I’ll fly away

Last week I took the second business trip of my new career — the second of many, I’m told. Since that’s pretty much all that’s going on in my life, I’ll recap the highlights… hmm, let me put that in quotes… “highlights” of the trips:

Trip #1 – Seattle, Washington

• After my longest flight so far, then riding to the hotel in a vehicle with atrocious New Car Smell, I had more than a little travel sickness for the rest of my first day there. (Apologies to the Hampton Inn for what I did in your lobby trashcan…)
• During meetings about the project, I met about thirty new people and had considerable trouble keeping their names straight. (Does no one wear name tags anymore??)
• There’s a lot of… waiting… involved at these meetings. That may be the hardest part. (Thank you, Tom Petty.)
• Actually, the hardest part is being new and having to learn what the heck everyone is talking about. Until then, I try to listen, look thoughtful, and not say anything to embarrass the boss.
• One of the guys on one of our teams is very cute and nice. He’s also very taken which should go without saying because those are typically the guys I find attractive!

Trip #2 – Augusta, Georgia

• I was thrilled to be closer to home.
• However, my room overlooked a noisy four-lane highway, and I got little sleep the whole three nights we were there.
• On the bright side, my room had a Jacuzzi tub, and yes, I *did* make time to soak in it all three nights we were there. I credit that tub with helping me keep my sanity, because…
• From something the boss said during our pre-meeting meeting, I concluded that he wasn’t impressed with my report from the first trip. I found the thought that he was writing me off after one experience very, very frustrating, and I was stressed about it for the better part of the trip.
• Then the first day of meetings started with a walk in the cold (albeit light) rain from building to building looking for the correct conference room.
• I think I’m catching on to learning new people. I was in charge of recording attendees’ names in the meeting minutes and that helped me put names with faces.
• A nice part of these trips is going out for dinner with our team of five to eight people. I’m pretty quiet – as usual – but there tend to be some good conversationalists in the group.
• On the trip home, the boss said – without prompting from me, because I was afraid to ask – that it seems I’m catching on to what I need to be doing. That really helped put my mind at ease. I mean, I know I’ve got much to learn; I just want to feel I’m at least moving in the right direction!

Jeff said that some people he works with are impressed with my new traveling job, and my first thought was, “Obviously, they’ve never traveled like that, or they wouldn’t be impressed at all.” It’s true that traveling is taking some adjusting to, but I’m trying to make the best of it. I just remind myself that I could stay at home all the time – and still be unemployed.

What has happened to Wal-Mart?

Dear Wal-Mart,

As a long-time shopper it pains me to write this… but it must be said. Things have changed between us, and not for the better, I’m sad to report.

Yes, you and I had it good there for a while. But for the last year – or is it two? – I can’t help noticing that the spark has gone out of our relationship. And by “spark” I mean “pricing that used to save me money”. Seriously, I’m trying to live better, but when I’m shopping at your store, it’s harder and harder to save money.

Did you think that your reputation for low prices would blind me? Do you think I haven’t noticed those games you’re playing? I’m no longer falling for the old Rollback Trick, where you raise the price on a product significantly then drop it a little bit and tout the so-called lower price. In your brazenness, you frequently do all of this over the course of mere days: at least give me time to forget! And then there are those products that I purchased from you regularly – until you inexplicably doubled their price. Why, Wal-Mart, why?

You’ve left me with no choice. I’ve started seeing other retailers. Oh, sure, I still darken your door, but more and more, I’m frequenting your competitors, comparing their prices to yours. And you know what I’ve found? Some have consistently better prices, at least on the things that I’m buying. Where you have failed, they’re coming through for me.

So, thanks for the memories. I’ll always(?) cherish the times we shared, but I’m moving on. I’m sorry, but it’s not you. It’s me.

On second thought, it IS you.

Love Sincerely,

Anne

a year in review – 2009

Again this year, I’m doing the Year End Review – 40 Questions meme.

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
watched entire seasons of TV shows on-line, got diagnosed with the flu, rented a non-ground floor apartment, rented and drove a large moving truck, hired movers, received unemployment compensation, told my boyfriend about my websites/blog, almost got hit by a snake that fell out of a tree

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
For 2009, I had a few goals: 1) learn the Stayin’ Alive dance, 2) read another of Jane Austen’s books, and 3) get involved in something worthwhile.

Results: I definitely got involved with some worthwhile efforts; I didn’t read the book but I saw the A&E version of “Pride and Prejudice” and *loved* it, and I made zero progress toward learning the Stayin’ Alive dance.

For 2010, since 2009 went nothing at all like I thought it would, I’m actually scared to set any big goals. I just want to know my job better.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No – thankfully!

5. Where did you travel?
only to local cities that I’ve visited before

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
My biggest dream is still to own a home. If I can get closer to that in 2010, that would be awesome.

7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
January 15th, the day my former supervisor told me I was fired

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I’m pretty pleased with what I accomplished during my unemployment. Sure, I started off sitting around and whining, but I got past that and really put a dent in my To Do list.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Thanks to getting fired, I felt like a failure most of the year, having to reply for nine months, “No, I haven’t found a job yet. Still looking.”

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Both! Thankfully nothing serious, but I visited doctors three times in two months: once for a stopped-up ear, once for an ingrown toenail, and once for my first-ever diagnosed case of the flu.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
In this Year of Living Frugally due to unemployment, I’m more proud of the things I *didn’t* buy: I repaired my years-old coat, I pulled an old coffeetable out of the attic to use for a printer table, and instead of buying a new cell phone, I dug out my old pre-paid model, which the company upgraded – to one that works – for free.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
The people who hired me! and Angie, who insisted that I apply for unemployment

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
The people who fired me

14. Where did most of your money go?
A dishearteningly large portion went to paying for an apartment where the fees for terminating the lease would’ve been more expensive than finishing it out. As I’ve heard it said, that apartment was very expensive, very inconvenient storage space.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The ample storage space in my new apartment

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
Congratulations by the Traveling Wilburys, because every time I hear it I think of how I felt so blindsided by my former bosses

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
Happier or sadder? maybe a little sadder
Older or wiser? this year, I’ve just felt older
Thinner or fatter? about the same
Richer or poorer? definitely poorer, since I was unemployed for nine months

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
been a blessing to other people

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
dwelling on how my boyfriend hasn’t sent me a single email all(!) year(!) [FYI, I sent him two earlier in the year, and I'm beginning to suspect that he's lost my address.]

20. How did you spend Christmas?
My mom, sister and I opened our gifts, then ate lunch, then went to my cousin’s house for a visit. Back home, we finished the day by watching “While You Were Sleeping.”

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
No

22. How many one-night stands?
Zero

23. What was your favorite TV program?
I *really* enjoyed watched Simon & Simon on-line.

24. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
my mother

25. What was the best book you read?
IIRC the only book I read was “Rebuilding the Real You” by Jack Hayford – and it was VERY good.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Make it Better (Forget About Me) by Tom Petty and the Hearbreakers. (I was pleasantly surprised to find a song of theirs I hadn’t heard – and an upbeat one at that!) I also really liked Free To Be Me by Francesca Battistelli.

27. What did you want and get?
a good new job

28. What did you want and not get?
a sensitive spot on my foot is not going away, and will probably require medical treatment: that is definitely not getting what I want!

29. What was your favorite film of the year?
Fave Film Released This Year: (didn’t see any movies in the theatre this year)
Fave Film Seen This Year For The First Time: the A&E version of “Pride and Prejudice”

30. What did you do on your birthday?
I worked on some computer projects, emailed a resume to my soon-to-be employer, ate my favorite lunch with the fam (including my dessert of choice, cherry pie), went with my sister to the mall, watched some of my favorite videos on-line – and made screencaps! – then watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
if I could’ve gotten my well-worth-the-wait job earlier in the year

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Continuing my efforts from last year, I’m still trying to assemble outfits that I like. Hair-wise, I’ve been trying a new tip – blowdrying hair from the top (no flipping hair over to dry) – and I think that’s been helping my hair not to be so dry and brittle.

33. What kept you sane?
faith

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
This guy and a TV character, AJ Simon

35. What political/current events issue stirred you the most?
unemployment

36. Who did you miss?
the people from my old job

37. Who was the best new person you met?
Caren, from work

38. What changed the most in your life this year?
It feels like everything changed: I got a new job and a new apartment in a new city.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009:
I’ve been surprised several times this year after being “so sure” I knew how things were going to work out. I guess that’s the lesson: don’t get too comfortable but don’t give up because you really don’t know what will happen next.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need.” ~ The Rolling Stones

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of you!

now that’s a delayed response

Two days ago I received a rejection from a job application. Since I’ve been at my new job for two months now, I knew that the company’s response was at least that old.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I looked up in my notes exactly when I had applied: August 7th. So this rejection is about four(!) months(!) past due. Thanks, Camber, for (finally) deigning to give me an answer, but you know, I kinda already figured out that I was not the candidate selected for that esteemed Administrative Assistant position.

But seriously, thanks for the reminder that job-hunting is beyond frustrating, and that I’m so, so blessed to have actually found a job.

more website work

With two lovely days off for Thanksgiving (woo hoo!) I have finished redesigning my “inspirational site.”

Two years ago, I changed that site to a blog format – where I still post regularly, btw – but the previous site is still open, partly as a backup and partly to point people to the new site.

I consider them both companions to my Christmas site, which I also redesigned a few weeks ago.

the I in panic

My boss called me at home early last week. She had to put me on hold for a few minutes, and this gave me time to ponder how odd it was to be hearing from her about seven-thirty in the evening.

My train of thought went something like this: “What in the world could she be calling about? Does she have a question about that project? Could I have misplaced something? Or is she just going to say that I shouldn’t come in tomorrow – or at all! Maybe the company’s in trouble financially with that one contract getting moved back! Or have I done something wrong? I HAVEN’T BEEN THERE LONG ENOUGH TO DO ANYTHING!” And if you’re reading each of those lines with increasing panic, then you’re reading them the way I was thinking them.

Needless to say, by the time she was back on the phone, I had braced myself for impending bad news. And the reason for the call? She was attending a training class the next day, and she realized that it would be beneficial for me to tag along as well. Could I meet her there at eight-thirty? I sheepishly said yes.

After I hung up, I was embarrassed to be reminded of my tendency of late to fly into Chicken Little mode at the drop of a hat. I’ve been doing that for the better part of this year in my thoughts about my health issues – all of which are thankfully minor, btw, knock on wood. Yet I persist in going from “everything’s okay” to “everything’s as BAD as it can POSSIBLY BE.”

Maybe Thanksgiving would be an excellent time for me to count my blessings and include all those things I’ve recently worried about that turned out to be nothing.

And hopefully I’ll take that all to heart and just try to calm(!) down(!).

photoblogging

I’m almost settled in at both my new job and my new apartment but I still can’t seem to follow through on the blog topics that I think of. So, I’m catching up with posting the pictures I’ve taken recently – if the baseball game that Jeff and I went to back in early September can be called recently. :blush:

Anyway here are the links:

Five photos from the baseball game
http://public.fotki.com/box47/misc2009/p090509a.html

Three photos from Joe Wheeler State Park
http://public.fotki.com/box47/misc2009/p110109a.html

Three photos from Monte Sano State Park and one from my Mom’s yard
http://public.fotki.com/box47/misc2009/p110709a.html

The links above are the first pic in each set. Click ‘Next’ at the top right corner of the picture to see the next one.

Note: as I was giving the slideshow a test run, clicking ‘Next’ and proofreading each comment, some ad suddenly redirected me to some weird yellowpages lookup. If that happens to you, use the album index link below to view the pictures. (And would you please let me know? I like the features at fotki, but if their ads get annoying, I will move my gallery away from them in a heartbeat.)

Photo Gallery Index (2009)
http://public.fotki.com/box47/misc2009/

a website oversight

Work is going well! Mostly, I’ve been reading to get familiar with the business, their software, etc. and that can make for a long day, but it’s a necessary first step. Happily, I realized yesterday that all of the reading *is* serving its purpose, as I do feel more familiar with the material.

In other news, this week I was finally able to check one of my (twenty or so) old email accounts. It had – I exaggerate not – over 4000 emails. Of course, 3996 of them were spam. Of the four valid ones, one was a test email I’d recently sent, which is actually what inspired me to do the work to check that account. But the other three non-spams were warnings from TheFanlistings.org. Apparently my MacGyver fanlisting was on the troubles list, and since I didn’t respond to their two warnings, they wrote to say that it was removed from the network. And this happened back in October of 2007. Oops!

I would’ve sworn I checked the TFL.org site not long ago to be sure my three sites were still listed. I guess I checked the two I thought were more likely to have been removed. Oops again.

This is not a tragedy. I think of the MacGyver site primarily as a fan website, and the bulk of its traffic is from people who are looking for MacGyver information. Still, I am embarrassed at this oversight, and after checking to see that there isn’t a new Mac fan listing, I applied for mine to be it again.

And if they say no, the new layout was made in such a way that it’ll be very easy to remove the fanlisting related links from the menu.

rhymes with “fired”

That would be “hired.”

:pause for anticipation of joyful news:

That’s right: I am HIRED! And I’ve gotta say that the eight(!) and a half(!) months(!) of looking were *well* worth it because I got a lot of my wants with this job. It’s close to my mom’s place. It’s not in the industry that I left in January. Best of all, it’s still in engineering but more on the business side and less on the oh-so-frustrating, who-do-I-have-to-kill-to-get-a-straight-answer design side. Excuse me while I weep for joy.

Really, it sounds like such a good opportunity that I’m almost afraid of saying too much about it at this point for fear of jinxing it. Maybe I’ll just move on.

I start to work this coming Monday, so there will likely be a slight lull in website work while I get settled into a new routine and find a new apartment.

Oh, and in sharing the happy news with some former coworkers, I finally revealed the location of my websites. So if any of them are reading this: welcome! Yes, I have a blog, and yes, I may have talked about you. And if there’s *any* chance that might hurt your feelings, may I suggest that you peruse one of my other sites instead?

But if you’re feeling strong – got your big girl panties on? Good – and are not afraid to hear another point of view, then read on.

And actually, I kid. There’s no need for anyone to brace for some scathing attack. I feel pretty comfortable exposing these writings because a) as I’ve written before, when I write something to post on-line, I keep in mind that anyone could read it, so I try to be as objective as possible. Also b) people who’ve spent time around me should recognize that I am overall a positive person, and c) on the occasions that I’ve ranted about coworkers, I didn’t use their real names. Combined with d) it’s been about a year since my last work-related rant, surely the objects of any rants will have forgotten and won’t recognize that it’s about them. Hopefully, they don’t journal.