Friday, July 18, 2008

Update!

Thank Goddess it's Friday! It's been a crazy week. My favorite manager is out having surgery, one of my fellow team leads left for a two week vacation yesterday. I will be so glad once we get our new venture, AJ Prindle, up and running. We also have another New Hire class, for our tobacco business, starting 7/28.

I am not aware of our specific plans for the weekend, so I plan to just relax and go with the flow, and enjoy the days off with Jeff before he starts school in the fall.

Less than a month til we leave for Topsail Island, NC!

Merry Part and Blessed Be!

Monday, July 14, 2008

Last Night On Earth

Just got finished playing a fun new game for the second time with Chits, Krev, Artie and Jeff. The game is called Last Night on Earth, and you play a party of 4 heroes vs. zombies in several different scenarios. Our scenario was Escape in the Truck. You had to find keys and gas, fill the truck, and have at least two of the heroes make it to the truck and get out. In this game, we all escaped, and I blew away 5 zombies with the pump action shotgun with some very awesome dice rolling. I got to play Jenny, the farmer's daughter.

Work is work. I am anticipating possibly having a new hire class before AJ Prindle starts. This would be preferable, as it means we could then take all of our people for the new company from our experienced agents. I'm working 1 PM to 10 PM tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to one more wedding before summer's end. I'm currently wildly jealous that Grey is at Sirius Rising. Trying to do more witchy stuff. I definitely need to do my yoga tomorrow morning. My goal is going to be to do Yoga every morning that I work late. That will get me doing it 2 or 3 time a week.

I ate too many peanut butter M&Ms, and my stomach is a little unhappy, so I am going to go lay down.

Merry Part and Blessed Be!

PS - Two posts in the same month... Woot!

Sunday, July 06, 2008

The Change

One hand
Reaches out
And pulls a lost soul from harm
While a thousand more go unspoken for
And they say what good have you done
By saving just this one
It's like whispering a prayer
In the fury of a storm.

(chorus)
And I hear them saying you'll never change things
And no matter what you do it's still the same thing
But it's not the world that I am changing
I do this so this world will know that it will not change me.

This heart
Still believes
That love and mercy still exist.
While all the hatred rage and so many say
That love is all but pointless in madness such as this
It's like trying to stop a fire
With the moisture from a kiss.

As long as one heart still holds on
Then hope is never really gone.

What I do is so
This world will know
That it will not change me

Borrowing a blog tactic from Al - sorry to have missed all the fun at the Farm this weekend, but Jeff and I got to spend some much appreciated quality time together. Just thought of this song the other day, hadn't heard it in forever and couldn't remember anything but the chorus, so here it is. You can hear it on my myspace page.

Merry Part and Blessed Be!

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Over a month again

Life is what happens you're busy not blogging...

Anyway, just wanted to drop a quick note tonight regarding DIABLO III. Jeff and I are very psyched for this despite not being able to find our old Diablo II disks to play and get a temporary fix while Blizzard holds out on us like a prom date before the punch gets spiked. PVP also mentioned it in today's strip.

Things are very busy at work and at home, we're getting ready for NC in August, and Froshapalooza was huge smash the weekend of 6/21-6/22. Rob's wife Tasha gave me a card reading with her Faerie Oracle Deck. A spider crawled onto one of the cards during the reading, lending extra signifcance and mystery to the card it touched (Ilbe, the Retriever. Something is lost, Ilbe has it for me when I realized that it's missing)

That's all you get for now. It's almost bed time. I got home from work at 9:30 and I am going back in at 8 AM tomorrow. Merry Part and Blessed Be!

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Quote of the Day

"I learned thirty years ago that it is foolish to scold. I have enough trouble overcoming my own limitations without fretting over the fact that God has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence."

John Wanamaker

I am reading Pathways to Success by Dale Carnegie at work today. It's an interesting book. It's a combined edition of How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.

So, something to mull over if you're in a mulling kind of mood.

Merry Part and Blessed Be!

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Happy Beltane!

Beltane
Jethro Tull

Have you ever stood in the April wood and called the new year in?
While the phantoms of three thousand years fly as the dead leaves spin?
There's a snap in the grass behind your feet and a tap upon your shoulder.
And the thin wind crawls along your neck it's just the old gods getting older.
And the kestral drops like a fall of shot and the red cloud hanging high
come a Beltane.
Have you ever loved a lover of the old elastic truth?
And doted on the daughter in the ministry of youth?
Thrust your head between the breasts of the fertile innocent.
And taken up the cause of love, for the sake of argument.
Or while the kisses drop like a fall of shot from soft lips in the rain
come a Beltane.
Happy old new year to you and yours.
The sun's up for one more day, to be sure.
Play it out gladly, for your card's marked again.

Have you walked around your parks and towns so knife-edged orderly?
While the fires are burned on the hills upturned in far-off wild country.
And felt the chill on your window-sill as the green man comes around.
With his walking cane of sweet hazel brings it crashing down.
Sends your knuckles white as the thin stick bites. Well, it's just your groaning pains.
Come a Beltane. Come a Beltane.
Come a Beltane. Come a Beltane.
Come a Beltane. Come a Beltane.
Come a Beltane. Come a Beltane.


Jeff and I started the holiday off right this morning. :-) I was sorry to miss the Brighidshaven event. The way the summer is shaping up, I might make it to Lughnasadh. Frosh-apalooza falls on Midsummer. I really want to go to a Snow Water event at their Nemeton.

I wish I had a Nemeton.

When I was in Erie a couple weeks ago, I picked up The Forest House by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It comes before the first short story in Lady of Avalon. It was a good book, but I already knew a lot of the information from reading Lady of Avalon. I would have liked to see more rituals, but part of the point was that the women of the Forest House were constantly afraid of the Romans because of what had happened to the priestesses on the Isle of Mona.

Have a blessed and joyous Beltane!

Monday, April 21, 2008

I can haz Cthulu!?

Lolthulu

Enjoy. I want this as a bumper sticker.

Work is going well. We let go one of our trainees and we are working hard with another to build her confidence.

I'd much rather deal with "I want to do it and I'm struggling" rather than "I'm lazy and I'm going to do as little as you let me get away with."

Today was the other trainer Kelli's birthday. We ordered lunch and she had to listen to my version of Happy Birthday before she left to go home.

I went shopping last Wednesday with Al in Erie and picked up some sweet new clothes for work at Burlington Coat Factory. I also got some Mary Jane-style Crocs, so I can wear them to work and be super comfy for training.

Gonna have some porkchops and macaroni and cheese for dinner, Jeff is on the phone to Adam. We are hopefully going to see him sometime in May.

That's all for now folks, Merry Part and Blessed Be!

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Damn you Artie

I know it's been a long time between posts. To make up for it, I bring you this link. Artie showed us this last night. I hope that once enough other people see it, I can stop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AXPnH0C9UA

Things are good here, just finished our first new hire class at work. We have determined that our test sucks. When the highest score is a 79.5% (You have to pass with a 75%) it's not a good sign. The test is poorly worded, and doesn't actually test what they need to know to be on the phones.

Today we are going to Port A to hang out with Jess and Frosh, Chits and Artie is coming to. We will play some games. I hope we can play Vegas Showdown, I am getting pretty good at it.

Not too much else going on lately. Looking forward to seeing Iron Man when it comes out May 2. I also want to see Zach and Miri make a porno when it comes out, which is apparently not until Halloween. :-(

Merry Part and Blessed Be!

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

It ain't over til I say it's over!

So yesterday morning, I get pulled into a meeting with my manager Tom, and our HR rep, and I am offered a Training Coordinator position. As it turns out my friend Juli, the current Training Coordinator, put in her 2 week notice on Sunday, as she is taking a job at a call center closer to her home in Jamestown. So now the new Training Coordinators will be Kelli (who I strangely feel better about, now that I know she spells it with an "i". She also reads a lot and has a good vocabulary, so I am certain we will get along swimmingly.) and me!!!

So although I am sad Juli is leaving, because I was looking forward to working with her, I am very excited to be starting my new position. I got to go out to lunch yesterday with some of the folks from our management team, and today I got to attend my first management meeting.

The only forseeable downside is that my schedule is going to change, I will be working at least one evening shift a week, and one weekend day. But Tom and Trisha both emphasized the need to be flexible as far as scheduling goes, so as long as people are willing to help me out and cover me when it is needed, I think it will work out great. My pay rate also increased, and as a member of management I will also get more vacation time each year.

Merry Part and Blessed Be!

Saturday, March 01, 2008

More work?

Work has been interesting this week. Once again, we can't accept credit cards. About a month ago now, we lost the ability to process MasterCard orders. We converted a lot of those customers to Visa. Now we have to tell them we can't take their Visa either. The customers aren't too happy. This contributed to the following quote from my friend Dawn, which made me do one of those arched back, belly laughs at the ceiling.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones,
But I have all your cigarettes!"

Lazy day at home, most ambitious activity so far has been shoveling and sweeping off the cars. We got a pounding from the snow last night. Jeff's copy of Risk: Godstorm also came in the mail today. I think soon he may be looking for someone to play with.

I was feeling a little under the weather yesterday, doing better now, thanks to 12 hours of sleep.

Back to World Of Warcraft now I think. I am working on getting my warrior to level 70. I have couple things left to do in Hellfire Peninsula and then it's on to the Mushroom Forest... I mean Zangarmarsh.



(Does anyone else remember this book besides me? It was awesome!)

Merry Part and Blessed Be!

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Things I wish I knew 10 years ago

I was having some deep thoughts in the car on the way home today, and I thought "this sounds like a blog post". I was thinking, you never know what life will bring you. Jeff was saying the other night that he wants the next place he lives to be the house he dies in. And that would be nice, to have so permanent a home, but you never know. We could buy a house near Bradford (not right in town, of course. Scary townies!) and then 5 years later the company I work for could move to New Mexico and offer to pay me to move down there. We could go on vacation somewhere and like it so much we decide to move there. Jeff could get his MSW and be offered a position in another city or another state. So we're never "done". I don't think we can plan before we're 30 to be settled. The only constant is change.

I called this blog "Things I wish I knew 10 years ago" because I was remembering being in high school and college and thinking "Oh, this is it my life is OVER. I failed a test, my life is over; my boyfriend dumped me; my life is over; My friends are all graduating and leaving me, my life is over.

Life is never "over." It's a series of endings and beginnings that cycle over and over again. And the balance of the Wheel goes 'round and 'round.

So even though I did not get the Training Coordinator position at work, my life is not OVER. My manager had nothing but great things to say about me even as he was telling me they went with another candidate (from outside the company) And I am going to be going through the training with this new person, so I can learn how our current training process works. They want to give me the background I need so that (hopefully maybe they wouldn't guarantee anything outright) I can be a part of our training staff in the future. Tom (my manager) also said they wanted to hear my ideas on our current training process, how to tie the information to different things so that people can remember it once they leave our training classroom and are out on the phones working.

So while I did not get the position, I am still going to be doing something new at work starting Monday.

It's not over. :-)

Merry Part and Blessed Be!

Sunday, February 10, 2008

February post

Today was a great day. Jess and I went skiing at Holiday Valley and then ate lunch and did some shopping in Ellicottville. We went to Alexandra, where there is this awesome candle that smells like a tomato plant. It reminds me of my Grandma Eb's garden. We also went to Kazoo II, which has all kinds of neat things. I spent some time looking at the milagros, which are silver charms that Catholics in Latin American countries will give as offerings to saints on behalf of their loved ones. For example, if your loved one had a broken foot, there were foot charms. There were also breast and penis charms, which seems to me to be for motherhood or fertility, or I guess any ailment with those parts of the body. It's basically a form of sympathetic religious magic. I love finding similarities between the rituals of different religions.

Then when Jess and I got back, we played a new PS2 game that Chits has purchased. IT's a trivia game and you get 4 buzzers with it. It was pretty fun. I won the first game (which Chits did not play in) and lost the second (in which Chits kicked all of our asses, badly) I also got to see my adorable nephew, Aidan. He can take a few steps now, and stand up from being seated. I can't wait til he starts talking.

It's a busy month. Lacy and Jay are coming up next weekend to go to the Old Library. They are going for Valentine's Day. I am going for French Onion Soup and dessert. Valentines Day sucks, see last year's rant here for the reasons why.

Well, it is way past my bed time. Merry Part and Blessed Be!

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

I want to have Cpt. John Sheridan's baby

Again, long time no post I know. But at least it hasn't been a whole month. We've been busy here. Had friends to visit over New Years. Jeff's Birthday was last Friday. We've been enjoying our Christmas loot, most specifically Babylon 5, which is the reason for this blog title. There was a move Sheridan came up with on the disk we were watching tonight, that was just so totally and completely bad-ass, that I want to have his baby. We are currently watching Season 3.

I applied for a new position at work. I'll write more about it if I actually get it.

Also, adding some funny videos here that we were introduced to over Christmas/New Years:



Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Merry Christmas!

Yeah, it's a day late, and I haven't post in a month, but you're still glad to hear from me right?

Anyway, I got a pile of sweet loot for Christmas. I know that's not what it's about, but it is a lot of fun. And my friends and relatives really outdid themselves. Jeff got me a Celtic necklace, a pretty scarf, The Princess Bride (the novel, not the movie, I already have the movie) and a Wicked Witch of the West Keepsake ornament. My Mom and Dad got me an IPod Shuffle (which is totally awesome!), some cute clothes from Old Navy, and the Seasons expansion for Sims 2. Jeff's Mom and Dad got me some books and DVDs from my Amazon Wish List, more Sims 2 stuff, and some neat things from their travels this year (a mask from Vegas and a necklace from Tennesee. We got more Department 56 pieces for our Halloween village from Jeff's aunt and uncle, and he got some cool gargoyle bookends from his cousin Steve. Oh, and I also got some big fluffy bath sheets and a fairy statue from my Aunt Beck and Uncle Rick.

I also got to see Allison, and Grey briefly. This week we have Adam coming to visit, and we're going to see Grant and Wendy too. It's also my nephew Aidan's first birthday on Saturday, so we have a birthday party to attend.

It's such a fun time of year! I hope everyone enjoyed their Solstice/Christmas or whatever you celebrate as much as I did.

Merry Part and Blessed Be!

Friday, November 23, 2007

It's been a month again, so I figure it's time to post

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving with their families yesterday. Jeff and I went to St. Marys and had turkey, mashed potatoes, etc. at his Aunt Sue's house. Today we are going to Ellicottville to shop with his family and also eat.

I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft lately. The recent patch made it easier to get from level 20-60, which is great, because those are the levels that didn't really get new content from the expansion, so they are kind of boring if you already have a level 70 character (or 2 or 3. I don't know where some people get the time!) So my warrior, Sampsa, has gone up 5 in the past 10 days or so, I'd say. She's currently working on Un'Goro Crater, Winterspring and Silithus. Actually, as I am typing this, she is flying from the night elf capital back to Un'Goro Crater (great area, volcanoes, dinosaurs, tar pits) to collect dirt to do a quest that increases your reputation with the night elfs. I want one of the night elf mounts, which are a big cat, and I am not going to get a night elf character to level 40 anytime soon.

Work is going better, they are going to change my scheduled to Monday-Friday until January to see "if it meets the needs of the business." I wanted to point out that me being dissatisfied and looking for a new position would also not meet the needs of the business. I think the problem is I know too much. It's handy to have me there on Sundays for them because then I can answer questions about mail, do the logging spreadsheets for the Admin team, and answer help desk calls from the phone reps while the managers are on break. I'm like a pseudo-manager that they don't have to pay management salary for. I didn't even apply when they opened the last two Team Lead positions, because they were for weekends and evenings. I'd like to see my husband and friends, thank you very much!

Anyways, Sampsa should have landed in Silithus now (desert area, ruins, big insects) so I am back to WoW. Merry Part and Blessed Be!

Sunday, October 21, 2007

I know you aren't surprised

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!

You have come to a place mute of all light, where the wind bellows as the sea does in a tempest. This is the realm where the lustful spend eternity. Here, sinners are blown around endlessly by the unforgiving winds of unquenchable desire as punishment for their transgressions. The infernal hurricane that never rests hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine, whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them. You have betrayed reason at the behest of your appetite for pleasure, and so here you are doomed to remain. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy are two that share in your fate.


Level descriptions: http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html
Take the test: http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv

I bought a new book at Books Galore in Erie yesterday called Talk Nerdy to Me by Vicki Lewis Thompson. I had to buy it as soon as I saw the title. The other books I saw of hers are also about smart women with a thing for guys with huge.... brains. I really enjoy Talk Nerdy to Me, I polished it off before bed last night. We also got some Christmas shopping done yesterday, and bought Halloween costumes.

Hope you are enjoying the beautiful fall weather! Merry Part and Blessed Be!

Friday, October 12, 2007

So wrong...

Cyanide and Happiness, a daily webcomic
Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

From the net. I have Jay's sister, Erin, to thank for introducing me to Cyanide and Happiness. It's worse than Red Meat. It's so wrong, yet I just keep reading!

MP and BB

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