All Quiet on the Blogging Front

I know, the blog has been the sound of crickets for a while now. I have had multiple posts written out in my head, but they've just never made it to the keyboard. I don't have much to say now, but I figured I'd better get back in the habit. :-)

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I'm settling in to my new job. I think I'm finally starting to understand what it is I'm supposed to do. Not that I think I know everything, but I have fewer questions. Everyone kept telling me to give it a year before I really feel like I understand what's going on. A year??? I don't think I've ever had a job where I wasn't supposed to know everything about everything inside 2 weeks!

It's not that the job is that difficult to understand in and of itself. There's just a lot of product knowledge to absorb.  I'm getting there! It helps that they just hired another person in our department, and I was able to refine my focus. Our products are divided in two categories, and technically she's over one and I'm over the other. That makes it a little easier, although I still need to learn hers and her mine. We just don't have to know it all righthtisverysecond.

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I started working out regularly again. I'm actually doing a pretty good job of sticking with it this time. I've been meeting my friend Leah 4-5 times a week for the past 10 weeks. I've discovered the keys to getting me to commit to it.

1. I have to be meeting someone.
2. I have to have a plan. 
3. I have to do it at 6am. 

A fourth condition might also be that I have to have it sprung upon me. Leah asked me to be her Maid of Honor, and I told her the only way I would do it was if she was my workout partner. Then 5 days later I text her a pic of my new workout shoes and she asked if I wanted to meet her the next morning at 6am for our first workout. Uh... sure! That was September 2, and we've been going ever since. 

We started out with this plan, which was great until the donkey calf raises. That's a no. Now we're working through a different one, although we're probably going to change it up again soon. We're both seeing some great improvements in strength, but now we need to get some extra cardio for the weight loss. 

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I've currently been without a "real" fridge for about a week. Ours just decided to stop cooling last Wednesday night. After multiple calls with Best Buy and Samsung customer service, they are finally coming to fix it this afternoon.

G was kind enough to take a lot of the stuff from our freezer and put it in his. Then we made an emergency purchase of a mini-fridge to get us through what turned out to be the next 6 days. It's been interesting trying to meal prep in a mini-fridge, that's for sure. But hopefully the real fridge gets fixed this afternoon. Then the mini-fridge will go live in G's garage. 

Ok, well that's enough rambling for today. I will leave you with this.

I might have been praying over this one last week. :-)

Happy Friday!

We made it to the weekend! I hope you've all had a good week and are ready to enjoy your weekend. My week has been pretty tame so far. The most exciting thing I did was rearrange my desk area yet again. Shortly after I started this job, my bosses decided to rearrange my office area to make room for another person we were about to hire. I already share the space with 2 other people, so when we were trying to figure out where to put a 4th person we decided to completely swap everyone's seating arrangement. I moved from the middle to the front, and I have moved my stuff around at least 3 times since.

Let's see if this works!

Even though I was only at my old desk for about 3 weeks, I was liked the set-up. I'm having a hard time finding good flow for my area. I think this might work best. We'll see.

My weekend plans have shifted a little bit. I was originally supposed to meet my niece, Brittany, in Chattanooga to pick up my mom and Tony, but yesterday she discovered she has to work all day tomorrow. It's not a big deal for me, really. I've lost count of the number of times I've driven to Alabama and back in a day. I just feel bad for Bee since she seems really upset about missing out on the visit. I told her we'd make it up later.

I don't know what my other plans for the weekend include. Greg and I had been talking about going to a demolition derby, but it's drizzling and gross today so I don't really want to sit outside all evening. And I don't want to stay out too late since I have a long day of driving tomorrow (also in the rain... yay!). I found a project I want to do for my oldest brother, so I may go pick up the supplies for that tonight. Maybe I'll tell G that tonight is a pizza and video games night? Do you think he'll go for that?

Fighting is healthy for our relationship. ;-)

Spirit Week

I'm going to totally pretend that you've only missed this week. That being said, this is still going to be a long post. Deal with it...

This week has been... interesting! In a mostly good way! Tomorrow is the Group Fitness Launch at work (where the instructors start using new releases of the MOSSA Group classes), so we've been having a Spirit Week at work to gear up for it. Starting Tuesday we had Earth Day, Sports Day, Crazy Hat Day, and Super Hero Day. Tomorrow for the actual launch will be Beach Party Day. What most of us heard was that we go almost a whole week where we didn't have to wear our uniforms. Chicka-chicka-ka-score! ;-)

The interesting part of my week really started on Monday. I knew the next day was Earth Day, and I was allowed to wear anything with an Earth Day/Recycling theme to it. I shot Amy a message to see if she had anything I could borrow since I had nothing appropriate, and she found a tshirt of her husband's that would be perfect. When she asked him if I could borrow it He said I could, but only if I applied for a position that had just become available at his company. I think we all know that I've been looking for other employment for a while now, so I was intrigued. After a brief conversation with Amy, I polished up my resume and go it to the HR person. When I saw Amy at small group that night, she said her husband came home saying he thought they wanted to interview me on Thursday. Sure enough, when small group was over I had a voice mail asking if I was available for an interview on Thursday at 10am. Ahhh!

Tuesday and Wednesday were kind of a blur. I scrambled to get my shift partially covered for Thursday (I was supposed to work 11am-6pm), and I finished getting the rest of Greg's birthday gifts together. Oh yeah, not only did I have an interview on Thursday, but the love of my life turned 37! Tuesday and Wednesday involved a lot of shopping and praying. Mostly, I was praying that I would keep calm and just present myself well. I didn't want to get too excited, mostly because I've applied for several jobs and had a few interviews and then crickets. So I kept praying for God to move as He saw fit in the situation and to remind me that He has perfect timing.

Thursday was a full day, which was great! I didn't have time to dwell on anything because the day was so packed. I had the interview, worked 1-6, then immediately when to the restaurant to meet everyone for Greg's birthday dinner. I think the interview went really well. The HR person had told me it would be less than an hour, and I was there for about an hour and a half. It was really friendly interview, and I think I presented myself as well as I possibly could. Amy said her husband sent her a message saying it must be going well because I was still there, and that was only about halfway through my time there. :-) They said they hoped to make a final decision on Monday, and I should hear one way or the other sometime on Tuesday. After that, I ended up meeting Amy at the store because I had to get new shoes. I might have forgotten my tennis shoes and socks in my hurry to not be late... I needed new shoes anyway! We wandered around a chatted for about an hour until it was time for me to head to work. My shift went by pretty fast, probably because it was abbreviated. ;-) At 6 I flew out the door and up to Market Square for dinner. Greg decided he wanted to visit The Stock & Barrel this year. I ended up ordering a Bison Burger and Duck Confit Fries. Ohmigosh, it was so good! I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of it, but I inhaled it! If you're in the area, I highly recommend it! After dinner we wandered around the square for a bit, then all headed our separate ways.

Today was pretty good, too. It started off a little rough, but it's nothing that needs too much attention. Amy is at a women's retreat this weekend, Greg is at a concert, and Mom went off with her small group, so I'm at home with Tony tonight. He's in his room, so I've been left to my own devices. Well, a girl can only draft her resignation letter so many times before it becomes boring, so I decided to make something. We have a private Facebook page for our small group. I noticed that now you can add a cover picture to group pages (it used to just cycle through the profile pictures of the group members), so I went to PicMonkey and made this:

Ephesians 3:20 has sort of unofficially become our group's theme verse almost as soon as we started meeting together. Plus I wanted to remind myself that as much as I may want this job, God is capable of doing so much more than I can even comprehend. Again, His plan and timing are perfect. There's no point in worrying about it.

It looks like Anthony and I will have a pretty busy weekend. His small group is volunteering tomorrow morning so I need to get up early to get him up and out the door. Then he has a "date" tomorrow evening with his girlfriend. Whew, I don't know if I'm ready for all that! I better rest up!

Siberia

Yesterday ended up being a pretty good day. Considering it was a Monday, and those are notoriously ridiculous anymore, I didn't have high hopes, but it was fine. Work was actually pretty decent, especially for a Monday. I go in 1.5 hours early on Monday to help get caught up on paperwork from over the weekend, and usually it's a race to get everything done on time. I was able to get all of my "bonus" tasks done well before my scheduled shift was supposed to start. Yay!

After work I finally got to hang out with that boyfriend of mine. We went to dinner at Abuelo's, which is definitely one of my favorite restaurants. [side note: Abuelo's is where my bff Amy said we were going for my birthday dinner when she was actually helping to plan my surprise party. Sneaky sneaky.] And miracle of miracles, neither of us was on our phone the majority of the time. I won't lie, I'm just as bad as he is so I can only get so mad. After dinner we wandered over to Target because he needed to return something he bought over the weekend. He ended up buying a new pair of sunglasses, and I managed to walk out empty handed. It was difficult.

Then we spent the rest of the evening watching TV. We started off watching Return of Jaws on Discovery (Shark Week!), which was pretty interesting. They managed to find a way to track a shark with an underwater video camera. Greg and I both agreed that we're not going swimming at the beach in Massachusetts. After that we watched a show called Siberia. I had never even heard of it before, but it was kind of interesting. It's a completely scripted series about a fictional reality show where the contestants are sent to a remote Siberian territory and told to survive the winter. But since it's a "reality" show, things start to go wrong. It's crazy, but I liked it.

Today was not as awesome. I woke up feeling like I couldn't breathe well. My chest was really tight and I kept coughing. I've also felt run down all day. None of this was made better by the fact that my boss's boss was at our club all day today. I like her just fine, but she still puts me on edge simply because of her position.

The bright side to my day came when Greg sent me a text to look at this video on YouTube.

That seriously made me laugh so hard. I love that they can be goofy and laugh at themselves. Sorry if it's stuck in your head now.