Asshattery & other headaches

Migraine, thy name is Wednesday. (If you heard me cursing and throwing things at work today, this is what that was all about. )

Throbbing Pain 1: BGSU not understanding the logistics behind paying for school using GI Bill. They want their $$ before the semester even starts, while the Army College Fund wants proof that the student is in class and getting decent grades before issuing said $$. And then when the school doesn't deposit your check until 3 weeks later and you have 4 major payments come out of your account within 2 days of each other, you have a problem.

Throbbing Pain 2: Bosses who are skilled in the art of micro-management... and not just micro-management, but last-minute micro-management. I'm not a fan of speaking in front of groups, so I've had my presentation ready for about a week and I've been reading over it every day and tweaking my talking points to flow better. I had gotten good feedback from my immediate boss and was feeling confident, and then had all the wind taken out of my sails in the course of a day, and not just any day but the day before my presentation, by my boss's boss who suddenly has all sorts of criticism and apparently no time to listen to what I have to say about it. He wasn't mean about it so much, but he kept talking over me when I would try to explain, so it was really frustrating.

Throbbing Pain 3: While I did get my car back in a timely fashion yesterday, the mere fact that I had to take it back to the shop again gives me an aneurism. And if Throbbing Pain 1 wasn't so insistent a pain, I would probably have gone to the Honda dealership after work today to test drive a Fit.

But, I had an "ultimate grilled cheese & chicken wrap" for dinner (cream cheese, swiss, cheddar, chicken & BBQ sauce... only thing that would make it better is bacon) and I'm going to watch some TV & spend some quality time on the couch with my hubby, and forget about it all for a while.

So bad, yet so good!

I gave in to my temptations today.

I bought a pack of Twinkies out of the vending machine.

Now I'm gonna barf.

I did take a moment to read the "Nutrition" label (if one can call any aspect of a Twinkie "Nutritious") and learned that a 2-pack of Twinkies has 290 calories, 80 of which from fat. Less than you would get from eating three 100-Calorie Packs in one sitting, which I have done.

I am soooo bad at dieting!!

I did find that the "Go Wraps" from Wendy's are pretty good though, enough to make me not hungry without making me full (or so full that I spend the rest of the afternoon in a food coma, which is what usually happens).

Windy City

I’ve never been to Chicago before, yet I’m sitting in my hotel room playing around on myspace. I got into town at about 10:30 a.m. & spent the better part of the day at the Art Institute, which turned out to be a farther walk from the hotel than anticipated, so my feet are tired & I just want to chill for a bit before dinnertime.

The train ride was pretty good, despite the dude behind me with his shoes off & the delays outside Chicago that held us up about 40 minutes. I slept for a while which was nice, but I have a kink in my neck because of it. Also I noticed that neighborhoods near the tracks, no matter what town, are shitty neighborhoods. There was occasionally a nicer house, surrounded on all sides by trash. Sad, & kind of ruined the view.

Tomorrow is day 1 of the "Sustainable Manufacturing Summit" and I hope it turns out to be good. Speakers from GE, Toyota, & a few other big names should make it either really interesting & motivating, or horribly dry & boring, OR completely unrelated to what I need to learn. At this point, who cares?

My hotel is pretty nice, for being one of the less expensive places downtown (most hotels from the Mag Mile down through The Loop run $300+ a night so finding one at the south end of the Loop for less than $200 was amazing, and a Best Western so it’s actually not bad). My cab ride from the train station was absolutely terrifying though, I swear this dude was doing 55 through city streets! The only bummer is I’m too far from the shopping district to walk... which is maybe a good thing?

Have a business dinner tonight that I’m not really looking forward to, I’d much rather chill by myself. Think I’ll take a nap beforehand though.

Spring fever

I finished reading a great book the other day. Not my typical "escape literature" and not something that everyone would be interested in, but it was helpful to me so I will share it... Every Woman's Marriage is the name of it. It made me feel better, that there are some women out there who are a lot worse than I am at being a good wifey, but it also pointed out where my mistakes are coming from so I know now what it is I need to change instead of just blindly saying "I suck at being married." So it's good for me.

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The job is going pretty well. There are days when I just can't focus on the research aspect, and I really want to establish some more interactive projects. Right now the goal is the HDExpo (Hospitality Design trade show) in Vegas in May. I'm giving a presentation at our yearly sales meeting which is exciting, and we're re-vamping the "green" story with that same deadline in mind, so that's sort of what I'm working on now, but it certainly doesn't take up all of my time. I'm heading to Chicago next week for a seminar which I'm really excited about... I definitely think it'll be better than the last one I went to even though the weather is going to be crappy over there! But it'll be an adventure... I'm taking the train, which is a first for me, and it's also my first time in the Windy City, plus the seminar is being held at the Art Institute so hopefully I'll get a chance to walk around there. The only real downer to this job is that I feel really isolated from my friends at work. Okay, so I'm not back in the side hallway with Heidi (thank god, she lacks vocal volume control), but I still feel like I'm losing touch with my pals over in Sales/Customer Sat & it's a bummer! No offense to my Accounting pals.

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Jake is still being a jackass every now & then. He'll get bored & eat something, thankfully not anything vital like shoes or furniture, it's usually food packaging or tupperware that he pulls out of the sink. Although today I was ticked because he ate a present for someone that had been sitting on the coffee table. Totally not food related in any way so I don't know what motivated him to eat it! Now that the weather is clearing up a little (although it was freezing today!) we'll be able to walk him again & wear him out a bit. B wants to start jogging again, so he can take doggy-nuts with him.

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I'm getting motivated about our home-decor projects! I painted the stairway last weekend (it was red before & still is red, but it needed to be re-done quite badly), and next I want to put a coat of primer on my fancy kitchen island that B made me for Christmas, then paint it. We have quite a list of projects... paint the guest room (a nice shade of blue that B's dad bought then decided he didn't like, yay free paint!), strip the wallpaper & re-paint my hobby room (no more two-tone teal, hello "Ducky" yellow, also free paint leftover from Megan's nursery!), strip the border & re-paint the dining room a nice olive(goodbye ass-peaches & assorted fruit), finish trimming out the back door, build & plant our vegetable garden, do something (anything!) to the drab kitchen cabinets... If I'm still motivated after all that I might paint the upstairs hall & the master bedroom too (they're both a peach color that isn't really that bad, but there are a lot of holes in the walls leftover from before we moved in). And yes, I realize that we don't even own this house, but we really enjoy doing this kind of thing & it's not costing us much, plus we agreed to do what we could to improve the value of the house while we lived here to justify the mondo discount we get on rent. So I get to scratch my decorating itch a bit.

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Not much else happening really!

When you go to Vegas...

... make sure you check to see if your hotel offers a shuttle to/from the airport. The cab was fine, & not like I was paying for it anyway thanks to petty cash, but the friggin line for cabs at the airport was ridiculous. It's not even that there were many people in line.... just that you had to hike through a mile of chained-off barriers to get to the front. And when you're dragging a 40-pound duffel bag (because your mondo wheeled suitcase that's a dream to roll around was waaay too big to take on a 4-day trip) and hauling a 50-pound laptop bag (because your cell phone "new every two" deal doesn't kick in until December so the fancy smart-phone you want has to wait, and until then the only way to access your daily dose of myspace is to take your Toshiba Brick with you... and really, the guy on the plane with the brand-friggin-new Macbook Air was just rubbing it in!), walking becomes painful very quickly.

*sigh*

Otherwise, if you DO ever go to Vegas and have beau-coup bucks to blow on a hotel stay, go for the Green Valley Ranch Resort & Spa in Henderson. It's a ways from the strip but not away from civilization (surrounded by high-end shopping, whoo hoo! Do you think I could get a Pottery Barn sofa home with me?), and it's gorgeous. It's only been here for about 3 years, and the pool area is straight off CSI: Miami with the fancy cabanas, palms, waterfalls & stuff. Too bad (a) I look fat in a bikini now and (b) I forgot to bring it anyway... oh and (c) I'm here on a work related trip. Gah.

And why put Grey Goose vodka out on the tabletop where it's staring me in the face? Why not put it in a cabinet where it's $30-something price tag isn't making me want to throw the half-sized bottle out the window?

I have a massage scheduled for Thursday evening after the conference is over... but I'll probably need another one after hauling my bag back through the maze that is the airport here. I've heard that they make the casinos in Vegas big & hard to navigate on purpose so you're compelled to gamble when you get lost, but seriously, in the airport? That's a bit of overkill.