Just Clench Your Teeth and Keep Going - There are only 24 hours in a Bad Day

Why does it always seem that bad days start bad...and get worse? Let's take this Monday for instance. I always take the 6am flight to Chicago...always...every week for 3 months. Yet I had scheduled the 6:40am flight on Monday because, for whatever reason, it was significantly cheaper than the 6am when I was booking my ticket.

Now, a person who is really with it and on top of things would have remembered that they were going to get an extra 40 minutes of sleep - which can make a big difference when you usually have to get up at 3:30am. A person who was really smart would have set up a calendar reminder....or heck, even noticed that it was a later flight during one of the 5 billion times they checked the website as they were trying to get out of their middle seat. *I* of course did not remember this. So imagine my surprise when I show up at the airport at 4:45am to find that my flight doesn't board until 6:10am. Can't you just hear the mental "Ugh!!...Grrrr....*sigh*"

That alone would be cause enough for a day to be deemed "bad" by my standards, but as you have probably guessed, it didn't stop there. I show up at my gate early, smile sweetly at the gate agent, and in the best southern drawl ask if it would be possible to get a non-middle seat. As you may know, a smile is not an easy thing to muster pre-8am so I was really working hard here. I guess I should have worked a little harder because the non-middle seat they gave me was the window in the last row of the plane which has a lovely view of the side of the engine.

Oh no my friends, don't stop reading yet. There's more. Our plane had no electricity and there was a problem with the de-icer which meant our plane couldn't fly to Chicago. They had to give us a different plane...a plane that wasn't planning to leave until later in the day so it hadn't yet been cleaned. Lovely! So we wait for them to clean the plane and manage to get off the ground about an hour after we were originally supposed to.

At this point I almost allowed myself to be fooled into believing that the day could only get better from now on. Ha! I had a brilliant idea at lunch time to get my lunch to go, check-in to my hotel, and eat my lunch in my room so that I'd have lunch and check-in taken care of. Great idea huh? Well I check in and they give me a room that is pretty much the complete opposite of everything I have listed in my Marriott profile: 2 Queens instead of a King, Near the Elevator, and Handicap Accessible. So I call downstairs and ask if there are any other rooms that aren't handicapped accessible. They put me on hold and end up hanging up on me. So I call back. *RING* *RING* *RING* ....No answer. So I walk downstairs and they give me keys to another room which is actually exactly the kind of room I like so I don't really know why they didn't just give me that room to begin with. Of course now that I've hauled all my stuff back and forth between rooms I no longer have time to eat my lunch so I sullenly took my luke warm lunch back to the office and ate there.

I think I'll just boycott Mondays from now on....

Stop Rubbing Your Flap On Me

I have purged my blog!

After many months of not posting, I returned to see how I was feeling the last time I posted and I realized I wasn't feeling all that great. Re-reading my old posts was depressing to say the least so I have removed the bad and this blog shall hence forth be a happy place once again!

For those who may be unaware, I travel a lot. In doing so, I return home every week with entertaining stories about the people I have the pleasure of being sealed in a tin can with for 3.5 hours. Yesterday was fairly uneventful, but I realized that I came very close to becoming one of the "interesting" people on my flight.

I know this may surprise you, but sometimes I'm grumpy. I know, I know...it's difficult to believe but it's true. Yesterday was one of those days where I was not as chipper as one might expect. I didn't really get enough sleep before my 8am flight to D.C. so all I wanted to do was sit down on the plane and pass out. I get to my seat and the man in the middle seat on my row was “Army Man”. Immediately I’m happy because I know I am the safest person on the entire plane. With this thought in mind, I sit down in a slightly better mood and I'm out before we even hit the runway.

About 30-45 minutes into the flight I wake up because something is rubbing on my arm. “Army Man” had this small cargo pocket with a flap on his uniform that poked out a little bit and it was rubbing on me every time he took a breath which was REALLY annoying. My first solution to this predicament was to lean my chair back, hopefully moving my arm out of flap range, allowing me to resume my slumber. Unfortunately, leaning my chair back only made Army Man realize that he too could lean his chair back, resulting in a return to square one.

This gave birth to idea number two – the seat scoot. I not-so-subtlely scoot over a little bit so that my arm won't touch his flap anymore which he took as a sign that he could put his elbow even FURTHER into my seat, resulting in more flap rubbing.

At this point I was really unhappy. The evil flap was inhibiting my ability to sleep and I wasn't sure how much longer I could take it! I wanted to look at Army Man and scream like a drill sergeant on steroids, "STOP RUBBING YOUR FLAP ON ME! YOU'RE GOING TO FLAP ME TO DEATH!"...

It was at this point that I realized I was about to become "interesting" so I took a deep breath, wrapped my blanket up high enough to block the offending flap, and went back to sleep.

Another incident avoided thanks to the quick-thinking mind of yours truly.

Keys to My Heart

So my dear fellow blogger Jim Hawkins posted this on his blog (Shine) so of course, being a sucker for quizzes, I had to try it out. Here are the results!

The Keys to Your Heart

You are attracted to those who have a split personality - cold as ice on the outside but hot as fire in the heart. In love, you feel the most alive when your lover is creative and never lets you feel bored. You'd like to your lover to think you are loyal and faithful... that you'll never change. You would be forced to break up with someone who was emotional, moody, and difficult to please. Your ideal relationship is traditional. Without saying anything, both of you communicate with your hearts. Your risk of cheating is zero. You care about society and morality. You would never break a commitment. You think of marriage as something precious. You'll treasure marriage and treat it as sacred. In this moment, you think of love as commitment. Love only works when both people are totally devoted.

Don't Catch the Miserable - It's Contagious

Yesterday I had the worst headache of my life. It wasn't one of those "I have to keep one eye closed and kind of squint to survive the afternoon" kind of headaches. It was one of those "Please God just let the blood vessel burst and end it all" kind of headaches. Finally at about 7:30 I decided I needed food and caffeine so I left work and went back to my hotel. I had some VERY fishy pasta for dinner (gag me). After I suffered through half of my pasta, I went upstairs and crashed at 9:30.

Then today while I was working, I found out that Casey had gotten sick and her eHarmony boy had taken the day off to nurse her back to help. He's quite the Florence Nightingale. He made her chicken noodle soup and drugged her with Nyquil. That's how you know someone really loves you - they bring you OTC's that will knock you unconcious.

So now I'm just left wondering who the "miserable" is going to spread to next.

Swee Home Blogger.com

Well after a little hiatus I’m back to my blog. So I’ve now been working for just over 3 months. My project is in Columbus, OH which means I fly out Monday mornings from Dallas and fly home on Thursday afternoons. I have a corporate apartment now which makes life much easier. After my first night in my apartment, I had to go shopping. My mattress was AWFUL so I went to Macy’s and bought a featherbed and two really comfy pillows. But, while my bed was very comfy, my room smelled musty so the next week I came back armed with candles. I had to get a lighter from the grocery store because they don’t allow you to bring them on planes and I swear I have burned my finger 10 times since I bought that stupid thing.

So a little more about my job: I’m staffed on a government project so I have to go through all this red tape to get access to everything. I waited a month to receive clearance for a badge which was “quick” on the government timeline. I’m still waiting to have access to something beyond basic email and internet access. We’re hoping I’ll be granted that access “soon”, soon being a relative term (and you’ll notice I didn’t use the word “quick” if that helps with the timeline I’m operating on here…”soon” is further in the future than “quick”)

I get a long weekend this week which is GREAT! I can’t remember the last time I was actually home on a Monday. I will still have to fly out on Tuesday, but I still get to fly home on Thursday so it’s all good. I haven’t had much work to do lately which is supposedly going to change in the near future. We’re in the “design” phase of the project right now but we plan on moving into the “build” phase within the next couple of weeks. My roomie here was telling me that my team is notorious for working long hours so I have that to look forward to, although I don’t really mind working long hours if I have something to DO.

The rest of my life is good. I got my hair cut this weekend and it’s SHORT. I cut off about three inches…and it’s SHORT. I think my 14 year old brother has longer hair than I do in some places on his head.

A couple weeks ago I was in a fender bender. We were sitting at a red light in Jeremy’s truck and this 16 year old kid bumped us from behind. Now keep in mind we were already stopped so it wasn’t like we made a quick stop and he just couldn’t stop in time behind us. He just “wasn’t paying attention” aka “my friends were across the street and I was talking to them through my window instead of watching the road in front of me so I hit a non-moving vehicle.” As we waited for the police to come and do a report, he told us that this was his first accident, yes he had had 4 speeding tickets in his first 6 months of driving, but this was his first accident. I told my mother that and her response was “If I had a 16 year old who had had 4 tickets after driving 6 months, I’d be taking the license away and we’d be re-evaluating their ability to drive in another 6 months.”

Speaking of driving, have you heard about this law they tried to pass in Florida? It was called something like the “Road Rage Relief Act” where if you didn’t pull over and let a car pass who was going faster than you, the police could issue you a 60 dollar ticket. Now at first glance it might seem like a good idea, we all get frustrated by people who don’t want to drive the exact speed that we deem appropriate plus there are always those true geniuses who drive the exact same speed as the person next to them thereby preventing anyone from going anywhere quickly. However, consider if you were going the speed limit (or as is appropriate in Texas, 5-10 miles over the speed limit) and a car comes up behind you going 15-20 miles over the speed limit. If you don’t pull over and let them pass, YOU get the ticket. Punishment for following (or at least almost following) the rules! Sure, I’d be happy if I could speed down the highway without someone getting in my way, but if I got a ticket for abiding by the speed limit, I’d be royally ticked off. Good ole Jeb Bush vetoed it though. Gotta love the Bush family!

5 Things I've Learned After Working A Month

1. It is actually possible to survive AND function on less than 10 hours of sleep. A month ago I wouldn't have believed that, but now I know from experience it is actually true.

2. Heels aren't solely appropriate for church and formal functions. No, really, some people actually wear them EVERYDAY.

3. Your mom can't call and get you an "excused absence" when you're sick. I caught a cold the minute I stepped on the plane on Sunday and my work still thinks I should show up! Can you believe that?

4. Work doesn't necessarily end just because it's 5 o'clock.

5. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

Good News vs. Bad News

So the bad news first: I heard from Accenture the other day and my start date has officially changed from February 7th to February 21st. I'm a little bummed about that but what are ya gonna do right? Besides, my good news far out-weighs the bad.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned here or not, but I've had some frustration at my church in regards to the music ministry. I love to sing, and I really feel like that is where I am meant to serve. However, I haven't always felt like I've been given many opportunities to use my gifts in that area. My frustration stems mostly from the fact that they had never really taken the time to listen to me sing. I mean, it's one thing to listen to me sing and then tell me that you just don't think you can use me but to not even take the time to listen is a little discouraging. So, they gave notice that they were going to be having "auditions" for the praise team which totally excited me. Today was my day to go sing so I cued up a song called "How Beautiful" by Twila Paris. After a verse, the music guy stopped it and goes, "Wow that was...well, beautiful. I don't think I've ever actually heard you sing by yourself. We're going to use that in the next couple of weeks just as soon as we can tie it into a sermon." So I was super thrilled. He wants me to sing in the choir thing that they're putting together plus he's still going to rotate me into the praise team so all in all it turned out well. Just goes to show you that God will find a way to encourage you and use the gifts He has given you if you just have the patience to wait for Him.

As for Jeremy, he's been on a major movie binge lately. We've watched movies almost everyday this week which is totally fine by me because I love movies. Today was nice because it was raining outside which made it a perfect movie day. We rented Paparazzi and The Forgotten, both great movies. I slept through the second half of Paparazzi because I had to get up early this morning for my audition at church. I managed to stay awake for most of The Forgotten and then he kicked me out because he had to do homework. Apparently, he wants to get this thing called a degree and he can't do it if I don't leave him alone so he can do his homework. Crazy person.

Random thought:
I never used to be sensitive to cold. I could sleep with the windows open and 2 fans blowing in the dead of winter and be extremely comfortable. Now it's like I can't stay warm no matter how hard I try. I can be wearing shoes and socks and yet my toes still manage to get cold. Today after lunch we walked outside and I told Jeremy "I officially cannot feel my toes anymore. They're completely numb from the cold. For all I know they could have fallen off my feet and are just rolling around in the front of my shoe." He said I was being "dramatic." Pssh!