For those of you who actually read this blog from time to time, I apologize for not writing in awhile. I officially have nothing to post. I was kind of hoping to do something new, exciting, different, and above all, fun this weekend, and I was looking forward to telling you all about it. Unfortunately, that did not happen.
Jesse had to work this weekend, and though he did not stay long, he still had to wake up at the crack of dawn (which meant he had to go to bed early). On top of that, he was hoping the weekend would be a relaxing weekend, since we have not had one in awhile. Needless to say, we spent the majority of the weekend watching dumb movies on the couch, napping, trying to texture our new room addition and going to bed early. The highlight of the weekend is a toss up between going to Panera bread and enjoying their excellent soup and baguettes, and taking Jersey for a walk to the pond in front of our neighborhood and laughing as she tried to swim clear across the entire pond to chase after some ducks. It's not that the weekend was bad, boring perhaps, but not bad. Jesse and I had plenty of quality time together, so that was nice.
I think I have come to realize one of the drawbacks of working from home. When I'm at home (what seems like) all-the-time, it creates a desire for me to want to get out and go do something. Jesse on the other hand, works 60+ hour weeks outside in the hot sun, and when he is off work, all he wants to do is relax at home. Gonna have to give and take on this one...
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Friday, May 12, 2006
Happy 25th Birthday Jesse!
What a birthday!I feel like we have been celebrating all week long.
Sunday night we went to The Aquarium with my family to celebrate (as described in a previous post).
Tuesday night, Jesse went to a friend's house for bible study, so I was able to go get his cake, go pick up his present, get it wrapped, and clean up the house.
Wednesday morning, I woke up at 5:15 am to make blueberry and banana nut muffins for breakfast. This is a big deal, because I never make breakfast, much less at 5:15 in the morning! I put a candle in one of the muffins and made him blow out the birthday candle and make a wish. He says he hates that cheesy stuff, but it did get a grin out of him, and that's all I wanted.
When he came home from work, he saw the stack of presents (you can see in the first picture). He immediately guessed what it was, though he did seem surprised by it. We spent the next hour putting his grill together. Jesse never gets overly excited about anything, but he seemed happy with it. Then to top it all off, his new Adidas shoes arrived a day early, and they fit perfectly! I think that got the biggest smile of all. His parents and our sister-in-law and nephew (Gina & Elijah) came over and helped us celebrate Wednesday night with hamburgers, salad, fruit salad, and cookie cake for dessert. It was a fun night.
Thursday night, we had friends come over to help celebrate. Chase and Rebecca, Hayden and Lauren, and Thomas all came over, and we grilled chicken breasts, with wild rice, green beans, salad, and strawberry shortcake for dessert (and leftover cookie cake). It was a very nice night to sit out on the patio, listening to music, hanging out with friends, and enjoying good food.
Tonight, we are going over to his family's house to celebrate with all his brothers/sisters/parents/grandma. I believe we are having pork tenderloin (yum), so another good night of food and fun company!
Talk about a week of celebration and good food! The diet starts again Sunday!!!
Happy Birthday Jesse; I hope you have enjoyed the week, and realize that so much celebrating comes out of the overflow of so much love for YOU! I love you babe, and I hope it was a special for you, as you are to me!
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Jesse's early birthday
Jesse's birthday is tomorrow (May 10), but we celebrated with my family on Sunday night, by going to the Downtown Aquarium. None of us had ever been, and I was very excited. It was a fun place, with very cool aquariums throughout the restaraunt, and to top it off the food was superb!
Jesse is going to have a lot of fun surprises for his birthday over the next few days...I will post more as it all plays out...!
Friday, May 05, 2006
Even more positive...
This morning when I walked in the office to my desk, there was a beautiful plant with small yellow flowers sitting there with a card. Joanne (my new teammate) had given it to me with a very nice thank you note for "all my help." It really made me feel good! She certainly did not have to do that, after all, helping her is my job, but it was nice to know she appreciates it.
After spending a little more time with her over the past few days, I think she is going to work out just fine. She is starting to show more interest and gets excited when something works correctly. The past few days she has spent the majority of the time on our client, and has begun asking many more questions. Perhaps she just needed to finish wrapping up her other work to truly transition to this team. I had further confirmation today when we went to get her badged, she said, "I hope they actually let me stay on this team and do not pull me off this time! It will be so nice to stay on one client for awhile." I agree! I hope that she does not get pulled off, and I hope she genuinely wants to stay and become 100% part of this team.
I feel much better today. :)
After spending a little more time with her over the past few days, I think she is going to work out just fine. She is starting to show more interest and gets excited when something works correctly. The past few days she has spent the majority of the time on our client, and has begun asking many more questions. Perhaps she just needed to finish wrapping up her other work to truly transition to this team. I had further confirmation today when we went to get her badged, she said, "I hope they actually let me stay on this team and do not pull me off this time! It will be so nice to stay on one client for awhile." I agree! I hope that she does not get pulled off, and I hope she genuinely wants to stay and become 100% part of this team.
I feel much better today. :)
Thursday, May 04, 2006
A positive note
After yesterday's long, boring, and negative post, I thought I should post something positive as soon as possible.
Today, I finally decided I could no longer wait around for answers from my manager, so I began to ask others for help in the initial setup/training of our new team member. I think he must have found out, because suddenly this afternoon he became very helpful and friendly again! Anyway, to make a long story short (which by now you all know I am not good at that), today I actually got some things accomplished! I called the HP help desk and found a work around for her access, we called another manager at HP to get the short-cut for her new access card, and I volunteered to take care of her badge process tomorrow morning. On top of that, I set up her training sessions at HP for next week, and still managed to get two docs out for review today!
In the end, she was very "impressed" with me, and said I was "spoiling" her. On top of that, my manager saw that I was stepping up and handling things so he did not have to. Hopefully, it made a good impression on both of them.
Though it is not much, it is something I am proud of, and I feel much better having accomplished this small task!
Today, I finally decided I could no longer wait around for answers from my manager, so I began to ask others for help in the initial setup/training of our new team member. I think he must have found out, because suddenly this afternoon he became very helpful and friendly again! Anyway, to make a long story short (which by now you all know I am not good at that), today I actually got some things accomplished! I called the HP help desk and found a work around for her access, we called another manager at HP to get the short-cut for her new access card, and I volunteered to take care of her badge process tomorrow morning. On top of that, I set up her training sessions at HP for next week, and still managed to get two docs out for review today!
In the end, she was very "impressed" with me, and said I was "spoiling" her. On top of that, my manager saw that I was stepping up and handling things so he did not have to. Hopefully, it made a good impression on both of them.
Though it is not much, it is something I am proud of, and I feel much better having accomplished this small task!
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Feelings about work
WARNING- Long Post!
Amy's last day at work was last Friday, and though I knew that things would be different once she left, I dont think I realized how hard the transition would hit me.
I have been very fortunate in my past work environments; every single time I have changed jobs, someone has "taken me under their wing," looked out for me, and just been my friend. I have made many of my close friends from work, and continue to keep in touch with a lot of them to this day (Emily, Christie, Anna, Desha, Shelley, Sarah, Tory, Danielle, and now Amy). I guess I have been pretty spoiled!
The way our office is set up, everyone is broken into teams that each support an individual client. With a setup like this, it would seem that team members are naturally closer to one another, since they spend a great deal of time together. Up until now, that has been true (minus a few weeks time when a certain someone was on the team, and life went to hell in a handbag!) When I heard that Amy was going to be leaving, I immediately started to worry about who would replace her on our team. It has been a very confusing couple of weeks, wondering what was going to happen, who would take her place, and what my role was supposed to be on this new team. (Background: Before, Amy was the team leader and I was her "assistant," you might say. She was held responsible for pretty much everything, and I just helped out where necessary. Amy had been supporting our client for over 5 years, and became excellent at every aspect of this job.) So now, there are these big shoes left empty, and I do not know what is supposed to happen. Am I supposed to step up and take her job of delegating projects? Am I supposed to train someone new? Or are they going to hire someone and place them over me? It was a very confusing time.
At one point, I felt very good about everything, because our client sent out a nice email explaining to everyone that I knew enough of what happens to continue to support them without interruption, and that I would naturally "take this opportunity and run with it" (her words, not mine). But then whenever I would ask my manager at work what was going on, he ignored me and acted like everything would be fine, without answering a single one of my questions. They even pulled me into an interview with a potential new employee to get my opinion of her for our team. So, with no direction from them, and no answers to my questions, all I could do was assume that they were going to hire someone new for our team, and that they expected me to train them. In the back of my mind, I was excited, because I thought this was my turn to be the one to help someone else, "take them under my wing," and do for someone else, what others have always done for me.
Needless to say, things did not play out as I had assumed they would.
I received a phone call from Amy last Wednesday (2 days before her last day), telling me that our manager had told her that he was going to pull another employee with our company on to our team. She is nice, friendly, and has a lot of experience in tech writing, though not writing directly for our client. Amy seemed okay with it, though nervous as to what I would think. After I got off the phone with her, I received another phone call, this time from our client, who had also heard about the "new team member." (Keep in mind, that my manager has yet to say anything to me about any of this.) If I'm being honest, I was very surprised at their decision to do this, and quite intimidated, as this lady has 12 years of experience. I finally thought I might have a shot at being able to give something back to someone, and yet this lady will not need anything that I have to offer. I then sent my manager an email asking what he wanted to happen next, since he had gone ahead and pulled her to our team, despite the fact that she was still working on other projects for other teams. I never heard a response.
Amy and I spoke with her a little during those last few days, and tried to teach her a little about our client and the way things are done on our team. Amy did most of the teaching, since she knows a ton more than me, and it was her last chance to share her knowledge with us before she left. The new lady told us that she was trying to wrap up some other projects, but that she would love to start learning more Monday.
Well, Monday was two days ago, and I do not think she has "joined" the team yet. I do not feel that I should have to baby her, seeing as how she knows a lot more than me anyway! I would think that she would take some initiative to come ask questions, follow me to meetings, learn about our database tools, etc, but once again, I assumed wrong.
I genuinely feel that she will be a good team member, if she wants to be on this team, and I cannot tell yet if that is the case. I know she is a quick learner, so she probably does not need any of the hands-on training that Amy had to do with me. I guess I just do not know where that line is. My manager has not told me one single thing, and has blatantly ignored 3 emails I have sent asking questions. I give up already! No one will tell me what is going on or what should be happening here.
All of this would smooth over much easier if I could see her becoming another good friend. Friendship has a way of smoothing over the rough spots; sure there have been times I have been frustrated or irritated with work issues from every single girl I named earlier, but they never escalated into any problems, because I knew that we were friends.
I guess I was hoping that despite I was losing a friend (at work) in Amy, someone new would come along and I could be the kind of friend to them that she has been to me. When you are new to a company, you have no choice really but to cling to your teammates, and then they very often become your friend. This lady does not need me as friend- merely a teammate, and an inferior teammate at that. I like having friends at work, and I know now that it is going to be a very lonely place for awhile.
Whew- I'm sorry this is so long and so negative. I dont mean for it to be, I just needed to get it all out. I know that things will work themselves out in the end. In the meantime, I'm just going to keep doing my job to the best of my ability and trying to be nice to everyone. We can always hope for the best!
Thanks to all of you out there who have started out as "work buddies," and have grown into great friends. I miss working with all of you, and I realize that I took our friendship at work for granted. You're all the best, and I'm sure that your co-workers today have found as much a friend in you as I did. :)
Amy's last day at work was last Friday, and though I knew that things would be different once she left, I dont think I realized how hard the transition would hit me.
I have been very fortunate in my past work environments; every single time I have changed jobs, someone has "taken me under their wing," looked out for me, and just been my friend. I have made many of my close friends from work, and continue to keep in touch with a lot of them to this day (Emily, Christie, Anna, Desha, Shelley, Sarah, Tory, Danielle, and now Amy). I guess I have been pretty spoiled!
The way our office is set up, everyone is broken into teams that each support an individual client. With a setup like this, it would seem that team members are naturally closer to one another, since they spend a great deal of time together. Up until now, that has been true (minus a few weeks time when a certain someone was on the team, and life went to hell in a handbag!) When I heard that Amy was going to be leaving, I immediately started to worry about who would replace her on our team. It has been a very confusing couple of weeks, wondering what was going to happen, who would take her place, and what my role was supposed to be on this new team. (Background: Before, Amy was the team leader and I was her "assistant," you might say. She was held responsible for pretty much everything, and I just helped out where necessary. Amy had been supporting our client for over 5 years, and became excellent at every aspect of this job.) So now, there are these big shoes left empty, and I do not know what is supposed to happen. Am I supposed to step up and take her job of delegating projects? Am I supposed to train someone new? Or are they going to hire someone and place them over me? It was a very confusing time.
At one point, I felt very good about everything, because our client sent out a nice email explaining to everyone that I knew enough of what happens to continue to support them without interruption, and that I would naturally "take this opportunity and run with it" (her words, not mine). But then whenever I would ask my manager at work what was going on, he ignored me and acted like everything would be fine, without answering a single one of my questions. They even pulled me into an interview with a potential new employee to get my opinion of her for our team. So, with no direction from them, and no answers to my questions, all I could do was assume that they were going to hire someone new for our team, and that they expected me to train them. In the back of my mind, I was excited, because I thought this was my turn to be the one to help someone else, "take them under my wing," and do for someone else, what others have always done for me.
Needless to say, things did not play out as I had assumed they would.
I received a phone call from Amy last Wednesday (2 days before her last day), telling me that our manager had told her that he was going to pull another employee with our company on to our team. She is nice, friendly, and has a lot of experience in tech writing, though not writing directly for our client. Amy seemed okay with it, though nervous as to what I would think. After I got off the phone with her, I received another phone call, this time from our client, who had also heard about the "new team member." (Keep in mind, that my manager has yet to say anything to me about any of this.) If I'm being honest, I was very surprised at their decision to do this, and quite intimidated, as this lady has 12 years of experience. I finally thought I might have a shot at being able to give something back to someone, and yet this lady will not need anything that I have to offer. I then sent my manager an email asking what he wanted to happen next, since he had gone ahead and pulled her to our team, despite the fact that she was still working on other projects for other teams. I never heard a response.
Amy and I spoke with her a little during those last few days, and tried to teach her a little about our client and the way things are done on our team. Amy did most of the teaching, since she knows a ton more than me, and it was her last chance to share her knowledge with us before she left. The new lady told us that she was trying to wrap up some other projects, but that she would love to start learning more Monday.
Well, Monday was two days ago, and I do not think she has "joined" the team yet. I do not feel that I should have to baby her, seeing as how she knows a lot more than me anyway! I would think that she would take some initiative to come ask questions, follow me to meetings, learn about our database tools, etc, but once again, I assumed wrong.
I genuinely feel that she will be a good team member, if she wants to be on this team, and I cannot tell yet if that is the case. I know she is a quick learner, so she probably does not need any of the hands-on training that Amy had to do with me. I guess I just do not know where that line is. My manager has not told me one single thing, and has blatantly ignored 3 emails I have sent asking questions. I give up already! No one will tell me what is going on or what should be happening here.
All of this would smooth over much easier if I could see her becoming another good friend. Friendship has a way of smoothing over the rough spots; sure there have been times I have been frustrated or irritated with work issues from every single girl I named earlier, but they never escalated into any problems, because I knew that we were friends.
I guess I was hoping that despite I was losing a friend (at work) in Amy, someone new would come along and I could be the kind of friend to them that she has been to me. When you are new to a company, you have no choice really but to cling to your teammates, and then they very often become your friend. This lady does not need me as friend- merely a teammate, and an inferior teammate at that. I like having friends at work, and I know now that it is going to be a very lonely place for awhile.
Whew- I'm sorry this is so long and so negative. I dont mean for it to be, I just needed to get it all out. I know that things will work themselves out in the end. In the meantime, I'm just going to keep doing my job to the best of my ability and trying to be nice to everyone. We can always hope for the best!
Thanks to all of you out there who have started out as "work buddies," and have grown into great friends. I miss working with all of you, and I realize that I took our friendship at work for granted. You're all the best, and I'm sure that your co-workers today have found as much a friend in you as I did. :)
April showers bring May flowers
I do not think it was the rain that brought the pretty flowers...more like Jesse's hard work! I just love colorful flowers; they make the whole yard look happy!
Time to get healthy!
Over Easter weekend, the Shulse family decided to step up to the plate and help my mother-in-law lose some weight. For those who don't know the history, I will not really get into it, other than to say she has some very serous health problems that cannot be fixed until she loses some weight. Jesse and I took her up to the gym Monday, and he showed her how to use all the weight machines. Luckily, she was not too sore yesterday, so I went up with her again and we worked out on the cardio machines and then did some light weights.
Our plan to "help HER out" is really helping all of us to get healthier. It is so hard to try and exercise by yourself, and exercise in itself can quickly become boring and routine. I like knowing that someone else is helping push and encourage me, just as I can push and encourage others. I am pretty sore today, and it makes me feel good. I like feeling that I have accomplished something; even if the only accomplishment was that I pushed my weak muscles too far.
I would like to lose at least 10 pounds, so please pray for me to endure these first few weeks which are always the hardest. I'm ready to do it, and our motivation to help my mother-in-law has also motivated me to step up and help myself. It is time to lose some weight, tone some muscles, and start to feel better!
Our plan to "help HER out" is really helping all of us to get healthier. It is so hard to try and exercise by yourself, and exercise in itself can quickly become boring and routine. I like knowing that someone else is helping push and encourage me, just as I can push and encourage others. I am pretty sore today, and it makes me feel good. I like feeling that I have accomplished something; even if the only accomplishment was that I pushed my weak muscles too far.
I would like to lose at least 10 pounds, so please pray for me to endure these first few weeks which are always the hardest. I'm ready to do it, and our motivation to help my mother-in-law has also motivated me to step up and help myself. It is time to lose some weight, tone some muscles, and start to feel better!