Moving out of the Dark Age

Today, I made one giant leap for mankind. Well, more likely for myself and Rob too. It's still pretty huge. I upgraded my phone today from one that is apparently worth $19 in the Verizon store to a Smart Phone. I got the new HTC Droid. That's right, I will no longer get angry when someone sends me a text message!

So far, I don't know how to do much with it, but I am pretty happy that I am able to check my Gmail account from work and check silly things throughout the day that the company has blocked. Not to mention that I can get directions on the fly now from google maps and I am sure get all kinds of gadgets and gizmos which I will be waiting on Rob to help me with. :) My favorite feature so far is the green robot that pops about and the snowflakes that appear on the weather report. Oh and some fun backgrounds. :) Did I mention WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE???

Preparing for Winter

Winter is upon us here in the great state NY and Rob and I are trying to get prepared. Last week I finally broke down and made a few essential purchases. First was the snow brush. This was a little more intimidating that I thought it would be with the 15 different choices they had. I just wanted one that removed the snow from my car. Thankfully I picked a good one. I got to put it to use this morning finally. Score one for me.

Secondly, I made a purchase from REI Outlet for a pair of boots. Apparently last years models are worth only 60% of their value. Like I care. I picked out a nice fuzzy pair and rolled the dice on if they would fit or not. To my absolute delight, they fit and are warm. Score another!

Now I need a hat and an cocoa dispenser for my car. I hope Santa has something up his sleeve.

Meetings - The Practical Alternative To Work

Work is full of meetings. I have been pretty fortunate to avoid a lot of them. I have one morning meeting every day that lasts all of 15 minutes and it's nothing more than a game plan for the day. Not too bad. However, I find there are a large number of meetings that aren't so short and sweet.

I was invited to a meeting this week with various customers to discuss delivery time line and installation issues of our product via teleconference. It being a teleconference should tip you off that this will not be a short meeting and in fact, we will probably struggle to stay within our time limits. This meeting was scheduled for an hour with an agenda of 22 points with about 4-5 groups dialed in (another red flag). At the thirty minute mark, we were on point number 4. I found this quite funny. Shortly after that thirty minutes, the people on the other end of the phone were having some nonsense conversation that didn't pertain to us so we had our own mini meeting, which I am sorry to say happens ALL the time with teleconferences. You can't see your attendees faces or their body language to signal to you that's not ok. So after about 10 minutes, we notice the phone has gone silent and someone says, "Hello?" This is where you have to make a graceful recovery to tell the people on the other end they were boring you, so you decided to talk about something else. Meeting fail.

At the end of our one hour, they had made it to point 6, but by the grace of gods, the conference room we had was only booked for an hour and we got kicked out. The main meeting people went to an office to finish what was probably another hour or two conversation and my boss and I left to go do "real work".

So why does this happen? I think it happens for a few reasons. One - Meetings are a chance for people to vent in an open forum. To bring up points they think are huge because it's eating away at them. Then you need to spend 5 minutes explaining they are smoking crack in a nice way and move on. Two - no one really wants to go back to work. If they are in a meeting, they can't possible be doing other things or meeting with OTHER people. The invention of the blackberry has kind of lessened this, but still, I think for people like us underlings, it's still valid. And finally, I believe that people running meetings have some phenomenon happen where time stops for them and they haven't the foggiest clue that life is happening around them back in normal land. Those who run meetings often determine their outcome and sad to say, many people are not good at it.

I am not saying, the meetings I run are perfect because they aren't. I just thought it was a funny observation that I could share with you. :) It's kind of like Office Space, probably a little to close to home. ;)

It's Christmas Time...

We have officially decorated our house for the holidays. It takes a while because we have about 8 boxes of Christmas stuff to sort out and put up, but it looks nice when we are done. So I will let the pictures do the talking. :)


Our pretty Christmas tree. We have an eclectic tree with all kinds of different ornaments that we each have collected over the years. Our favorite additions this year are the personalized engaged ornament and the ornament from Rothenburg, Germany.


The holly lights are my favorite non-tree decoration because I think they are classic Christmas.


We didn't want our entry way to feel left out, so we put a small tree down there. This particular one has a set of lights on there that blink, so really this is an action shot. :)

Rob and I aren't the only ones in this household that enjoy the Christmas decorations. Both Dory and Sparky think that we have done this house up as some sort of playland for them. They take turns sitting at the extra lights from the holly.


And they both like to camp out under the tree. In this case only one cat was being cooperative so Dory gets all the limelight on this go around. :)


Of course, they also like batting at the ornaments which means strategic placement of all fluffy/non breakable ornaments so if they bat at something, they bat at those.

Here's to the Christmas season!!

IT SNOWED!

Like an excited 5 year old, I was thrilled at the sight of snow this morning and even woke up Rob to share this news. I am sure he was just as excited as I was, but wasn't awake enough to relay that enthusiasm. It's the first real snowfall of the season and how appropriate to be on December 1st. Anywho, it was worth a photo before work because it's already melted, just like it used to in Atlanta.

10 Years Later

Last night Rob and I attended my 10 year high school reunion. I wasn't sure I really wanted to go, but I felt that I would feel regret if I didn't attend. Like I had missed out. So Rob and I got ready and headed into the metropolis known as Phoenix with our two stop lights and our one local bar where my reunion was happening.

We got there a little after it started and I immediately spotted Ryan who I haven't seen in about a year and was truly looking forward to seeing. I greeted him with a hug and he pointed out the "sign in location" where I was to get a name tag and my bracelet for the night. Our name tags had our senior picture on them which brought back some memories. Shortly after we greeted Shawn and Bonita. They finally got to meet Rob which was super nice. Then Megan showed up and joined us which was great. She and I were roommates briefly in college, but haven't seen each other since.

Throughout the night I got to meet and greet with some people who I wanted to catch up with, but most of them are mentioned above. I did get to talk with a few people that I was curious about how things were going with them, but largely, there were a number of people I didn't talk to in high school and it just felt bizzare to ask those people, "So, how have things been? What are you up to these days?!" I don't say this to be mean, but what do you say to someone that you never really knew? I got a lot of those kind of head nods and recognition, but that's about where it ended.

Everyone fell back into their own clicks, but I think it's only natural. Those were the people who you spent a lot of time with during our younger years. I wasn't really that surprised. There were some people who were really nice and some people who were still big snots, but hey, we all can't change for the better. :) There was a lot of awkward moments that were like, ummm ok, moving on. I wished there were a lot more people there that I wanted to see. Overall it was kind of a small turn out, although more people showed up after our event "ended". We left shortly after that because we were pretty much ready to go and thought we wouldn't get much more out of staying. We came back to our house and hung out playing the Wii and flipping through the yearbook. Honesstly, between all of us, I got more information on where people were than if I had stayed chatting with people.

I thought about what has changed with me since high school. There are some things that haven't changed like my hair color, my ability to laugh at silly things, and my parents home address. But there's lots that has. So I thought I would compile a small list of things that I thought of.

- I like sushi
- I have lived in big cities and survived (Washington, DC and Atlanta)
- I have moved more than a dozen times
- I have a pretty good career
- I have been skiing out West
- I made my first international trip
- I dated a few losers
- I found the man I will marry and whom I am very much in love with
- One of my most fun jobs was in college scrubbing dishes and mopping floors
- I have officially watched the all of the Star Wars movies
- I own a guitar I can't play
- I have two cats who provide much entertainment and comfort
- I have great friends
- I enjoy a dinner party and game night more than being at a bar and at the movies
- I don't dress like a dork anymore :)
- I wear make up
- I donated my hair to Locks of Love and will donate it again to Pantene after my wedding
- I practice yoga

I am sure this list could go on, but I have a house to decorate for the Christmas season. :) I had a good time, but I don't know if I am interested in going again. I probably will for the same reasons I went to this one. The hopes of seeing people I really would love to see. Let's just hope next time we don't plan on in the middle of the worst economic downturn/recession ever. :) That might help.

Kitty Cuteness

Since I don't have kids, occasionally I subject people to pictures of my kitties. Technically they are cats, but they will always be my kitties and sometimes are referred to as my fat fuzzies. Anywho, after Rob's nap the other day, my fuzz butts curled up on the blankets and didn't move after I grabbed my camera so I was able to snap a photo.