Rochelle's Blog ::: Subtitles Included

This one is oh so easy to answer. Obviously, my best trip was to London in September.

It was truly a dream come true, and something I will never forget. My sister and I talk about it nearly every time we get together. So often, we direct message each other and say “I miss London”. And let’s just say that on Thanksgiving, it pretty much dominated our table discussion, as the three of us went off about it!

One story I didn’t share on the blog was about the hot bar staff at The Swan. It’s probably why we went there night after night. Me, my mom, and my sister were boy crazy. There was one HG in particular that was Irish. He was a little bit older and oh so easy on the eyes. We basically fought over who got to go up the bar to get the next round. I really liked this one guy, who basically walked around and picked up glasses.

Now, I didn’t go on too many trips this year, not like the past. But I can’t discredit Las Vegas for my 30th birthday. We had a great time, plus I turned 30 in a fun place!

So like I mentioned in the previous post, I have been terrible, just TERRIBLE at my Project 365 this month. I mostly blame (besides myself) NaNoWriMo, which I’m using as an excuse for everything else I’m behind on (particularly cleaning). But for what it’s worth, here are some of the photos I did take:

November 14, 2009: Pumpkin Pancakes

I made these delicious Pumpkin Pancakes that I found the recipe for at This Week For Dinner. They were delicious and perfect for the season.

November 15, 2009: Penny

Just a simple shot of my dear Penny cat. She’s such a cutie.

November 17 2009: Water Spots

After a weekend of doing lots of laundry, I noticed these water spots on the ceiling. It freaked me out! So I worked from home and had a very nice maintenance man over, who told didn’t really fix anything but cautioned me from over doing it with my washer. Then he came back a few times to paint over it.

November 18 2009: Rochelle in Curly Hair Form

A self portrait, basically used to show my twitter friends about how I wore my hair curly. I can’t tell you how much I love my current haircut. It is one of the best I’ve ever had. And so for the first time ever I’m going to go back to the girl who cut it. I’ve never done that because I typically have such poor experiences.

November 19 2009: New Moon

Like I talked about in my last post, I went to the midnight show of New Moon with my sister and my friend Michelle. It was such a blast. First Twilight at 9, and then New Moon at midnight. The atmosphere was such a blast!

And that’s about it! Everything after New Moon was all about writing my NaNoWriMo novel!

I’m loving my new system of doing one Project 365 post a week. It’s really freed me up and makes me love my blog so much more! Hope you guys like it too.

Nov 01 2009: Lazy Sunday

Today was great. I watched lots of football, made delicious calzones, and started working on my NaNoWriMo. I also enjoyed the nice weather. Only in Colorado could there be a huge snowy blizzard and then lovely sunny weather soon afterwards. The cats have been loving the extra sunshine of course. Here’s Penny, stretching out in the sunshine:

Nov 02 2009: Pure Evil

So Halloween was two days ago, and once again, no trick-or-treaters came by. So I’m stuck with a bowl full of my absolute favorite candy. How good–or should I say how bad? It calls to me every time I walk by. I’ve been doing ok with only sticking to two pieces a day, but I’m afraid I’ll just give in one day and make myself sick on it. Definitely time to put it away or take it to the office to give away.

Nov 03 3009: Mystery Writer

NaNoWriMo is going pretty slow and since this is my first time writing a mystery story, it’s kind of hard for me. I’ve been watching lots of mysteries on TV and reading a lot. I love my plot so much, it’s just kind of hard to execute so far.

Nov 04 2009: Anniversary

Today is the anniversary of the 2008 election. I’m still excited and happy. Those feelings last year are still so much a part of me. I will never forget it. And even though I still feel upset and somehow the minority in my belief system when you see these rowdy loons, I remind myself of what happened last year and how a strong majority of this country came together to vote for change.

Nov 05 2009: Jinx?

I have a long and complicated history with the Denver Broncos. For the past few years, it’s been impossible for me to be a Broncos fan because I hated Jay Cutler and Mike Shanahan so much. Then a great thing happened. Shanahan was fired and Jay Cutler became a whiney bitch that got the trade he was hoping for. Good riddance a-hole. No one thought the Broncos could go anywhere and that’s how I liked it! I love an underdog. All expectations were out the window and so I embraced the Broncos once again. I saved up some money to get a new Broncos sweatshirt, and when it finally arrived, I wore it for the first time on Sunday. Well it was the first game they lost of the season. So now I’m wondering, is it a jinx? I doubt I have that much control over the universe, so I think I’ll keep wearing it anyway.

Nov 06 2009: Behind

Today I called in sick today, feeling rather lousy. I thought though that I’d get some work done on my NaNoWriMo novel, but even that seemed too hard. So I pretty much sat around and didn’t get too many words in. I did however find the most stressful desktop background. It’s a calendar that shows where my word count should be at each day. Let’s just say I’m already thousands of words behind

Nov 07 2009: Happy Acorn

Today I felt worlds better. I still didn’t do much though, but I had to get out of the house. So I got dressed and went over to Panera to work on my NaNoWriMo novel. That was a great time and I did get some words in and did some important research. But what I missed was my cute happy acorn that sits on my desk back at home. I don’t know why, but this little thing just makes me happy, which somehow inspires me to write. I mean, seriously, how could you not smile when you see it’s happy face?

So as stated in a pervious post, I’m going to be consolidating my Project 365 posts into one weekly post. Here are my photos for the remainder of last week.

Friday October 30 2009: Matthies Halloween Party

So I am still tracking down a picture of me from the party. My costume turned out great and so I’m eager to see a photo. For the time being, here’s the representation:

Saturday October 31 2009: Happy Halloween!

I helped Marissa get ready for Halloween. She was Jackie Kennedy!

So lately I’ve been wanting to post more than Project 365 entries, but I feel weighed down by the project. It is one of the harder things I’ve ever done, but I’ve somehow stuck to it (for the most part). Nevertheless, keeping up with Project 365 makes it harder for me to post other fun stuff, and I really miss that. Mostly because I feel like if I don’t post my Project 365 entry for the day (because I don’t have the pictures edited, uploaded etc), then I can’t post about anything else, for continuity sake.

I could go on and on, the point is…I’m making a change.

I will continue to do Project 365 posts, but I’m going to compile my seven photos into one post a week. That way, the rest of the week I can blog here and there about all the other crap that comes to mind.

I should have done this a lot earlier in the year, but I had to overcome the disappointment I felt over the inconsistency it would bring for the project as a whole. I’m not sure I’ll do this project again next year, but if things improve because of my new strategy, I might just give it another go.

So now I feel free to do the stuff I used to. Book reviews and silly rants, obsessions and TV talk.

Thanks to all my readers who keep up with me! You make it all worthwhile!

–Rochelle

Once again, while all the schools (and colleges) around the Boulder campus closed for the snow storm, my place of employment was open. Seriously? But it all turned out okay. There was very little traffic on the way in (since a lot of smart people stayed home anyway). And work was light and easy.

When I got home, I snapped some pictures of the snow. I love it. Especially this time of year, because it’s not terribly cold.

Quite a day!

I woke up to a ton of snow and the news that while everything around me was closed down to the snow storm, the university was still open. Typical.

And so we rushed our way to campus to get there in time for the big staff meeting where we celebrated the implementation of our fancy new identity service (the project I had been working so hard on). While private industry folks might receive some nice bonus or big perk as a way of appreciation, little old CU just can’t put out that way. So we do the best we can, and got a bigger breakfast than usual at those staff meetings, and they made a pretty fun PowerPoint presentation. It was really light hearted and filled with the best intentions.

We returned to our offices and before we knew it, we got word that the campus would be closing at 2 p.m. Awesome. So I had a little lunch, went to a little meeting, and made my way home.

So what do you do on a partial snow day? Well, you do things like:

Eat delicious cheese and crackers…

And catch up on shows…

And take cute pictures of the cats…

And take pictures of this Halloween snow…

After all that, it pretty much became a night of watching Grey’s Anatomy (I’m almost caught up, crazy! I’m in season 5), and playing on my computer. That’s how I roll on a snow day early release.

So today was a hectic day at work, full of meetings, and little time to sit at my desk. Thankfully, I had gotten a lot more sleep the night before to catch up on the lack of sleep from IdM launch.

When I got home, I just vegged out and watched TV. The snow started to come down around dinner time, right on cue. Big fat flakes started falling. It was the perfect night to stay inside with my furballs.

I got two pictures of the cats.

The first is a picture of Penny on her latest perch. I’ve been keeping these blankets near the couch (out of laziness — from when my dad was here). She loves to be up high like that.

And the second is of Persephone. I had to grab this one with my iPhone. The cool thing about this picture is that I used the Photoshop application on my iPhone to turn it B&W. It’s a pretty great tool.

I’m combining this post between the 25 and 26.

Yesterday was  the big product launch. The one that I’ve been working so hard on. It should be noted that my work on this project was a drop in the bucket compared to some of my co-workers who did amazing things to get this thing launched. It took us about five years and now it’s out there! My part of the puzzle was to make all the help web pages surrounding our new environment.

So I finished up my work around 3 and then the waiting began. The launch kept hitting bumps and the launch got pushed out. Finally at 12:40 a.m., I got the e-mail I had been waiting for! The product was launched and it was time for me to put my web pages in place. That took about twenty minutes and then I was finally free to go to bed. Of course, though, my brain didn’t shut off right away and so it was nearly two when I really fell asleep. And then before I knew it, it was 6:30 and time to get up.

Anyway, what a weekend. I truly feel like I worked for most of it (ten hours on Saturday, five hours on Sunday), and so I feel like I’m on my eighth workday in a row. I will admit that I am not in the best of moods today and I’ve already gotten quite bitchy with some of my co-workers, but that’s how it goes.

This afternoon we’re doing interviews for a new position in our communications department. I hope I don’t come off as the ragged bitchy girl. That would be bad

As for pictures, I snapped this photograph yesterday. It snowed all day off and on, but it didn’t stick.

I had planned on going into my office today to keep working on IdM, but then I decided to just make do at the home office. So I set up my laptop on my old Apple display and cozied up with a cup of coffee. The day was long. I put in about ten hours on the project today, but I got a lot done. Once again, my brain is completely fried, and I can’t believe that I still have more work to do tomorrow. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The new service launches tomorrow and I will be off the hook a little bit.

So yeah, I sat at this desk all day, except for a couple of quick meals and walk to the mailbox.