Juan Visits Hotlanta

When I was working in DC, they were trying to set up a buddy system for new hires that were going to be transferring to the area with people that were already at site. Since I am an over achiever, I jumped at this and said, "I'll do it!".

I got the name and email address of my buddy and proceeded to write a long and detailed email to a Mr. Juan Figgers. I talked about places he may want to consider and pluses and minuses of being in each area, some of the things that go on in DC he may want to look into, grad school sites, and whatever else popped into my head. Then I heard nothing back from him.

Months later I heard we were getting a new team member and that they would be working directly with me. How exciting! Until I found out it was the jerk I emailed who didn't have the common decency to write a one liner email back saying thanks. So I was holding a grudge from the beginning.

A few weeks later while we were working on mids, Juan kept dozing off and was having a hard time staying awake. Some people were giving him crap for it and he was looking for a sympathetic ear when I told him, "Oh you are already on my list". "What did I do?!" He was lost. I let him sit there for a minute or two and then said, "Remember that email you got a few months ago from someone who took the time to tell you all about the area?" "That was you!! Oh man, I'm sorry!"

From that point forward we were cool, but it was a questionable start. He and I spent many 12 hour shifts next to one another and saw each other at all hours of the day. He knows that I don't function at 5:45am, ordering Chipotle for 5 nights in a row annoys me, and that I love Rob and my kitties. He even helped me move a few times, but hey, hasn't everyone?

So I was excited to hear that Juan was going to be in town this weekend. We decided to meet up for lunch over at Perimeter Mall this afternoon. We had a good chat and caught up on jobs and what's been going on with each other lately. I had a great time visiting with him. Sometimes I wish those visits were closer together, but I take what I can get. :)

Did You Get That Memo?

Perhaps if they had read receipts on TPS memos, there wouldn't have been a need to create Office Space. Then again, all the other office nonsense that happens is still pulls its own weight so who knows?

Since I moved, my hard drive had to be wiped clean. When they did that, they reset some of my settings like desktop background, font sizes, and preferences in my email. Apparently I had set an email preference about read receipts and at one time checked the box - "Do not ask me again". This has been pretty awesome.

Now that the preferences have been reset, I am starting to remember what it was that made me do that way long ago. I get read receipts on literally every work related item that comes into my inbox. I know people can automatically set preferences to ask for read receipts on every email they send. Honestly, why on earth would you do that? Do they seriously check through each and every one they get to make sure you read what they sent?

All that receipt really means is that I clicked on it long enough to make it think I read it. Nothing actually tells the sender that I processed the information on that email. Even if I did read it, if I didn't answer it that second, there's no guarantee that I won't forget about it.

I feel that should be reserved for emails you really want to make sure someone reads or if you are having problems with a person that is resulting from them not "reading" your emails. I wouldn't do it just because I can.

If I had to rate myself with timeliness of response time and ability to handle email flow, I would give myself a 90%. I am human, I forget things, some things I need time to answer, and there are the very few I ignore all together, but they are far and few between.

I really really wish there was an email/netiquette class for everyone to take so they would understand when to use what and how to write emails. It's pretty sad sometimes. While I am at it, I also wish I could a million dollars. We can dream.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Last Friday I said good bye to the Mods and Heavy Maintenance Team. They have been absolutely great. I know I am going to miss working with them, it's been a riot. Where else will someone give you solid advice like, "Don't teach a pig to sing"? It had gotten to the point where I could joke with them and knew what was going on. It takes a while to build that report with people, so it's hard to start over. It's going to be different now, but hopefully, it will be a good different.

So on Monday, I started with the new group, Material Management. It was a rocky start with training the last three days, getting my computer out of my old building and to my desk, and inbox flooding of emails from old and new job tasks. Let's not forget about learning if you can make oatmeal in the morning or leave a Coke in a fridge and it will be there at lunch time. Those are the really important things you need to know when you start any new job (if you are me anyway).

Today I actually started to do job related functions. I think I am going to enjoy it, but it will take a while for me to comprehend what I am doing. Learning mainframe software is definitely challenging. There is a lot of out of office time coming up too between vacations and conferences. Hopefully I won't data dump everything I learn by then. :P Here's to new beginnings!

Another Milestone

This is one of the larger recent milestones (to me) in unpacking the house. I have graduated from being on the floor/Tupperware bin to my desk. A real solid honest to goodness desk with a chair. I am very excited. I feel like a grown up.

Oatmeal Blues

For about the past two years I have started about 90% of my mornings at work with a bowl of oatmeal. The same oatmeal. It's delicious and sweet and healthy. On the odd occasion I am out, I turn to donuts or pop tarts to substitute, but otherwise, the oatmeal has been good to me. And it's been good to my co-workers who I have trained not to bother me until this has been consumed in the morning. This may sound rude to you, but people don't bother me when I am not ready to deal with them and they don't get a snippy or grouchy me. I think it's fair.


On my last grocery trip to the store (featured here) I was at a loss. My box of oatmeal was not there. It wasn't out of stock, it was as if it never had a space on the shelf. Out of 20 some varieties of oatmeal, I pick the one it appears, they started to discontinue. I was eating Quaker Oatmeal, Nutrition for Women, Vanilla Cinnamon flavor. It's delicious and the specified "Nutrition for Women" made me feel like I was at least getting something right.

I went to the Quaker Oatmeal website and found a store that still carries it nearby, but I have a feeling I will eventually face the extinction of this wonderful tasty morning product. They have a new brand the labeled at Vanilla Cinnamon, but not Nutrition for Women. I am really hoping it's the same thing in a new package.

Travels Bring Surprises

Most of the time, this means, "Surprise! We lost your bag", "Surprise! You are now delayed 3 hours", "Surprise! Bad weather at your destination". However on the rare occasion, something neat happens and you get to tell everyone about it and they also think, Neat!

I had to travel for work Wednesday afternoon for a day trip to Dayton, OH (hopping Metropolis it is). This means heading to the famous overly busy Atlanta airport. My boss and I car pooled together (go environment) and proceeded through security without too much trouble. This was my first time giving carry-on only luggage a go. Thankfully I succeeded, but that's not where the story is.

In the security line, I was about 3 people behind a man that I thought looked rather out of place for airport travel. He had about 3 plastic bags full of stuff. And stuff exactly. I could tell he had disposable pie tins and some other odd assortments. He was an older man, blading, with hair sticking out like Einstein, and I just wrote him off as kind of odd.

Later my boss and I are on the tram heading to our terminal on the other side of the airport and after the first stop, he says to me, "Do you know who that is?" and points to the odd man I described above. I say no, to which he replies, "Do you know who Gallagher is?" "Oh the man who smashes stuff?" "Yup, that's him."

Admittedly I got a little star struck, here I am sharing a tram with a somewhat famous person. It's no Johnny Deep, but hey, I take what I can get. We got off at the same stop and head to the escalator. He steps on right before me and now I am about a foot away from him. He looks around and tells me "You go on up the ladies department" and turns back down the escalator to continue some joke with the guy from the tram which my boss is standing next to.

We get off and head towards the gate and he sees my boss walking with me and says "Oh she's with you, I didn't want to be telling inappropriate things in front of the lady." My boss continued to have a conversation with him as we walked and at his terminal stop he said, "Ok this is me, bye."

So that's my neat news. There was also the "Surprise! Your flight has been delayed 5 hours" fun too, but this was better of a story to share. :)

Dinner for Two

We just have none stop fun here. That's right, we are going to hit up the grocery store together today. Wild and crazy things happen in Atlanta, I am just here to tell you about them. Again I say, lucky you.

This marks our first trip together while living under one roof. No more buying two gallons of milk (unless it turns out we are milk fiends) or loaves of bread or other such things. As it stands now, our refrigerator is mostly full of beer and condiments. Kind of a throw back to college days.

This also means planning dinners got slightly easier. We have been cooking for two but in two different places, which you may say, what's the difference? Well, normally by Thursday it was "I had the two meals planned we ate and I thawed some stuff, but could make pasta, so umm, now what?" Never quite compared notes on those kinds of things. That's about to change.

Between the two of us, we have approximately a ton of cookbooks. We are trying to reference them as we go forward to find new recipes. This week we are trying Herbed Pork Chops with Wild Mushrooms, Tequila Shrimp, and Asian BBQ chicken in additional to some classics.

I may have to adopt the side bar Meredith keeps on her blog, "Project In My Fridge" to show the latest creation, but we will see. That may need to wait until things have settled here a bit. This should be interesting. :)

Moved and Mostly, Kind of, Maybe Settled...

It's been one week since the move. There's been a LOT of change in that one week. We started with the "Box Forest", aka, the entire apartment. I don't think we could have fit anything else in this place. Since then, we have started to find homes for what we can get to. There is, of course, a large portion that hasn't been put away either because it's not staying here or we can't get to that box yet.

Many many many thanks to Rob's dad who happen to stay Sunday night due to some flight delays. He helped clear out the old apartments and place things in this one. I know we would have had a LOT more work to do without his help.

My bedroom furniture has finally been squared away. For a large part of the week, I had to shuffle around some things to get to the bathroom and closet. Fun! We found the dining room table and actually had a real dinner at it last night. It's still surrounded by a lot of boxes, but it's taking shape. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow we will find the living room! One can only hope.

We unpacked our pantry food today. We found out that between the two of us, we have copious amounts of pasta (among many other household objects). The good news, it all fit on the shelf we had designated as the "food area". A trip to IKEA today (can we say zoo?!) solved some storage on that shelf and below it. We made it appear a little more organized. Tricks of baskets and buckets. Shhh... :)

And let's not forget my fuzz faces. I was a little worried about moving them again. The last time I moved, it involved a 10 hour car ride for them and a lot of strange one or two night stays in different places. Thankfully they seem to settling in well. I am sure the rest of the place will follow in due time.