcorder uses that to store still pictures) will arrive on Thursday. I'm hoping that the mini-DV tapes will ship soon today, so I'd have them by Saturday at the latest...that way I get to play with the camcorder while I have a few days off work. Hee hee.

Sarah, the person at Lasting Impressions that supposedly ordered my wedding dress, called my home phone yesterday and left a message...saying that that she had a question for me. I called back, and whoever answered the phone said that Sarah was on another call, and that she would call back in 5-10 minutes. As expected, no return call. I have a feeling that she would probably call my home phone again today and leave another message, and when I call back, she'd be on the phone or with a customer. It's so annoying when people tell you that they'd call back and they wouldn't. Now I'm all wondering about what question she could possibly have for me, when my dress was supposedly ordered 3 weeks ago. And why didn't she call my cell phone? It was listed on my sales receipt for a reason. Ugh. I'm just very annoyed at the place...I had to call 3 times before they'd call me back. That's just not good customer service. Hopefully I don't have to deal much with them anymore.

Anyway, I have a half-day tomorrow, and then am off Friday & Monday. Can't wait. It's been a long week. Then next Thursday we have a company Christmas party at Champps. Fun. :p

Posted by alpha at 08:05 AM | Wedding , Work | Comments (0)

November 18, 2004

Last Day of the Week

Boy I sure am glad that today is the last work day of my week. I could surely use a break.

So I had my performance review yesterday afternoon...it went well. It was a pretty good review, actually. Apparently "Hawkeye" considers me a senior level person, a reason which she had used to justify her "salaried employees" statements to me. Whatever. Hopefully next year I'd get to do more technical stuff, moving a little bit away from the content management stuff. She told me that she just can't imagine me being happy doing content management all day long. So we'll see what happens.

Today's Matt's (my friend from work) birthday. :o)

Happy pseudo Friday!

Posted by alpha at 07:56 AM | Work | Comments (0)

November 15, 2004

Another week begins...

How exciting...it's gonna be raining all week. At least I'll be off on Friday. Wheeee! I can't believe that it's Thanksgiving already next week! Craziness. 2-day week for me next week! Yey!

Anyway, I got dumped with a HUGE project last Friday (at 11:45am, mind you). One that took a total of 10 hours to complete. Bettye, my counterpart in Chicago, took pity on me and helped out with a little bit of it. I worked on it from 11:45am to 4:45pm. Then I had another 3 hours left of work to do on it after I got home. So I went home, drained my brain a little bit, and got back to work. Greg was very nice (he knew that I was really stressed out at work) and went out to get Popeye's for dinner. :o) Worked from 8:30pm to 11:30pm. Then at 11:30pm, I had to start doing the volume stuff (for which I was previously scheduled)...until 2am. Just before I went to bed Friday night, I managed to figure out that I worked 15.5 hours that day. Ridiculous. I don't want to hear another word about having to work more just because I'm a salaried employee.

Saturday I slept in (for obvious reasons). I just kinda hung out and didn't do anything all day 'cuz I was so exhausted from the past week's drama at work. We left at about 6ish to go to the store to pick up some stuff for Chris & my combined birthday party (Chris' bday was on 11/12). :o) It was great fun. Chris' friend Judy's brother brought over the XBox and they were playing Halo 2 on the projector. It was ridiculously big. :p Great people, great food, great fun. :o) Funny cats. It had it all. :o)

Sunday we went to church. Then we hung out, and I slept for awhile. We tried to go to a pizza place for dinner, but apparently both pizza places that we usually go to (the one in Plano and the one in Lewisville) were both closed on Sundays. :o( We drove all the way to Lewisville to find that out. So we settled on going to Johnny Carino's instead. Tasty food, nonetheless. Afterwards I went to my hockey game where we lost 0-4 to the Hornets.

Posted by alpha at 01:53 PM | Friends , Hockey , Work | Comments (0)

November 12, 2004

Twas just one of those days...

Yesterday sucked.

I got to work at 6am yesterday, 'cuz the guy who usually has the early shift was off on vacation. It was busy as hell too. I got up once at 9:30 to get breakfast (they served us breakfast burritos yesterday to celebrate clearing a billion contracts this year), and then I didn't get up from my chair again until 1:30 or so. Didn't take lunch 'cuz we were so freakin' busy. So basically, I worked almost 9 hours yesterday. I signed off at 3 after I finished with all my stuff, and told my counterpart that I was sticking around until about 5 so I could go out to dinner with our director, who was in town from Chicago.

At 4:50, my boss condescending asked if I hadn't been working for the past 2 hours. Maybe she had a bad meeting or something, but I told her straight out that no, I hadn't been working for the past 2 hours. She proceeded to come over and gave me a speech about how I'm a salaried employee, and that I'm expected to work extra hours if I was around. I just glared at her in disbelief, and (as calmly as possible) told her that I was done with my stuff at 3, and that I told my counterpart to call if she needed anything. She didn't call, so I assumed that she didn't need help. My manager just looked at me and said...well, if you have a problem with that, we can discuss it at your review. I turned and looked at her, gave her the WTF look, and she left. I was soooooo pissed that I almost didn't even go to dinner, if it wasn't that I didn't want to be disrespectful to our director. I was glad though that we sat at opposite ends of the table at dinner...that made it a little bit more tolerable.

Ya know, it's just crap like this that makes me dislike my job. I like the work just fine, but I don't appreciate being treated like that for no reason. What, did she expect me to work at 11-hour day just because I wanted to be courteous and go out to dinner with the group?? I just don't think that my work ethic ought to be questioned when I'm working almost 9 hours a day already. That's just such bull. And I'm getting REALLY tired of her pulling the "salaried employee" card whenever she feels like it. Hell, you know what, if you want to make me an hourly employee, be my guest...you'd end up paying me a whole hell of a lot more money.

Posted by alpha at 07:21 AM | Work | Comments (0)

November 11, 2004

Marathon Day

It's 8:12 and it's already over 2 hours into my day...I hafta stay 'til late tonight too 'cuz our Director is in town again (this time to do reviews), so we're all going out to dinner (supposedly anyway). We'll see. I brought a couple of DVDs to kill time between 3 and 5pm. Fun stuff.

I guess I haven't updated since the weekend. My birthday was really nice (especially so since Greg and I got engaged). :o) Saturday Greg and Paul went down to College Station for the A&M/OU game, then to Austin for the Texas/OSU game. They were gone all day and got on TV coverage twice in 2 different games. How funny. Anyway, Jodie, Luci, and I went wedding/bridesmaid dress shopping. It was loads of fun. We found both a wedding dress for me and a bridesmaid dress for them. :o) Quite an accomplishment I'd say. Hee hee.

Saturday night I went over to my parents' for dinner. I requested that they make dinner this time instead of going out to celebrate. It was a great time. My sister and Matt left soon after dinner, but I stuck around and watched the Mavericks game with my Dad, then talked to them some more about the wedding and reception and stuff. :o) My Mom came up with 60 people for her guest list. Good grief. We'll see what happens with that.

Sunday (my birthday) we slept in, and then went out on a motorcycle ride to go have breakfast at Denny's. That was pretty fun, and it was a beautiful day out. We also stopped by the golf course in Plano to check out their banquet facilities for the wedding reception. Looks like they could only hold 120 people though. My hockey game was at 7:30pm...Katie finally broke our no-scoring streak! Went out to Razzoo's with Greg, Luci, Katie, and Tony after the game to celebrate my birthday. It was fun. :o)

Monday Greg and I were off work again. We tried to get a hold of the people who are in charge of event planning in the City of Plano. Found the golf course guy, who referred us to a lady at the Plano Centre, who we emailed but never heard back. I don't think we did too much else that day. Just kinda hung out and relaxed.

This upcoming Saturday, Chris and I will be hosting a birthday party at Chris & Beta's house. :o) Wheeee! Fun fun! Hopefully people will be able to make it since it's a little bit late notice. I'm sure it'll be a great time. Hee hee.

Posted by alpha at 08:13 AM | Family , Friends , Hockey , Wedding , Work | Comments (0)

November 04, 2004

Yeyeyeyeyeyeyey

3 hours 45 minutes to go, and counting...then no more work until next Tuesday!

Man I just realized that I have a lot to do before I leave today. Also am obligated to attend a lunch thing at 11:45 with a Senior VP who's in town from Chicago. I asked my manager if I should stay to go to that (otherwise I leave at 11:15 for my half-day), and she would highly recommend that I do. So I hafta stay for it. Oh well. Not that I had other plans anyway. :p

Last night Luci came over and we made "extreme nachos." It was pretty tasty. Hee hee. Then we (including the kitties) had ice cream that she brought over. Mmmmmm.

Saturday I'm going shopping with the girls for wedding dress/bridesmaid dresses. Fun stuff! Then Saturday night my parents are making me dinner for my bday. :o) Hee hee. We hadn't had dinner at home in awhile (we always celebrate at a restaurant), so it should be fun.

Posted by alpha at 07:29 AM | Family , Friends , Wedding , Work | Comments (0)

November 03, 2004

*Yawn*

*Yawn* I was definitely spoiled by my extra 45 minutes of sleep yesterday, when I worked from home. :p Plus last night Greg was watching the election coverage 'til really late when I was trying to sleep. Heh heh.

Lessee...yesterday was somewhat uneventful. It was nice to not have to drive to/from work...actually gave me an extra 1.5 hours in my day. Heh heh. :o) I used that time to run adware/spyware removal software on both the laptop and the desktop. Just a monthly maintenance thing. Fun stuff.

Last night we had a meeting with our premarital class facilitators, Cody and Georgia. We went over the test that we took awhile back. They said that we had scored in the highest category possible (yey!). :o) Hee hee. The meeting went pretty well. Cody went through the results and pointed out things that we should pay attention to in our relationship. Yep yep. :o)

Tonight Luci is coming over for dinner. :o) We're making "extreme nachos". Should be tasty and easy to handle. Hee hee.

Tomorrow I'm working a 1/2-day, which means I get to go home at about 11:15. :o) Yey! Then I'm off on Friday & Monday. Wheeee!

Posted by alpha at 07:52 AM | Friends , Wedding , Work | Comments (0)

October 28, 2004

*Growl*

Man! I'm hungry already. Not a good sign...

Today at work, we're having a "baseball day." People are allowed to wear baseball jerseys & hats to work, but get this...NO JEANS ALLOWED. Lame. We do get fed hot dogs, chips, nachos, pretzels, popcorn, and cracker jack though. Oh well.

1 more day until the end of my last 5-day work week for the year...wheeeee!

Chris & Beta's wedding is on Saturday. :o) Yey!!!! I'm so excited. Must remember to charge up batteries for my camera...I have picture-duty at the wedding. Hee hee. :o)

Posted by alpha at 08:04 AM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)

October 26, 2004

Record Time!

29 minutes from garage to parking lot this morning. :o) I think there were a couple of stalled cars on westbound 635, east of the 635/75 intersection, so they alleviated traffic somewhat. Hee hee. Wheeee!

I think Greg and I are gonna go vote during lunch today. Hopefully there won't be a really long line or anything.

This week is my last 5-day work-week. :o) How 'bout that! We got all the vacation schedules figured out and put on a nice-looking calendar (thanks to yours truly). I'm off next Thursday afternoon, through the following Monday for my birthday. Hee hee. Greg got next Friday & the following Monday off too. Yey!

This last weekend was good. I was over at my parents' house for most of Saturday. My sister and Matt joined us for lunch, we all chatted...had a good time. Then my Dad and I took pictures of some of the wood products that he had, so he could put them up on the website. Saturday night Greg and I took my parents out to dinner at Toyko One. He officially got permission from them to marry me! Ha ha ha. :p We had a great time. It's usually not just the 4 of us that get to hang out...my sister and/or Matt is/are usually around too. So that was good. :o)

Sunday we went to church for our class, and then to the mall to get Greg some new clothes. He bought this new pair of Timberland shoes that are really nice. :o) He wore them to work yesterday and said that they're very comfortable. Hee hee.

Sunday night I had my hockey game against the Hornets. Lost 0-2. Coulda been much worse. I think for the most part we kept up pretty well. Our coach Michael's back. :o) I like having him around. I know some of my teammates don't like his aggressive coaching style, but I always enjoy learning from him. Anyway, he and Drew (our goalie Vicki's boyfriend) both know how I can improve as a player (Drew used to coach my travel team), and I appreciate them volunteering their time to help us get better. :o) Oh oh! And Michael made it on the backup squad for the Ft. Worth Brahmas!!!!! He might get called when a player gets injured, etc. That's soooooo cool. :o) And he said that he's been practicing with some Stars players at Grapevine Mills. Hee hee hee. :o) Very awesome.

Posted by alpha at 07:20 AM | Family , Hockey , Memories , Work | Comments (0)

October 22, 2004

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday everyone! :o) I'm only working a half-day today, so that makes me ultra-joyous!

Last night we went to go see "Friday Night Lights." It was pretty good. Greg had read the book so he was pointing out all the fictionalization in the movie. :p Hee hee.

Also talked to my travel agent and put down a deposit for our Jamaica trip. :o) Greg decided that he'd much rather enjoy the trip with A/C in the room, so we upgraded to the beachfront verandah suite. It has A/C, a stocked mini-bar, and satellite TV. Wheeee! See pictures of rooms.

My Mom's trying to be difficult. She sent an email (from her work email addy) to the agent yesterday afternoon (like 2:30ish). Then she emailed me at like 8:45pm asking me how they could finalize plans if the agent doesn't respond to her email. I was like...ummm...I talked to her earlier in the evening, and she got your email...she said she was getting right back to you...PERHAPS she sent an email back at your work email??? Geez.

Anyway, everything else is going as well as can be. :p Looking forward to leaving at 11:15! :o)

Posted by alpha at 07:43 AM | Wedding , Work | Comments (0)

October 21, 2004

Ah-ta-da!

Last night I went out to dinner at Saltgrass with Matt, Gary, and our department's director Dan (in town from Chicago). We had a good time. :o) Got home at around 7:30ish. Greg was on his way out to Brook Mays when I got home. :o/ So I sat down and worked on the wedding site for a couple of hours. I don't think Greg was very happy with that. But hey, I don't wanna be watching baseball either (which was what he was doing)...so...whatever.

I think tonight we're going to go see "Friday Night Lights." Greg bought the book last week and read it, and wanted to go see the movie.

Tomorrow I'm working a half-day. Yey! Have to bring my car in to get the oil changed and tires rotated. Maybe I'll get around to do some early voting too for the election. We'll see. I don't wanna plan too much for Friday night 'cuz I've been busy just about every night this week, and it's tiring me out. :p Planning on sleeping a little bit on Saturday. Then it's on to my parents' house to work on some pictures for the company's website. Saturday night we have dinner with my parents. Fun fun. Hopefully I don't have to justify myself too much more on the Jamaica thing. *Sigh*

Posted by alpha at 07:29 AM | Work | Comments (0)

October 20, 2004

Fajitas!

Yesterday went by relatively quickly. I did my fair share of goofing around, and then our Director Dan came into town from Chicago, so we went out for an 1.5-hr lunch. :o) Stopped by the store to pick up stuff for dinner...and the strangest collection of people were there. It was rather bizarre.

Luci came over at about 7:30, bearing Snickers ice cream and red wine. Greg cooked the fajita meat and the veggies (and shrimp too!) on the smoker. It was ultra delicious. I made some mexican rice that turned out great! Found the recipe on AllRecipes.com. It's also listed below if you want to quickly see what went into it...it was very simple to make.

------------------------------------------------------------
Mexican Rice II
Submitted by: Sylvia Eccles
This is a wonderful side dish for any Mexican dinner.
Servings: 4

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup uncooked long-grain rice
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup tomato sauce
2 cups chicken broth

Directions:
1. Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and add rice. Cook, stirring constantly, until puffed and golden. While rice is cooking, sprinkle with salt and cumin.
2. Stir in onions and cook until tender. Stir in tomato sauce and chicken broth; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes. Fluff with a fork.
------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by alpha at 08:24 AM | Friends , Recipes , Work | Comments (0)

September 29, 2004

Wanted: Tape of Gilmore Girls & One Tree Hill

What a disaster!

I sat down tonight to catch up on my shows from Monday & Tuesday, when I noticed that the VCR only taped 1 hour's worth (so I thought I didn't have "One Tree Hill") last night. Disappointed, I rewound anyway and sat down to watch. Then I noticed that it had taped ABC instead of the WB. So, I ended up with a tape of "My Wife & Kids" (which I don't watch), instead of "Gilmore Girls" and "One Tree Hill." Dammit! I thought I set it properly and checked it twice, but I guess I didn't. So I'm in dire need of a tape of "Gilmore Girls" and "One Tree Hill" from last night. Can anyone help please....????

Anywho, aside from my TV-taping drama, I actually need to go to bed soon 'cuz I have to be at work at 6am tomorrow. It might not be so bad, 'cuz the first hour and a half would involve some intensive (busy) work. Can't think of a quicker way (notice I didn't say fun way) to get rid of 1.5 hours at work. Then tomorrow for lunch, our charity committee (we're supporting the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center this year) is doing a lunch fundraiser. People volunteered to make food for lunch, and the rest of us donate $5 to get lunch. Not a bad deal to me. :o) Hee hee. So that should be fun. Plus, it'd be nice to be able to leave work at 3pm (there better not be traffic!)...and then I'm off on Friday and Monday. Wheeee!

Posted by alpha at 08:32 PM | Misc , Work | Comments (0)

Posados

Went with the gang last night to Posados for dinner. It was mighty tastiness. :o) It sure was good to see Kent. He told us that he was in Fallujah and his platoon ran support for the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade (something like that). I had no idea that he was in Fallujah. Goodness. Anyway, he's on vacation for a month (while Ruth has their 2nd baby), and then they're moving back to Camp Pendleton in CA (in a couple of weeks). Ruth is scheduled for a C-section on Monday at noon, so I'll go by there and see her. :o)

Oh, after Posados, we all hopped on over to the Cold Stone up the street. I didn't have any ice cream 'cuz I was too full from dinner, but it sure looked delicious.

Tomorrow I'm working 6am - 3pm. Icky. The guy that usually comes in early (and actually enjoys it) is taking a vacation day. Not that big of a deal...I just get to start my vacation earlier (I'm off on Friday & Monday). :o) Wheee!

Posted by alpha at 07:45 AM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)

September 16, 2004

Thursday

Yesterday was a day from hell at work. I won't go into details, 'cuz it'd just make me mad all over again. But I'm lucky to have a friend in Matt, who I can email with off-network and get a sanity check. :o) Anyways...

Nothing else really happened yesterday. Went to work, came home, fed cats, watched TV. Worked on my homework for the seminar. Yep. Exciting, I know. But it was a much needed brain-dump time.

Let's see...Saturday I have a bridal shower to go to for Beta. :o) Then I think Saturday night Greg has an encore concert to play at Brookhaven College. I'm not sure if I'm gonna go to that one, since I've already gone last week. We'll see. Will probably move some things around to get ready for moving Greg's furniture in. Yep. Fun fun. Hee hee.

Posted by alpha at 12:25 PM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)

September 14, 2004

Vacation has come to an end...

Man I just remembered that I have to go to work tomorrow. Bleh. This is gonna be a marathon update...you've been warned! :o)

My time off has been nice. Friday I had lunch with Luci at First Chinese BBQ and it was awesome. :o) We walked over to the Chinese bakery afterwards and got some pastries, etc. It was a good time. Did some cleaning when I got home (note that this will be a common theme during my vacation). Went to Central Market with Greg when he got home from work, and bought some food to make for dinner. Tastiness.

Saturday morning Greg left early to go to symphony rehearsal. I slept in a little bit, then vacuumed in preparation for Jodie's arrival. Jodie and I went over to Ft. Worth, to the Bass Performance Hall, to see "Stomp" with my coworkers. :o) It was a great time. We went to a burger joint for lunch beforehand and got to chat a bit. Good times as always. The Bass Performance Hall is AWESOME inside...it's designed like an opera house, with boxes and stuff. It was very neat. "Stomp" was great (nothing like making music out of brooms and barrels and stuff). After the performance, we skidaddled and went to Milwaukee Joe's for ice cream. It was delicious! :o) They really need to open a store in Plano or something...somewhere closer. :o) Mmmmm!

We then all went to Greg's symphony concert Saturday night. That was fun. I brought my camera 'cuz I wanted to get a pic of the orchestra members all dressed up. They had a photographer there to take a pic for their program's centerfold. He had all this awesome sophisticated (ie. EXPENSIVE) equipment set up. So Jodie and I went and sat behind him. He striked up a conversation with me, and I showed him my camera. I realized how little I knew about cameras from talking to the guy. Ha ha. But he let me borrow the trigger of the 2,000 watts worth of studio lighting (ie. VERY BRIGHT FLASH) to take a couple of pictures. That thing was freakin' ridiculously bright. It was fun though. Hee hee. The music was good, and we were entertained by this really old lady who didn't realize how loud she talked (which, included some racial comments about the saxophone soloist)...we got a big kick out of it. Hee hee.

Sunday we had our first marriage preparation class. It went pretty well. We have homework to do for the next class (which reminds me...). Anyway, then my sister and I had a "marriage session" with my parents. Apparently, whatever went wrong with my parents earlier on in the week are now all fine and dandy. Oh well. Our session went well...and when my Dad realized that Greg and I are taking a class at church, he was like...oh, well then I don't need to speak as much to you about this. Ha ha. :p Then they got all excited because we're taking a class at church...one thing led to another, we were all discussing our wedding! Ha ha. It was pretty funny. My parents were REALLY excited...I had to calm them down and tell them that it's not official yet (no ring on my finger) and we won't be making any solid plans until that happens. But I wanted to give them a heads up so they wouldn't be surprised when Greg comes a-knockin' to ask for permission. Plus, I wanted to find out what their reaction would be. So it all went well, thank goodness.

Since the session with my parents went so well (and very long), I had to rush home to pack up for hockey. We lost to Relentless 0-2. I got to skate very fast during 1 of my shifts...that was fun. I hadn't done that in awhile. Hee hee. :p I had some shots on goal, but nothing went through the goalie, unfortunately.

Monday...I don't really remember what I did. I was on the computer for a good bit, trying to get someone to get my server back up. And once it did, I started transferring stuff over to Adam's server. :p I think I spent quite a bit of time doing that. Then went to the store and bought some food. Made queso for a snack and it was ready right when Greg was arriving home from work. He was happy to see food for him when he got home. :o) Hee hee. He made some sausages for dinner, and it was great. I watched the season premieres of "7th Heaven" and "Everwood." Yep. Cleaned a bit. That was about it. :o)

Today I got up reasonably early, got on the computer for a little bit, cleaned a little bit, and went off to lunch at Texadelphia with Chris, Adam, and Katrina. It was good to have lunch with the gang again. I think that's what I miss the most at my new job...I miss hanging out with my friends. :o/ After lunch, I came home and cleaned some more. Got a lot of boxes out of the way. Just a few more piles of papers left before we can move the couch into the office, and Greg's couch from storage into the living room. At least I've accomplished something during my time off though. :o) Hee hee.

Posted by alpha at 09:09 PM | Family , Friends , Hockey , Photography , Work | Comments (0)

September 09, 2004

Bored

Tick......tock......tick......tock......

Clock's not ticking fast enough. Argh. This afternoon has been going by soooo slowly. The morning went by rather quickly, but the past 2 hours have been just dragging. Ugh.

I got the tix for "Stomp" this weekend. Wheeee! :o)

Not much else is going on. Luci gave me info on the jeweler they like, and I passed on the info to Greg. A few emails later, he said we could go look after he gets his next commission check. We'll see if that happens. :p

In other news, my Dad randomly emailed me and asked me to find a time where my sister and I can have a "meeting" with him about marriage and stuff. It was really random and a little weird. I guess it wouldn't have been odd had the crap didn't happen between my Dad and my Mom earlier this week (they were pissed at each other for some weird reasons). Oh well. Hmph.

Posted by alpha at 02:25 PM | Wedding , Work | Comments (0)

September 08, 2004

Me's a updatin' me's a journal

This week has been going by relatively slowly at work. Kinda weird 'cuz it's a really short week for me. But somehow 2 days of work felt more like 4. Tomorrow's the last day this week that I'll be working...then I won't be back until next Wednesday. Yey!!! :o) Not going anywhere special...in fact, I'll prob spend most of it cleaning up the house to make room for Greg's furniture that has been sitting in storage for a year. Hee hee.

Labor Day weekend was good. I worked Saturday morning while Greg went to orchestra rehearsal. Then we left for Austin at about 11:30am. Went to Stubb's BBQ for lunch. It was REALLY tasty. We left the car parked over there and walked over to the football stadium for the game. It was a good 15 or so blocks. :p Walked off the BBQ that we just had. Ha ha. Anyway, the game was fun. Texas won 65-0 vs. UNT.

After the game, we drove down to the lakehouse. Diane & John were up when we got there. But we all turned in soon after 'cuz we were quite tired. Paul had a migraine Sunday morning so he didn't go jet skiing with Greg & John. I slept in and then helped Diane fix lunch for everybody. John's parents and brother came over in the early afternoon. Dr. & Mrs. Nau (John's parents) are so cool. Ha ha. Mrs. Nau is always so nice. :o) Marshall & Laura came over with Dr. & Mrs. Nau 'cuz I think they went shopping together or something beforehand. Anyway, Greg, Marshall, Laura, and Diane went jet skiing...John & Dr. Nau went down to sit by the lake, and Paul and I stuck around the house and talked with Mrs. Nau for awhile until John's brother Neil came over with Erin & her boyfriend Glenn. Then Paul and I went down to the cove and went swimming. Greg drove up in the jet ski just as we got there, and we skipped rocks on the lake for awhile. That was fun. The water was nice. :o)

Sunday night we grilled burgers and sausages for dinner. Greg did most of the work and it was delicious. I think John got jealous and was challenging Greg to a BBQ cookout (I think Greg would kick John's butt...and everyone agrees). Ha ha. Fun times. We watched "Starsky and Hutch" after dinner. Hee hee. Funny movie.

We left Monday morning to come home. As we were leaving, my sister called and asked if I wanted to come shopping at San Marcos with her and my parents. They're such goofballs...they left Dallas at like 6:30 in the morning to come down to go shopping. I kindly passed (I knew they wouldn't come back until late and I have to be at work early the next morning). :p The drive back was somewhat uneventful. It did rain quite a bit though, which made the temperature relatively cool. So it was pretty pleasant. We grilled pork chops for dinner. Paul stayed over again so Greg could bring him to work Tuesday morning. Yep yep. That was how my weekend went. Prob more details than you guys care to know, but oh well. :o)

Anyway, this weekend is fun-filled (laced with cleaning chores). Saturday I'll be going to see "Stomp" with Jodie at the Bass Performance Hall in Ft. Worth. It's my company's outing. :o) We're meeting at 11:30 and heading over there, run around downtown to find something eat, and then show's at 2. After the show, my company had planned a reception thing across the street from the Bass. Depending on how long the show is, we may or may not be able to stay very long at the reception. Greg has his orchestra concert Saturday night at 7 or 7:30...in Mesquite...which is WAY on the other side of town from Ft. Worth. So we'll see how it works out.

Sunday is our first premarital class thing at church. Hopefully it'll be cool. :p Fun stuff. Heh heh.

1 more day left of work this week...

Posted by alpha at 09:36 PM | Family , Friends , Fun Stuff , Work | Comments (0)

September 03, 2004

In a protesting mood...

Someone annoyed my boss this morning (before she even got to work), and she went on a tirade checking every link on a site, so I got like 20 emails from her for things that need to be changed. But right now I feel like protesting and I'll just sit here listening to my 311 CD and updating my journal. :o)

Anyway, this week has flown by, thank goodness. It has been relatively quiet at work (obviously except for today). Looking forward to a 3-day weekend even though I have to work tonight. It should be a nice and short week for me next week. Monday off, and then I'm off Thursday afternoon, Friday, and the next Monday & Tuesday. Wheeee! Hopefully I'll get some much-needed cleaning/organizing done while I'm home.

Paul stayed over last night. His car got stolen from his apartment complex last Friday night, and the Dallas Police found it on Tuesday. It was completely trashed. So a friend of his dropped him off after work last night, we watched football and had a good time, and Greg took him to work this morning. Tomorrow late morning we'll be heading down to Austin for the first UT football game...so it all works out just fine. We'll be heading on down to the lakehouse after the game for the rest of the weekend. Should be great fun.

Last night my sister came over with her dog Mak. She wanted to show me her portfolio that has her drawings in it. It was pretty neat. She can really draw. I was impressed. :o) We'd make a good team 'cuz I can program and she can draw. Ha ha. She has an interview with a lady who owns a graphics design company on Saturday. Hopefully something comes out of that.

Other than that, I don't think a whole lot is going on really. My bruise has gotten MUCH nastier. It's mostly purple now. Really, it's gross. I'm sure I'll get comments on that at the lake this weekend. Ugh.

Great...now my Director has joined in the madness in sending emails about things that need to be fixed. Argh. Guess I better go. Fun stuff. Maybe these would make the day go by quickly. Y'all have a great and safe Labor Day weekend! :o)

Posted by alpha at 09:53 AM | Family , Hockey , Work | Comments (0)

August 30, 2004

Black & Blue Goodness

Weekends go by way too fast nowadays. Why can't the work week go by fast like that too? Actually, maybe it does. It's already the end of August. What happened to my summer?

Got a call from Jodie Friday afternoon with some good news. :o) Hee hee. I'll let her tell you all about it. And no, it's not that Jodie and J.D. are engaged or anything juicy like that. :p

Friday night I went out to dinner with Ruth (and her daughter Lily), Bena, and Mirjam. Friends from high school. :o) Ruth is pregnant with her 2nd girl and is due at the beginning of October. We're gonna throw her a baby shower. Hee hee. Anyways, we had a good time hanging out, and got to check out Bena & Josy's new crib (they just got married in May). It's very nice. They're living in Bena's parents' old house...they completely remodeled it and it looks fantastic. There's hope yet for my little pink-carpeted house.

Saturday we were supposed to go move Greg's stuff from storage to my house, but it was rainy and we really needed some time to make room for all of it. So I ended up going over to my parents' early to have lunch with them. It was mightily tasty. Then I helped them fix up my Dad's computer so it's getting emails from the proper email addresses for the company. :p Had a great time. We met up with Greg, my sister, Matt & his bro for dinner at the buffet place. Ate too much as usual, but it was fun hanging out with my parents. Hee hee.

Oh, by the way, an update on the 1st online sale we made on our website. It turns out that my Dad tried to process the lady's credit card on Friday and it didn't go through 'cuz the security code was wrong. So my Mom tried to call several times Friday to find out what it was supposed to be. She finally got a hold of the lady Saturday morning...the lady was all apologetic, thinking that it was completely her fault (even though we didn't get her order email until Thursday night) that the order was being processed late. Ha ha. It was pretty funny. Anyway, she gave us the correct security code and it went through just fine. My Mom shipped out the package Saturday morning...so it's now official that WE MADE OUR 1ST INTERNET SALE ON OUR WEBSITE!!! :o)

And the reason why my Dad didn't get the order email in the first place was that he didn't have Outlook checking the right accounts. Just what I had suspected. It's all good and fixed now. Ha ha.

Sunday I spent most of it sleeping (other than when we were at church). I was really exhausted for some reason. Greg cleaned out the garage a bit and cleaned out some empty boxes. Sunday night we had our hockey game against the Hornets, which was frustrating at best. I also now have a huge bruise (so huge that my left thigh now looks deformed) from stopping a slapshot with my thigh. It hurts to walk. :o/ Maybe I'll take a pic of it later for your enjoyment.

This whole week at work is going to be just me...again. Bettye is off for yet another week. I can't wait 'til I can take some of my vacation days. This whole you're-the-only-person-here thing is getting annoying. I mean, really, do they really expect me to work 7:15 - 5:30 with no lunch break? I'm hoping that there aren't any late stuff that comes out this week so I can take off at 4:30. Lame, I tell ya, lame.

Posted by alpha at 09:02 AM | Family , Friends , Hockey , Memories , Work | Comments (0)

August 18, 2004

Salmon and Twix Ice Cream

This week has been going by rather slowly. :o/ I can't believe it's only Wednesday. It feels like it ought to be at least a Thursday. Ah well.

Not much is really going on. We had Luci over for dinner last night. It was mega-tastiness. I went and bought some fresh(er) salmon, some green beans, and some dinner rolls. Luci brought over some red wine and ice cream. Mmmmmm. Good food and good times were had. Lemme tell ya, Greg's getting pretty good with the smoker. We've had grilled food the past couple of nights, and both were exceptionally tasty.

La la...I can't wait 'til this week's over. My counterpart in Chicago is out on vacation the rest of the week, so it's one of those "come in on time and stay late" kinda situation for me. Ugh. Hopefully it won't be too terribly busy and I can get outta here having only to stay an extra 15 minutes or something. It'll still suck though having to sit here all day long...but anyways...

Oh! I now have Photoshop and Illustrator CS installed on my computer at work! I even got our PC guy to leave me with the books that come with the software. I s'pose that's what I can do when I get bored. I've always wanted to learn Photoshop properly... :o)

Posted by alpha at 08:24 AM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)

August 13, 2004

Kinko's

Well, I got an email a couple of days ago from a recruiter from FedEx Kinko's. I had submitted my resume for a Web Developer job there last week 'cuz I was frustrated with my current job. Anyway, I didn't really expect to hear from them since it was a Monster.com job posting. :p

He emailed and called several times on Wednesday. When he finally left a voice mail, he said that he wanted to schedule an interview with me early next week. So I wrote him back (since I can't really call him during business hours when I'm at work), and asked him some questions about the job and the company. Here's what he said:

- the position reports to a Sr. Project Manager
- client is the internal sales team, which gets the projects from external customers
- the job description has a little bit of everything (project planning, design & layout, programming in HTML, JavaScript, and PHP)
- Kinko's is closing their CA office (after they were bought by FedEx), thus moving 300+ jobs to the Dallas office (over by the Galleria)

I tried calling the recruiter back last night, but he wasn't there...so I left a message. Bleh. I'm still not quite sure whether I want to take the interview. From my standpoint, here's what I see:

Pros:
- the Galleria is a whole lot closer than Las Colinas...I'll get to have lunch with the boys and Katrina
- potential of not having to work weird hours and/or weekends
- I'll get to be more involved with the whole project...instead of just updating content

Cons:
- unsure of salary range...it's a bit dicey since it said "4-yr degree preferred but not required"...hard to beat $50k/3-weeks vacation (and I'm likely to get a bonus at the end of the year)
- I like my job just fine...only some minor inconveniences and annoyances every once in awhile
- leaving a job after 5 months doesn't look good on the resume
- my leaving would leave the group in a bind, and I have no real good reason for it
- everybody likes me here...and I see upward potential eventually

So basically, I think my conclusion is that Kinko's has to do some serious convincing for me to go work for them. There's not enough reason (as of this point) for me to jeopardize what I have here and take the gamble with them. I'll keep you guys posted.

Posted by alpha at 09:22 AM | Work | Comments (0)

August 11, 2004

*Yawn*

7:15 is way too freakin' early to have to be at work...

Yesterday I was told that I have to start coming in at 7:15 'cuz this email that needs to go out at 7:30. Some people just couldn't wait the 15 minutes for me to come in at 7:30 (hence allowing me to carpool with Greg instead of having to drive myself). Ugh. Most annoying. So now we have to drive separately, and I have to leave between 6:30 and 6:40ish to get here. The only nice thing about this is that I'd actually get to leave when I'm supposed to (as opposed to coming in at 7:30 and then having to wait until Greg gets off work at 5 to come pick me up). But it was nice to have his company on the way to/from work. :o/ Hopefully this arrangement is just temporary.

Anyway, so I get in, checked all the numbers, and went to moderate the email to be sent...the network asked me to change my password. Okay, so I changed it to something I had never used before. *Boom* "Your login password cannot be changed." Process was repeated 5 more times. Luckily, our network security guy gets in early, so I went over to have him check out what the problem was. Apparently he had just gotten off the phone with one of the VPs who's having the exact same problem. No matter what we typed in as the password, it wouldn't take it. It took a good 20 minutes for us to figure out how to get around the system. It turns out that while it gave me the error saying that it didn't change the password, the password was in fact changed (WTF???). In the meantime, I had to ask the guy in Chicago to moderate the email for me 'cuz I can't log in to the computer. Fun. What a way to start the day...

So the lesson is...don't use NVIdentity to sync passwords on your network. It doesn't work as intended and causes huge problems. Hopefully we'll get rid of it soon.

Oh, last night I went to a New Owners Meeting at the Toyota dealership. It was pretty nice...we got Jason's Deli for dinner and got to take a tour of the shop and stuff. I had dropped off my car yesterday morning to have the little ding on my rear bumper fixed (we did it when we were unloading the smoker grill). Yep. It cost $50 to fix...and this is with the Customer Relations lady pulling a favor with the touch-up guy (he quoted $90). All car things are so expensive. Bleh.

Tonight we're dropping off Greg's car at the Volvo dealership so they could clean it up and stuff (they never got to when we got the car last week). Yep. I think that's all I've got planned. Hopefully it'll be a nice quiet day at work today.

Posted by alpha at 08:09 AM | Family , Work | Comments (0)

July 16, 2004

TGIF!!!

My goodness it's been a long week...

After my marathon day on Tuesday, I've been exhausted all week. I continue being the only one here doing site updates, so I can't make lunch plans or anything (the guys were nice and brought Chipotle back for me on Monday). I finally went grocery shopping so I have some food to bring for lunch. :p

Lessee...Tuesday night's dinner with the girls was great. We got some great hang time in. We really should do that more often. Hee hee. :o)

Wednesday night I called Community Credit Union to see if my car loan payoff check had been deposited. Found out that they never got the check (WTF??). So I called Capital One to see if the check had been cashed yet, and luckily it hasn't. I had the guy cancel that check and send me a new one. It was, all in all, a very annoying ordeal. For some strange reason lately I've been getting some mail, and not some mail (like my auto insurance policy)...it's starting to make me suspicious that someone's going through my mailbox. I'll have to keep an eye on it. Hopefully it's just a coincidence.

Anyway, the guy FedEx-ed the paperwork to me one more time. I picked it up last night, and went straight to the bank to deposit it. So now my loan at CCU is supposedly paid off, and I should get more info from Capital One soon (if they ever got my paperwork from last time). Hmph.

I'm so glad that it's finally Friday. This week seemed to have dragged on forever, even though each individual day went by relatively quickly. We're leaving tonight to go down to Diane's (Greg's sister's) lakehouse at Canyon Lake (near San Antonio). Hopefully the weekend will be funfilled with relaxation, jet skiing, and boat cruising. :o) On the way home on Monday, we'll probably stop by the German restaurant in Granbury again. :o) I want to get some sausages that we could freeze and save for later. Mmmmmm mmmmmmm! Got hungry just thinking about it!

Posted by alpha at 08:46 AM | Family , Misc , Work | Comments (0)

July 07, 2004

Foil and Microwaves don't mix

Hmmm...so in the freezer at work I found some of those breakfast burritos that we've been having. Thought I'd heat up one of those for myself this morning. It, incidentally, was wrapped in foil, and after looking around for a plate (to no avail), I thought I'd test out the foil-in-microwave theory. Turns out that the theory was not a myth, and foil does burn in the microwave. Go figure. At least I was standing there watching and took it out in time. Well, me and one of the VPs here anyway...how embarrassing.

Anywho, yesterday was somewhat uneventful. I watched "Happy Gilmore" on TV, and then my sister came over with her new puppy Mak. :o) Mak is SOOOOOO cute!!! See for yourself!. And he's the quietest dog! He didn't even bark once when he was at my house. The cats (Benny, specifically), weren't quite sure what to make of Mak. It was hilarious. :p

Posted by alpha at 08:33 AM | Family , Kitties , Memories , Work | Comments (0)

July 02, 2004

Huh!

Nothing really going on this week. Everything's been kinda slow. I got my car refinanced yesterday...at 5.29% APR (vs. the 6.4% that I got at the dealership). Yah. So today I'm filling out all the paperwork and stuff that goes with that. Fun fun.

My sister got a 4 months old Yorkie! His name is Mak (stands for Matt And Karen), and he weighs 4 lbs. Craziness. She's gonna bring Mak by tonight so I can see him (and perhaps to take some pics). Hee hee.

Tomorrow I gotta get to work by 9am. :o( Not sure when we'll be done. Ick. I'm thinking that I'm prob not going to go down to San Antonio this weekend (Greg's leaving tonight with Paul)...it's not really worth it to be there a day, having to drive 12 hours back and forth. And that is assuming that everything goes fine with our cutover tomorrow. So it looks like Katie and I will be keeping each other company for the 4th (unless anyone else would like to join and/or let us tag along). :o)

Posted by alpha at 10:34 AM | Memories , Misc , Work | Comments (1)