I was up at 4:40 this morning. *dies a little inside*

But today's event, while full of Big Important People, is a well-manned event for 50. We have THREE tech guys AND a sound guy, and a full wait staff.

Unlike, y'know, my one-man show of a professional training for 80 this past Wednesday.

It's not so bad.

Aside from the waking up at 4:40. In the morning.

As cool as it sounds, I could never survive a 4-10 work week with an office job. Of course starting at 7 and not 6 am on a regular basis might help. But here I am at 2:30 and I'm starting to crash, exactly 8.5 hours after clocking in. I have to make it two more hours!

I was at work this morning at 6 am (the cats were confused).

Yes, AT work.

There's nothing OPEN to feed me at 5:20 am. I'm hungry.

But I get to cut tomorrow short, which is good because it's my Mommy's birthday, and she's coming up to visit for a few days.

On Sunday I bought a coupon book, because I keep losing my Target or Michael's coupons, or forget to use them.

I am thinking about signing up for Ravelry. Insane?: Y/N

And I get to work Saturday! Joy! Lucky for me that means I get time and a half flex somewhere next week. I vote no Monday.

Tonight I hope to finish Halloween invitations. I'm crazy excited about sending them out and seeing what everyone thinks of them. I'll take photos and post after they've all been received.

I went home yesterday with CS3. I come into work this morning with CS4. ^_^

Apparently I don't need vitamins and nutrients, I just need jelly beans. I bolted down a lunch of noodles and broccoli but other than that, all I've eaten today are jelly beans. I got a bag of starburst ones yesterday, and they are 3/4 gone.

Diabetus!

I think I set a record for program prep today. 40 binders from start to finish since 8:30 this morning, with an hour and a half removed for meetings. I totally win.

I am also totally pooped. I slept better last night, perhaps in part because I didn't care to watch out for the cats and tossed and turned as I wished. They found somewhere else to sleep ^^

In an effort to catch up on things, I binged on Bleach manga Sunday night, and am almost caught up. Yay Hinamori! Yay backstory chapters! Yay battles that don't take 20 chapters to get through!

Baby!Gin is one creepy little bastard, and also sort of adorable.

So today was my first official Monthly Financial Meeting with my boss. I hated it.

Then I read the first page of FailBlog.

Wednesday is a little better.

I came into my office this morning to find a chocolate bar on my desk with the note: "Eat Me and Give Feedback. Good?"

It's one of those fair trade/ethically traded varieties of good chocolate that benefits an environmental cause, so I'm assuming we're testing it out to include in some kind of program.

It's not often I get to write on my To Do list "eat chocolate".

Well, kind of a weekend. After working 8-6:30 all weekend I got yesterday off with only two things on the To Do list: tape down the entry way rug so it stops getting caught in the front door before I break my nose, and make an appointment for my taxes. I did both and said that was a day well spent (forgetting that I also needed to go to the bank). Other than that I slept a lot.

Tonight is yarn night, tomorrow night I am paying someone to do my taxes for me in an hour and make sure I don't miss anything. And then I get a REAL weekend+ and get Thursday and Friday off.

Right now I keep forgetting my own address (seriously, I am paying bills, and having to double check every time I write my return address. Four days of meditation, even without the lectures and work tasks sprinkled in, is hard. And you wouldn't believe it until you've done it, but sitting for four days is exhausting. Saturday was no lecture and all meditation. In silence. It's wasn't the being unable to speak that bothers me, I do that on my own if I'm working on cosplay or projects on any given Saturday. No, the slightly unnerving part is that sitting there for a day gives your body and mind the opportunity to bring things to your attention that you otherwise don't notice, in all the busy of everyday life, or choose to ignore because it's no fun, or flat out refuse to acknowledge because you've told yourself it's scary and it will be your undoing to face it. It was good to see that I was still standing at the end of the day. The program went really well, I learned a lot, and really need to commit to carving out a time every day for practice.

...oh wait. Mine hasn't started yet.

It's starting now! With bed. And sleep. And kitties.

I worked all weekend. Actually I worked the last seven days, which, after several years out of the retail mill and into the "9-5er" dance, is quite shocking to the system. I bribed myself with fresh bagels each morning, and I'm ashamed to say it worked too well. I was consistently on time for days in a row, without crazy rushing in the morning. If I knew the cholesterol wouldn't kill me in the end, I would do bagels for breakfast every morning.

I'm also finding that with all the worky I do no cooky. Which is also bad, and expensive. But I really just wanted people to hand me delicious food all week. Well, I guess I want that all the time, but I didn't guilt about the money this week. I will do 7 hail pbj's this week for atonement.

I learned how very very bad I am at most of the program material that was presented, but all geared up about my homework and practice plans in the time before the second half next month. It went very smoothly from a program coordinator's standpoint, and I probably can't say this about many professional training programs, but I'm taking it as a good sign that three grown men cried at the end. My work and workplace is weird and neat like that.

My professional lessons for the day:

-500 gigs, in the world of video capture, is nothing. Beans.

-purchasing a machine, dedicated to video capture and editing that has no dvd burner is just unfathomably dumb.

-running out of hard drive space, with no method of back up or archiving, when you NEED to record three more class session: well, life isn't interesting without a little drama now is it?

Our OIT guy, who refers to himself in e-mails as "computer guy jeremy" because he knows people are unappreciative bastards with the memory of gerbils, totally saved my butt and whipped out an 80 gig external just to get my co-workers through the weekend. Next week I am going spring cleaning all over that mac.

A/V monkey is NOT in my job description...

But apparently knee socks and boots rule the world.

A free seminar I coordinate that runs once a month will get maybe 30 people to attend, so it's a nice day for me because I don't have to come in until 10:30 because I stay later in the evening, so I get once a month to sleep in on a week day and it's a very low pressure event.

Tonight? 90 people are registered. I about had a heart attack yesterday morning listening to my messages because it's so odd that all of a sudden that many people would crawl out of the woodwork to attend.

Also this morning I got up a little after nine, in the firm mindset that I had over an hour to get ready and get out the door. Apparently, I've convinced myself I can teleport.

Today I am alone in my department and office. I can get so many things done! I am working all day tomorrow, when I know I will not be inundated with phone calls or e-mails. I can get so caught up!

...I don't feel like doing anything.

I got a flu shot today so I don't get my baby privileges revoked until March. I have a feeling if I didn't volunteer, that my new-mom office mate was going to booby trap my chair with a loaded syringe. ^^

As a designer, it's completely awesome to hear an ink-monkey (printer) say "you did an excellent job".

Go me!

Hi, I'm posty today because it's Friday and I don't wanna work. I think I'm hitting "vacation" mode a few days too soon...

Anyway, the problem: Shifting between a Mac and PC multiple times during a work day? You start mashing the Alt key on the PC at the WORST times, expecting to paste a blurb of text, not to throw your inbox into chaos and disarray.

Eesh.

Work and upcoming AWA have taken over. To throw a monkey wrench into things, I'll be working outside normal hours this weekend into next week working events, further crunching the amount of stuff I have to do while I AM in the office, and the events cut into cosplay work time! The nerve.

I would say it's not so bad, because I can't really accrue OT so that's a few hours I can come in to work late, or cut out early, except that in the next two weeks I can't find any time to DO that because of all the work I have to get done!

Whine whine.

On a good note, I finished my black leotard/collar thing for Impa this weekend, which took for.ev.er. Stupid boobs and their third dimension, it makes tweaking an existing pattern a pain in the ass. But it looks good and fits well. On to the sleeves and strappy things, and then the boots! Oh and the armor. Which I'm still not sure how to tackle, but I'm not panicking yet. Maybe I'll pencil it in on Wednesday.

My Cheetara wig should ship today! Godspeed little package!

So I kept randomly remembering all weekend, with a nice panicky adrenaline rush, that my first year-end review is on Monday morning. I haven't been here a year, but long enough that I'm up for a raise along with everyone else, so that's nice! It's just nerve-wracking and I hates it, but I keep telling myself my boss isn't the type to wait to let you know you're doing something wrong, so there shouldn't be any surprises, and it really shouldn't be unpleasant. Really.

So I get in this morning ready and willing to just get it over with, and by 10 am I'll be a free woman.

But no.

My review is on Tuesday. I even had "8/19" written down on my calendar, but all weekend I just kept thinking it was a Monday.

D'oh.

I've had NO energy to do anything once I've gotten home this week. My boss is getting involved in too many projects, which makes her stressed (well, it would make anyone stressed) but then it makes it very unpleasant to be around her. Or not be around her, because then you wonder what the next disaster will be. Bleh. I stress out about her stress way too much because I'm not quite sure how to professionally communicate "This vibe makes me feel like a neurotic chihuahua who will pee on this carpet if there's sudden movement. srsly."

But that's just the icing on the cake, all my own work has piled up and everything has just been super busy and I hate not feeling like I've got a handle on things.

I Do: Supply you with information about an upcoming event.

You Do Not: Immediately e-mail me asking for information about that upcoming event.

*smacks forehead*

To balance that out I got kowtows for "bringing the department into the 21st century", and another co-worker has asked me if I'd do freelance consulting for them.

o.O

Tonight, I continue my machinations for all the May-babies running around here. There's a lot of you. Damn your parents and their fall frolicking.