bye bye Michael

Well yesterday was my contractor's last day. It was sad to see him go. I enjoyed working with him. I couldn't have asked for a better contractor. He was very dedicated to getting everything done and put in a lot of extra hours.

I'm not really sure if management is really my cup of tea though. I think I prefer being a worker bee. Doug has been covering for his manager this week and it has been pretty hellish. He is always getting calls all hours of the night and weekends to do stupid stuff for upper management or to join conference calls every time something goes wrong. Being in management requires a lot of patience and having to be responsible for other people. It wasn't too bad with one person but I can't imagine managing a whole team unless they were all a bunch of Michael's. ;)

Oh and to top it off, as a goodbye present he got me two tickets to the Snow Patrol concert in Feb and left me his fancy shmancy mouse. Wasn't that sweet? I hope he enjoys his time off and is able to find another job when the time is right.

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Christmas

My Christmas was pretty mellow this year. No one came to visit and I didn't go visit anyone. Lots of presents were opened and there's still some late presents trickling in from the family.

I put together a wishlist every year which Doug and my family go off of. I decided to start doing it this way because I used to always end up getting a bunch of stuff I didn't really want. So this has worked out pretty well until this year... I ended up getting two of a bunch of stuff. Doug and my family didn't communicate on what they were getting me so I ended up with two PC tuner cards, two down comforters, and two sets of frying pans. I also got a 19" flat screen monitor, backup drive, more wax for making candles, and a few sweaters.

We had an outage in our network at work and Doug ended up getting called just about when we were going to eat. He ended up having to stay on a conf call for hours. Nice timing, but he was able to eat dinner a the table I set with my new china I got last year so it ended up working out ok. I took a pic of the dinner table with my cell phone. We had turkey breast, shrimp, salad, and asparagus.

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Lucky

I somehow lucked out this past week. We had the worst storm in decades, breaking wind records, come through the area taking power out to over 1.5 million people. Hundreds of thousands are still without power, including several people I work with and Doug. Temps are in the 30's and I feel bad for those people who have no power, no heat, no hot water, etc. And now people are dying and getting sick from carbon monoxide poisoning cuz they're bringing their bbq's inside the house to cook and keep warm.

The worst part of the storm hit on Thursday night. Power was pretty much out everywhere on Friday morning. Some people managed to make it to work and ended up having to go back home because the doors were locked and there was no power. I feel bad for those people that drove in. It probably took them a while to get there with all the lights out and roads closed all over.

I lost power off and on Thursday night but it was back up when I woke up Friday. I took Friday off so I didn't even have to think about trying to go in to work. I woke up to no cable and no cell phone service though. The cable service came back later that afternoon and cell service came back saturday afternoon.

I'm not looking forward to the commute to work tomorrow morning. I did find out we do have power now at work but there are several roads closed that we normally take to work so we are going to have to take an alternate route which I'm guessing will take at least 2 hours. If I didn't have to drive the vanpool tomorrow I would work from home.

Here's just one of many pics I've seen of the storm damage:


More can be found on King 5's website

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I thought this was pretty funny. The Seatac Christmas holiday tree fiasco made it on the Colbert Report.

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RIP James Kim

Doug and I watch CNET on Tivo every week. They give reviews of hot gadgets and stuff. James Kim was a senior editor and always had a segment on the show where he would talk about kewl new electronic gadgets like phones and mp3 players. He was visiting the Pacific Northwest with his family and they got stranded on their way back home. His family was found but he was not. He left the family to seek help but ended up getting lost and was not found for days. He left a trail of clothes and other items behind to help searchers find him but it was too late. He was found dead. Rest in Peace James Kim!


Here's the story .

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Lotion is made

I finally got around to making some lotion to go along with the soaps I've been making. Wow is making lotion a lot easier. There may be more stuff that goes into it but it is much easier to cleanup afterwards and you don't have to wait a long time for it to cool like soap. I made one batch and have enough containers to make two more before Christmas. My first batch is Lavender and I put a bit of patchouli in it as well. I really like the way it turned out. I have 2 oz jars and 4 oz bottles of it. I put them up on my store but I am probably going to end up giving most of them away for Christmas presents. So if you want any you better buy them quick cuz they are going to be gone soon. I plan on making more after Christmas though. I just need to get some more jars.

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