I say that in all love, but Sam is the bane of my existence. She convinces me to do things that I KNOW I'm not going to enjoy and don't really want to do, but for some reason I end up being addicted to whatever it is. Here are some examples:
Hummus - I never tried it before until she took me to Medjools and I tried it. Yummy, especially with grilled flat bread.
Sparkling Wine - It isn't that I didn't like it, but I'd never really tried it before. Now I am completely hooked.
Kir Royales - See above regarding Sparkling Wine, because it is just an extension.
Guacamole - I never thought I really liked it, until she made some fresh with homemade chips. I only like hers so far and as long as I have it with homemade chips.
Grilled Vegetables - Well, vegetables in general. She has shown me the light regarding things like squash and peppers. Of course, the Queen's husband had a lot to do with introducing me the joy of grilled veggies!!
Walking the Dish - I hate doing this every time I start, but when I finish I feel the best ever!!
Calistoga, CA - The beauty of this place and the hot spring pools and the good food and the jewelry there. We are planning another trip up there in the Fall....can't wait!!
Pilate's - I finished my third session this morning and while it hurt like a bugger it was also wonderful. I went ahead and set up more sessions through the end of the month and am looking into some classes!!
Riding the BART - I did that for the first time all by myself today and that is definitely the way to go if I work in the city and also if I work across the bay in Oakland. "On the BART line" is one of those things that is now a prerequisite for any job I take.
While I'm certain that this isn't everything that Sam has introduced me and I'm certain that there are a number of other things that she'll will force on me in the future, but that is all another blog. For now.... Dang You, Sam!! Thanks for learning me how to survive in the big city!!
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Preparing for the Week
Well, it is Sunday afternoon and I'm sitting here thinking about what all I need to do this week and what all is currently on my schedule. I'm trying really hard to take every body's advice and find that work/life balance and I'm doing better. I'm also trying really hard to live a healthier lifestyle. Last week I managed to get a walk in every day after work, except for Tuesday, when I worked from home and went and walked in the mid-morning up to Noe Valley, which was very pleasant. Saturday, I went to another session with Abby the Pilate's instructor and she had be stretched in ways that I didn't think my body could do.
So this week, this is the plan:
Monday - Wrap up the crap that I have to do for the quarterly Quality Initiatives. Review the Policies and Procedures and update those. Update and print off resume. Walk the 3.3 mile Dish walk with Sam.
Tuesday - 7:00 AM Pilate's session with Abby. Do some number crunching and analysis to present some good, hard data as to why and who is screwing up so terribly at work. Go meet a recruiter to see if she can help me find another job.
Wednesday - Meet with the PWC auditors to talk about our processes. Continue with the number crunching. Walk the Shoreline and stop at Target.
Thursday - Spend all day in tiring meetings with the customer. Get completely aggravated by the people that I work with. Walk the Dish with Sam.
Friday - Crossing my fingers that I can have the day off. If I have the day off, then I'm sewing and taking a walk to Grace Cathedral Labyrinth and have a whole zen thing.
Saturday - This is still very open, but I'm going to shoot for getting a walk of some sort in and probably some REALLY fun things like grocery shopping, dusting, and vacuuming.
And that takes us back to Sunday. Who thinks I'll actually manage to accomplish all of these things?
So this week, this is the plan:
Monday - Wrap up the crap that I have to do for the quarterly Quality Initiatives. Review the Policies and Procedures and update those. Update and print off resume. Walk the 3.3 mile Dish walk with Sam.
Tuesday - 7:00 AM Pilate's session with Abby. Do some number crunching and analysis to present some good, hard data as to why and who is screwing up so terribly at work. Go meet a recruiter to see if she can help me find another job.
Wednesday - Meet with the PWC auditors to talk about our processes. Continue with the number crunching. Walk the Shoreline and stop at Target.
Thursday - Spend all day in tiring meetings with the customer. Get completely aggravated by the people that I work with. Walk the Dish with Sam.
Friday - Crossing my fingers that I can have the day off. If I have the day off, then I'm sewing and taking a walk to Grace Cathedral Labyrinth and have a whole zen thing.
Saturday - This is still very open, but I'm going to shoot for getting a walk of some sort in and probably some REALLY fun things like grocery shopping, dusting, and vacuuming.
And that takes us back to Sunday. Who thinks I'll actually manage to accomplish all of these things?
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Why Bother?
Why do I even bother trying to do my job? Nobody pays any attention to me. Nobody listens to me. Nobody understands me. Am I speaking a different language?
I currently function as the Change Manager on our account. For those of you who are not familiar with this role, it is basically the person who polices and changes within the environment and makes people follow the rules so that changes can be tracked appropriately.
One of these rules is to do your change within the window that you have stated that you are going to do it in and document it in the system that you have done it. For example, if I say I'm going to change something on Monday, July 28 from 9 AM - 11 AM, then I darn well better do it within that window and document IN THE EXPECTED FORMAT. Right? That makes complete sense to me. I say I'm going to do something, I say when I'm going to do something, then I do it when it has been planned, and document appropriately.
However, I come in this morning and as I'm reviewing the report of changes that failed to do this I realized that there were EIGHT such failures. When I contacted the people to find out why this occurred, because some of them were things that were scheduled for last week, but didn't get documented until yesterday. I received back a lot of "well, the change was done successfully, I just didn't bother to update the system until yesterday." I even had one person reply back with, "well, it was an emergency change and I did it but put the ticket in after the fact for auditing purposes." I swear I want to go wring some people's necks.
Is this just wrong that I'm this annoyed by people not following the process? Because they haven't bothered to follow the rules, we all have to suffer financially. But I guess they don't really care, since they have been given their walking papers.
Grrrrr. This is just too frustrating!!!
I currently function as the Change Manager on our account. For those of you who are not familiar with this role, it is basically the person who polices and changes within the environment and makes people follow the rules so that changes can be tracked appropriately.
One of these rules is to do your change within the window that you have stated that you are going to do it in and document it in the system that you have done it. For example, if I say I'm going to change something on Monday, July 28 from 9 AM - 11 AM, then I darn well better do it within that window and document IN THE EXPECTED FORMAT. Right? That makes complete sense to me. I say I'm going to do something, I say when I'm going to do something, then I do it when it has been planned, and document appropriately.
However, I come in this morning and as I'm reviewing the report of changes that failed to do this I realized that there were EIGHT such failures. When I contacted the people to find out why this occurred, because some of them were things that were scheduled for last week, but didn't get documented until yesterday. I received back a lot of "well, the change was done successfully, I just didn't bother to update the system until yesterday." I even had one person reply back with, "well, it was an emergency change and I did it but put the ticket in after the fact for auditing purposes." I swear I want to go wring some people's necks.
Is this just wrong that I'm this annoyed by people not following the process? Because they haven't bothered to follow the rules, we all have to suffer financially. But I guess they don't really care, since they have been given their walking papers.
Grrrrr. This is just too frustrating!!!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
More Rude People
You all know that I really hate rude people. I've mentioned it in the past, but it requires being mentioned again. And, yes, I know that I'm too nice..... although I think my family would beg to differ!!So my latest run-in with a rude person was today while I was doing my laundry. And maybe she wouldn't be considered rude so much as inconsiderate, but anyway....
When I moved into the city, I moved into an apartment that did not have a washer and dryer in it, which for me was a challenge in and of itself. Luckily, there are washers and driers in the garage, nice, new, industrial washers and driers. And there are six of them, you would think that would be plenty for a building with maybe 60 units. In my opinion, it is perfectly reasonable, as long as everybody is considerate of the others in the building. Well, I do my laundry on Tuesday mornings, because I work from home and I would think that the appliances would readily available. I've been doing this for a couple of weeks and have had no problem...until today!!
This morning I go down with a couple of loads, and find only ONE machine available. ONE!! Of the five that were remaining, four of them had approximately 5 minutes left to run and one was sitting there finished. Well, I put my darks into the one available and started it up, then headed back up to my place to get the rest of the laundry (yeah, I had a couple of weeks worth to do and couldn't carry it in one trip). I got a little side tracked answering some emails and taking a call, so it was about 30 minutes by the time I got back down to the laundry. My one load had 4 minutes left on it and the other five were all finished but just sitting there with wet clothes in them. Well, I decided that I would wait for my one load to finish, put it into the dryer, put another load in, and then if nobody came to remove the other clothes, I would just pull out two of the loads and put them in the baskets that are sitting in front of the washers.
So, as I was pulling clothes out of one of the washers, this young female (can't say girl or lady) shows up looking like she literally just rolled out of bed (jammies and wrinkle impressions on the face). I apologized saying "tee hee, sorry did I just take out your things?" She was all put out with "Harrumph, yeah." She then took her clothes out of 4 of the 5 washers and promptly took up FIVE dryers!!!
I put my clothes in the washers and left. I looked at my watch and made the mental note that I needed to be back in 30 minutes, which I was. I get my darks out of the ONE dryer that I was using and then looked into the other driers to see what was available since ALL of them were finished.... Yep, you guessed it not a single other drier could be used as they still had clothes in them. So, I shoved my 3 loads of laundry (after sorting out the items that I hang dry) into the ONE drier that I had to use.
It is now time that I go check on my laundry and see if things are dry. Keep your fingers crossed. I'll let you know if HER things are still down there!!!
When I moved into the city, I moved into an apartment that did not have a washer and dryer in it, which for me was a challenge in and of itself. Luckily, there are washers and driers in the garage, nice, new, industrial washers and driers. And there are six of them, you would think that would be plenty for a building with maybe 60 units. In my opinion, it is perfectly reasonable, as long as everybody is considerate of the others in the building. Well, I do my laundry on Tuesday mornings, because I work from home and I would think that the appliances would readily available. I've been doing this for a couple of weeks and have had no problem...until today!!
This morning I go down with a couple of loads, and find only ONE machine available. ONE!! Of the five that were remaining, four of them had approximately 5 minutes left to run and one was sitting there finished. Well, I put my darks into the one available and started it up, then headed back up to my place to get the rest of the laundry (yeah, I had a couple of weeks worth to do and couldn't carry it in one trip). I got a little side tracked answering some emails and taking a call, so it was about 30 minutes by the time I got back down to the laundry. My one load had 4 minutes left on it and the other five were all finished but just sitting there with wet clothes in them. Well, I decided that I would wait for my one load to finish, put it into the dryer, put another load in, and then if nobody came to remove the other clothes, I would just pull out two of the loads and put them in the baskets that are sitting in front of the washers.
So, as I was pulling clothes out of one of the washers, this young female (can't say girl or lady) shows up looking like she literally just rolled out of bed (jammies and wrinkle impressions on the face). I apologized saying "tee hee, sorry did I just take out your things?" She was all put out with "Harrumph, yeah." She then took her clothes out of 4 of the 5 washers and promptly took up FIVE dryers!!!
I put my clothes in the washers and left. I looked at my watch and made the mental note that I needed to be back in 30 minutes, which I was. I get my darks out of the ONE dryer that I was using and then looked into the other driers to see what was available since ALL of them were finished.... Yep, you guessed it not a single other drier could be used as they still had clothes in them. So, I shoved my 3 loads of laundry (after sorting out the items that I hang dry) into the ONE drier that I had to use.
It is now time that I go check on my laundry and see if things are dry. Keep your fingers crossed. I'll let you know if HER things are still down there!!!
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