Category: Work

Vacation, all I ever wanted

We got lucky, while Emily was visiting, in that we had a minor cool spell. Temperatures were only in the mid-high 80’s instead of the 90’s and up they were in before and are again now. Her visit was fun, albeit too damned short. We went tubing on the Brazos, drove through Fossil Rim, played at the Ft. Worth Zoo and Japanese Gardens, saw Lifehouse perform at the Granada Theater, toured the rainforst, aquarium, etc. at the Dallas World Aquarium, AND managed to squeeze in a bunch of shopping as well as movie-viewage. There was more that we wanted to do, but weren’t able to due to a lack of time and us being up incredibly worn out. With all the walking we did, I was pleased that my knees mostly held up. They did start to protest and ache, but they didn’t nearly as bad as they were prior to the last round of shots.

For our tour of the Ft. Worth Zoo, I opted to take my film camera instead of my digital. I’ve been missing the feel of my big SLR camera in my hands as well as the superior zoom I have on it. I love the instanteousness of digital, but love the control that the film SLR gives me. Once I can afford it, I certainly plan on buying a digital SLR. I’ve got my eye on a few already; but unless I end up with a windfall of money in the near future, I’m going to have to wait till I get next year’s income tax refund. As soon as I get those developed (the main thing I hate about film – ha!), I will upload them into a gallery on the site. I shot digital at the Dallas World Aquarium and only just remembered to get the pics off the camera this morning. Once I’m home and can get them uploaded, I’ll share some of those as well.

It seems like almost everyone in town has suddenly caught a case of Mavericks Mania. I’m probably one of the few people who’s not Mavericks’ nuts. Sure, I think it’s great we made it to the Finals, and I hope they win – but I’m not following the games, wearing blue or Mavs gear, decorating my car & yard, or anything else. I’m just not a basketball fan, and a trip by the hometeam to the big game isn’t going to suddenly sway me into watching; so I’ll leave all that to the real fans. When it comes to sports? Give me the Dallas Cowboys. Anything else? I don’t care about it. Hell, even when the Cowboys were winning Super Bowls, I didn’t decorate my yard or car. I did wear Cowboys gear on a daily basis, but that’s a little different since I was actually working for the team at the time, and was required to wear it at work. Like I said, though, I do hope the Mavs win. It’ll be nice to have 3 out of our 41 major league sports teams to have won National Championships2. Just don’t expect me to watch the games or buy/wear anything in support of them. Having a 4 year old pup named Maverick is the closest I’ll get.

After being in my lovely 10th floor office for 6.5 months – I finally got a drawer to put my personal belongings in today. The 2 file cabinets in here were both crammed full of papers, most of it junk that needed to be sent to storage. As it was all before my time, I have no idea what any of it is, and have asked several times about going through it to file it so I can have space in here. I always get a “later” type response. Today, I ended up with some free time after we completed all work for the day. So, I grabbed a box and transfered all the contents of 1 drawer into the box. Everything is still in exactly the same order as before – but now it’s one step closer to storage and I was able to unpack the box that contained my belongings into the drawer. It will be nice to actually have a place to put my purse during the day, as well. Even though I’ve decorated the walls some already, it’s funny how something as simple as having my own drawer actually makes this place feel more like “mine” instead of like I’m just subbing for someone else. And it should feel like mine, since it is!

And on a random closing note, I finally started to do some work on the layout. I’m working at personalizing the Tiga theme, making it more “me” color-wise. I’ve only been doing a little at a time, mostly because I can’t play with graphics when I’m at work and half the time I forget once I’m home. Oops?

Footnotes

  1. 4 out of 5 teams, if you include the now-defunct Dallas Sidekicks who won the MISL & WISL Championships.
  2. The Dallas Cowboys are 5 time Super Bowl Champs and the Dallas Stars are the 1999 Stanley Cup Champs. Dallas Mavericks are currently up 2-0 in the NBA Finals. Texas Rangers are the only local team now to never have made it to the big game.

By transcendental meditation, I go there each night…

But I always come back to myself long before daylight

God, I’d love to be anywhere else than here these days. Especially right now when “here” means work. Everyone seems to be rubbing me the wrong way today. If there are reports of someone going postal and killing/maiming/whatever people on the 10th floor of a building here… have bail money ready. 😉

Seriously though, I’m grumpy beyond belief, and I think that most/part of it is the heat. I cannot understand how 2 rooms that are side-by-side in a house can be so drastically different in temperature. My room is a total sauna, even with the brand new ceiling fan and a oscillating floor fan turned on in there; and the A/C vent open wide. If you open the door to the guest room, a blast of cold air comes pouring out of the room; even though the A/C vents are closed, so none of the cold air should be going in there. It’s just not fair that there is such a drastic temperature difference between the 2 rooms. I probably should’ve gone out to Grapevine this weekend for this year’s Main Street Days. They had a snow tubing hill, but somehow I think they wouldn’t have appreciated my desire to just lay down in the middle of the snow, instead of going tubing. But damn, it would’ve been nice to curl up on a pile of snow yesterday.

Slowly but surely, I’m getting everything ready for Emily’s visit down here. I ordered quite a few things this weekend, including new shoes (moccassions & water shoes), swimsuit, clothes, etc. The one item I ordered and want the most for our tubing trip, however, seems to be problematic. I ordered the speciality tubes at the end of last week, and still have not heard anything from the vendor. Luckily for me, they took PayPal as a form of payment, so I used that and opted to pay by my PayPal Buyer Credit. Which means although the Buyer Credit has been charged – it hasn’t come out of my physical bank account yet, so I’m not hurting for that money. Plus, since I paid via PPBC, they should/will help me get my money back if this company turns out to be a total dud.

I haven’t been tubing in years, and am really looking forward to this. Yes, even in the awful Texas heat. It’ll be fun. If only the next 7 days pass as quickly as possible and I can finally A) be on vacation, B) be away from work, and C) have Emily here to show all around town and have fun and hang out.

I’ve found you find strength in your moments of weakness

My horoscope from last Sunday made me smile – Leo: Moving on is tough if you don’t feel like you’re making any progress — but you are. That is really truer than it sounds. For what seemed like an eternity I’d been struggling to move on from past hurts and betrayals, but I felt like I was mired in place, getting no where at all. Then last year I made major progress, all thanks to a concert I attended when visiting a friend. It’s amusing the places and things that can help you face and overcome your demons. Lately though, I’ve felt like I’ve been stagnant again, not able to move forwards. So that horoscope was perfect in its timing, arriving on a day when I felt hopeless, felt like I wasn’t healing anymore, possibly even felt like I was backsliding. It gave me a much-needed kick in the pants at exactly the right time.

I have very bad knees1 (osteoarthritis, osteophytes2, and chondromalacia patella) and my orthopedist has restricted some of my activities; one of those restrictions is to avoid stairs unless absolutely necessary. At my last appointment when I had a cortisone injection, I mentioned to him that I work on the 10th floor of my building and that we were getting close to “fire drill season”. Since a fire drill means taking the staircase all the way down to the bottom, and I’m not supposed to take stairs, I asked him if there was anything that could be done for me. He wrote me a note that allows me to take the freight elevator with anyone else unable to take the stairs. After that appointment I contacted one of the fire marshalls for my floor, to find out exactly what to do, and to alert them to the fact that I was now to follow these alternate evacuation procedures.

That note finally came in handy this week. Monday afternoon, the fire alarms went off. Someone actually had to tell me3 they were going off, oops? Let me tell you – it was incredibly nice being able to ride the freight elevator down. The last time we had a drill my knees weren’t half as bad as they are now, yet I could barely walk after going down all those stairs. I knew if I had to do it now, I would have issues before making it all the way down, and likely wouldn’t be able to move at all the next day.

Like I said above, if I had been required to take the stairs on Monday – I most likely wouldn’t have been able to walk on Tuesday. But, on the off-chance I had made it into work – Tuesday would have killed me. Tuesday afternoon the fire alarms went off, again. As I was waiting at the freight elevator for the fire marshalls, most of the people who were headed down the stairwell next to me showed their jealousy – calling me a cheater, saying it wasn’t fair, etc. It amused me some, with all the looks & remarks I was getting. But, when the elevator opened and I got on, it was already almost full with very able-bodied people from the top floor who were just flat-out being lazy. On the way down, we stopped on a floor with someone in a wheelchair, and 2 on crutches were waiting, yet none of the execs in the elevator made a move to get off to let the people who truly needed it have their spaces. That kinda saddened/sickened me some. Hell, I feel slightly guilty about taking the freight elevator down, yet I actually need it!

Footnotes

  1. My knees are bad enough that I could request a disabled parking sticker, but my conscience won’t let me do it. I may be barely able to walk on my worst days, but I would feel guilty taking a handicapped spot from someone who needs it even more than me.
  2. Osteophytes are more commonly known as ‘bone spurs’.
  3. I could hear a faint siren, but I usually hear them coming from police/ambulance vehicles outside on the Tollway so I just tuned it out and assumed it was out there again.