Thought I'd do a quick post since I won't have a chance to post tomorrow night before I leave. For those that don't know, I'm going out of town for 6 days. I'm driving, yes driving, up to Minnesota for my 2nd cousin's wedding. I haven't seen my aunt, uncle and cousins for about three years, since the last wedding, so it will be nice seeing them again. I'm leaving early Thursday morning, hopefully about 8 or 9 am, which will put me at my aunt's house mid-late afternoon. I will be returning probably late Tuesday evening.

Since it's supposed to be warm all week and weekend, I'm taking mostly shorts to wear. I'm also taking some snacks and stuff to eat inbetween meals. I learned three years ago that my aunt doesn't fix a lot of food for meals. So I was hungry all the time while I was there. I am taking some granola bars, some dried fruit, and some fig newtons.

On Friday (I think) I am going to a place called The Raptor Center. It's associated with the University of Minnesota, and they have all different kinds of raptors and birds prey there, mostly for rehab. I was told to bring my camera, unfortunately I still use the old film kind lol. If I go, once I get the film developed, I'll try to scan them so you can see what I saw. The reason I'm not sure if I'll go, is because I just read on the lady's blog that I'm planning to see there, that she is thinking about making a 5 hour drive north Friday to Saturday to see some bird that's rare in Minnesota. So maybe sometime on Thursday I'll call her to see if she's going up north or maybe it's after I stop in to see her Friday morning. Sorry, just kind of rambling here, lol.

This will probably be the last time I will actually stay at my aunt and uncle's house. My uncle has alzheimers and it's getting slowly worse. I was very clear with my aunt, I didn't want to be a bother or burden to them, that I was more than happy to stay at the hotel. She told me she thought it would be ok for me to stay there, and she did sound like she was looking forward to it last night on the phone.

For those that I won't talk to again before Thursday, have a great weekend, and talk to you when I get back!

Final comment about this asshole at work, I think when I go into work tomorrow, he should be moved to another cubicle. The phone guy was there this afternoon and switched his phone extension over, so he'll have to be moved tomorrow so he can get his phone calls. I actually think he'll be in a good spot. He's closer to the boss (who can keep an eye on him and his antics), he can annoy Cathy and not me (lmao), and he's closer to Mary, who talks on the phone to her kids almost every day and you just wouldn't believe some of the stuff we hear!

On to bigger and better topics! Every Tuesday, I try to go to Target and pick up any new cd's that have been released, since that's the day the new ones come out. This week, my plan was to pick up four cd's: Billy Ray Cyrus' new cd, Los Lonely Boys' new cd, Eric Church's cd, and Rodney Atkins' new cd. I found the Billy Ray cd, I found the Los Lonely cd, I even found the Eric Church cd, but no Rodney Atkins cd. There were two places for it, both places were empty. So I figured I'd run to a different Target by where I work on Wednesday to see if they had any. They didn't even have a place for the cd! Like they weren't even expecting it! This is the first time I've not been able to buy a cd when it's released. And this isn't even a big name, like Tim McGraw, or Kenny Chesney, or Toby Keith. This is Rodney Atkins, this is maybe his third cd total? So I figure...I still have to go try to buy another present or two for my Aunt's birthday celebration on Saturday, I'm going to Borders, which is right by ANOTHER Target, I'll stop in there Thursday after work, and see if THEY have one. Nope. Strike Three. Then at Borders I couldn't find the dvd I was looking for, nor did they have another cd I was looking to see if it was even a real cd.

Saturday before heading out to my Aunt's for the movie and lunch and presents, I'll run over to the first Target I went to. If they still don't have any copies, I'll get a raincheck and hopefully soon they'll get more in and I can still get it at the sale price of $9.99. Oh and Borders had two copies of it, but they were $13.99, and I won't pay that much for a cd unless it's Def Leppard or Pella! lmao So as I'm writing this I'm ripping the three cd's I did buy, and they are being added to the ever growing stack of music to send to Kerry. One of these days, I'm just going to send them by email and she'll get a surprise in the morning before work, lmao.

With so many thoughtful and kind comments and support from my friends, I have managed to look beyond my faults and see the good things I offer the world. You'll never know how much your love and support means to me, during this past emotional day.

I may not be posting in my blog for a long long time. I found out today that I have SO many faults that there are too many to list. So all my free waking hours will be spent working on them, leaving no time to blog about my boring life. And of course, working on all my faults will mean my life won't be quite so boring, and I might have something to blog about. What a dilemma!

I'm going to try to blog tonight, before I fall asleep. I got busy with an unexpected, but interesting, conversation on msn, and so now it's almost 2 hours later than I wanted to do this, lol.

Where to start....

BATS!

My bats are back! Boy are they back! Jeepers creepers, are they back! I have more bat droppings outside my sliding door than I think I've ever seen at one time. There just may be more of them there now than ever before. I'm still glad they're there, just not so sure about the possible numbers of them, lol. With the air conditioner going, I haven't had a chance to listen for them. I was thinking about shutting my a/c off tomorrow since the high will only by 83F, but then it's climbing right back up into the 90's, so I think I'll just keep it on. Lucky me. I would really rather have it off. Saves me money when I don't run the a/c.

It's getting closer and closer to my vacation days! Wooooo hooooo! I'm heading up to the twin cities (MN) on July 27, returning sometime on Aug 1. I'm looking forward to taking these few days away from work and everything. The traffic here has been running me ragged (I was gonna say bats, but I wondered if you'd think it was the bats instead.) Not only do I have to deal with all the commuting traffic 5 days a week, but I got an extra dose of bumper-to-bumper traffic Sunday night. I was visiting a friend for her daughter's 5th birthday party...bbq, pinata, presents, cake & ice cream, the whole bit. By the time I left there it was after 8:15pm, and the trip which should have taken me about an hour 15 minutes, took an hour 45. I was not happy walking in the door at 10pm, with laundry still to do, plus being all wired up from the traffic. The particular tollway I was on has THREE toll booths under construction AT THE SAME TIME. I was only going through two of them, but the first one I went through, had an 8 mile backup. Yes, you read that correctly, 8 mile backup (almost 13 km). Two lanes, no exits, nowhere to go, just me and all the other cars crawling. This is one of the major tollways people use coming from Wisconsin, so I'm sure there were some weekend travellers trying to get home. And poor me, just sitting there, complaining to my aunt on the phone that I deal with this 5 days a week, I don't want it on the weekend too. Turns out, there were only 4 lanes to pay the toll, one for I-PASS users (transponder and automatic deduction of toll from your acct), and three manual lanes. Well, our I-PASS lane was posted to be a 5 mph lanes, that's the suggested speed to go through it. We had to slow down so much for that, plus for all the people paying manual tolls, that we were backed up for what seemed forever.

Then to top it all off, the toll has been doubled at this particular booth. They are re-configuring the toll booths in each direction, so once it's done, the westbound side pays two tolls instead of the original three, and the eastbound pays two instead of the original three, with one in each direction doubling in cost. This is supposedly to help keep traffic moving. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. Same opinion I have about all the other work on every other tollway in the area. I have yet to see an improvement from any of the toll booths they've redone. I'm expecting my commute will never drop below an hour, even once everything is done and construction is done in 6 years. OMG, in 6 years, I hope to be the hell out of here, someplace where they don't DO road construction! Does such a place exist? Either that, or I'll have grown wings so I can just fly to work and not worry about traffic.

On July 13, 1932 Clifford and Alma welcomed a baby girl they would name Elaine Carole. She was born at St. Luke's Methodist Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the very same hospital she would deliver a girl of her own some 37 years later. She got married in Las Vegas in 1964. The man that would be her husband was rumored to have been her boss. She was a typical housewife, always there when her two girls returned home from school or a day at the pool. She never got to see the oldest get married, or have three girls of her own. She would have been a wonderful grandmother!

Happy Birthday, Mommy!

So I finally have something worthy of blogging about!

This past weekend, a co-worker (Annette) got married. Congratulations to her. She's nice enough, but she isn't very dedicated to her job. She doesn't really do much, she doesn't even handle that many accounts, and some outside salesmen don't even want her handling any of their accounts. So she was off on Thursday and Friday right before her wedding, and I believe the wedding was on Saturday.

She was due back to work on Wednesday with the rest of us, only she didn't show up. Now, our boss took that day off, so she could have left a message on his voice mail, and we wouldn't know it. When I arrive at work today, my boss is already there, a couple other people in my department are there, but no Annette. When someone calls in sick, or will be late, or out for whatever reason, we have a big dry erase board so other people in the office know who will not be in that day. There was nothing posted about Annette not being in today.

About 9am, I was walking past the fax machine that sits behind my cubicle. I saw some faxes on it, so I pulled them off and started looking through them to distribute accordingly. The first few were for one person, and the last two were for my boss. One was a typed letter from Annette, stating that she is officially resigning from her position at the company effective yesterday July 5. Who would FAX in their resignation? No phone call, nothing in person, just the fax. And she knew she was doing it; She took all her personal stuff home with her last Wednesday. Either none of us realized it, or we refused to acknowledge the possibility of her quitting. We all knew it was coming eventually, she's going back to school, after all. I guess she's going to be a Napra Path, but to quit over the fax?

I show it to one person, to see if she knew anything about it, she didnt. Then I quietly put it in my boss's in tray. About 9:30 or so I see him get up and go talk to his boss. I, of course, know what they're talking about. Then we all get an email, stating they'd like to have a short meeting about 10:30. I know what this meeting is about too. At 10:30, we all assemble in one of the conference rooms, and it is revealed to the rest of the department that Annette has chosen to burn her bridges and her friendships, and resign with no notice or instructions to anyone regarding her accounts.

My boss then proceeds to begin discussing the few accounts she handles, comparative to the rest of us, and offers his suggestions as to who would be able to handle some extra work. The two obvious people are myself and Mike, who sits next to me. We are the lucky ones. Everyone else gets to go back to work, Mike and I are kept to go over which accounts we'd get, and what mill's we buy from for those accounts. Like I mentioned, Annette didn't do much, so the accounts that Mike and I got aren't HUGE, but it will be extra work. Coincidentally, just this morning, Mike mentioned to me how slow he is right now. Perfect timing!

I will be handling two service centers/processors that are owned by the same parent company as us. They are like a sister company to us. They have several locations in the U.S., I will be handling the one in Alabama, plus one specific end user that is supplied by both the Alabama location and the Illinois location. Not a lot of work, but enough to make me busier than I have been. And I don't mind the extra work. Unfortunately, I would have liked to have gotten the opportunity to get caught up on my filing that's been piling up since last year. I've gotten some done, but there is still a lot left to be done, and as I file more, I pile up more, lol. So really, I'm not getting anywhere at all with it!

At 11:30, my boss and I went over to Annette's desk and started going through everything to sort through what is now mine, and what is now Mike's. I walked back to my desk with a stack of orders, faxes, invoices, product certifications, etc. Where to put it? Not on my desk! No room, lol. Onto the empty desk it went, the one Linda used to sit at. Once I could get a little more caught up on my own stuff, THEN I'd look at it. But it had to be today. If there was stuff in there from June, today was the last day to do it.

Finally about 2pm, I started going through it. I found some duplicate faxes, pitched all but one, sent the answer back to the mill. I also had to send them some shipping notices that we never got invoices for, dated 6/1. Who would wait a freaking month for invoices? We normally get them within a week! Got that all sorted out. I filed some stuff in my drawers that I don't really need to do anything with. I also put away some recent status reports that have been sent to the customer. That's one of the services we provide...once a week we print out status reports from the mill and send them to our customers so they know what's on order, what stage it's at, when it will be due, etc.

Glad tomorrow is Friday, it should be interesting!

Sorry, just not feeling very inspired lately. If something compels me to write about it, I'll let ya'll know.