Monday, January 03, 2011

Certain restrictions apply

Well hello there 2011. You arrived early, and I'm just not ready for you. Can you please go drive around the block a few hundred times? Thanks.

From my workday:

Purpose:
Confirm understanding of key activities for the next day and address any urgent hurdles to progress.
Provide clarity when path forward changes from previous plan/agreements.
Trying to focus on exceptions...no time to solve all problems

Julie T. would be the person.

Can you please let me know if you will need weekend support on January 8th and 9th? Management is trying to find out which clients will be working that weekend.

As a reminder, an implementation command center has been established to dispatch calls related to the implementation.

Once you have reviewed and submitted, your second level approver will receive an auto-generated email to complete the sign-off.

You recently reported a problem to I/S Service Delivery and we would like to invite you to complete a brief Customer Satisfaction Survey. This survey is your opportunity to tell us how well we met your needs and help us improve our service to you in the future.

My favorite Excel formula:

=IF(ISNA(MATCH(J2,Sheet1!J:J,0)),0,INDEX(Sheet1!L:L,MATCH('Sheet1 (2)'!J2,Sheet1!J:J,0),0))

Now then, don't you wish you were me???...

Overheard just now:

You know what. I'm sick of these people sending these emails to me. It's ridiculous.

From my head, not related to work:

"Madden had that look on his face like he was drinking a Dr. Pepper and somebody switched it out with iced tea but didn't tell him." I think I heard this one on NPR.

Nah nah nah nah. Nah nah nah nah. Hey hey hey. Goodbye. Been singing that in my head. When my kids were in elementary school, every year on the last day of school, staff members and some teachers would stand outside the door, hands raised waiving kleenexes (like a saber arch) and singing that lyric over and over as the kids walked out to the buses to start their summers. It was cool. Every time I think of that, I smile.

My 1999 Caddy DeVille had 4 gallons of gas left in it according to the dash info, and it beeped Empty at me two seconds later. She's a cranky old thing. So I paid about $3.20/gallon this morning, and Kev tells me it is now down to $3.01. Grrr.

Big flakes, little snow. Little flakes, big snow.
We had a mostly warm and rainy start of our weekend, but then it got cold again. It snowed on and off yesterday without much accumulation. This morning Kev was the first to leave the house, so he made fresh tracks all the way down the driveway and the road to M-20. His tracks down the road swerved from one side to the other all the half mile. He did that for me. So I called him and said, "Pretty!" Kev likes to do that with fresh snowfalls. On the rare occasion I'm the first to leave and it's a fresh snowfall, I make crazy tracks all down the road for him.

Mike was working on Joyce's Impala on Saturday, changing the oil and something with the brakes. (He's awesome that way!) It was late Saturday afternoon that the temp dropped so abruptly - within minutes it went from mild to very cold. It had been very windy all day, and with the drop in temp, the wind seemed to pick up. Kev was also outside, working on one thing or another, so he was standing not too far from the car. Mike was under the car, which was parked on the cement approach in front of our pole barn. Both Mike and Kev heard a huge BAM! A tree branch fell out of one of the oak trees and shattered the Impala's back window. Some of the branches that have fallen from those oaks are the size of small and not-so-small trees, this branch was probably about 8 or 10 feet long and about 6 or 8 inch diameter at base. Could have been worse. Mike was startled. As you can imagine.

Sam is doing well with his knee. He is at physical therapy right this moment. He's also able to walk around home now without the big brace on his leg, and that is a relief to him. He still must wear it anywhere outside and at school.



Kev and I drove around Mt. Pleasant on New Year's Eve trying to find a place to have dinner that wasn't a two-hour wait. We finally settled on Ruby Tuesdays, got our names on the list then went into the bar area to get a beer while we waited. We were standing at the bar when 2 guys left, so we quickly grabbed their seats. Then another guy asked one of the bartenders to turn the TV station to the Wings game that was just starting. While on our 2nd round of beer, Kev and I decided that we had the best seats in the house, so we ordered our dinner and ate it at the bar while watching the game. It was awesome. We had an excellent time. Even if NY won.