TV Trash Talk

#1. Good Morning America: What happened to news anchors having actual names? Because of their silly names, I felt yesterday like Letterman was hosting the Oscars again. "Ju Ju." "GiGi"

#2. Dairy Queen Commercials: OK, the waffle cone cup, and the soft serve ice cream meeting, falling in love, and starting a family is cute. Well, it's cuter than a caveman at least. But I'm just wondering how the writers decided that the waffle cone thing needed to be male, and the soft serve should be female. For various phalic/yani symbolic reasons, it seems it should be the other way 'round, but especially when they visited the fertility doctor, and the waffle cone thing finds out he's not lactose intolerant. The way they played that scene, I really think that should have been the female character saying that.

#3. Lil' Bush: OK, we all get it, our president is stupid. We can't wait for the next administration to come into office, black, mormon, female, doesn't matter, couldn't be worse than what we have now! But this show makes me done with the Bush-bashing, it's just so tired. Let's find something actually funny again, please.

Summertime...

Hmm, since my blog name is a song title, maybe I should title all my posts with song titles.
Anyway.
If you're actually here and reading this, you did some extra work, and I should be rewarding you a little more. But I sometimes don't know what to say. This blog isn't really private, so I don't want to say something that could hurt someone who might wander in here. So if I want to be able to say exactly what I'm feeling, maybe I should rethink again the completely private blog. So here I can't say so-and-so is arragant, and so-and-so is gossipy, and so-and-so is a baby. But that's kinda how I feel right now.
So summertime.
I'm a 9-5er. (Ok, 8-5, but the song and the phrase is 9-5, so I always say that). My guy is basically a second-shifter. He's also a 4-day-a-weeker, but that's a different story. And now in the summer, my kids are on the second shift (or third shift) too. My oldest kid got a job, literally on the second shift, but they both like to stay up late and sleep late. I like that, too, but I work daytimes, so I can't. So here I am, awake and up since 8. That's actually sleeping late for me, since I have to be to work by 8 normally. Here I am in a quiet house, which is a nice change, but it feels so weird. I can't do much of anything or I'll wake someone up. I guess if I had my 'druthers, we'd all be on the same schedule, because I feel like I don't have enough time with any of them. So I'm just a little meloncholy right now.

Happy Day, Fool!

(Read the title in a Mr. T voice-it's not meant to be rude)
Happy April. Wow. Sometimes April really seems exciting, reaching it, I guess I mean. It usually signifies that spring is really here, we probably won't have any more snow, we can start gardening soon, some flowers are already up, and we can make definate plans for summer. Sometimes in March, it still seems like summer will never get here.
We had such a weird winter here. So mild at the beginning, we didn't even see snow at all until I think it was New Year's Day or New Year's Eve. We broke high temperature records in November and December. We thought we might go all winter with no snow, especially since the last couple winters were so mild. But when it started to snow, it kept snowing! I love snow (and I took lots of snow pictures), but this snow came with bitter, and I mean BITTER cold temps. So that's all over now! It's actually April!!
I hope the weather is beautiful in your neck of the woods!

Back Where I Started

So I've mentioned before my work saga. I had a job I really loved, but they relocated, and I had a heartbreaking decision to make, finally making the only decision that was right for my family at that time, to stay here in our little town. So I had a bout of unemployment, a secretarial job, and a staff assistant (glorified and slightly better paid secretary), and finally have worked my way back wor-wise to about where I was. But the part of the story that I haven't shared is the part about my transportation. Working at my job I loved, I had a nice little stationwagon, fairly new (and for a family who does not buy new cars, fairly new means 10 or less years old), sporty, fun, drove back and forth to my long-distance boyfriend's house just fine. Until one day it threw a rod, and just died. Luckily, I was close enough to home to get a AAA tow for only $20. And this was within 2 months before my last day at work at my job I loved. My great friend sold me an old car he had, and let me work it off doing odd jobs for him, and my dad fixed the things that had to be fixed. I'm very surprised that the old Honda lasted so long for me, over three years. But it finally died last fall. My parents were wonderful enough to loan me their mini van while they were gone, the last almost three months, and we've been saving for the next state car auction. To make a long story short (all together: too late!), we found a nice mini van for sale last weekend, my folks were back in time for dad to check it out for me, and I am now the proud owner of a 1997 Ford Windstar! So now I have a good job, and a good vehicle, and I feel like I'm finally at about the same stage I was...three and 1/2 years ago. Long, tiring trip, but I feel sooo releaved to be here!

All around the BlogBerry Bush

So I'm finally getting some web/blog things cleaned up, fixed up, put down, rearranged, etc. Here's my latest update: I've already sung my swan song on my food/recipe blog, and will soon on my TV blog. I just haven't been keeping these blogs up well, so I'm taking them off my chore list. Blogging should be enjoyable, not a chore. I love keeping up my projects blog, and this place is where I dump the rest of the thoughts, so I'll keep working on it.
My guy and I are starting a new project that will be on the web, kinda a blog, see the info here. With a new big project coming up, I wanted to clean up some of the old stuff. I still have an official personal site, but before this weekend, I hadn't really touched it in over a year. Now I'm taking photos off there, as long as I have flickr pro account, I don't need to eat up so much bandwith on the personal site. All this cleaning up and rearranging takes time, and I feel like I'm still getting the blogger beta bugs under controll as well. So lots of computing time in my future...

A thought on Thoughts

I'm already fast on my way to sleepy land, but just wanted to get something out of my head. My new job, in addition to being better suited to my abilities, and actually making me use my brain, in addition to bringing home a little bigger paycheck, has another added benifit: time to think. When you're anywhere in a reception/secretary/assistant type of job, you are often busy with busywork all day long. Answering phones alone is enough to drive some insane. My new job is so quiet. My phone rings once or twice a day, and it's usually my kids. So my brain actually can think about things. I've found it wandering off on some tangent, while I'm concentrating on the numbers in front of me. It has a good time, and figures things out. I think it's all good.

What next?

So lately I've been experiencing an unfamiliar feeling. I'm not even sure what to call it. Let me attempt to describe it, by giving you the background. When my old job that I loved "left me" and moved to a different city, I had some time to think about what kind of a job I wanted to get. I'm not talking fantasy dream jobs, I was a single mom, and have a great need for stability, so I was thinking practically. I thought about what I loved at my old job, what I didn't love as much, what talents and skills I had, adn what the opportunities in my town were. The biggest thing I didn't love at my old job (and also was one of the things I loved the most) was the work hours. You decided that yourself. A lot of times it was completely awesome, you didn't have to punch a timeclock, fill out leave slips, ask permission to leave, decide to take a long lunch when you weren't that busy, or even go garage sale-ing on Friday mornings like my former boss would do. (After she checked in, and made sure there was nothing pressing, if there was an issue that needed taking care of, of course she'd skip the garage sales that day.) Other times, it wasn't as much fun. If your project had to be done by a certain date and time, you had to figure out how to make that deadline, and some things in your timeline were based on factors you couldn't control, so sometimes you might need to work on a weekend or evening to meet your deadline. Because there was no official time off, you might feel obligated to work on a holiday that most people had off. I also kinda messed up myself, vacation-wise, and only once did I actually take a whole week off at the same time, and I was there for 6 years. That was my own fault, and I took plenty of random days off, like snow days with the kids.
Anyway, I decided, in that time of thinking about what to do next, that I wanted a regular 9-5 job, that I wouldn't have to work any weekends or holidays or evenings. Part of this decision was based on the fact that there are hardly any other businesses out there like my old job that I loved, in the work hours catagory. (Or any other catagory, for that matter) I decided that I wanted good benefits, and lots of time off. Work-wise, I was pretty flexible, I have done many things in my work life. I wanted something that would be interesting, challenging, and pay well. I decided to look for a job with the state for the benefits part, and lean toward office work for starters. Working with people I could stand was a given, I didn't even put that on my list.
My first state job was as a secretary. Not that exciting, but pretty good after being unemployed for nine months. Not great pay, not even good pay, really, but it was a start. No bringing work home with me. I did however, bring other things home from work, like bad vibes! Most of the people I worked with, including my boss, and other superiors, were great people. Problem was, I was stuck in a room with another secretary. And she was passive-aggressive, bossy, rude, uber conservitive, opinionated, and down-right crazy. I couldn't get out of there fast enough!!
I moved on after just over a year, to a staff assistant position. The title and pay were better, but I was still a secretary, basically. Not terrible, but not challenging enough, and not good enough pay. Love most of the people. I say love not loved because I'm still with the same people, in a different position. It's been not quite two months so far. It's challenging, pay is very good, great co-workers, quiet (as apposed to answering 4 lines all day), and I'm in a different part of the building where I can actually get my favorite local radio station, KZUM!! (you can listen on-line, so check them out)
So now, I appear to have met said job goal. And it's giving me this weird feeling, that I don't know how to describe...

Work Update

Well, I've been in my new position for a little over a month now, and yes, I still love it. The first full paycheck will come next week, then I'll REALLY love it! The only part that is strange, not great, is that I don't see everyone anymore. At the front desk I saw pretty much everyone every day. Some said hi, some waved, some stopped for serious discussionor just gossip, some just walked by, but I saw them all. Now, I can go in, go straight to my desk, and unless I bump into someone in the bathroom or at the candy or copy machine, I might only see 5 people all day. And I had plenty of mindless work to do, so I could chat with whoever happened to stop by, and still work while I chatted. I guess I'm not getting my quota of chatting in these days. But I don't have to chat with people I don't really want to chat with, either. I mentioned this to one bathroom-bump-into-buddy, and she likened my old position to a bartender. I think that's about right. I got to listen to everyone's complaints whether I wanted to or not, it was just part of my job. Now, I'm the chef, behind the scenes.