Howdy

Hi there, howdy, welcome, ola...

Happy New Year Everyone!

First, an apology - there is no excuse for the tremendous lack of posts except that i'm lazy. I admit it - i always have admitted to being lazy. Don't know why i am, but i am.

Things have been going really well around these parts. I quit my last job which was a bit scary, but liberating.

Took 2+ weeks over Christmas.

Went to Phoenix to spend Christmas with a part of my family that i rarely see let alone spend Christmas with. It was so great! Such a break from our usual family get together at Christmas. I think our family really needed it. In 2007 our family lost 2 very important members within a week of each other. Tough times, and if we had tried to celebrate Christmas in the same settings with the same routines but without these 2 people, it would have been very sad and very strange. So thankfully our cousins out in Phoenix hosted us for a week or so.

After Christmas, we all travelled to Las Vegas for new years. SO FUN. Different, mind you, when you spend New Years Eve in Las Vegas with your 60+ dad and 70 (?) Uncle, but still fun and definitely an experience.

When we returned from Vegas, Mat headed back to work, while i still had another 3 days plus a weekend before starting my new job. Unfortunately, we were both sick and there was NO WAY i was calling in sick on my first day, so it was not an easy first few days, but I LOVE MY NEW JOB.

I'm doing what i love, i'm busy, i'm surrounded by smart, young, nice people. I have benefits coming out of the wazoo, i'm so SO happy i took the risk of changing jobs. Change is always hard, but almost always worth it.

I've been at my new job for 3 weeks now and did i mention that i love it? I did? ok, sorry.

Not much else is new around here - we've been doing a bit of painting in our house and had our dear "old" friends visit us from home-home in our new house. Love those guys! We had so much fun and they showered us with cool prezzies :) Can't wait for them to come back again!

Mat and i have almost narrowed down our choices for a venue for our reception. I'm so excitied! Now it really feels like a wedding is on its way. I can envision how the night will play out, and the people we'll see and the everything - getting really excited.

The only part of the wedding (besides $$, and god does it suck how much money weddings cost regardless of how many or how few people you invite) are the bridesmaid dresses. I don't want the "traditional" bridesmaid dresses where they all wear the same dress. I wonder if that's even traditional...

I told the girls that they could wear whatever dress they want so long as it was knee length and in the fall colour family such as red, orange, green, brown. At the time i envisioned this beautiful blend of fall colours, but now i'm worried that there will be too many colours with 3 bridesmaids all wearing a different colour and then mat and i obviously wearing different colours from that and then the groomsmens ties - gah! Must sit down with some magazines and a story board and figure this out before i go crazy!

Last, but certainly not least, my friend Meg just delivered her first baby girl. I am SO EXCITED for her and her husband - i can only imagine how happy they are.

I think that's it.

How are you guys?? I'm still reading your blogs, but not commenting that much as you can tell because i've been a bit busy.

Bye for now :)

Hurtin'

Hi my lovelies,

I'm sorry for taking off and not saying anything.

I don't really have time for this post, but i miss you guys, so i thought i would just bang this out for now.

Lady x responded by basically saying "thanks for all your work on this, but there are still a lot of items we haven't received for the syllabus so we're going to hand it over to one of our locals so that we can easily go back and forth with her which wouldn't be fair to you." (That was not a direct quote from her, but i summed it up for you). Clearly she was not happy with my recommendation and wanted to do it her way (who knows what the rest of the committee thinks). I'm sure when i see the final product it will have all kinds of 'And's, 'In's and 'Of's . Oh well, it actually doesn't bother me as much as i would have thought. I'm actually pretty proud that i have a high standard and i won't have my name attached to just anything. I mean, what if she wanted me to misspell words just because she wanted them that way even though it's incorrect. idontthinkso.

So...i've been hitting the gym lately. Yay! It's about freaking time. I've been taking advantage of my lunch hour and it's been working out nicely. Although it means my lunch is a bit extended with the short travel time and shower time factored in, i make up for it by eating my lunch at my desk and not taking any other breaks (note: many people here are smokers and take several smoke breaks a day).

I'm taking group classes at the gym (like aerobics, step, weights etc. etc.) It changes every day which is great because i'm working everything (if i go everyday that is....) but MAN, it has not been easy. The first two days i was hurting BAD. My legs and arms are b-u-r-n-i-n-g!

On top of that, i suck with a capital S at coordination. This is a huge surprise to me as i play a ton of sports that require coordination AND i played the piano for 10 years which required that i could follow a beat. But for some reason when i'm trying to do the aerobics and step classes, i can't keep up with what the instructor is doing and i end up looking like an idiot. Where everyone is facing one direction, i end up facing the opposite and i end up looking at people when we shoud all be looking at each others backs....very embarrassing. I'm always totally off and i'm getting really really frustrated.

Well my dears, i'm sorry this is such a lame and quick post, but i have some deadlines hovering over my head that i need to attend to.

Please keep me in your thoughts when i'm at the gym - i need all the strength i can get!

p.s. i need a new gym bag - something cool and roomy and with lots of compartments. Anyone have advice on ones they love?

It hurts, it hurts!

What do you do, when someone asks you to do something that you KNOW is wrong?

You KNOW it's wrong, and it pains you to do it, but you feel you can't speak up or say anything about it?

Now, before you start thinking that someone has asked me to kill someone else for them, it is nothing like that. At all.

I am a coordinator. I plan events and do almost everything in between for an event. One of those things is building a syllabus or program guide for an event / conference. Most of the events i organize are conferences for the healthcare industry.

When i build a program guide or syllabus, i take the info someone gives me which usually comes in the form of a word document and i flash it up, take out extra spaces, make corrections etc. etc.

With this syllabus i'm currently working on, it had a lot of small errors like capitalizing Every Word In A Title Including The 'Thes' And 'Ands' And 'As' And 'Ins' etc. etc.

I corrected them so that only the appropriate words in the titles were capitalized.

I sent it back for review, and she sent it back to me with a ton of track changes and she changed back ALL of the words i had de-capitalized.

It looks stupid, and unprofessional and it pains me to go back and make every insignificant word start with a capital.

Should i say something or let it go? This isn't my conference, and techincally i just carry out their wishes and make happen what they want, and if they want their titles to be capitalized and incorrect, i guess i should let it be, right?

This person is older, and supposedly has done this before, but she's a nurse and so that tells me that she hasn't had to do a lot of writing and editing etc.

Thoughts?

p.s. i KNOW i'm horrible about things like that when i write here, but when i'm making something that goes to print, it's different....k?

Tattle tale Roz

OH GOD.

I'm one of THOSE people.

I'm pretty sure i just got one of my colleagues in trouble. I didn't mean to i swear!!!


Here's the scoop: I was very suddenly given a new role at work: to be a coordinator for a committee. Like i said, it was very sudden and very weird for lack of a better word. I'm obviously the best person to handle it because of my other role in the organization but i was not made aware of any thoughts or discussions around this new role being given to me until it happened and i was one of the people on the email that said "please note Roz is now the coordinator for this committee."

Okaaaaaay......

So i'm thinking, whatever, i'll just do what i'm told and if i mess up i'll say that it's because i had no idea what i was even supposed to do because no one told me.

The girl who used to be the coordinator of this position sent out an email to the members of the commmittee making them aware of the change. There just so happens to be a teleconference today with the committee and i'm supposed to head it (just so you can get a better understanding of the timeline, i was made aware of my new role two days ago).

So my manager pays me a visit today and says "i just want to let you know that i spoke with the girl who used to have this position and i told her i didn't want her to just 'dump' everything on you. She'll be by later to see you and go over things with you".

I said "oh, ok, ya she came by and there's a teleconference tonight that i'm supposed to head up and take minutes for". Well my manager just flipped out and said "WHAT??? YOU??? but you don't know anything about the committee!! She shouldn't have dumped this on you!!". She made me follow her to this girl's desk while she told her - in front of me - how it's not very professional of her to just dump this on me without giving me some more guidance and a longer transition period.

I felt so bad. My face must have been 10 shades of red. It sounded like i went to my manager and cried to her about how i had to head the teleconferece tonight which wasn't the case at all. I mean, i've done many-a-teleconference and although i wasn't thrilled about being given 2 days notice, it wasn't something that i couldn't handle. I mean, this girl did come and see me and although i still have no idea what this committee is about, i just figured i would pick it up as i went along. I had no intention of getting this girl in trouble and it totally looks like i went to my boss to tell on her.

This couldn't have happened at a worse time for me. I was just starting to feel somewhat integrated into the organization. I mean, no one asks me to join them for lunch or anything yet, but at least people smile at me in the hallway and compliment my outfits once in a while. I was JUST starting to feel comfortable making small talk with these people. And on top of all that, this girl is one of the nicer people and probably closest to my age whereas most of the other people are nearning retirement.

Why oh why did this have to happen to me and why did it have to be with that nice girl?

I feel horrible now and i want to send her an email "apologizing" but i also don't want to bad mouth my manager.

sigh.....

Rosalind has added you as a friend on facebook...

To add or not to add?

With all of the new ways to stay connected to people like facebook and myspace, what are the rules with adding "friends".

Is it ok to add your colleagues from work as your "friends"? What about your past employers or teachers or professors? Should these people be given the privilege to see into your oh-so-personal life?

After being a member of these "profile" communities for a while, it's hard to remember what you've posted, what you've said about someone or to someone, what kind of albums you have or what kind of pictures you've been tagged in. I just wonder if it might come back to haunt you in the future.

Do you really want these people who aren't necessarily your "friends" but rather "friendly acquaintences" to see all of the personal things that you've posted? It's a tough call because on one hand, facebooking is fun, and you want to learn more about the other person, but on the other hand, it could lead to some uncomfortable situations - even ones that you're unaware of.

I've added some colleagues as well as some past teachers, but now I'm wondering if i should have kept my distance, and on top of that, i've created this annoying little thought in my head telling me i should worry everytime i interact on facebook: "will so-and-so read this?" "what will they think?" "would they tell someone else about it?".

I started thinking about all of this when i started hearing about highschool students who would comment on a group on facebook, but then a teacher or a principal would join the group and get the student in trouble for saying something mean about a teacher for example. That really sucks because now that kid is always going to be cautious as to what he says in case big brother is watching (which he is!).

What is your opinion on adding people like colleagues to your friend list? Do you? Does it make you nervous at all? Should there be some guidelines? Or should there be a rule that what happens on facebook stays on facebook?

I heart my job!

How many times do you hear those words from people?

Well, yesterday was my first day at my new job. It felt like my first day of school. Remember how great those were? You never did any work, you just met your teachers and class mates and got your text books and schedule and usually left a bit early. Well my day yesterday was just like that.

I met the entire organization and I think i'll do an ok job at remembering most people's names. Everyone is really nice and laid back, but let me tell you about the "perks".

Well, as most of you know, i have come from a very small company. There was six of us who worked at the company, and we didn't have very many luxuries. Coming to such a big organization (or is it?), i found so many things really cool!

1) I got one of those cool security swipe passes that you clip to your pants with the extendable leash thingy!

2) I have my own email address now :)

3) I have my own telephone extension

4) I can import my voice mail messages into my email and listen to them as wave files. I can also forward them to other people to listen to!

5) Our copy / mail room has a HUGE hole puncher that can do about 50 sheets at once AND a HUGE stapler that can do about the same! argh i can't wait to use them and not be frustrated by the ones i'm used to that jam all the time!!

6) The photocopier can scan things and send them right to your email or anyone else's email! you can also just scan something and fax it to another person...too cool!

7) we have a little gym in the building

8) we have free coffee machines in the building

9) we have a little cafe for our lunch with 2 microwaves and a huge fridge and all of the drinks are free (pop, juice, tea, water, coffee etc.)!

10) we have picnic tables outside for lunch time

11) i get a parking pass and free parking

12) my cubicle is probably the best cubicle arround. Almost eveyrone (except the execs) share an office or a cubicle! and there's usually 2 or 3 per. I get my own, large cubicle which is nicely tucked into a cozy corner, not too far from the elevator, bathroom and coffee maker, but not too close to them either...it's perfect :)

13) my superierors are THE nicest!

14) i can come and go when i want

15) probably some other cool things i'm forgetting but will sure to post about in the future.

yay for my new job :)