Rochelle's Blog ::: Subtitles Included

It’s been a long week. I was sick for part of it, but healthy for most of it. While at work, I worked hard, and barely had a free moment to tweet or play or pay a bill.

TV was great this week. Loved The Office, with Jim and Pam’s baby. So adorable. I’ve watched the episode twice already. Also, for the past year, I’ve been trying to catch my friend up on Lost so we could theorize about the show. As of yesterday, he is now completely caught up. It’s fun! We’ve never been on the same page, because I’ve always been so ahead. I’ve now seen every episode twice, which definitely helps. And boy-oh-boy does watching Season Five over again really put things into perspective.

If you haven’t heard, Sunday is the Oscars. Usually, I try my best to see everything that’s nominated, but it’s been hard to do so this year, particularly because of the Olympics. It also doesn’t help that there are 10 freaking Best Picture nominees. I hate that. Before the big show, I’ll be watching “An Education,” “District 9,” “The Hurt Locker,” and “A Serious Man.” Leaving just “Precious” and “Up.” I’m also for the first time ever watching all of the Live Action Shorts that are nominated, because Comcast has them bundled into one movie for $2.99. I always have to guess on my Oscar ballot for that category, this year I can actually make an educated guess!

Anyway, not much else to report. Here’s a couple of new pictures of the kitties.

Persephone trying to blend in.

Callie on her favorite red blanket.

Oh my blog, I’ve been away. That’s because it’s been one completely crazy week.

First…I turned 31!

And here is my birthday portrait, taken with my new lens.

If you look into my eyes you will see that they are actually completely tired. Here’s why…

I tend not to go to work on my birthday. In fact, in most cases, I tend not to be in Colorado on my birthday. But this year, just staying at home and going to work seemed like a great idea. I guess some things were  meant to bed.

Monday

Still reeling from a fabulous Valentine’s Day and excited about my new lens, Monday started great and stayed great all day. It was a really easy day at work. I got to play with camera and snap some pictures, while having a bagel at the UMC.

And then Mike’s daughters came by to bring us all the girl scout cookies they had sold us. Oh my gosh, there was a new buzz around the building, probably a sugar high.

That night at home, I watched massive amounts of Olympic coverage. Man, I love the Winter Olympics. While there, I snapped some pictures of the cats.

It as my last day of 30 and it was pretty awesome.

Tuesday

Isn’t it always strange to wake up on your birthday? There’s a few seconds when you don’t realize that it’s actually your birthday and then it sets in. That’s exactly what happened. And then I realized that it was almost impossible for me to get up and get going, even though I had an 8:30 meeting. That’s where my tiredness began.

The morning started off a little tense at work with some meetings, after all that I barely had time to sit down at my desk and thank people on Facebook and Twitter for all their birthday wishes before I was being carted off to a fun birthday lunch with some of my co-workers. Right after that, I was in three more meetings, all of which I struggled to stay awake in, and not for a lack of caring. I had no explanation for it.

After work, I rushed off to celebrate some more. I went to see “Up In The Air” right after work, which was quite a strange movie to see regarding work a day before things got strange at my own job. And then with Marissa and Johnny in tow, we went to 3 Margaritas at like 8:00 to eat dinner and so I could wear the big sombrero. Sadly, none of the pictures worked out. Except for this cute one of Johnny and Marissa:

And then it was back home for cake and presents.

I could barely stay awake by this point, and so I crashed pretty soon afterwards. It was a good birthday.

Wednesday

As soon as my birthday goodness ends, it begins for my dad. I love that his birthday is the day after mine. My day started out all right, but then things got a little strange. Basically I found out there was a re-org on the horizon and I was somehow part of it, but my part wasn’t revealed until Thursday morning. I was pretty stressed the rest of the day, trying to guess what it could be. That night I went home and got in bed and watched the Olympics.

Thursday

This day was devoted to understanding my part in the reorganization. It was a day of highs and lows. I was confused, depressed, thrilled, curious…everything.

Friday

Another day of re-org attention with lots of meetings interspersed in between. By the end of the day I had much more clarity about the situation and felt so much more hopeful. Change is really hard. But once I could understand the decisions that were made and understand the vision, it was way easier and even exciting! I was able to provide my feedback and recommend tweaks to the situation. And it was nice to be heard.

I came home from work really relieved and quite frankly exhausted. After some scrambled eggs (it is Lent after all…I gave up Soda and of course meat on Fridays), I watched some of the Olympics and fell asleep at like 10, which was way earlier than I’ve gone to bed in days and days and days.

So my long week is over and I have every intention of relaxing this weekend. Monday is a new start, in so many ways.

Did you know that I’ve been blogging since 2001?  I used to pore out my heart in those old blog posts. Like the icky private stuff. Then I started a blogspot account in 2004, and developed a blog that I could share with my friends and family. After that I got new ideas and went forward in a different direction. I changed names a couple of times, and then a few years ago I switched to wordpress because of the privacy options available.

Wanting more from Wordpress, I looked into domains, and doing a wordpress.org installation that would be give me more flexibility and access to tons of free templates and plug-ins.

It’s been a good ride. And while I’m about to do a little more shifting in the coming months with my template and my domain, I decided to look at some of those 2004 posts, which is where this blog begins, and give you a little update on some of the stuff I was talking about in May 2004.

So here we go……

When I walk into work every morning I always have the feeling that people still perceive me as a student. Perhaps it is my “casual Friday is everyday!” attire or my young demeanor.

Not the case anymore. At 30, people can see that I don’t fit in with the student body. Also…I get ma’am’d like crazy these days.

I hate Quark. If only QuarkXPress wasn’t the frontrunner of desktop publishing.

Good news for me, Quark was surpassed by InDesign a few years ago.

I made the mistake of eating half of a low-carb bagel and now I feel like yakking! So nasty.

Eww! I can’t believe I ever ate low-carb bagels. That was probably the last one I ever had.

I spent most of my weekend designing a new web site. It’s called Nine*Poems Creative Outlet, www.ninepoems.com. It is just for fun, but hey if I make a couple of bucks, that’s cool too.

Ha! Even back then I couldn’t resist new websites. Well as you can see, that old creative outlet was retired and you are currently on ninepoems.com. Funny thing is that I’m actually working on something to transition away from ninepoems.com. More to come on that later.

I wonder if my crafty-ness will ever wear off. That’s all I want to do. I go through phases I guess. This happens every now and again, and then it’s back to books, or some other thing to occupy my time.

No update required. Still the same.

I bought some new fonts today, hooray! Of course I had to pick up stuff for other people too, like a Tungsten C and some canned air.

The key part of that text is the Tungsten C. That’s an old Palm device. We thought it was the bees knees. I’m sure one day, I’ll laugh at my iPhone as archaic.

What’s your blogging story?

I have this lovely plant that I inherited from my old boss when she quit. Sad she didn’t want to take it with her. I think maybe she had inherited it too. I took over it’s care, and I’ll be honest with you, I’m not the best plant owner, as you’ll see later in this post.

Well…over the past eight years it’s had it’s good days and it’s bad days. Mostly because I forget to water it. Poor thing. There was a really great period of time when I used to share an office with one of my student assistants. She had tons of plants and so she kept her eye on this little guy too.

Since then, I’ve been up in my own office and the plant just chills in the window. I would water every now and again and it was doing pretty well. Then a couple of months ago I noticed something odd. Not only did my plant look amazingly alive and well, but there was a mysterious bottle of water next to it.

Ok….

I figured I must have placed it there. I am notoriously bad at bringing drinks into my office and letting them fester.

But I wasn’t sure. So I left it there to see what would happen.

Sure enough, the water in the bottle would deplete and then I’d come in the next day and it would be refilled!

So somebody, I don’t know who, is sneaking into my office to water my plant. I’ve asked around and there are no answers. Perhaps it’s the cleaning staff? But I sort of doubt it. They are are really short staffed and just overwhelmed. Perhaps it’s a secret watering gnome?

Maybe it’s my plant? Could it have magical powers?

Anyway, I know there’s got to be an explanation about it, but truthfully I want to stay in the dark. I love coming in each day to see the water bottle and my very healthy plant. I feel like the answer may disappointment me.

So if you’re out there secret plant waterer…THANK YOU!

And since we’re talking about plants, I thought I would come full circle with the Bamboo saga. Read this post to familiarize yourself…

Basically, Amanda got me the bamboo as an engagement present. The plant thrived, until Brian and I broke up, and then it dwindled. Mostly because the cats kept getting at it. So I brought it to my office and tried to revive it, but there was no hope. It was gone.

So I kept the dead plant around (am I a hoarder?) and decided that once my divorce was final I would put the plant to rest. How dramatic is that? Sure enough, I somehow remembered that little idea, and so the day after I got my divorce papers I did just that. Goodbye bamboo. I think I’ll replace you with another bamboo.

Or this post could have been titled “My Great Photography Fail.”

A long, long time ago…2003-2004ish, maybe, I hired my first real student assistant, Andy. He was a bit of a non-traditional student, who had gone half way through college and then joined the Peace Corps and did good deeds (and got Malaria. Twice.). When I hired him, he was back from his dutiful stint and trying to finish up his degree. We had good times, and we had bad times, as I tried to figure out my footing as a supervisor, which is something I continue to struggle with at times.

Anyway, he graduated and moved away with his girlfriend Kerry, who is now his wife, to New Haven so she could go to Yale for graduate school. These days, they’re living in Oklahoma. He’s a firefighter and has his own web design business, and she works for the parks service, or something like that.

So with all of that lead up, it’s probably obvious who I went out with last night. Andy made some strong connections with a lot of folks at ITS while he worked for me, and even played on our softball team. So we had a group of 18 last night that filled up an entire back room at the Walnut Brewery in downtown Boulder.

Andy and Kerry were great to visit with. They seem really happy together and are such nice, down-to-earth folks that there was no awkward haven’t seen you in a long time phase to break through.

My favorite part of the night was when Andy told me that the skills he learned working for me has made a huge impact on his life and he thanked me for it. I was so delighted to hear that! I always try to help my student assistants understand that their job with me is gonna be one that they can draw from for years to come. Sadly, I’ve had a couple students who never grasped that and chose to prioritize other activities and less meaningful jobs over their position with my department. They get it now that they’ve graduated and are coming back to me often for advice and references.

The biggest disappointment was that I didn’t take any pictures. No pictures, even though I had my camera in my purse, and even though I thought about doing it a couple of times. I just didn’t have the nerve. That is something I have to get over.

So when I came home, I had a little bit of fun making a picture to showcase the moment. Yay for Photoshop, Project Runway, and HGTV to take me into the wee hours of the night.

Rochelle, Andy, and Kerry in cartoon format.

This year I attended a monthly leadership seminar and a few conferences, one I even helped organize. While all of those were helpful, they weren’t inspirational or motivational, which is sad. So it’s hard for me to pick from those. Instead, what’s been one of the best things for my job is getting serious about CSS, and I can thank a few things for that, but mostly CSS-Tricks. I did a few of the tutorials that Chris publishes and I can’t tell you how much it helped CSS really click for me. I’m really grateful for that, and it’s actually inspired me more than ever to do a better job and take the time to code pages well. Thanks Chris!

Long time no blog! Eek!

You should actually take that as a good sign though. It means that all of my writing energy has been poured into my NaNoWriMo book! Last weekend, I finally got the breakthrough I was looking for and I have seriously increased my word count. That being said, I am still massively behind, at only 19,000 words. But I’m not afraid anymore. I feel rather confident that I can get it done, and I’m quickly falling in love with my story.

Falling in love with my story makes me happy, but it makes me worry about the other novel I’ve been working on for a year. I have already invested 300 pages into it and I am still determined to finish it. I’m pretty good and splitting my attention, but I must be honest and say that I am currently obsessed with what I’m working on now and the influences that I’ve been accessing to motivate me. I have a whole new music collection that I’ve been listening to as I write that is completely different from my other book (Click here to see it). I’m not going to lie. A lot of these songs come from Grey’s Anatomy and I think that’s a great thing. There’s a reason why the show uses these songs, because it evokes emotions and allows scenes to play out very well.

So anyway, if you’re wondering what I will be doing the rest of the month, you can bet it’s writing. I’m attacking this NaNoWriMo challenge hardcore!

Speaking of hardcore…I have some other things to report.

As you may recall from 2008, I am a Twilight fan. I shouldn’t be so ashamed about this. I have a strong philosophy of “to each their own.” My hugest pet peeve is when people who have their own nerdy, fringe, or even super popular interest are critical of one of the things I like. This comes out like crazy in the workplace. I happen to work with a lot of lovable nerds that love Sci-Fi, etc., that have literally gone to conventions, and some that love playing WoW and spend a good chunk of their free time doing that. So you would think that I wouldn’t get grief when I mention Days of Our Lives right? I totally do. It’s the most fucking obnoxious thing in the world when people do that and the most hypocritical. Star Trek is not my thing. I barely tolerated the movie and thought it was only okay. I’ll never own it or go to a midnight show for the sequel (actually, I might, because I like going to midnight shows of things). But I have a friend who loves it and I would never try to bring him down. Thankfully, he doesn’t try to bring me down either and totally grasps the “to each their own” philosophy.

So if you’re about to roll your eyes at the next part of this post, because I talk about Twilight. Spare me. It takes so much more effort to hate something than to just accept that some people like it. And if you think that hating on something that is popular, especially amongst women (which I would argue is part of the problem), makes you somehow superior or cool, it doesn’t. It makes you seem insecure.

Life is hard, and so it should be celebrated when anyone can have a ton of fun loving something in the fictional/escapism realm. To-each-their-fucking-own.

Last night I went to the Twilight double feature with my sister and my friend Michelle. It was a blast! We saw Twilight at 9 and then New Moon at midnight. It was a great time and I’m going again tonight with a larger group of friends. Is New Moon the greatest movie ever? Hell no. Do I care? Not one bit. Because I have fun watching it and living in that world for two hours.

So I guess you could call me hardcore for Twlight.

But do you know what you should actually call me hardcore for….

Grey’s Anatomy.

Because even though I got home at 2:45 in the morning and I had to be at work by 9 this morning, I stayed up and watched the new episode of Grey’s Anatomy at 3 in the morning. HARDCORE.

Truthfully, I am not actually hardcore for any of these things. I personally know people that actually attend Days of Our Lives fan events, went to the New Moon premier in Los Angeles, and make montages of Grey’s. And while it’s unlikely that I’ll ever go that far, I could never discredit or mock those girls for being passionate about something they love.

So the next time you’re working hard at hating American Idol, soap operas, Nicholas Sparks, fan fiction, Star Wars, WoW, Lady Gaga, or High School Musical….remember, it’s all for fun and life is too short to stop the fun.

PS……

Grey’s turned out way better than I thought it would for Cristina and Owen last night! I hate that a love triangle is coming, but at least this episode made me pretty happy:

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.

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.