12

Gotta show off my lame-ness.  Happy triple dozen day!

I was at lunch, just for the record...

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!

10 positives about my current situation

1) PERFECT PRE-HOLIDAY DIET.
2) Opportunity to sleep all day (Stomach Monster willing).
3) 30 minutes of cuddly puppies...then they revert. 
4) SAVING SERIOUS $$$$ due to lack of eating and/or going anywhere.
5) Hygiene is considered a luxury.
6) Saving the planet by lowering water and electric usage (dishwasher, washing machine, stove, etc....though, I will note that the now overuse of some bathroom devices [appliances?] may lower my planet-savingnesscity…let's skip the fancinesses...the toilet and sink faucet should call OSHA on me...)
7) I'm available to call 911 if anyone in the neighborhood needs it (and shouts loud enough for me to hear).
8) I'm able to do about 1 chore per day during an "upswing."  Give me 3 weeks and this house will shine!  And gleam!  And other clean/sparkly words!
9) I get my work e-mail on my phone so I can still respond to those non-overly-important e-mails and probably make my coworkers feel that I'm just skipping out on the day before a holiday.  Nearly the whole week, really.  But, I assure you -- I'm not.  Don't ask me to prove it.
10) The "Bazinga!" moment I have when I start feeling worse later in the day and I had thought about going to work earlier.  I was right, Self!  I win again!

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.