A Day of Rest -- For You

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Let me start with the usual disclaimer. Should any of you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please let me know. I'll not be offended -- unless, of course, you're one of my kids and then I'll just be ticked.

No journal yesterday. I was too tired. AND I wanted to watch a movie, which I did. Using my Netflix "watch instantly" -- which isn't too 'instant' when you're connected to a hotel internet access. I tried wireless first, but the picture kept stopping so I thought I'd be clever and hook up to their "high speed" internet connection, since my work laptop comes with a patch cable. Hah.

Their "high speed" connection is apparently just a grade above snail's pace. I had to wait 20 minutes for the movie to load ... during which time I washed my face, brushed my teeth, etc. Made some tea. Ate a granola bar. Played my hand-held solitaire game.

The movie finally started -- U.S. Marshalls -- and only stopped 3 times! Each restart took anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes. In spite of all that I loved the movie. Another one I can remove from my queue.

We spent most of yesterday (when we weren't outside smoking) checking that all my log-ins are working. There are 3, 4 or 5 different systems I'll have to log in to, and I have to log in to each one 3 times (once for each Service Point). You'd think I would know how many systems there are, but they were so busy throwing acronyms around that I don't know if some of them have more than one name. More than once Peggy would show me something and then say "oh, you're going to be VoIP so it probably won't be the same". Terrific.

When Adrian was leaving for the day, I did ask if I'd be taking any classes and he assured me he's looking for the ones closest to my area. Thank goodness! I don't care where they are, I'll go!!

Donna brought in homemade tortilla chips and pico de gallo. Really good! Besides the Texas donut and chocolate cake Adrian brought in. I brought in a bag of baked Cheetos. :0 ) And they were eating them! Go figure.

Yesterday was a March of Dimes hamburger lunch. We bought tickets for $5 and got a grilled hamburger with all the fixings and a bag of chips. Drinks were another $1. The burgers were small (we do these things better in CA!) so I didn't feel too bad about eating it.

In the middle of the day, Peggy said I had to turn my company car in because someone was scheduled to take it. I gave her my key so she could turn it in and completely forgot that my Magellan dashboard mount was on the passenger side floor! (Do you see a trend? It's because I'm sleep-deprived, darn it) She took me to Avis after work so I could pick up a rental car in order to get to the airport on Monday morning. It was as I was getting into the car that I realized I don't have my dashboard mount. Peggy's going to ship it to me. That's probably the 2.5 pounds I was over in my luggage weight anyway. My Magellan will still work, it just won't look pretty sitting on the dashboard.

In my effort to come down off this food high I've been on all week, I took 2 granola bars and a bowl of raisin bran back to my room for later. They had biscuits, eggs and sausage patties with sausage gravy for breakfast. I had one biscuit with gravy and only 1/3 of the sausage patty. It was SO salty I couldn't eat it. I had 1/2 the raisin bran too. I also have several yogurts in the 'frig so I'm doing yogurt for dinner. I hope I can at least get down to what I was when I got here. Of course, there are no scales around for me to check.

I'm going to do my laundry today and the laundry room is in the fitness room so maybe I'll go on the treadmill while my clothes are washing. Sounds like a plan!

Oh, the whole "let's go to San Antonio Fiesta" is off the table. Everyone is too busy, too tired or whatever. I'm just as glad. I'm not really a sightseeing kind of gal, especially with strangers. I like to look at everything and most people do a quick browse (Heather and Tami, you know what I mean). When I went to the Exploratorium with my kids, they did the entire museum in the time it took me to check out one exhibit. Sheesh.

I've not been overly impressed with the little bit of Austin that I've seen. The traffic is just as bad as ours, and made worse by the fact they're doing construction all along the stretch of freeway that I have to travel. They don't have on-ramps, they have lanes that go on to the freeway. There is no freeway landscaping ... it's basically just overgrown and weedy. Yuk. And everything looks dusty. Granted, I'm seeing just a very small part of it and it's near an industrial area so not a good place to form an opinion, but if I were here to consider moving here for a job -- I'd be heading back home.

My intention for this weekend is to complete at least one of my telecom VCU classes. For you non-Farmers people, VCU is the online "university" we access through our company web site. I've signed up for two telephony classes, one that is specifically for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). I'd hoped to have some time to do that during the week but we spent so much time outside smoking, I wasn't able to. So -- onward and upward.

The sun is shining, the sky is clear -- did I tell you about the thunder storm on Thursday night that I slept through? I vaguely remember thinking 'that sounds like thunder', but I heard no rain. Everyone said the rain was so loud it woke them up. Of course, they're not on the 4th floor of a hotel!

Alrighty then. That's it for this episode. I'll probably not write again until Monday so keep all your fingers and toes crossed that I make it to Kansas without incident. If any of you find my missing brain cells, please don't FedEx them to me. I think the US Post Office will get them here faster.

Have a great weekend everyone!