Thursday, May 31, 2007

Race to 500 - May 30

First let me say that I am sorry for not posting a graph yesterday. I have no excuse. But here the graph for yesterday.
Ellen is still up by 20 miles, but I am still keeping close behind Rachel...

Doctor follow-up

So, I went to the doctor today about my leg. I had mentioned my leg surgery when scheduling the appointment, and I knew my doctor was aware of it because she'd had me do an x-ray of it a few months ago, so when I went in and she asked I started to explain the type of pain I was feeling but I didn't specifically mention the surgery and the metal plate in my leg. I thought she'd remember or it would be in my chart and I said something about it to the nurse that took my blood pressure and weight. Anyway, so after a few minutes of talking I realized she did not remember that anything had happened, so I said something like, "well, I remember when you had me get the x-ray a few months ago everything looked ok." Then she was like, "oh yes. So there's no mystery why that area is bothering you" so she gave me the names of 2 orthopedic surgeon and 2 physical therapists and said that if I decided to see either of them then I should call the office and they would do the referral. She also wrote me a prescription for an epi pen (so you can stop worrying family).
I told her that I was trying to be more active (the trying to be more active was causing the leg pain) and eat better and she said, "thank goodness, because you really need to".

Ok, that's not what she said, but I think that's what she meant. She said, "that's great. I'm very happy to hear you are doing that"

So, I think I'm going to go to the orthopedic surgeon and see what he thinks. If he thinks it looks fine she said I should just do what I'm comfortable with. If he thinks there may be a problem I try PT. Or I could just go to the physical therapist once to talk about how to do good stretches for my leg.

What do you think?

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Race to 500 - May 28




Here are two versions of the graphs for the 28th. Which one do you like better? Whichever gets the most votes wins. The new one is courtesy of Matt. Matt, I'll assume you vote for yours.









Monday, May 28, 2007

Race to 500 - May 27


Here it is as of May 27. But only Mr. H and I reported for May 26 and 27, so I bet when we hear from the others this will change, but for the first time in a long time I seem to be ahead of R Sr!!!! I'm sure once she tells me what she did the past two days that won't be true any more, but I can hope. Ellen: I'm coming for you!

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Race to 500 - May 25

Here we go as of May 25. I got nothing for today because I was at a wedding all day!

Friday, May 25, 2007

May 24

Ellen is still ahead. R Sr and I are only about 20 miles behind. That's no biggie, right? Wrong, R Sr was right. Ellen just walks around all day! Though today she emailed that she'll only have 1.5 miles for the 25th. R Sr! It's time to catch up!

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Apartment 2/Leg

On another note, yes, we move in July 1 to the new apartment. We have our current one till the end of July. But I like to move in slowly. And I haven't figured out how to get my washing machine into the basement! Maybe when I get the dryer I have to buy delivered I can get them to take the washer down too? They might do that, right? I'd pay extra...

Matt, you said you'd take care of pedestals for the washer and soon to be dryer?

I'm excited. We'll have two floors and a basement. They'll be a guest bedroom for visitors (hint hint).

In other news, I made a doctors appointment to talk to my doctor about my leg. I'm going to see if she'll refer me to an orthopedist and/or a physical therapist. My legs been hurting more than usual lately so we'll see what she says. The appointment is for May 31st in the morning. I'll let you know how it goes and what she says.

May 23

Here are the results as of May 23. Ellen is still in first place (but I didn't get any miles from her today... are they coming?), R Sr is in second and I come in third. I'm really going to have to pick up the pace!!! Ellen is almost 1/10th to goal!

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

We got it

Well, Morgan and I got the apartment we applied for. So we have an appointment to sign the rental agreement June 12th at 6pm. I'm excited! We have someplace to live next year!

I'm excited!

Race to 500 - May 21


Here it is. But Mr. H and R Sr, I know you went for a run on the 20th. Send me your mileage so I can update.

Ellen is kicking everyones butt...

Friday, May 18, 2007

May 17


Here are the totals as of yesterday, May 17. Ellen is catching up... Was R Sr right? Does she just, "walk around all day"?

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Day 3


Here it is as of yesterday. R Sr is in the lead.
14.1 miles. I mentioned what we were doing to someone and work that I don't really work with and then immediately regretted it when she said, "that is wonderful. I think it's worth writing an article about...." So, we may appear in some article somewhere sometime about how we are encouraging each other to be more active...

Apartment

Morgan and I are looking for a new apartment. We don't want to move far, we just want to live someplace that doesn't cost $400+ to heat in the winter. Yesterday I saw a post on craigslist that was posted the day before (2 days ago) for an apartment in the Falls (5 ish minutes from where we live now) and I think walking distance from one of my favorite restaurants. It's cheaper than where we are now. It's a duplex with the owner living on the other side. There is a basement and 2 floors. The first floor has the kitchen, bathroom (annoying that in many houses around here the bathroom is off the kitchen) and a living room with a bay window. Upstairs are 2 bedrooms with a small office in between them. The heat is about $150 during the coldest months of the winter. Also he's replacing all the carpet and so the move in date is July 1 which is exactly when I wanted it to be! The only downside is that he does not want to do a lease, but wants to rent month to month. But I think the location, price and place make it worth it.

Morgan is at my favorite restaurant now picking up dinner. It's delicious and the two of us can get dinner for $15 dollars. What a deal, eh?

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Change in Holiday Office Closure Policy

Today the executive director walked around and said, "all staff in the conference room" so everyone gets in the conference room. I think that maybe they're going to tell us what to do in case of a tornado since the sky was very dark and there was a tornado watch. But, no, they pulled everyone together to talk about a change in the policy for Jewish holidays off. The policy used to be that if you celebrated a Jewish holiday you could take it off paid but the office would remain open. But people felt that wasn't fair to the non-Jews, so now the office is closed on the following days:
The first and seventh day of Passover
Shavuot
Rosh Hashanah (the first day)
Yom Kippur
Sukkot
Shmini Atzeret

This is in addition to the regular holidays (yes, there are pathetically few of them):
New Year's Day
Memorial Day
July 4th
Labor Day
Thanksgiving
the day following Thanksgiving
Christmas

So, now there are 14 paid holidays instead of 7. Not bad, eh? Ok, fine, I'm sure it's not as good as what you have, but at least I'm better off than I was.

Day 2 of the Race

Today is the third day of our Race to 500. Here are the standings as of yesterday.
Looks like RH is in the lead. RS, Mike? Nothing for yesterday?

Sadly the tornado watch cancelled my afternoon walk.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Bike!

I bought a bike helmet today and a bike pump! Then I came home and put air in the tires of Jeanne's bike and rode it! Only 1 mile since it was getting dark by then so I didn't want to stay out in the dark riding a bike in the road. But tomorrow I should be able to bike a lot. Then my mileage will go up and up and up! And then I will take the challenge by storm!

Race to 500!



Race to 500. Here are the standings after day 1.
Rachel S is in the lead.

I will post an updated graph each day until someone reaches 500. Ok, maybe every other day.


To answer some other questions: 1. I have decided not to go for the other job at work. It would not be more money and I'm going to give my current job a little more of a chance. I guess 3 months isn't that long, so who knows what will happen.
2. Crystal Reports is a program that connects to your database (we use In Order) and allows you to create reports. For example, it can pull all the people who live in Massachusetts and are in our 1 year old subscription. Or it pull information and put it directly into a letter (kind of like a mail merge, but it saves you a step of having to export the data to Excel and then putting it in Word like we do now.

In other news, starting Thursday I am going to be keeping a TV Diary. Nielsen TV ratings sent them and so we well write down what we watch and when and then they use that to figure out TV Ratings! How cool! Especially since I don't watch what an average 26 year old watches. I think I'll be the outlier.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Schedule

My schedule from STCC arrived in the mail today. Conveniently enough I also took a long lunch and went to the bookstore to buy the book for my class. I was glad that in my 45 minute lunch I was able to drive to STCC, go into the bookstore, buy the book, drive around campus to find the building where my class would be held, park the car, walk around the building to the right entrance, walk to the fourth floor and peer in the window, drive back towards work and stop at McDonald's and walk back into work stopping to talk to some people in the conference room for a minute. That is good since class will start at 5:45 and I'll get out of work at 5:00. I shouldn't have any trouble getting there on time. I'm all set, just a little over 3 weeks before I start.

On another note the director talked to me yesterday morning and said that she wanted me to be happy and that if I wanted to I should talk to someone at work who is leaving to see if I want to try and move up within the company to take her job. I don't think I do. I heard her talk about her job a little bit more today, and while I still don't know exactly what she does, it was pretty clear that it sucks a lot of the time.

On a totally unrelated note I finally got to play with Crystal reports today. And I made a huge step forward in writing the report that I want. Then I did something stupid and now I'll have to completely redo it again on Monday. A word to the wise. If you're not sure the thing you're about to try will work be sure to save first! Well, you live and you learn. But I had a great day because I really enjoy playing with the program and trying to figure it out.

So, I guess things are looking up.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Trying to get away

Well... I did it. I registered an Accounting 1 class. It's at Springfield Technical Community College, not a fantastic school, but close to work and has a convenient class. I was looking to see if there were any classes at any of the schools around here. So I went to stcc.edu and looked at the summer 1 session classes. And I think it was a sign, but the first class listed was Accounting 1. It either was a sign or the list was alphabetical.

Anyway, I registered. The bookstore is open from 8-4. Tomorrow I'm going to call to see if I buy the book over the phone how long it would take to get to me. Classes start June 4 and end July 5 from Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 5:45 to 9:15.

On another note after sending out two mailings today, one of 81 and the other of 125 the director asked how I was liking my job. I told her I was hoping it would be more challenging and interesting. She said that she knows that I'm very capable and will try to see if there are more things that I can begin doing and I should speak up if I see something that I can do. So, we'll see what happens.

Monday, May 7, 2007

Half way through a deck of Cards

Being 26 feels a lot like being 25. But now I feel like I'm half way through a deck of cards.

Work today was busy. I barely sat at my desk all day. Because of a system error we had to mail out 699 books by hand instead of sending them to the Work Opportunity Center (who does all our mailings) so today I finished mailing everything out. Each book needed a sticker and a reading guide put in it. It needed to be put in the right envelope and then needed postage. HG hadn't signed the check to the post office so we only had about 500 dollars worth of postage on the postage machine. I used about 300 of it. The other 800 dollars was in stamps. Thank goodness they are self sticking. of the 699 books to be mailed 180 of them needed $1.35 and the rest needed $1.59. The $1.59 was 5 stamps - 1 $1, 2 $.24, 1 $.10 and 1 $.01. The $1.35 was the same only one $.24 stamp instead of 2. When Janna was helping me we had to hand stamps back and forth sometimes so we called them: man ($1), butterfly ($0.24), clock ($0.10) and bird ($0.01).

The weekend was exhausting, but here are the highlights that pretty much only effect me:
  1. I got the name for this blog
  2. I decided I might take a class or 2 to see if I like accounting before I decide if I want to go to grad school to get an MSA
  3. It turns out I do not have to buy a new outfit for the black tie wedding in 2 weeks, I just need to buy fancier shoes and a "ridiculously sparkly" necklace
My very exciting plans for tomorrow at work:
  1. Break down some boxes
  2. Clean up the area in front of the book shelf
  3. Put together and mail out national marketing kits
  4. Do a mail merge (people keep talking about this as if it will be very time consuming. I keep trying to tell them that a mail merge is easy. I guess tomorrow is the day of truth)
I know you all wish you were me and got to work at my picnic table.