Our Office Space

The crown jewel to our winter break was finishing adding popcorn to the ceiling and then painting the room.  AND adding this spiffy new ceiling fan.  It's quiet.  And effective.  And pretty.  And I'm done rambling about a ceiling fan now.

When I went to bed last night (why yes, we did take this project up to the last minute...thank you for noticing!), this is how the office looked.

Very important side story:  Do you see that glass and metal desk behind Jon?  What about the drafting desk at Jon's feet?  It turns out that those are not very useful when you have no hardware to them.  Jon finished painting Sunday night and we were excited and ready to move furniture in.  We brought in the glass desk, unpacked it, and realized that the hardware had been packed elsewhere when we moved.  Over a year ago.  We had NO IDEA where it was.  We spent that whole night looking and did not succeed.  Jon found it in the early evening of Monday.  Then we got to continue on our project!  I was very, very excited.

Another picture!

Office stuff!  In the OFFICE!

Picture Explosion!

Thank goodness I'm a photo-taking-fiend or else I would not know what I have done in the past few weeks!  Or maybe I would, but it wouldn't be as entertaining.  My world:

New bath towels and hand towels happened sometime in November.

Memories of the sickness...round 2 for this season.

Barefoot in mid-November...no big deal...

Someone has the middle initial pi.  SO JEALOUS.

One of my brilliant ideas.  Works like a charm!  (And it's festive...double win.)

Pink garbage truck!

Tackled these bad boys on the 1st of December!  But now they're back...le sigh.

Okay, I guess those were mums behind the garage.

December has been and will be pretty wild.  This is just my work calendar.  (Family/friends birthdays not listed...)

Pie my coworkers and I won for winning the Halloween Costume Contest.  It was pretty good!

Same coworkers plus more decided to decorate for a decoration contest.  These are "post-it" sized squares that we taped to our windows.  I designed the Kwanzaa candles, penguin, and dreidel.  And I actually put up most of the penguin and half of the dreidel.  Festive to the max!

Oops, I lied...NOW it's festive to the max!  My "ugly/tacky Christmas sweater" submission.  It lost.  :-(  Ah well, I still got lots of remarks on it and showed it off around campus as our company broke into groups and did a campus-wide scavenger hunt....which my group won!!!!!  (Yay, $5 Starbucks gift card!)  PS, I sewed this after designing it.  I literally searched Google for visual ideas after thinking that this is what I wanted to do and I found zero.  None.  That is very rare for Google.  I think this was a true original!

Alright!  Seeing as the costume thing just happened today, I think I'm caught up!  See you next time!

A Collection of Photo Stories

This is poo.  It landed right in my line of sight as I was driving to work last Tuesday.  This was one day after a bird pooped on my arm as I drove my car through a drive-thru.  Wednesday was a very uneasy day, but it was uneventful.

Salad WIN.

Wet, yet happy dog.

Wet, yet not so happy dog.

Potluck at work!  I was the only one that put a sign on my dish...kinda awkward, but it went over well!

This classy mom cut me off in traffic, so I got to enjoy her car art. Right above "Tahoe", is a pink magnet that used to say Suck Feisures....but she corrected that.  You can't read the magnet to the left of her plate, but it says something about being a smart mom.  Her 4 children (and either one of them is dead or a 5th is dead) must be so proud!  I am not a mom, but I can assure you that my children would not be allowed anywhere in or NEAR this tackymobile.

These precious children were standing in the middle of our yard playing their Gameboys (or whatever the new hot thing is right now...I have no idea...) when I got home from work.  They watched me pull into my garage, shut my car off, and come talk to them.  "You guys waiting on someone to come pick you up?"  "No."  ...  .... "So, you're just not going home yet?"  "Umm...uh...*mumbling*" ... "Well, okay then."  I shut the garage door, let the dogs outside and check on them several times.  They stayed in the yard playing their games for about 5 more minutes before the started to leave, as pictured.  Kids need their parents' phone numbers sewn into their shirts.  I definitely could have used a complaint line.  Who raises kids to do this!??!

New "job" and everything else lately I missed in the past 2 posts...

Man, it wasn't even a month ago that I posted last and I already am on my 3rd post today to get everything out!  Okay, let's try to cover everything...

My job under the contract RHYTTAC ended with September, although we didn't find this out for sure until Monday, October 1st.  We then had to get all of our stuff prepared to transfer over to the new contract holder and figure out what stuff couldn't be transferred.  That's what was happening for that week.  Then, on Sunday, October 7th, I came down with a stomach bug.  This lasted for way too long, turned into a cold, and I missed work on Monday, October 8th and Tuesday, October 9th.  Even though I was still kinda sick, I came to work on Wednesday, October 10th and in the afternoon moved my stuff to my new desk in my new department [Resource Family Training (RFT)].

RHYTTAC desk

New RFT desk (very similar to the old desk...but with plants...:^))

Went back to the RHY area a few days later to raid all of the leftover boxes.

I began really working in RFT on October 11th and have been hard at it since then.  The department was down several people for awhile, so we're still not caught up.  It's a very different environment than what I was used to, but I think I've getting used to it and they're getting used to me.  After I got access to the DHS database that we use (and a DHS e-mail address...randomly...), it was pretty smooth sailing.  Well, as in, I knew what I was doing.  I'm still not super fast at the process and keep double-guessing myself, so I'm behind.  :^(  I hate being behind.  Anyway, this is the bulk of what I've been doing in the past month.

We've also done some home renovations/decorations:

I decided we needed a fall wreath for the front door.



Remember these guys?  They finally got sealed!  Now they're ready to be hung!



We finally decided on new silverware that we both like.  (Yet had to take them back after they rusted after the first wash!  :-(  The hunt is back on...)

Trimmed back branches from scraping our roof.

The dogs enjoyed the branches.

Jon began phase 1 on popcorning the office ceiling.

We bought a new ceiling fan for the office.

Jon had to change a door knob and deadbolt because the old one started locking when it wasn't supposed to.

The season of fall had some surprises up its sleeve:

Random bloom in October

I guess we have mums.  I also guess they don't bloom in spring - only in fall.

Our yucca plants are back again.

Jon became Dad to another musical instrument sometime in the past couple of weeks:

Playing it a lullaby...on...itself.........okay, so the dad/kid metaphor doesn't work...

I participated in Halloween at work this year and our group won for most creative!

Rock Paper Scissors...me, previous boss Danielle, and our bestie Merritt

Look how many people dressed up at work!  We're a fun group.  Yay.

I also found out that the health insurance I had selected will no longer be an option for OU employees next year, so just today I researched which one I needed to choose and enrolled.

Now we have Election Day coming up Tuesday and I have printed out our sample ballot, but I've yet to research everybody and everything.  I'm most worried about the state questions.  I don't feel like I really know what they are saying.  They also have a question about "abolishing" DHS and I kinda work for them and have a sister-in-law that works for them and the term "abolish" is pretty much terrifying me.

So, there you go.  There's everything.  Or at least as much as I can remember right now.  Big Gulp, huh?  Welp, see you later!

Ramdom added cuteness that describes how I feel.

Thought Soup

I'm going to coin that...anyway, I would like to share my soup with you:

I'm thinking about not voting for President.  I do not like either candidate for the major parties and I don't think our state allows us to vote for any other than them (BTW, there are more than 2 people running...look it up.  You can start here to get the names.  I haven't actually looked up what their platforms are, so I may not even vote for one of them even if they were on the ballot...ha). 

I just found out that my upcoming sleep study costs over $4000 without insurance.  That sure took the sting out of the $250 that I will have to pay (my deductible, apparently).

I need to find a way to make more money.  I want to be chipping away more at our debt.

I wish thinking about losing weight didn't make me hungry(ier).  Husband wants to try Insanity, but I was told that you basically need to be in P90X shape to even start Insanity.  Awesome.  And diets...I have never been on one and don't want to.  I've seen how they fail and I know they would fail for me, too.  I want to focus on portion control and eating the right amount at the right time of day, not cutting certain food/drinks out of my life completely.  I like salad, but to make your own you have to buy so much stuff and I am unable to eat it all quickly enough before it goes bad.

I would kind of like to start walking our neighborhood, but I don't feel like that's a safe idea.  I feel like our neighborhood is safe, but then I remember it's Tulsa and bad stuff can happen even in good neighborhoods.

Pretty sure we have a dead squirrel in the attic.  It smells like it, at least.  It's so bad.  I'd love to go get it out of there so it stops smelling, but Jon thinks (and probably rightfully so) that opening the door to the attic will just release the smell into the garage and into the house directly.  I wish I knew how long the smell will last.  It might be worth 2 days of gut-wrenching gross as opposed to 3 weeks of musty, light spray of death.  Sorry.  I hope you aren't reading this over lunch.

Where do adults meet friends?  I don't feel like I have many in town and I don't really know where to meet people without being weird.  I had lots of friends in college, then they all moved away (and I guess I did, too).  I like talking to them and keeping up, but sometimes I just want someone to go to dinner with me.  Coworkers are always weird because you spend all day with them, so you probably don't really want to hang out with them at night.  I feel alienated because I don't have kids, so all of my friends with kids have different schedules and needs than I do.  And I have the dogs, so I'm not exactly living fancy free either.  And while I have Jon, we work very different hours than each other, so "double dates" or whatever aren't really an option, either.  PLEASE NOTE that I do NOT wish I wasn't married, didn't have our dogs, or that my friends were single and/or without children.  I don't want our family to be an island - I would like to be in a chain of islands.  :^)

Speaking of children - we still aren't ready for them.  I had thought it was because we didn't feel financial secure enough for them (and I still feel this way), but I was recently told that kids don't really change anything.  If you had $20 left in your bank before, you'll have $20 left in your bank after.  And though we haven't had children, we have felt this effect in our lives already, too.  The more money you make, the more you spend.  This simple statement made me realize that it's not just the money part keeping us from having kids right now.  We both just don't want them right now.  And maybe it turns out that we don't have kids.  I think I might be okay with that.  Disclaimer #2:  These are all "mights" and "maybes" right now.  Apparently these are strong words, so don't take it that we are saying we will absolutely never ever ever have kids....that's not what I'm saying.  Do know that we are not attempting to multiply anytime soon, though.  I think everyone knows that, though, and that's not the tear-inducing statement...we won't go there unless we decide for 100% sure.

Mmmm...that was some good soup, wasn't it?  All gone!

Snapshots of Our Busy Lives

Where I spend 8 hours each day.

Some sort of storm tracking truck

Phaux was humiliated by a bird.

Sylvester the Cat's head fell off.

My birthday at OU! (Cat card not pictured)

My birthday at Saied's!  (Another cat card, oddly enough...)

Children playing near the street at midnight at Jack in the Box.

Danielle's birthday!  Her favorite color is purple, by the way!

My car clock is lazy now...telling me 'bout what time it is.

One of these is mine.  $0 if you guess which one.

Siegi's "medium-sized" beer

Lamborghini in Tulsa...shut your mouth!

That crazy Astoria - half bobcat/half regular cat

Danielle has mad baking skills and was still badmouthing this cake....(Koo Koo!)

Phaux LOVES his new toy.

Sleeping with one eye open...

Dad gave us a loveseat...more seating!  Whoa!

New TV stand.  It's much prettier in person....and in better light....

T.HANKS for checking out the blog!

I'm not gonna apologize for not blogging all that often.  I'm living my life!