It was my last week in my current position in Phantom Works. *sigh*.....I already miss the prestige of saying I work there! But since I wasn't doing any actual work, I had a lot of fun just hanging out with my coworkers and chatting. Then on my last day in the office (I kept my last work-at-home-day on Thursday), I just HAD to play some sort of going-away prank.....because that's just how I roll. :P
So what did I do? Be thankful you don't sit next to me, I'll say that to begin with. Thankfully, Erik has a good sense of humor and played along with my prank flawlessly. Like he had a choice? Anyhoo, I decorated his cubicle with about 15 posters of the Jonas Brothers (who he HATES of course)....so everyone that walked by got a good chuckle out of that obviously. Then, I kidnapped his prairie dog. He has this stuffed prairie dog sitting on his desk and dressed it up for Christmas, etc....and I always warned him I was going to kidnap the thing. Not only did I kidnap it, I dressed it up like a cheerleader (complete with pom-poms, courtesy of my daughter's American Girl doll...thankfully she doesn't know or she'd probably be pretty p*ssed!)....I snapped a quick picture of it with my phone (we're not allowed to have cameras in our building) and then hid it in a locked cabinet. Then I sent Erik a ransom email. :P Not just a regular email either, 'cuz what would be the fun in that? It was a scavenger hunt....10 items he had to find and return to me in exchange for his prairie dog. Can ya tell I had fun with this? uhm, yeah!
When he walked into the office and saw his cube, he just laughed....when I showed him the picture of his prairie dog and he checked his email, he was really laughing. And he played along with the scavenger hunt......finding things like stickers of non-company products....a used fast food cup....candy (for me!)....something that was over 10 years old (some parts manual he swiped from another coworker's desk)......it was SO funny seeing him run around looking for all this junk. Our OA came by and wanted to know why Erik was looking around in people's cubes! Oh, it was SO much fun! :P He was a good sport though, I gotta give him credit for that. And after he got done with my scavenger hunt, I returned the 'dog' to him.....and he loved the cheerleader getup. And part of my 'ransom' was that he couldn't tell anybody what was going on....but afterwards, the entire office got a good laugh out of it. :P So yay for me for flawlessly executing an awesome last-day prank!
Then we all went out for Thai....which has always been our group "thing". Any special occasion (or for no reason at all other than a "thai craving"), we'd go to this Thai place in town. The owners know us quite well by now! So I chose that as my last lunch.....and my boss picked up the tab for me. Only thing better than a Thai lunch is a FREE thai lunch! :P When it was finally time for me to leave that cube for the last time, I had a hard time not crying. I gave hugs and said my goodbyes and made them promise to keep including me in the thai lunches since i have a feeling i'll need the escape from the new dept. :P So that was my last day on the old job. And here it is, all scrapped with Vicki's new kit, Bring on Spring:
Friday I started my new job. I'm doing data management for the Apache Trainers. Uhm, yeah. I'm not sure what that means just yet either. :P I know what an Apache is.....and I know what the trainers are (and no, they haven't let me fly one yet, but I'm TOTALLY working on that one 'cuz I want to try it SO BAD!)...and that's about all I know about the new job so far. Friday I spent unpacking my stuff, which actually got delivered on the day it was supposed to! Went to a couple meetings, got a tour of the new building, etc. Got set up on all kinds of servers/websites that I'll be needing access to. Hung up all my kids' artwork and family pictures (very necessary to decorate a dull cubicle with kindergarten artwork!), and that was about it. Tomorrow will be the first really productive day. And how was it? okay. I'm not that excited about the work, as it's not 'engineering'...and I'm kind of a snob in that respect.......because I didn't go to school and work so hard to become an engineer to do stuff anybody could do. So I'm already anxious to get back into more engineering stuff again. But times were desperate and I had to get a job fast, so this is what I got. So until I can find something else to move to, I'm going to make the best of the situation I'm in. I know there are so many people out there that're in worse situations, getting laid off and such, so I'm not about to start complaining, kwim? I'm just hoping this is a temporary position......I'll say that much. :)
The rest of the week was typical.....The kids didn't have school on Thursday or Friday because of the weather.....-20 degree windchills is dangerous and practically unheard of here, so they shut all the schools down. Fine by me! So the kids are getting a 5-day weekend out of this with tomorrow being a holiday......lucky little things! :P Karl was miffed because his district never shut down, and GOSH was it NOT fun to get out on those uber-cold mornings to go to work! I haven't had to drive into the office on a Friday in almost 3 years, darnit! And this week will be my first full 5-days-in-the-office-week in I don't know how long. BLAH!
I can't really think of anything else that happened here this week aside from my job stuff and the ridiculous weather......some soda cans we had out in the garage (and forgot about obviously) froze and exploded....which was kinda funny at first.....but then now we're wondering when and how we're gonna clean up THAT mess! Oh wait, yesterday we took the kids to see the bald eagle at the visitor's center in Alton. This area of the country is the wintering home for bald eagles, so every winter, they are everywhere by the river, building these huge nests up on the clifs and then flying around looking for food, etc. We always see them as we drive up and down the River Road, but you don't get an appreciation for just how BIG the things are until you see one up close:
With a wingspan of over 6-feet, we told the kids that's like "two Matthews".....THEN they realized how big it is! :P
I did manage to get SOME scrapping done......and shockingly enough, I dragged out my rolling totes and actually PAPER-SCRAPPED this week. I know! I can't believe it either! And as I was sorting through all that paper-schmaper mess, I reaffirmed my love for digital scrapbooking! That paper mess is for the birds! And just WHY was I paper scrapping you ask?
For our upcoming Disney World trip in March (for Alaina's 8th bday), I'm making all the kids some autograph albums. The boys won't care, but I can't exactly do something really cool for Alaina and not them, ya know? So anyways.....I made a compromise with myself.....I'd use up all the Disney paper scrapping stash I had and then do everything else digially. Gosh scrapping with paper is time consuming! :P I'm going to get a regular 4x6 photo album and on each page, I'll have a card that i've made for the character's signatures....and the other side will be the picture that we take of them with that character. And I think I counted that I'm going to need somewhere between 30-40 of these pages......times 3 kids.......so I figured I'd better get started! :) I think I did about 12 sets of paper pages.......as you can see here.....nothing fancy....just using up my sticker stash!
And the rest I've done digitally.......which is why I haven't scrapped as many regular layouts this week....I've been working on these little gems. I'm trying to keep them fairly plain so that the autograph is the main focus...
Here are the regular digital layouts I did this week......a couple more from our UK trip.....all of Oxford:
Now, onto all the little digital autograph cards I made for the Disney trip...
Here's one I made for Woody, from Toy Story:
And this one is for Mike from Monster's Inc (Sully doesn't sign autographs....or at least he didn't the last time we were there):
This one I made for Pluto....didn't have much 'dog'-ish stuff, so I went disney-generic instead:
And this nice, woodsy-one is for Pocahontas:
This one is for Mulan:
This one's for Minnie Mouse:
This one's for Lilo and Stitch:
For Donald Duck:
And Daisy Duck:
And that's all I have done so far......lots more to do, but I'm pretty happy with how many I already have done. yay me! :P
So, last up is my blessing for the week.....I picked my church congregation....we're like a big family and they're such a big part of my life!
Journaling reads: Our congregation is small. On a typical Sunday morning, our family of 5 is almost half of the congregation! We started attending the Wood River congregation when we moved out to this area 10 years ago. We considered going to other, larger, congregations, but in the end, the people and the fellowship we found here kept us where I know we belong. Our church family is like an extension of our blood family. We share our joys and sorrows and are always there to support each other, just like any other family would. We host study groups at our house and it’s so fun to have all these people come over to our house each month to study and discuss different topics. And it’s kinda funny to realize that our entire congregation can sometimes go out to lunch together and sit at the same table! It would be nice sometimes to have more people in our congregation, but for now, we are happy and content with the group we have now. They are a huge part of my life and they are a great blessing to me.
And that's it for now......Karl's got the day off tomorrow, so he'll get to hang out with the kids all day while I"m at work....blah! So until next time, have a great week!! Be grateful to be employed and all that jazz (this is my mantra from now on!).......catch ya later!
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