1 Whole Year

As of 7:30 this morning it marked the 1 year mark since I quit smoking! I'm excited and proud that I actually was able to do this. It wasn't easy in the beginning. Now I find that I hardly ever find myself wishing for a cig during a stressful time (my biggest trigger). Now if only I could master losing weight like this!

Other happenings in my life about now:

Valentine's day weekend was fabulous! Rick and I went to the Polaris on top of the Hyatt for dinner on the 13th. The view was beautiful, but we didn't think the food was that great. When I pay $30 + for a steak I think it should be cooked perfectly! Neither of ours were perfect. But the view was wonderful and it was a very nice experience.

As a valentines present Rick got me a $100 gift card to Vici Capilli Salon and Spa! I'm psyched about this. I've never ever been to a spa before and I'm so looking forward to a massage! I made my appointment yesterday for a Relaxation package! Facial, 30 min massage, and an areoma therapy foot soak. Plus free lattes or anything from their relaxation bar. SWEET!!! It did throw me off for a second when the lady who was scheduling me asked if I wanted a male or female massage person. Honestly that thoght never crossed my mind. I went female, I didn't want to add any extra anxiety around my first massage...just in case. ;)

One of our wonderful kitties has OCD. Somehow I find this funny (as in funny haha) that one of our cats ended up OCD go figure! What he does is licks his belly constantly, this the vet says is his way of dealing with stress and/or boredom. We have to try a diffuser that works like a glade plug in but with a cat pheramone instead of scent. This is supposed to calm cats. I believe it will work because the vet sprayed some on his hand then rubbed it on the towel in the cat carrier. After that Abby fell asleep (in the carrier at the vet!) and Spaz appeared more relaxed and didn't huddle in the back of the carrier. Also, the ride home was much much quieter. Abby didn't meow at all and Spaz only did a little bit. A complete difference from the way to the vet!

Now that the kitchen sink is dethawed we have come to another problem. Now it's the garage door opener. It opens fine but closing is a challenge. It stops and reverses every 6 inches or so. NOT FUN! I think we're in agreement that we're going to get a new opener as the one we have now is very old.....infact it is the same one that my parents have and that has been in there since we moved into that house 23 years ago! Wow that makes me feel old! I'm excited about the new one we picked out. It's more expensive but cool. It has a battery backup which is necessary since the garage door is our only option for getting in the garage. It also has the keypad and a fingerprint reader! How cool is that, we can open it with our fingerprint!

Everything else seems to be good. Knock on wood!

25 Random Things

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

1. I bought my first house in August with my boyfriend of 2 years, Rick
2. I got a puppy in October and she's the coolest dog ever!
3. I have lost a total of 60 pounds and still have more to go.
4. I'm at a plateau with my weight loss at the moment.
5. Our kitchen drain freezes when it's really cold out and the faucet is dripping.
6. To stop the faucet from dripping you have to turn the handle just right....not easy to do when you're in a hurry in the morning.
7. We had to use a space heater, a hose with hot water, a fan, remove boards in the basement, and add new insulation to the pipe area in the wall to get the drain to de-thaw.
8. The previous owners shoved old clothes in the joist between the foundation and the house for insulation.
9. I'm deathly afraid of centipedes. They have too many legs and move too fast for me.
10. We have problems with centipedes at the office. Last year we kept a count of them...there were 45, most of which came from my office.
11. I drive a minivan and actually like it
12. I am working really hard on changing my eating habits, it's not going that well.
13. I am afraid of losing my job.
14. I work for a small company (4 employees)
15. I live in South Milwaukee
16. I got married in 2001.
17. I left my ex-husband in August of2006 after he chased me around the house with a knife trying to destroy my laptop because he thought I was cheating on him.
18. I don't believe in cheating on a person. If you want to get involved with someone else end the current relationship and don't cause unnecessary pain.
19. My divorce didn't go through until November 2007 b/c my ex started it then waited until the last day to try to file the rest of the paperwork, which he didn't have filled out correctly and the courts wouldn't let me file since he was the one who started the process. I ended up finishing it after the clerk saw his attempt of stretching the process out.
20. I'm getting increasingly anal as I get older. At one time I didn't care which way the toilet paper went on the dispenser...now I have to change it if it's not a "waterfall"
21. My favorite soda is Coke
22. My weakness is chocolate
23. I enjoy working with databases and would like to get Microsoft Certified in SQL Server.
24. I sometimes wonder if I chose the wrong career.....I think I should have worked with animals, something I've wanted to do when I was little.
25. I still love ducks!


I'm not tagging anyone, but I welcome anyone who would like to list 25 random things!

Career change?

This is something that's crossed my mind several times over the last year. I think I may have even blogged about it here and there. When things get really shitty around here I always find myself questioning my career choice. I talk to others in my field and a lot of them really have a passion for technology. For me it's just something that pays the bills. Sure I find it exciting to learn about new technologies much less get to use them in the real world. But it doesn't really make me tick. The only area that has a faint tick in that aspect is working with databases. I need to get my butt in gear and get my certs in that.

The thing(s) that really make me tick are animals. I've always been into animals as long as I can remember. Growing up I always wanted to be a vet. But as I got older I decided the schooling was less and less appealing. Especially once I got to my first college level chem class and failed miserably! I could see myself in the position of a vet tech and I think I'd be happy doing that. I could actually see it as being fulfilling. However, I've done a little looking into the salary and found that it's about half of what I'm making now. That's a little hard to get used to if you know what I mean.

Who knows, maybe some day my prince charming will stroll up on his white horse and I'll be able to afford to go back to school, and take a 50% salary cut just so I can't be happy.

One clever pup

My little puppy Bella is quite clever I found out! While we were visiting my Parents for Christmas a friend took her for the weekend. While she was at their house she somehow got out of the kitchen without moving the gate or the chair on the opposite side of the gate. Lord only knows how she managed that one. At 25 lbs you'd think she would have moved the gate if she climbed it.

Last night I discovered she's learned how to get into the cat room. We put the gate in the door way so that it leaves about 3-4 inches at the bottom so the cats can get under it, but the dog can't. However, she's been getting in the room and eating their food somehow. Well, last night she happened to wake me up while eating the food. When I told her to get out she crawled under the gate and I readjusted it, making it a little lower. No more than 30 min. later I hear her messing with the gate. So I take a look and here she has her head under the gate and is trying to push it up enough so she can squeeze under it! That little turkey!!!

Now I must devise another plan to keep her from eating the cat food. I'm thinking about putting a table in there next to the cat tree so the cats have easy access to get to it but the dog can't reach. I'm just happy that she seems to be over her "I need to mark this room" phase (knock on wood)!

I'm sure I'll have many more adventures in the future. She really is a good pup and catches on to things SO quick! In puppy kindergarten she would have the hang of new things within 3 attempts! However, she's a Mommy's girl and will not listen to Rick....could be his method of yelling at her instead of positive reinforcement like I use. She will do anything for a treat...except roll over. :P

We really need a camera here to fully understand my workplace

So, a while back we had the whole fiasco with CoreComm. See the previous CoreComm Sucks posting. When all that was going on my boss and I were discussing the fact that CoreComm has been unreliable for both email and Web hosting. Due to them being completely unreliable and making changes without notifying customers we decided we would switch vendors. We decided to go with one of our ISPs to do our hosting of email and Web services.

I received the information on setting it up over the summer and asked my boss when I should aim for it to go live. At that time I was told to wait until things settled down a bit as it was the beginning of the school year which is crazy around here. So I waited and when things calmed down I got email and our Website setup with our ISP.

Needless to say it's been 2 months since it's been set up and about 4-5 months since we took on the ISP for these services, so we're paying for both at this time! I've been sending emails to my boss about them being ready and have even asked our accountant/boss' right hand man to see if she could get an answer out of him. Well today, she brought it up in their mini meeting. He acted like he had no clue what she was talking about! His response: "Why would I get rid of Core Comm?" Really? Are you serious???? In response she told him to ask me. That was an hour ago and he has yet to come. I'm trying to resist sending an email to him explaining the situation!!

This isn't the first time something like this has happened either. Recently we had a problem with a ISP that had local outages. When that happened he found out that our new version of the product was on this line (which hasn't had outages that effected us within the last 3 years). As soon as he found that out he was in here to tell me to switch that product to the other comm line permanently. Mind you that last school year we had MANY problems with that line and informed him about them. Usually it was a quick outage, but noticible by our customers. So I told him I wouldn't recommend that then he freaked out and said we have to keep a log now.

Next was we had issues with our new product last week. My spurr of the moment job was to back up the production files every time our off-site developer did an update. OK, fine, but I don't know .Net I don't know what needs to be backed up and half the time I'm not informed when an update is going out. Wouldn't it be better to tell the developer to make a copy of it when he puts it out? He's already making a copy of the previous stuff.

See everything suddenly becomes an emergency.....then when the problems are worked out they're forgotten. Really, I sometimes wish we had hidden cameras here so people could see that things that happen here are not in our imagination or we're not making them seem worse. They really ARE this bad!

On the plus side. My kitchen drain unfroze on Friday. Since we had the snow day I set up a space heater to warm up the cabinet all day and now I have my sink and dishwasher back!!! Just in time for my Birthday!

Welcome Home

This past weekend we went up north for Christmas with my Parents and Mom's side. It was a very nice weekend and it was nice to see my family that I haven't seen for a while. I was kinda sad to see how bad my Grandma is. She has Alzheimer's and it is pretty bad. Within 5 min she asked me then Rick how she got to my Aunt's house, when she got there, and how she's getting home. She also spent most of the time in her room curled up on the bed under blankets and was very anti-social. Over all it was a good weekend. We returned on Monday evening after dropping off chocolates to some of our northern districts. This resulted in an 8.5 hour car ride!! That's far too long to be in a car for me!

Once we returned we noticed we had a not so nice surprise. Our kitchen faucet was dripping while we were gone. Since the temps were below zero and the drain area is not well insulated the drain froze. I spent a majority of Tuesday evening trying to get the thing to unfreeze to no avail. Salt, boiling water, keeping the cupboard door open, and taking a hair dryer to the pipes did nothing! I am so pissed and so frustrated! I went home at lunch today and nope it's still froze. Not sure what to do here. Any ideas????

The frozen drain mixed with me falling on my ass at the end of the driveway and hitting my head hard enough to knock my glasses to the top of my head, dinner made the house smokey (grease hit the broiler part), the dog whining, snow, and the fact I did not want to go to Puppy KG made me very crabby and unhappy. I'm still crabby and unhappy because of drama at work. Here's hoping to a better evening....and the salmon not making the broiler smell!

Snowfall

Last night was the first major snowfall of the season around here. Forecasters were predicting 6-8 inches of snow. However, in the end we ended up with about 3 inches due to warmer temps by the lake. Since our house is so close to the lake we ended up with rain/sleet for most of Sunday and the snow had not started sticking to the ground as of the last time I took the dog out last night (around 9:00).

This morning the snow was up to the brown markings on Bella's legs in most spots. She loves the snow...I think it somehow gives her more energy! She loves running in it and shoving her face all the way up to her eyeballs into the snow. She kept me laughing through our walk this morning! However, she wasn't too thrilled with the shovel this morning. I thought I'd let her play in the snow while I shoveled. She just sat by the door so I let her in. This is one of the times I wish we had a completely fenced in yard so I could just let her run free.

This was a very pleasant weekend! On Sat. Rick said he was going to go clean out the garage so both cars could fit. I gave him a hand and it only took half an hour or so and we had both cars in there! Perfect timing too!! It was so nice not to have to brush off the van this morning before coming to work! Turkey pot pie turned out beautifully we didn't even have any leftovers...which we usually do when I make chicken pot pie. We also watched a movie...The Strangers. I'm not quite sure I'd say that's a good movie, but it's not horrible.