This is what I did tonight…

just a hint of what’s to come and the players involved.

It was a ton of fun!

It’s just getting started…

I have been listening to the Today show in the mornings while I get ready for work. Mainly because of the breaks for local weather and traffic, now that I drive downtown, but I occasionally get to hear some interesting stories and interviews. Most of the time, I roll my eyes at the obviously biased slant on political pieces. As my pastor challenged awhile back while talking about politics, I’m listening to something that I probably won’t agree with in order to better understand those around me. This morning they had top media advisors from both the McCain and Obama campaigns on the show to talk about McCain’s most recent ad. If you haven’t seen it or have only heard it talked about, go click the link in the previous sentence and watch it then continue reading.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with having Britney Spears or Paris Hilton in the ad, especially the way it was done. While the Obama camp is rapping on McCain for going negative, I think this 30 second spot actually brings up a real question we should be asking. Is it all celebrity or can he really lead? In an article on RealClearPolitics, the author asked “Just tell me one thing that Barack Obama has done that you admire?” This question was posed to a prominent Democrat and after a pause he responded with a reference to Obama’s speech in 2004 at the Democratic convention.

All I’m saying is that, if someone who knows a lot about politics and this candidate says that the only thing he can admire about the guy that is his own party’s nominee, is a speech he gave four years ago, maybe we really should be asking if he’s qualified or if it’s all just some hype about hope.

Pic of the day:

I just realized that I haven’t talked about or posted a new picture of my hair since I chopped a bunch off. Not one of the better pictures of me but it works. Oh and the length stops at the bottom of the photo but it’s just hard to tell.

Before and After…

It’s been a very productive day…

Before:

Before 2:

After 1:

After 2:

Where’s my shoe phone…

And if you don’t know what I’m talking about…RUN and go see Get Smart! I can’t begin to tell you the number of times someone held up a shoe when talking during our finance department meeting. And people think finance people are boring. The last two days have been meeting after meeting and tomorrow means finally getting back to work…it’s not going to be pretty, especially since I was at training most of last week. These are a few of the photos I took while in St. Louis for training.

Since I haven’t really blogged since I got back from training I thought I’d do a bullet point review, which is much more interesting for us all.

• While trying to say some other word that I can’t think of, it came out that we brainwash our employees. Let’s just say that the mistaken word got a really long laugh.
• I have a new respect for those who work with volunteers on a regular basis…you wouldn’t believe the stories that I heard.
• I can list a word for every letter of the alphabet that has to do with the organization (okay so I had help from the rest of my team)
• When in need of a team mascot that will be judged by the Chief of Government Relations, go “green”…it made all the difference in our points.
• People make you do really stupid things in group training meetings under the guise of fun…case in point, making up/performing a cheer for your team.
• I discovered my inner cheerleader.
• It pays to work in the division level especially in the corporate office, especially when that means you get an easy question during the videotaped “So Glad You Asked” training.

I’m guessing that at this point those who really know me are wanting more details regarding my “inner cheerleader” moment. If you didn’t want them, stop reading now.

Through out our three days of training we played games as teams for points as a way to break up the lectures. First we had to come up with a team name and mascot which we made posters for. We created these posters after the first team game and someone called my table the “Megastars”. In the name of full disclosure, it really wasn’t a fair game for me to play as the fact that I do coding for the entire division means that I know EVERY office we have and we were listing as many offices as possible. Well we took the megastar theme and went in a slightly different direction. We named ourselves the “Megawatts” and our mascot was an eco-friendly lightbulb. You know, one of those twisty lightbulbs. Oh, I just remembered that I took a photo of the poster…

So when it came to the cheer game, we decided to make it based on our mascot. Let’s just say that I had a few more ideas than I am willing to admit to. It was incredibly cheesy and went something like this:

Electrocute the cancer, Illuminate the Cure….blah blah blah.

Anyway, that’s the gist of the cheerleader story… and I’ve now bored you all enough.

What a weekend…

A photographic weekend in review.

This shirt really makes me want to hit him in the chest…

Finally…with all the excitement, I managed to forget about this.

Well I should get some packing done…

The toast was toast…

Or so it was said while talking about a toaster catching on fire. Today was fire extinguisher training at work. We watched a training video in one of the conference rooms and then had a hands on training outside in an empty parking lot. At this point, if you are cool, you are immediately picturing myself as a character in “The Office” watching Michael give his crazy safety training demo! It felt very much like that…minus the almost jumping off the roof onto a bouncy house. While waiting for everyone to arrive for the video, we watched YouTube-like clips of totally random things, funny, but nothing to do with fires, fire extinguishers or even emergency situations. It was very Michael Scott. I can now say that I have used a fire extinguisher as we all had to put out a computer controlled fire with one… that was pretty cool! And I even managed to sneak in a picture without anyone knowing!

You can just barely see the fire in the background but it was there!

I leave you with a couple more pictures for the day. The cat is REALLY not enjoying the fact that everything has been moved around in order to pack. She was freaking out today because the floors in the kitchen were being cleaned and that meant not only was the vacuum out but so was the swiffer! Very traumatic…

Please, do NOT bring that “thing” my way.

If I stay up here, it can’t get me.

Oh man, here it comes… I see you.

The Great Migration

This week begins the series of moves from three roomies in one apartment to three individuals living by themselves in different states. All of this could be why Pheobe looks like this…

Or it could be because this is what our apartment looks like…

Geek alert…

I’m warning you right now, this is probably not going to interest anyone but me and maybe mom or Steph but I’m posting it anyway. Because it’s my blog! I was on RealClearPolitics today and was looking at the current polling numbers for Obama vs McCain (hence the geek alert). When I clicked on the Pew Research page, it took me over to a listing of their current questionaires and the subsequent answers. The very first one caught my eye. The question asked the often quoted “overall, satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the US”. It had the numbers for the same question goinging all the way back to January of 1988 so I did some comparing and found something very interesting. While yes, the current numbers (in this case, 18% satisfied and 76% dissatisfied) were the highest it wasn’t by newly as much as I thought it would be. From May 1993 to March of 1996, the numbers were in the range of 71-75% dissatisfied and 20-28% satisfied. So basically, under President Clinton, we were only ONE percent point away from the current record number under President Bush. I just thought that was interesting because the media makes such a big deal about this being the highest disapproval rating ever.

Now on to the picture..

I’m away from my desk…

That is exactly the phrase that I have heard over and over and over from someone who I’ve been trying to get ahold of at work…for the last TWO WEEKS!! Seriously, I had no idea that someone could possibly be away from their desk that much, especially as she’s suppose to be an “Account Representative”.

So I’m typing this while watching Gilmore Girls and once again wishing that I could come up with the witty retorts that they have. This line of thought totally reminds me about something that happened at work earlier this week. I love being able to say that! As I was saying, my supervisor is from Texas and we all crack up because she says things like “I’m fixin’ to get mad” on a regular basis. Well apparently I crack her up with my use of “Just kidding” when someone starts to do something and then suddenly stops or changes their mind, etc. It’s so funny to me that I have a “thing” that I do. Especially because most of my friends did exactly the same thing as I do.

That’s about all the excitement that I have right now so here’s the picture for today…

This is the infamous “Chocolate Bag” at McCormick and Schmidts (sp?)!! Seriously fantastic and almost the entire reason for choosing that place for my graduation meal!

Look…two days in a row!

Doesn’t she look important? :