CafeChatNoir

So, I skipped out on a party this evening, for various reasons, and am chilling out here at home - I’ve come to the conclusion that I either need more books, or cable. (Or possibly just to get over the things that made me decide to stay in, but that’s a post for another day.) Regardless, I’m in a snarky mood and probably would have said something inappropriate over the course of the evening anyway.

I realized this afternoon that I do in fact have one other call to deal with on Monday - however, I am going to see if I can’t punt it to one of our senior folks, as he helped me with it the first time around - the client came back and said it’s broken again… Being in training through Wednesday, there isn’t going to be a whole lot I can do with it.

I should be working on getting some scripts written for work and/or reference entries done, but both of those require dialing into the system at the office, and I am not in the mood for dealing with dialup right now. Note to self: Ask about the VPN setup before the weather gets bad, and don’t ask the jerk that wouldn’t help you with remote access the last time it came up.

Target has also been disappearing all night. Get out the treats and he’s there, but where he’s been hanging out is a mystery to me.

Going to see the dogs today was a mix of fun and incredibly depressing. They’re all real sweet, but since I can’t get a dog, so I probably shouldn’t go to these things in the first place.

Perhaps the best thing is to simply go to bed…

…I am probably one of those people that could skip Christmas entirely and never even notice.

Christmas meme:

Do you celebrate Christmas? (If no skip other questions) Yep.

Do you believe in Santa Claus? Of course!!

When do you open presents? One on Christmas Eve before bed, the rest the next morning.

What is your favorite childhood animated Christmas movie? Tie between Charlie Brown Christmas and The Grinch that Stole Christmas

What is your favorite live-action Christmas movie? Don’t have one.

What is your favorite Christmas song? Don’t have one.

Have you ever gone caroling? Once, when younger and it sucked. Ideally, you need to be at least 21 and able to carry a flask when you carry on that kind of nonsense in the middle of winter.

Any special foods you only have during the holidays? None are coming to mind right now.

What part of the gingerbread man do you bite off first? Been so long since I had one, I couldn’t even tell you.

If you receive a fruitcake what do you do with it? Doorstop. Or paperweight.

Do you put up Christmas decorations? Sometimes.

Do you have any Christmas traditions? Not really.

Have you ever been kissed under the mistletoe? Probably, but I really don’t remember.

Do you send Christmas cards? Managed to do it twice.

What is the best Christmas gift you ever got? Can’t really nail one down.

What is the worst/most odd Christmas gift you ever got? Same as above.

What do you really hope to receive this Christmas? Can’t think of anything specific…

Does Christmas make you feel younger, happier, stressed, or bitter? All but bitter.

Have you been naughty or nice this year? Let’s not even go there.

You would think it wouldn’t be so hard to find a dog… Hope, the dog I posted about earlier - well, she was 45 pounds when she came into the shelter system, is part Rottie, and has been THRIVING with her foster family and is now closer to 65 pounds - much too large for Mom. So, today she went to the Adoption day for Homeless Animals Rescue Team. Pretty much all big dogs again. Saw several that *I* really liked, but that’s another story. (And I don’t think they like people to come to these if they can’t adopt.)

What it comes down to is that it seems that dogs in the 25-35 pound range get snapped up immediately. They did have a pair of peki mixes, but they’re 8 years old, and frankly, I would be worried about stepping on them and crushing them - they’re that small.

Got rid of my client, so I have NO calls going into training for the next three days. That is a very good thing.

I am over 25% done with my shopping.

4 weekends left. Last one will be for baking and wrapping - all shopping should be done by then.

For my brother, I have one more amazon order, a trip to the mall for one item we saw today and a trip to Best Buy for a DVD cabinet thing he showed me.

Have a couple little things for Mom - need to take a weekend to shop for her and Grandma - they are usually fairly easy, I get them a couple of outfits and this year I’ll put together the jewelry to go with it.

So, I think I am off to a good start this year.

Shopped.
Ate.
Napped.

A damn fine Black Friday if you ask me.

Were you aware of this? (Headline courtesy fark.com)

Auburn president meets with possible replacement for Auburn football coach three days before current football coach defeats Alabama. Hilarity ensues

And I hope everyone had a wonderful food filled day yesterday. :) Ours was great, as always.

I’ve got my work email up, and dialed into our system, and have the work IM up… Still haven’t heard back from my client - here’s hoping she sends the stuff back and I can get her taken care of…

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

One of the dips didn’t set up at all, and frankly tasted awfully “twiggy” for lack of a better term. I’m unsure on the second - don’t know if it is really OK, or was just so much better than the first… So, the first has been tossed, and now there is good ol’ onion dip and cheesy bacon ranch dip, so we are definitely covered. :-D

Cheesy Bacon Ranch Dip

1 pint sour cream
1 packet Ranch dressing mix
1 c shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 c bacon pieces.

Mix, chill, serve.

K, it’s time to go get myslef cleaned up and semi-presentable. Hope everyone has a lovely day.

95% of my email is junk. 95% of the mail in my regular mailbox is junk, too. Most of the phone calls I get at home are hangup calls. (Can you say telemarketers?) I would love to just get useful mail only for a change - even if it was only bills. At least it isn’t more crap to have to throw away and/or delete.

Hmmm, also realizing I haven’t heard from Mom yet, re: the dog. I hope it means that she was there late playing with the dog and filling out adoption papers…

Amazing how the last call of the day can really eff things up. That woman just got under my skin. She’s looking for us to do a massive reconcilation for her, which we don’t do. I’m trying to figure out some streamlined ways to look at the data so we can at least point her in the right direction and she can’t even manage to zip a file so her email system won’t block it. And she’s annoyed that we won’t have full support on Friday. So - yeah, I’ll be dialing in before I go out for the day, in what may very well end up being a vain attempt to spare my coworkers.

Wow, I just want to go into hibernation between now and about mid-March…

…last day before a holiday weekend, I get the green light to leave early, get stuck and end up getting out later than the normal time.

Icky day. They moved our training for next week from Wednesday to Monday. So, we end up with a different trainer. Argh. So, my last call of the day - had to tell her - yes, I’ll be gone until next Thursday… I assured her that her call wouldn’t get dropped while I was gone, and damned if she didn’t want a contact name for Friday…so I gave her the name of one of the supervisors that will be in. (I did warn her!) However, I’ll dial in on Friday in the AM to see if she at least sent me back the scripts I need and maybe I can do a little legwork on it from home - we only have two people in the office as it is, and we don’t need this woman causing problems.

Finally, after being told at 3:45 that I could head on out at 4 if there were no new calls, I finally got myself out of there at 5:30…

Then the grocery store. Yes, this is possibly the worst day/time to be there. Came home, made the dips for tomorrow, and frankly, they don’t look or taste too good. If they don’t set up decently overnight in the fridge, it’s back to the store again for the old standbys… How do normal people manage an entire holiday dinner when I can’t even get two pints of sour cream dip to come out right?

Feels like a Friday night - I mean, sure, it’s a short week, but I shouldn’t be getting ahead of myself like this.

Back on calls tomorrow - while I do really REALLY hope that it is quiet, it will be nice to be back in the swing of things.

Today’s training was just SO much better than any of the other ones. Really filled in some gaps I had about this part of the software - I feel SO much stronger on the subject now.

[small coworker rant]
Thursday and Friday there were two of us from my group. Yesterday & today there were three of us. Now, yes for 3 of the days, the training was 98% worthless for us. And I bitched and moaned about it - outside of class. In class, I paid attention, took notes, asked questions when I thought the instructor was glossing over things, helped the other folks who were having problems, and did my best to participate and try to get something out of it.

Can’t say the same for the other two people from my group and frankly, I think it makes us look bad, cause everyone else in the class knows what department we’re in. Strolled in late, left early, and were generally annoyed with having to be there. One said to me, “I just don’t understand why I am in this training class today.” I didn’t say, “Cause, honey, you suck at this subject.” I know why I was there - haven’t had any formal training in these modules and this is better than nothing at all, even if it mainly covered what I had already learned on the fly - it’s reinforcement. She’s there cause the managers think she needs more work on it. They don’t go taking people off calls if they don’t have to.

We have one more round of training next week, Wednesday to Friday. I am looking forward to that one too - knowing the way the classes are, I realize that there will be some (maybe a lot) of things that I have already learned just by doing, but there is a lot more in the module that I don’t know about yet. Best part is that it is being taught by someone from OUR group - so the problems that we run into with the software will be addressed. And I don’t think the show up late/leave as soon as it gets to ‘reviewing time’ is going to go over nearly as well.
[/small coworker rant]

Oh, and that clickety-clack you hear? That would me typing a mile a minute again on my $9 WalMart keyboard. Never could get used to the “indestructible” one at all, so it’s in reserve for when I dump a cup of coffee on this one and don’t have time to get to the store for a new one right away. :)

For those that are getting ready to head out of town for the holiday - have a great one!

You are Juliet, fragile, yet not as much as people
think. You are a sweet, lovely creature, and
are very well liked by others. You tend to be
impulsive at times, and get carried away by
your instincs and passions.

~Which Shakespearean Heroine Are You?~
brought to you by Quizilla

A two-month-old tiger cub clings to the neck of his caretaker at the Sri Racha tiger zoo outside of the Thai capital. Thai police said they would charge the owner of a private Bangkok zoo, Safari World, with illegal possession of protected wildlife after a raid exposed hundreds of orang-utans and tigers on the premises.(AFP/File/Emmanuel Dunand)

Today’s training is SO much better than the other ones. We’re actually getting some gaps filled in w/what we already know, and I’ve had several ‘a-HA!’ moments already, which is good, cause it feels like I am actually learning something rather than just wasting a lot of time.

We have one person on a separate queue who usually telecommutes from another state and for whatever reason, she’s here this week, and dayum, she gets a little rough with the clients. Yeah, our clients can be complete idiots, but they do appreciate it when you’re NICE to them. Glad she’s not here all the time, I think that would drive me crazy. I do wonder how long she’ll last at this.

I really, really hope tomorrow is slow.

We did get word from someone in our group this morning that one of our most inept clients has left the company she was with. WOOHOO!! She was the type where you’d be explaining something to her, and it would just go in one ear and out the other, and then she’d end up calling back 3 or 4 times on the exact same subject.

I’m still not much in a holiday place yet - they’re hanging up the Christmas decorations in the office park where I work today. Not really ready for it at all.

15 minutes left to goof off before training starts again.

Got a semi-decent night’s sleep, the 2AM wakup call from Snoopy notwithstanding…

Occurs to me that training starts at 8:30, I am officially off calls all day for it, so there is really no reason to be busting my backside to get to work at 8 this morning, now is there?

I am keeping my fingers crossed that tomorrow is quiet and I can dump some of my weird calls. Friday and yesterday seemed to be rather busy, and I am just not ready for that this week.

It’s three days until Thanksgiving, a month until Christmas. I am nowhere near any kind of Christmas place. Not a damn idea anywhere in my head for anybody. Hell, I’m not even ready for Thanksgiving - I need to call Mom & see what I am supposed to bring.

Doesn’t help that I keep hearing about folks that have managed to get all their shopping done over the course of the year. I have never been able to manage that.

Edit: Inspiration struck and there will be at least two surprises this season.

At least only one more day of training. Today I learned exactly one new thing. Very discouraging, since I had hoped to come out of this training *stronger* in the subject matter. Worse when I brought something up and the instructor said it was too advanced for the class. :(

Update on the dog search: Mom went back to the Washington Animal Rescue League today to look at another dog. However, it was another that, while very interested in the other dogs, unresponsive to people when they took her out to play.

BUT - when she got home, she got a message about a dog being fostered through Washington Humane Society that she had inquired about, and she is going to go meet her on Wednesday night! The dog is a 4 year old terrier mix, about 45 pounds, named Hope. Gets on well with dogs and loves cats. (Not for eating. Her foster mom is also fostering kittens and they get on very well.) I am keeping my fingers crossed on this one. Pic of Hope:

…and it’s annoying me to death. I keep think it will get better and it doesn’t. They’re doing stuff out of order - even the instructor says “Yeah, we should be doing tomorrow’s stuff before today’s things.” And yes, he is teaching both classes…

Fell asleep on the sofa last night, woke up at 1AM, went to bed, then woke up pretty much every hour on the hour until the alarm went off. No idea what was waking me up.

The good news is that the beeper never went off this weekend, and I’ve got a couple more hours of vacation time for the trouble.

More than anything, I am incredibly happy that this is a short week. I don’t think I could handle 5 days in a row.

Last week, Mom had to have Snoodle-dog put to sleep. (Little guy had a rapid onset of senile dementia and the vet thinks he may have had a stroke the night before she took him in.)

Not surprisingly, she wants another dog, probably two. So, today we headed to the Washington Animal Rescue League to check things out. The dog she had initially been interested in was a no-go. Little guy was completely oblivious to anyone around him. Interested in what was happening with the other dogs, but absolutely no acknowledgement of the fact we were standing right in front of him trying to get his attention. I think she was kinda bummed about that. But, I am sure it won’t be long before she finds the perfect dog.

I was surprised at how few shepherd mixes they had - lots of terrier and hound mixes, though. However, I completely fell in love with Carter, below:

Mocha

Sugar

Scooter

Midas - a purebred Shiba Inu. Beautiful dog, they have had to amputate one of his legs, and danged if he doesn’t bounce around just fine without it.

…is that I am completely out of practice with this dress up stuff, LOL. Last time I went to one of these shindigs was in ‘99. By then I had been doing it 8 years straight and had prep work down to a science.

• The dress situation has been resolved.
• Jewelry has all been located.
• Hair is clean. Wet, but clean.
• Three coats available to wear - preferred lighterweight one is among the missing. (Please try to contain your shock.) Second choice will do just fine - three quarter length grey suede. Would normally wear my long velvet coat, but since we’re having freakishly warm weather, I fear I will roast in it.
• Need to take some time to feed myself.
• Pocketbook is loaded up and ready to go.
• Makeup all in one place.
• Several brand new pairs of stockings at the ready.
• Directions have been printed out.
• Should go make sure I have enough pins for the hot rollers…

This does make things interesting. I have approximately 6 hours, the dress situation is somewhat questionable at the moment, my skin is breaking out like I was a teenager again, and I really, REALLY don’t want to have to make an emergency trip to the mall…

Went to iron the hem of the dress. It needs to go to the cleaners. I didn’t check it close enough at all when I looked at it the other night.

Please let the Plan B dress still fit….

Well, good except for the screaming headache I’ve got this morning. Feels like a hangover without the fun of getting to drink the night before.

Not much on tap today except getting cleaned up for tonight. Already tested out the new iron on a couple of things and I realize what a POS the old iron was before it died completely on me.

Oh - cool thing at our Wal-Mart - they have several self-checkout lines. Used that last night and it is a TON faster than the regular lines.

…the last thing my boss said to me WRT the beeper before I left was, “As long as you have it with you and have your cell phone, you’re good to go.” So, I took it and went shopping. Have shoes, have pocketbook, have iron.

So, the fun part of training today was when our consultant decided he was tired of teaching and had us teach one of the chapters ourselves… Not sure it was such a good plan, but I liked my section and everyone seemed to understand the material when I was done, which is more than I can say for some of the items the instructor taught.

And the beeper did NOTgo off. Let’s hope tomorrow brings more of the same!