Almost busiest time of the year!

One of the truly joyous aspects of working at a company whose primary function is retail sales is the Christmas holiday season. Since this is the busiest time of year, and since this Christmas is combined with a once in a century economic meltdown worldwide, the department in which I work is going to be doubly inundated.

Which brings me to my main problem - my intellectual "eyes bigger than my stomach" problem. Because you see, I thought I could handle a full time job and a full time school load. And I have. But just barely, and starting next week, there is mandatory overtime scheduled.

It's going to be fun.

So, to anyone out there who wants to write me an email or talk to me in any way, shape or form - I am likely to send Christmas cards as a way to decompress, but that's probably about it in the way of communication for the next 5-6 weeks.

Did I mention it's going to be fun!?

Memorial Day Weekend

My Memorial Day weekend began like most - I cursed my alarm clock as I awoke at 6am to get ready for work. Work was interesting, because it was Memorial Day and we had maybe quarter staffing for the holiday. I ended up with too much work, missed my ferry and had to take the next one, which made me miss my ride, but it all worked out, cause I just walked and met my ride at our destination.

Destination: Dancing Brush (or Paint, or Paintbrush, whatever it's called now) on Bainbridge Island. I decided on making a birthday giftie - a painted Green Man (Froud) on a large serving platter - and it took three hours to paint. Then, I realized I might have just enough time to do a mug I brought with me, and painted mod style poppies on it (Thanks to M. for the design inspiration!).

After that, I got food at Central Market (yum!) with M., and we watched three episodes of Flight of the Conchords, which was totally sweet. I love those guys - so hilarious. I know they hate being called British/English, but their humor vibe is totally Monty Python with music.

My evening ended with a trip to McCloud's with my friend J. to sing some karaoke. I decided to really go for it, and sing "Uninvited" by Alanis Morissette, a song I hadn't ever done before, and totally nailed it, so that's always a fun adrenaline rush.

Finally back to my apartment at 1am to go to sleep and be rested for my 12 hour day at work (today).

All in all, I'd say an excellent holiday. :)

Holiday Busy-ness

One of the things I like most about the holidays is how busy I am.

One of the things I like least about the holidays is how busy I am.

My brother came back to visit, so I’ve been spending piles of time with him, and a friend that I haven’t seen in a year a half reconnected, on top of the regular holiday scheduling, plus starting a new job. They’re both flying back to their respective homes tomorrow, I’ve gotten more comfortable in my job, and the holidays are, for all intents and purposes, over. So now I have more time on my hands for working overtime.

This year has been very good for me. I am looking forward to how many great new things I’ll be able to do and try this year. I plan to continue with pottery, take a knitting class, a sewing class, and learn to swim this summer. All I managed this last summer was learning how not to drown with a little training board and how to float – but I was rather proud of that. Next week, I’m signing up for a gym membership and a personal trainer. I’m researching condos for my move in June, and looking longingly at a gorgeous cream brocade Victorian chaise that I know I can’t yet afford.

I hope you all have had wonderful holidays as well and done fun things with people you love.

Ich wünsche euch eine guten Rutsch in neue Jahr!

White Christmas

It's snowing! I don't remember how many times as a kid I hoped for a white Christmas and was left with maybe a grayish-brown one. Or just gray, cause it was raining the whole time.

I doubt it will stick, but it's lovely for now.

Merry Christmas, everyone!!!

Almost Christmas!

This week has been long. After more than a couple of months sitting on my chair doing nothing but attempt to prevent myself from falling into a coma, going back to doing real work all day long was rather tiring. I was so tired, in fact, that I went to sleep at 6:30pm on Tuesday night after getting home from work.

Both because of the keeping busy part and just because, I LOVE my new job! I really like the people, I like the atmosphere, I like the style of the company, and I like what I do. I'm never bored, and there's always something interesting and amusing to see. Today, I ran across an email address: "hexenweib43" or something similar, which translates loosely to, "witchy woman." The funny part is that she was attempting to buy an electronic item on a new account with several bad debt relations. Not the most brilliant thing one could do and expect to get away with it. So, in case you're wondering - ordering electronic stuff online using free emails with silly handles isn't probably going to be successful.

I watched the Canadian Brass on Wednesday evening with my brother. They were about as schticky as I expected, but also just as talented as I expected. They are all wonderfully technically proficient, of course, and they put on a great show. I very much enjoyed it, and considering I spent only $16 for my ticket, I'm quite pleased with it.

I'm now back at home for the weekend. I have to go into work Monday, quite early. I'm planning on getting there around 7am, because I don't yet have an after hours pass to my building. Then I'll work through lunch and hopefully be out of there in time to beat it to the ferry dock. Thankfully, most people can't order anything and guarantee it arrives by Christmas if they order it on Monday, so there should be fewer bozos to deal with. Everyone else in my department is working this weekend, but since I'm still training, I would actually slow down the progress of my supervisor so I'm not working. I only feel slightly sad about this - and that only because I calculated how much money I make on overtime now.

I'm also looking forward to getting trained to work on business in France, just to see how much French I've forgotten. I do find it vastly amusing that the most useful portion of my Master's degree was my language training. We received an absolutely hilarious email from a customer that quite literally took me back to my days of reading German before it was standardized (essentially pre-1550). If there's a name for the sort of German that corresponds to the English a redneck on his sixth beer at 3am would use, it would apply to this email. It's difficult to misspell in German (at least, I think so, coming from English), but maybe 1/3 of this person's email was spelled correctly. Not only that, but it was utterly nonsensical even if you could read the whole thing well, which you couldn't. Really, an excellent way to start off one's morning. :)

I am told that tomorrow will be a day of baking and food preparing, so I guess my big plans for tomorrow are to bake some gingerbread and possibly go to a movie with my brother. I do like these sorts of weekends.

Happy weekend before Christmas, everybody!

'tis the season

Maybe I was just feeling a little more prickly than usual today. But when I heard the phrase: " 'tis the season to be shopping" on the radio, I got really annoyed. I know that hardly anyone actually celebrates Christmas because they actually believe in Christ, and most people don't celebrate 'Christmas' anyway - they celebrate the 'holidays' - whatever that's supposed to mean, since the word itself comes from Christian holy days anyway.

But even if you don't care at all about or find the reason for the season offensive, the idea that the whole purpose of this time of year is crass materialism is just a little too much for me.

Maybe I need to go watch Charlie Brown Christmas again and restore my faith in humanity, even if the messengers are by turns racist and cruel cartoon children.

An Auspicious Beginning to the Holidays

Today is an auspicious day. At lunch, I will go to the post office, and mail not only my Christmas cards (and it’s still the first week of December!!) but also my voter registration. I am currently still registered to vote in Oregon, but I don’t like voting in Oregon, so I’m switching to Washington. I like the registration process in Washington better anyway, because you don’t have to register with a political party. However, because of consolidated voting, I don’t get to vote for a Republican in one race and a Democrat in another, which is really irritating. As an independent, I would like to be able to choose who I think is best for a job based on their positions and experience, not based upon their party affiliation. I really hate political parties.

Anyway, that will also be early, since my deadline is January 18, 2008 if I want to vote in the Presidential primary in Washington (not as though my vote will count, but it’s the principle of the thing). So, I am early in two important areas of my life for the first time in recent memory. I didn’t get my Christmas cards out last year until the week before Christmas, and I’m pretty sure some didn’t go out until after Christmas. But then, traditionally, Christmas is December 25 until January 6 (Epiphany or Twelfth Day), so I always said I had until the 6th. Technically. But of course, no one actually cares about the twelve days of Christmas anymore, it’s all crass commercialism up until the 25th, then the tree gets chucked by the 31st. How sad.

Next week, I am not working. I gave notice to end my current employment on Friday because I can't stand it anymore but because of background checks, I will not be able to start work this Monday, but the following Monday, unless by some miracle my background check comes back early. I sincerely doubt this, because I had 15 addresses on my list in the past seven years (five were from this year alone). So, I’ve decided to enjoy my last week of freedom before I settle down to my average 10-15 hrs of overtime per week job.

Snow!!

Today, I had the pleasure of going to my friend Michelle's show/booth at the Urban Craft Uprising in Seattle, at the Exhibition Hall in the Seattle Center. I got some business cards from some great artists and crafters, and I can't wait until I have money and can go online and buy some of their stuff.

But, most importantly, after I left, it was snowing!! It never snows here, for those of you who may not realize, and it's AWESOME!!! I haven't seen this many smiles in Seattle for quite some time. I'm just finishing up my soup and hot chocolate at the local coffee shop and I can't wait to go back to my apartment and curl up with a book and watch my Netflix movie later tonight.

And... it's December!! Happy holidays!!

gotta love the long weekends

Thursday, my mom and I went hiking. Really worked up a nice appetite for our chicken pasta primavera and bruschetta on ciabatta, with apple crisp for dessert. Not very Thanksgiving like, but after last year's 15 hour cooking marathon, I wasn't interested. I did miss the stuffing, though.

Friday, I enlarged photos and bought yarn and went to a musical. Good musical - 'Whistle Down the Wind' at the 5th Avenue theatre. On Saturday and Sunday, I lazed around my apartment, cleaned things, tidied things, went through all of my photos and decided which ones would make it into my scrapbooks, read a few novels, hammered away at the Count of Monte Cristo (which, even in my abridged version, is still three inches thick), and played with my cat.

The only problem with my long weekend is that everyone else had a long weekend too, which meant that they had no time to evaluate my applications. But, one of my possibles called my supervising lawyer today, and he gave them a nice recommendation, so that should be good. It's the one with flex-time, so I could go four 10's a week, if I wanted to. That would definitely be nice. But still... the siren's call of working in an all-German environment calls to me...

Thanksgiving break

Tomorrow I have an interview with a contractor for a government agency. Unfortunately for me, I was the victim of office politics – aka, a dissatisfied and insecure coworker decided she didn’t like me/felt threatened by me, I really don’t know – and now I’m looking for a new job. Some people just really need to grow up. Anyway, I’m going to look at it as a blessing in disguise, because now I have the opportunity to get out of the verbal contract I made, and I can look for a better job.

This weekend was spent putting together IKEA furniture and then organizing all of my books and such into it. Those stupid things are a pain to put together. Even following the directions very carefully, I still managed to make a number of mistakes, just from getting certain holes on the top when they should have been on the bottom. Of course, I didn’t realize these mistakes until a few pages further into the manual, so then came the backtracking. Still, the beast is done, even if it did take almost two hours total. It weighs about 200 lbs, too. The kitchen shelving unit was much simpler to put together. Sad thing is, even with my new behemoth IKEA shelving unit, I still don’t have enough space for all of my books and materials. I collect paper.

I am looking forward to Thanksgiving break. My mom and I are having a nice quiet dinner together with some bruschetta for an appetizer, pasta primavera and pan fried turkey for dinner, and pie with fresh ice cream ala mode. Yum!

Federal holidays are nice - IF you get them off

Last week, I made plans to go hiking over Veteran’s Day weekend, thinking that I had a three day weekend to exploit. Well, I was wrong. So here I am, at work on a federal holiday. The only upside is that I get two days off at Thanksgiving, and I only got Thursday off at my old job.

I went walking around in the Theler Wetlands nature park in Belfair with my mom on Sunday. I didn’t even realize it was there until I read about it in a hiking book. It’s really quite fascinating, and so interesting to think that all of Kitsap used to look similar to the preserve. So much of it has been destroyed to make way for housing subdivisions. I’m all for people having their own places to live, but long-term land management doesn’t mean land for me, no land left for my children and grandchildren to appreciate in the future. One of the reasons I hate Wal-Mart so intensely is the way in which they built their stores in Bremerton and Poulsbo. In Bremerton, they decided it was cheaper to pay the fine for building on a wetland than to find a new location. In Poulsbo, the city council voted not to let them build the store, so they just built it right outside of city limits. Evil, nasty corporation. I am beyond glad that they have lost so much money recently.

My apartment is completely unpacked. However, I have not yet bought my shelving unit, so most of my stuff is in piles on the floor. Caesar is finding this to be endless fun, though, and he keeps hiding behind piles, then jumping out and attacking me when I walk by. He is also loving my new trunk, as it is the highest point he can reach in the room. I think it makes him feel powerful.

Halloween + moving

Okay, I admit it – mom and I were “those people” on Halloween - the ones who give out a small amount of lousy candy, these little hard sucking candies that mom’s had for ages because no one wanted to eat them. We forgot! I was moving my stuff to my new apartment, not to mention being disgustingly sick. Then the kids started showing up. We gave granola bars to some teenagers. The last group, we didn’t have even granola bars for them, there were at least ten of them. Poor mom, she ended up having to give out the lousy candy. I was too embarrassed to volunteer to do it myself.

On to more interesting news – my new place is totally cute, and I absolutely love it. It’s really very small, but the location couldn’t be better, and it’s my very own little place in Seattle. I did not have to settle for a roommate, thank God! I’m looking forward to painting my allowed number of accent walls (one per room), and figuring out a way to build in enough shelving space to accommodate all of my books and such. Next time, I’m paying people to move me. Luckily, some dude was walking by (I live across the street from a food bank, so that’s probably why), and offered to help. I’m all for handing out cash when it’s been worked for, so I said yes. He carried all the heavy stuff, too. Now, off to IKEA to get cheap shelves. My steamer trunk that I’m using instead of a wardrobe or chest of drawers is arriving this evening. I’m very much looking forward to that as well. Happy Friday, all!

T.G.I.F.

Today is a rather nice fall day for Seattle. The air is nippy, it’s partly cloudy (although one can probably expect the sun to come out shortly), and there’s that lovely crisp freshness of autumn welcoming the coming winter that is lurking, undefinable, behind the long shadows of the high rises.

Today is also Friday, and as most offices downtown have a casual Friday, Seattle is a veritable sea of jeans this morning. I looked closely, and saw only one pair of black slacks entering the Washington Mutual building when I walked by. My building must be slightly more dressy because the woman in front of me going up the elevator was dressed in lovely black fishnet stockings, cute black wedges and traditional business attire. Still, I’m pleased with the amount of casualness I see – I doubt this would work very well on the east coast, which I’ve heard is far more fashion conscious than we are.

Today is also the first night of the weekend before Halloween, meaning lots of Halloween parties all throughout the area. My cousin is coming up to visit, and we will have carrot cake with cream cheese icing in celebration. I hope that many people will have fun this weekend. I read an ad recently in craigslist for writers writing about loneliness in Seattle. The ad contended that while other cities had their fair share of lonely, depressed people, Seattle has a unique culture of loneliness and depression. Some blame it on the weather, some blame it on the mouth-breathing males, some blame it on the stuck-up females. I do not agree with this hypothesis, however – but what do I know? I don’t actually even live in Seattle yet. Here’s to hoping there are some great parties this weekend and lots of people have lots of fun and feel lightness in their hearts.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Christmas - But not with the 'Christ' or 'Mass,' please.

I recently read an article online about schoolchildren who are suing their school district for prohibiting them from passing out gifts they wanted to at a Christmas party. One girl's pencils, printed with 'Jesus is the reason for the season' were taken by school officials.

Why do we celebrate this holiday if no one wants to admit that we have Dec. 25 off expressly because it's been celebrated as the birth of Christ for centuries? There are two options: remove the holiday entirely (also Easter days off) from being observed federally, or also make holidays of a similar stature in other religions days off as well. Personally, I'm for Hamburger B. This is done in Myanmar, where Islamic, Christian and Buddhist high holidays are observed. Lots of days off from school. :)

I understand the need to be fair in how religion is presented in schools. After all, I would feel rather uncomfortable if I felt somehow coerced into supporting faith based activities that I didn't believe in. However, I don't see why it's harmful for students to share pencils printed with personally meaningful phrases. This has an opposite side to it, though - last year, the same school district was sued for allowing Harry Potter items at a fundraiser. If you are wanting to allow your children to share their faith, others must also be allowed to do so.