unexpected

As I was reviewing my upcoming week, I began to realize I had one, two, three ALL DAY meetings at the.land.of.cubicles this week, along with a snow storm prediction for Tuesday into Wednesday. REALLY?! Now there's a way to start your Monday off with a bang, home.werker.

Hotel room grudgingly booked, laundry finally moving, and dinners dates being set. At least I can get a 'dinner and Parenthood' date in with one of my great friends who lives in the Springs and shares the same deep love I have for the Braverman family at 9pm every Tuesday evening.

Now I just need to focus on packing in the midst of trick-or-treater this evening. Let's hope we actually get some cute kiddos knocking on the door this year. Last year, Jake and I had to eat all the candy ourselves since not one single kid showed up...I'd really rather give all of our candy away this year (at least what's left of it!).

Happy Halloween!

What Lexi would be if I could get her to agree.

Pinterest

I have succumbed to new addiction, and I'm seriously going to have to limit the time I spend on it. I always had a hunch that Pinterest would be just my kind of thing, especially since I spend so much time on the internet already. Especially because I literally go through magazines and create 'style folders' for my future house, christmas decorations, etc. Well, Pinterest let's you make a virtual collage/pin-board/what-have-you of all of your favorite things in one spot. And for the artist-crafty-trendy-goofy side of me, Pinterest has sucked me in.

The only down side? There are few people in my life who I know WOULD LOVE Pinterest, although they are busy with their little ones, and this is the beginning of my campaign to recruit my sister to Pinterest. If for no other reason than to laugh at my 'slightly inappropriate' pin-board.


I sent this to my sister in an email already, but I'll share it here too...It's just so great.

8 inches

Between Tuesday night and Wednesday evening, 8 inches of snow fell in our neighborhood. Having just returned from a trip to the land.of.cubicles on Tuesday afternoon, I was feeling pretty good about my uncanny ability to plan meetings around poor driving conditions...ok, I had no way of knowing it would be 80 degrees on Monday and then the first snow storm of the season would arrive on Tuesday after I pulled off the freeway...but still, I'm really thankful I didn't have to be out driving 100 miles round trip in the stuff.

I woke on Wednesday morning and did something I have done ever since I was little, while still perched on the edge of my bed, I pulled back the curtain just enough to see that the forecasters had been right! Everything was blanketed in fresh white snow, and it was still falling. There's nothing quite like waking up to freshly fallen snow...especially when school is cancelled, or, ahem, you are the.home.werker and you can bask in the glory of new fallen snow from the comfort of your cozy home office.

I cracked open a tube of cinnamon rolls and got comfortable on the couch with my laptop and a fleece blanket...only to discover that our internet was not connecting. As many of you know from previous posts, I rely HEAVILY on the internet to do my job, and having to spend 20 minutes on the line with the Qwest>>CenturyLink girl who pronounced 'filters' as 'flitters'... and only after we had exhausted all possible options of it being a user error did she then check to see if there was a regional outage. Of COURSE there was, the rain from the night before, combined with the heavy snow knocked out the power line supplying our internet connection....speaking of which...

About an hour after consuming our cinnamon rolls and twiddling our thumbs because we were not connected to the internet, a deafening silence came over the house. The lights flickered, the heater turned off, and the crockpot stopped cooking. The electricity had gone out too!

Jake was home yesterday, so I took my werk with me on my trusty iphone, and we headed out to run some errands and hope that the electricity and heat would soon kick on, oh, and the internet too.

A few hours later, we came home to a cool house and still no electricity or internet connection, and a guy who showed up to blow out our sprinkler system on the coldest and snowiest day in 7 months. Little did I know, he left our backyard gate wide open, and Lexi decided to give herself a tour of the neighborhood. Thankfully, I poked my head out the door to get our mail just as she was crossing the street. After minutes of extreme panic, running through the snow in my flats and ankle socks, and cornering her in the neighbor's backyard, we got her corralled back into the yard. I think she was pretty ticked at me for catching her, you could tell she had gotten the taste of freedom and was not happy about being back in her more than adequate yard.

I, on the other hand, cannot stop checking the gate or for her whereabouts whenever she goes outside now. At about 5 pm, the heat, electricity, and internet all kicked back on. The crock pot started cooking, the house started warming, and I desperately needed to charge my iphone after werking from it all day.

The snow, however, was beautiful. The cinnamon rolls were delicious. Jake still ate an Italian beef sandwich from the crockpot at 10pm. Lexi, might still be a little bummed.

Monday, Home.werker style

Life has been quite busy lately! We've had a few visitors and a lot going on, but it's all been a blast. We just spent the weekend in Steamboat Springs, CO with Jake's parents. I've never been to Steamboat before, but now I find myself wishing it wasn't so stinkin' far away. It's an awesome town in a gorgeous place, and I know Jake and I both caught ourselves wondering if we could live there someday. I bet we'd still get lots of visitors if we lived in Steamboat:).

One thing my mother-in-law asked me was,"Are Mondays the same when you werk from home?". Honestly, they are not 'the same' in many ways. There is no bleary eyed picking out of the outfit (that does not include jeans!), no desperate attempt to prop my eyes open with a run through the Starbucks drive thru, or a desire to remain invisible to all of my co-werkers for at least the first two hours of the wretched day... Wow, I guess I didn't really like Mondays in the.land.of.cubicles!

There is still a teeny bit of mourning that occurs as you realize you've got five more days until the weekend and that your quality time with the spouse is decreasing for the next five days as he gets back into his routine. But werking from home, Mondays are little easier to monitor and you can pace yourself and you really ARE invisible to your co.werkers, at least physically!


Here's to Mondays, and that fact that we've almost made it through this one, no matter where you are werking!

I think I need this t-shirt.

when it rains

Do you ever feel like the saying 'when it rains, it pours' is just completely dead-on? I find that happens a lot with werk related stuff, and I'm probably particularly sensitive to it now that I have enjoyed almost two full months of not having to travel for werk. I have gotten into the home.werker groove and anything that rips me out of that can feel slightly traumatic at first! I'll go kicking-and-screaming, but usually I am happy I went.

That happened to me earlier this week, and that is why Jake and I are headed out soon to help host a movie premier that is sponsored by my organization. There's nothing like being asked/told you have a public speaking gig with less than two days to prepare for an audience you know very little about...and oh yeah, it's on a week night.

I don't mind doing stuff outside of traditional hours, but would I rather be watching Grey's Anatomy than this film for the umpteenth time, I hate to admit it, but yes, yes I would. (That's some of my kicking and screaming I referred to earlier).

So backing to the 'it pours' part, I'm also heading down to the Air Force Academy for a team offsite tomorrow, which will likely take up most of my day. I'm realizing I still need to gas up the car and buy salad for our dinner party we're going to tomorrow night. Lots to do here tonight! Thank goodness for 24 hour grocery stores (who also give you rewards points for gas! score!).

Laughter

Do you ever come across something that just makes you giggle? Every time you look at it, the laughter starts all over again because it's still just as hilarious? I came across this post on Facebook from an old co-werker today, and I seriously cannot stop laughing at it. Here's some humor for your Tuesday. :)

Nap Time

So Jake is winding down his first half of the semester, and the next two weeks he'll have more free time than he could have ever dreamed of over the last month. After spending 55 hours a week in the hospital and classroom for the past four weeks, he has earned a break!

However, after coming home from his Simulation Exam this morning and catching up with me for a bit, I asked him to help me with the laundry by stripping the sheets off of the bed in our guest room. My dear friend from high school spent the weekend with us, and Jake's parent are coming to visit next week! Time to get fresh sheets on the guest bed. Well, the bed has been stripped of its sheets, but my home office now has a new occupant...

I am digging out of my Monday morning emails and trying establish priorities for the week, but I'm still kind of sleepy...it's Monday! I love my husband dearly, and I know he needs the rest, but the sound of his breathing while sleeping is making me more tired than productive...it's time for the.home.werker to relocate to the living room so he can continue his nap and I can resist the urge to also take a mid-monday-morning nap!

Background Noise

Today is a very windy day along the front range, so much so that Lexi is actually huddled at my feet, seeking some sort of security from the banging and howling outside. Today is not a good day to try and be on a conference call, on your cell phone, outside...like one of my co.werkers just tried to do.

It is also NEVER a good day to be on a conference call while sitting in a busy starbucks...or any coffee shop for that matter. My co.werker stepped inside a starbucks to get out of the wind, and I still have sounds of the steamer, a high pitched beep, and 'pumpkin spiced latte for Jenna!!!' ringing in my ears. All of that, and I'm sitting here without any coffee to call my own, just a sore right ear from the crazy background noise of my last conference call.

When in doubt, werk from home, a locked office, or even your car.

Happy Monday/Wednesday to ME!

I'm back, after a nice trip to Minnesota for a multitude of excellent reasons, it's Wednesday...my first day back at werk and it feels like a Monday. The kind of Monday where your co.werkers werk ALL weekend and flood your inbox...but you refuse to check-in.

I signed into Outlook this morning to discover that my mailbox was completely full, so not only did I have 200 new messages to go through, but I had to go through a year's worth of old emails before I could start responding to any new emails. BLEH.

It's noon, I've had two meetings about websites for different projects I'm working on, and my brain is spinning! I guess that's better than wading through emails endlessly and trying to push the rusty switch in my brain back into home.werker mode!

But to be totally honest, I'd rather still be hanging out with my two adorable nephews and my family in Minnesota. There's just nothing better...but Lexi is doing a great job keeping me company this morning and I have to say, I missed her A LOT!