Mutual Weirdness
Just the randomness that is my life.
10/19/2015
Ringing in my earsDirectly behind my desk is the lobby area for my office. Along the back wall are 2 doors one on the left and one on the right. My boss' desk is directly through the door on the right as you face them, directly behind where I sit with a glass wall in front of her. She has a direct view of my desk area. This is important because when I am not at my desk she is supposed to watch it in case anyone walks up needing help.
Two years ago when my desk was first moved here I purposefully made no mention of the possibility of getting a bell for my desk. Bells are abused when they are sitting on a counter. Not by customers who come by but by other employees who think its funny to sit and ring it a whole bunch just to annoy whoever is sitting there. And I know of at least 3 people who would ring it every single time they walked by. My previous boss would come and sit at my desk whenever I needed to be away for more than just walking to the back of the office. This meant there was no need for a bell as there was still someone at the desk. My new boss does not do this. She sits at her desk working away and rarely looking up. And because of this, she has now sent me an email asking me to purchase a bell for the desk because "sometimes it takes me a while to notice when someone is at the desk." Oh for Pete's sake. If you know I'm not at my desk, and I make sure to tell her any time I leave the office, then make sure you are paying more attention to what is going on. And really she should be moving to my desk when I'm away because people have no situational awareness. They get off the elevator and for some reason always turn away from where I am sitting to look for someone to talk to. So most of the time I have to say something to get their attention before they'll even walk over to the desk. So who knows how many people wondered away having not been helped because she couldn't be bothered to leave her desk for 5 minutes. I know I could only put the bell out when I'm away from my desk. It would just be a habit that I would need to develop. But even then, it will probably be rung more often by someone who doesn't need to ring it than someone who does just because they'll want to see if I come running. I do not want a bell for my desk.
10/16/2015
Storage WarsAs I mentioned in my background post, my desk at work sits in the hallway and I act as reception for 3 departments. In return for me handling reception for the Law office, their admin staff cover my lunch break as the desk has to be manned all day. In order to accommodate this, the desk is very large and has an extra computer and chair just for the use of their office when they are out here. The only storage for the entire desk are small 2 and 3 drawer file cabinets called “peds”. The desk, when bought new, came with one 2 drawer and two 3 drawer peds. I myself had two 2 drawer and one 3 drawer one from before the remodel. My three peds are full to bursting. When we first started using this desk, the new two drawer ped was designated as the one to hold interoffice mail folders and a few other things. One of the three drawer peds was graciously put beside the work area the Law office uses for general office supplies they need when they are here. And the last ped had some odds and ends in it but wasn’t full.
Now, a while back, the Law office decided that they needed another 2 drawer ped for use in their office and wanted to take the one from this desk as there wasn’t much in it and they felt that it was theirs. Now let me clarify, the remodel and this desk were completely paid for by the Manager’s office, my department, and as such everything at it (save for the computer, printer and chair used by the Law office) belong to this office. Sure, we’re all part of the came organization, but each department has their own budget and this came out of ours. So we don’t let other departments just have things unless we truly are not using them anymore. This was made clear to the Law office several months ago and they managed to find a couple of peds from storage that would work for them.Recently one of the three admins from their office that covers lunch has been mentioning under her breath about how she wishes she had somewhere at this desk to lock up the documents she works on when she is out here. I’ve never commented on it because it seemed odd that she would want to keep any of her work here since she is only out here at lunch and only every third week. Also, she was never really speaking to me when saying any of this. I didn’t think much about it until my boss came to me this afternoon and mentioned that they wanted to use the semi-unused 2 drawer ped to lock up the stuff they are working on while out here. They figured since they would be leaving it at the desk it would be ok. Can’t argue much with that and since it won’t be leaving the desk and everything in it can fit into the other semi-empty ped. So we just switched where each was located at the desk so the 2 drawer one would be by their work area. But here is what gets me, why do they need to store anything out here? There are 3 ladies that cover my lunch. They cover for a week at a time on a rotating schedule. One of them never brings any work out here with her and spends her time either on her phone, ipad or on the computer doing I don’t know what cause I’m not here and I don’t really care. The second one brings a little bit out with her but no more than a stack of papers. The third (the one who mentioned needing it) always comes out here with 2 bags full of stuff, a huge stack of papers, some binders and a drink. The ped will be used by the 2 who actually bring their work out here. What confuses me is do they really have work that they ONLY do while they are out here? I guess they must as why else would they want to leave it out here? The third lady wouldn’t need to if she would just leave some of the stuff at her desk though. The bags she brings out are full of personal stuff that I’ve seen her working on like a bible and a journal. I’m just annoyed that I’m having to switch up where I keep stuff because someone who is only out here for an hour a day can’t prioritize her work well enough to only bring with her what she actually needs for the hour she’ll be out here.
10/16/2015
Work BackgroundIt has been a slow week at work with out anything very interesting happening so I thought I'd give a bit of background about where I work. This way I don't have to explain it all with each post and can just refer back to this one.
I work for a fairly good sized local government. I thought about leaving out that bit, but as I work in a court house, some of the most interesting things that happen are the people that come in for court appearances. So it's relevant. The way the organization is set up, is that there is an elected board of 5 members who are in charge of everything. They hold weekly meetings where they vote on the important decisions. They have Executive Secretaries in their office. Under the board is the Manager. He is the head honcho and takes care of all the day to day running of things. We have an Assistant Manager also. My boss is actually the Manager's Personal Assistant and I am the only Administrative Assistant in the department. We also have 3 intern positions though only 2 are filled right now. Our department also has a sub-department in it that shares our office, Public Relations. This department consists of their PR Director, a Media Liaison, a Projects Coordinator, a Graphic Artist and a Video Guy. Now the last immediately relative department is the Legal Department which is directly across the hall from my office and their door is kept locked so that no one can just go in and walk around. They have 8 lawyers and 4 admin staff. Now, I know I called myself an Admin Assistant but I'm also a receptionist. My desk sits in the hallway between my office and the Legal office. I answer phones for my department (and sub-department) as well as for Legal. Over all I have about 20 people I need to keep track of during the day so that I can properly transfer calls. I also cover phones for the Board office when both of the ladies down there need to be out. The reason my desk sits in the hall is not only so that I can let people into Legal but because we tend to get a lot of people lost on our floor looking for their court rooms. There are two more departments on my floor, a branch of the local sheriff's office and a Projects office, but I'm not involved with anything they do other than to direct people to them. This is just a very basic over view of where I work and who I work with. There are many other departments in our organization but they are all either on different floors or different buildings.
9/24/2015
Metal LillyTwo weeks ago we went to the State Fair and these metal flowers were my impulse buy for the day. They are sitting beside my front door.
9/16/2015
Labor Day HolidayLabor Day Weekend. The holiday here in the States where you are supposed to get a day off of work to relax because you work so hard the rest of the year. And the beginning of September is a wonderful time for it as it is still quite warm out but most of the high temperatures are fading to fall.
I only wish my Labor Day was so relaxing. My parents bought a small cabin at Table Rock lake in Missouri which is about 5.5 hours from where we live. They decided they wanted the entire family to travel there for the long weekend and having no other plans, my husband and I agreed. My parents and one of my sisters left early Friday afternoon. My other sister and her family were on the road by about 5:30. Since I did not get off work until 5 and still had to pack, my husband and I were not on the road until about 6:45. This put us arriving at the cabin just about 11pm. But this story starts before we even arrive. The last good sized town on the trip was called Aurora and we went through it about an hour before reaching our destination. After going through that town all the roads got narrower, hillier and a lot more curvy. The car started to feel a bit wonky at this point but it wasn't anything I could really put my finger on. Then we passed through the tiny town of Cape Fair and turned down the most twisty, turny road I have every been on. This road doesn't have an inch of straight along the entire way. And this is where I really started to notice something was wrong with the car. I was having to turn the wheel much to far in order to make it turn. To go just around a slight curve I was turning the wheel almost all the way around. Trust me, nothing is scarier than being on an unknown, twisty road, in the dark, driving a car that is suddenly having issues turning. We knew right away what the issue was. The rack and pinon was broken. Again. It was a part we had just replaced 2 years ago after it broke. This part is what allows the steering wheel to turn the wheels. So with out it, no turning. We made it safely to the cabin around 11pm but we knew the car would never make it back home through all those curves. Even a normal corner would be near impossible. And it was Friday night on a holiday weekend. The chance of getting it fixed the next day was slim to none. First thing Saturday morning my husband starts making phone calls to our insurance, repair shops and road side assistance. He managed to find a repair shop open that day, but they were an hour away and only open until 2pm. We scheduled to have a tow truck pick up the car and take it to the shop. They were supposed to be there by 10:30 and we hoped that meant the car would be to the shop early enough for them to have it fixed before they closed. The tow truck didn't show up until almost noon. We were not happy. Our car did not reach the shop until 1pm so by that time all they could do was confirm what the problem and tell us how much it would be to fix. They would not be open again until Tuesday because of the holiday on Monday. We made the best of the next few days. Swimming in the lake, boat rides, roasting hot dogs and marsh mellows over an open fire, all the normal camping type stuff. Everyone was supposed to head home on Monday morning. My sister and her family did go home that day. All her kids had school the next day. My parents and my other sister all stayed an extra day as the hope was that our car would be repaired early on Tuesday. It was not and they couldn't stay another day as they all had to get back for work and left that morning. So we spent most of Tuesday hanging out in an empty cabin with nothing to do. A storm moved in early in the afternoon so even just sitting outside was a no go. Have you ever spent the night in a strange place all by yourself? It can be pretty creepy. While watching a movie we heard a noise like someone in an apartment above you dropping a large object. Only there was no upstairs for there to be anyone dropping anything. We went outside to see if we could figure out the noise and came to the conclusion that a tree branch had fallen on the roof. But even so, we went back inside, locked all the doors, checked all the windows and huddled in for the night. Thankfully our car was finished first thing the next morning. The really great bit is that they drove an hour out to our cabin to pick us up as we had no other way to get to them. They picked us up at 11am, we got to their place to pay at noon and were back at the cabin by 1pm. We had most of our stuff together ready to go, but it still took us a bit to load up. Even then we were on the road by about 1:30 and home by 7pm. Over all it was completely exhausting. We did have some fun spending time with the family of course, but it would have been so much better if we hadn't been having to worry about the car.
8/6/2015
Bad Dinner WaitLast week one of my cousin's messaged my sisters, myself and our mother's asking if we wanted to have a girl's night out, dinner, this coming Wednesday since we had a lot of fun the last time. So last night my mom, both my sister’s and their little girls (2 weeks and 2 years), my cousin and her mom (my aunt) head to Bricktown Brewery. They have several locations but the one in our town is still fairly new, opened just a few months back, and while I hadn’t eaten there yet I’d been wanting to. Also, Tuesday was my cousin’s birthday so we were celebrating her.
Starting out we thought that going out on a Wednesday would mean the place wouldn’t be all that busy. Well, we were wrong, at least for this place. When we got there we told them we had 6 people plus a toddler and baby so we'd need a high chair and sling. They said no problem and went to push a couple of tables together. One of the girls comes back a few minutes later and tells us that the tables they were going to use for us ended up having people seated at them. Huh? And that there was a large group that came in just before us that had been there a while so they need to seat them at the tables they were going to put us at. Um ok? Our wait would now be 15-20 minutes and they would be starting a wait list. It seems that they were just randomly seating people without logging people into the electronic seating system so they had no clue who was seated where and had to sort it out before they could seat anyone else. Now normally when a restaurant has a wait list, they ask for your name, give you a buzzer, or something. They did none of that, but I figured they knew we were here and they’d be putting us at the top of the list since we were first in line when they started it. So we sit to wait and are chatting. We see all sorts of groups with 3-4 people come in and be seated within 5 minutes or so of walking in the door, but the restaurant does have seating that wouldn’t work for us, booths and such that were not large enough, so I didn’t think much of it. After 20 minutes, one of the hostesses comes over and confirms the number in our group and asks my cousin for a phone number. Apparently that’s how they do wait lists, they send you a text when your table is ready. We are not happy that they are just now doing this because it means that they have not been paying attention to the seating to make sure they can seat us, but hope we won’t have to wait much longer. We wait another 15 minutes; the text says that our table should be ready so my cousin goes to ask them what’s going on. They don’t know. Those are their words. Not even the manager knows what is going on as he is standing there just staring at the seating chart. It seems that in the past 35 minutes they still hadn’t figured out how to use it and had just kept seating people without paying any attention to the fact that they had a large group that could only use certain tables. They couldn’t even tell us how much longer we’d have to wait. After talking it over we made the decision to go somewhere else if we could find a place that could seat us right away. My cousin happened to have the number for Granite City in her phone and gave them a call. She comes back inside and tells us that they have a table ready for us right now. So we all stand to leave. As we head out the door I look straight at one of the hostesses and say “Bye” and the other one actually says “Hope you have a good night” which ticked me off as they seemed to be doing their best to ruin it. I just turned and glared at her. That is when she tried to mutter “sorry about that” or something in regards to the mess up. I just said “No” and walked out the door. That was the only apology we got from any of them for the entire incident. No offer of a free drink or appetizer, not even a sorry we messed up. Nothing to show that they actually cared. My younger sister and I were also not happy about the fact that we missed out getting a free beer. The restaurant has a phone app that after you download it you can redeem a coupon for a free beer on your first visit. This excited us because we both wanted to try one of their craft beers but our budgets are tight. Well we didn't redeem them right away figuring we'd wait until we were seated. I'm not sure what changed, but after the first 20 minute wait we figured we'd have a table any minute and went ahead and redeemed them. When we all were seated at the new restaurant my sister informed me that as they were leaving my 2 year old niece, Rylee, told them that we were leaving because they wouldn’t find us a table. She is a very articulate 2 year old and I hope those girls felt some shame being admonished by her. The rest of the evening was very nice. Granite City didn’t have a whole lot of business that night so the place was fairly quiet. We wouldn’t have been there nearly as long if we had stopped talking long enough to look at the menu quicker, but it was ok. The only thing that went wrong there was Rylee got her finger stuck in the buckle of the high chair. It pinched her finger badly so it hurt her a lot but it wasn’t serious. The waitress filled a latex glove with ice for her to put on it and that made her happy. In fact that glove was her favorite thing of the night and she asked to take it home. Of course it was just filled with water by the time we left, but she didn’t care. My sister had also told the waitress that it was our cousin’s birthday so at the end of the meal she brings out a long metal, chilled plate that had Happy Birthday written on it in caramel along with a cookie covered in ice cream. My aunt got some cheesy pictures of her trying to hold it up so it could be read while also not dropping the cookie on the floor. She also got a nice picture of her licking the caramel off the plate. Even though the night started out rough it had a happy ending. We still had great food with even better company and had a wonderful night. I just don’t know if I’ll ever try going back to the first restaurant again.
8/4/2015
Cruisin Towel ArtOne more cruise post, this one featuring all of the towel art on the cruise. One of the things that Carnival Cruise lines is famous for is their towel animals. Each night while at dinner, the staff turns down the rooms for the evening. When they do, they leave the schedule of events for the next day along with a cute towel animal. I took a picture of the one in our room for each night. We never really figured out what this one is. It became a toss up between an elephant and an aardvark. It's wearing the hubby's sunglasses though. A few times they would pick up items we left out and add them to the animal. A monkey hanging from the mirror. The sunglasses and necklace were mine. Hubby thinks this was a rabbit lounging on the bed. I'm not so sure, but I don't know of any other animal that has ears like that. A crab being crabby. A cute puppy. A lovely lobster. But while these were super cute, the really amazing ones came one morning when we walked out to one of the pools. Every single lounge chair and then some had a cute towel animal on it. They call it the animal parade! I took a lot more pictures of it, but I was going so fast that most of them came out really blurry. I believe these were penguins. An octopus and her babies floating in the pool. These are the ones that really impressed me! Parrots! Over all it was a really wonderful experience. The crew on the ship were all so friendly and really went out of their way to make everyone happy. Hopefully some day I'll get to go again.
7/24/2015
Cruisin' FoodThis post is going to be all about some of the food I had while on vacation. I would go on another cruise just for the food! It was fantastic! Anything you could want to eat was likely to be found somewhere on the ship. The main buffet area was on the Lido Deck or deck 10 which happened to be the deck our rooms were on. It was also the deck with the swimming pools. The buffet had pretty much everything on it. Salad and fixings, all types of meats, pasta, breads, veggies and of course deserts. There was also a burrito bar. At the back of deck was a deli station that would make pretty much any sandwich you could want. Just above the buffet was an Italian restaurant. Out beside one of the pools was a 24 hour pizza bar and a 24 hour burger bar. So no matter what time of day you got hungry there was food you could get. And if you wanted desert instead there were soft serve ice cream machines also open 24 hours. On the 5th deck was a pub that served pub food, a salad bar where they lady would custom make any salad for you, and outside on that deck was a grill where they would make sliders and hot dogs all day. On this deck they also had what they called the "Taste and See" bar where you could get samples of the food that is in the Steak House on the ship. They do this because the Steak House costs extra to eat at and is not included like the rest of the food. Next to the Taste and See was a coffee and ice cream bar that also cost extra. I tried their Rum Raisin ice cream and it was very yummy! For breakfast each day you could choose to either eat at the buffet or to eat in the dinning hall. The hubby and I chose to eat in the dinning hall each morning because it meant we didn't have to wait in line for our food. Along with the food, there were probably 10 different bars that could make just about any drink you could want. I think mine ended up being what they called a Hurricane Wave. It's a frozen Hurricane layered with banana daiquiri. It was very good! But, enough of all that, on to the real food! As part of package on the cruise we had a set dinner time in the dinning hall of 6pm at an assigned table. We didn't have to eat there each night, but we decided as a family we would. And it was nice that we did so as we all kind of split up and did our own things during the day, so this brought us all back together to chat. We were in the Southern Lights lower dinning hall which was located on the 3rd deck near the back of the ship. While our table was in the middle of the hall we could see out the back windows to the ocean. All 11 of us sat together at a very large round table to enjoy what I would call a 3-4 course meal each night. After sitting down, the wait staff would come and fill our glasses and offer some bread to start out while we looked over the menu. There was real butter on the table every night along with more glasses and silverware than a normal person should use for one meal. The menu each night consisted of two parts. The left side of the menu was the same every night and had some basic restaurant foods on it that most people enjoy, fried chicken, steak, lobster, shrimp, etc. The other side changed every day and would have more exciting food on it. Each side had an appetizer and an entree section to choose from. The best part was that if you wanted more than one of the items you could order more than one. I did that a few times with the appetizers as there were new things I wanted to try. I also went really bold on this trip. On the side of the menu that changed, each day they had an appetizer that they called a Didja, as in Did you ever try that? It was usually something odd that most Americans wouldn't be eating on a regular basis. I ordered it every single night no matter what it was. And I liked all of it! Once the main bit of dinner was done, they would bring out a desert menu. Like the regular menu they would have a few new things each night along with a few things that stayed the same. I made sure to have a different desert each night. Then, near the end of the dinner service we would suddenly hear someone over the speakers say "Show Time!" The first night we asked our head server what that meant, he replied "Time for me to hide". We found out a few minutes later that Show Time means that the wait staff comes out and sings and dances for us! One night they danced to Pharrell Williams' song Happy. Another night it was Gangam Style. Our last dinner service was on July 4th. Since most of the guests on board are American the last night they sang America the Beautiful for us. It was just so much fun. Now because just talking about food isn't always that interesting, I did try to take pictures of each dish each night. I didn't get the first night or some of the last night along with a couple in between, so hard to remember to take a picture of your food when it looks so good that you just dig right in! Picture time! I don't remember exactly what each dish is, but I'll do my best. This first one is the Didja from the last evening, Frog Legs. I'm not sure what the sauce was, but it was very good. They do taste just like chicken. There were so many other dishes that I just didn't get pictures of. The ones I remember are Mahi Mahi, raw tuna, a souffle and a chocolate melting cake.
There was just so much food! I tried to try as much as I could, but a person's stomach can only hold so much! I'm back from vacation and we had so much fun! I took tons of pictures, though not as many as I thought I did. We drove to Galveston, Texas which took us about 12 hours. We drove down the night before and then boarded the ship around noon on Sunday. The rooms are small, but that's ok because you barely spend any time in them. We were confused at first because there were only 2 small beds in the rooms that had 4 people booked in them. Turns out they have bunk beds that come down from the ceilings. Since there were only 3 people staying in our room we had them push the small beds together to form a King size and Gabby took one of the bunks. Since we had an interior room we found out very quickly that it gets very dark in the room at night. So dark in fact that we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces. We ended up leaving the light on in the bathroom with the door cracked opened.
My sister found out quickly that the toilets are nothing to mess with. My niece is 2 and mostly potty trained but accidents happen. She messed her pants on the first night and my sister did what she always does, rinse them out in the toilet. Now the toilets on the ship are like those on airplanes, they use a vacuum to suck the waste down and use as little water as possible. Now my sister had by this time already found this out, but not thinking she flushed the toilet anyways while cleaning out my nieces underwear and WOOSH...down they go! We all found out a few minutes later when my nephew knocks on the door to inform us that "Mommy flushed Rylee's underwear!" Sam was so embarrassed but told us what had happened. The next day though their toilet stopped working so they had to have a cruise employee come and fix it. He pulled the underwear out of the pluming and Sam got them back. It was good for a laugh. We had so much fun on the trip though. The food was wonderful, there were a ton of activities, a casino, comedy shows, just about anything you could want if sitting out in the sun isn't your thing. We spent time doing some of the trivia. Gabby and I won the Harry Potter trivia, well, really she did as she knew all the answers, so I let her keep the trophy. A plastic gold cruise ship, lovingly referred to as a "Ship on a stick". Later on Brian joined us for some of the Disney trivia and he was the only one in a room of maybe 100 people to know the movie one of the songs came from. I don't know the song, but the movie was "The Happiest Millionaire". I think he was the only one there that had even heard of it. Because of that, we talked the guy running the trivia into giving him a reward even though we didn't win the trivia. He received a "Boat on a Rope" or a medal. The kids enjoyed the water slides and water park on the boat and spent a lot of time there. Then each evening we'd all get together for dinner. We had an assigned dinning time of 6pm and sat at one big table right in the middle of the dinning hall. It was like eating at a five star restaurant every night. They'd bring bread, then an appetizer, entree, and then desert. I'll go more into that with another post as I tried to take pictures of ever dish I had since I ate some things I'd never had before.
5/18/2015
Zoo PlantsIn our latest trek to the zoo, I found myself taking a lot of plant pictures, especially in the new Tropics exhibit. I did take a lot of animal pictures, but they were so active I had trouble getting images that were not blurry. But plants don't move so I got a lot of good ones of them that I felt like sharing. The pink plants obviously stood out the most out of all the plants there which were mostly greens.
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