Black Hole

It's a black hole up here, I swear. I'm writing posts, hit "publish" and then, BAM, they're gone.

Because clearly, it can't be that I'm neglecting The Anticipated Best Summer Ever.

Here's what I'm going to do for this post. Instead of my favorite posts, which pick on something that happened and make fun of it or espouse on it or whatever.

Instead, I'm going to write this like an e-mail catching up with an old friend. Because there is lots going on, and here's what it all is!

I've mentioned it a few times, but I'm in training for the American Odyssey Relay Race at the end of April. Here's the deal with it: teams of 12 (two vans, holding six runners each) will cover 200 miles from Gettysburg to Washington, D.C., in about 30 hours. One person from the team will always be running, including straight through the night.

Melissa has been doing an incredible job of getting this all together and organizing everyone. Twelve people is a lot to keep track of! I have the second-easiest leg, and it sounds like it'll be easy - I run 4 miles, then 4 miles, then 4.9 miles.

Piece of cake. Except for the whole, sitting in a van for 9 hours in between each run. Cramping up. Not eating. Not sleeping. But most definitely smelling, and smelling the others around me.

So I'm confident it'll be incredibly physically (and mentally) challenging!

I'm also gearing up for Lasik surgery soon. The above-mentioned race is throwing a kink in the scheduling of the surgery because I have to wear my glasses for two weeks before the surgery and then can't do strenuous exercise (like running) for two weeks after. I don't really want to wear my glasses for the race, but I also can't take off two weeks in April with no running as I'm prepping for the relay.

I'm doing a bunch of pre-op screenings next week (and therefore have been wearing my glasses for the past two weeks and I have re-discovered anew why I so desperately want to have Lasik!), but then it looks like the actual surgery won't be until mid-May. And it's all my fault. I've been talking about doing this for a long time, Mike finally agreed that in 2009 I could do it (with our left-over HSA money from 2008), and it took me until the end of February to get going. If I'd just started these screenings in January, I'd be 20/20 by now!

Further scheduling difficulties for the surgery are that I'm out of town for the last half of March. I start the tax seminar travel. Nine seminars in nine cities in two weeks. So if you're in Raleigh, Boston, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Arlington, Oakland, Denver, Vegas, or San Marcos, please join us! Drop me a line and I'll get you registered for free. Pass the information on to friends - please!!!

I'm extending the tax seminar travel by a few days and going from San Marcos to Austin, Texas, for a 10K race with some colleagues and their families. I've never been to Austin, although heard lots of stories from said colleagues and I'm really looking forward to that!

Meanwhile, the move at work is getting closer. We now have a moving date, which just happens to be... the day before I start the two weeks of travel. I'm sure that'll go smoothly.

Of course, I'm not planning on taking it easy in April. We are in the middle of scheduling a trip to Miami over Easter weekend for a friend's 30th birthday. Then back to Raleigh for a charity gala with Terry and Sara. Then the relay race...

Oh, this is fun! Because of all this travel, Patricia is giving me a stuffed animal to take on the trips and take photos of to send her at school. As part of her lessons for the kids. Yay! I'm so excited. In fact, it's kind of silly how excited I am. I just think this'll be fun!

Ok, that's the big stuff! Trying to lay low this weekend, catch up on some work, and head into the office to pack before the move. I'm scheduled to fly to Dallas on Monday morning, but now they are calling for a big snow storm Sunday night to Monday morning. I need to be in Dallas for Tuesday morning, but wanted to be there early on Monday because Keith (you all know him from comments on this blog!) is doing a Washington Post chat live at 10 a.m. Central, 11 a.m. Eastern. I'd love to be in the office when he does that. Otherwise, I'll refuse to get on a flight until after the chat is over so I can check it out online!

So, Barb, and anyone else with small biz tax questions, go submit a question!)

Might get sidetracked a bit this weekend, though. Mike's really not feeling well (he does horrible with drastic temperature changes, like how this week it went from 30 to 60 and today back down to 30). I feel bad because he took the second part of the CPA exam yesterday and slept horribly the night before and was all cough-y during it. He was up at 5:30 a.m. this morning coughing (so guess who else got up at 5:30 a.m.?). I made him some tea and honey, put on Ratatouille, and he's back asleep now.

Me? I'm off to the gym! I hope this post was minimally interesting!

Caps v Pens game

David, Lauren, Mike and I went to the Capitals v. Penguins hockey game this afternoon.

The four of us (along with four others) are now officially Caps season ticket holders for the 2009-2010 season. (see this post for how I got duped into that one!) But today, we were outfitted in Penguins gear.

As my nearest and dearest friends know, I am a HUGE hockey fan.

Yeah, not really.

Anyway, the four of us didn't sit together. David had his firm's tickets, which included a parking pass. Mike drove the four of us together, and as we were pulling into the Verizon Center parking garage, either Mike or David joked about how everything at the Verizon Center was sponsored by Lexus, and we were driving a Lexus. Hardy, har, har.

This quit being funny and started being awesome, when we were crawling through the parking lot, anticipating having to drive deeper and deeper down to get a spot behind all the other cars in front of us, when an attendant waves to us, walks over to an empty space that has an orange cone in front of it, removes the orange cone, and indicates for us to back into the space. Right next to the elevators. On the first floor of parking.

We've got no idea what's going on, but who are we to argue?


Until we step out of the car, and there is this sign:

We head into the game, and before we split up into our seats (David and Lauren all posh and comfortable, me and Mike, not so much!), Mike and David want to swing by where their season tickets are for next season.

Here they are:

(ok, not the best picture, but you get the idea!)

A quick "hi!" to Lori and Mark, long-time season holders whose seats we won't be far from, and then up to watch the game.

And, well, that's all I'll say about that. Let's just say that a screaming and upset husband doesn't do much to foster my love of the game.

;-)

Snuggled

I wish I could be as warm and snuggly as Goldie looks!

Oops

It's not possible a week has gone by without a post!!

I have a bit of an excuse this week. On Tuesday morning I got a call from the higher ups asking me to fly down to Dallas that afternoon for a few days. Nothing like three hours notice before getting on a plane!

All great, though - I'm thrilled to be asked to come down here and be a part of some exciting stuff that's going on. And get some good work done, answers to questions I've been waiting on, discussing new ones, and all the things I generally miss while being up in DC and away from half the staff.

It's so great all the independence we get in the DC office, but I certainly miss all the water cooler talk because we aren't in one location.

Like setting up the big boss on Twitter yesterday morning. Oh, that was fun.

So I just wanted to say a quick "hi!" and thanks for putting up with me!

The elevators

I just received this postcard in the mail this afternoon. It's from the Villa, the retirement home my grandmom is in.

You remember, the one that we donated to in December, and then grandmom called to thank Mike?

Anyway, if you can believe this, it is the ongoing problem at the Villa that the elevators don't work. Which really isn't a big deal, because it's not like 95% of the population is in wheelchairs or anything.

So every time we go to the Villa, I'll opt to go right to the stairs instead of even trying the elevators. One is always down, so you wait for the only working one. Which takes about 45 seconds between each floor when it's moving, but is stopped for about 2 minutes on each floor because of slow-moving people going in and out.

And since you would consider me one of the 5% that doesn't need a wheelchair when I'm visiting, I take the stairs.

Still, the elevator thing bothers me, on principle.

When we (yes, WE) sent in the donation in December, we specified it to go to the elevator fund. The elevators are so bad, there is an elevator fund designation on their donation form.

Hence, the invitation that arrived today.

Can you read what it says?

Join us

Sunday, March 15, 2009

for the blessing of the Elevators

They are blessing the elevators.

And they capitalized Elevators. Because they are so precious and they are so happy to have working ones, the deserve capitalized treatment.

I don't know why, but this just cracked me up.

The negotiator

Monday night, Mike was the ultimate negotiator.



I had been mentioning that I really wanted to go to Raleigh this year to attend a charity gala with Terry and Sara in April. They go every year, and have invited us for the past few.

It seemed the timing never worked out for us. This year, though, I have a new dress to wear to the gala (see right!). And the dress is hanging in my closet just screaming to be let out again.

I e-mailed Mike on Monday after looking up flights and told him what we were looking at if we flew, or if just I went down, or we could drive.

So Monday night over dinner, Mike says, "Is this something you really want to go to?"

And I said, "yes!"

And he said, "You really want to go? Because it's not my first choice of how to spend a weekend. But if you really want to go, we can go."


(If the italics didn't do it there, he was very much acting like putting on a tux to stand next to THAT ... look at the picture one more time ... was a sacrifice.)

So I said, "Yes!" again.

He says, "Ok, we'll go."

Beat one, beat two, beat three...

"So, I was thinking about buying a share in season tickets to the Capitals next year, what do you think?"

I swear, it was a set-up.

Wine tasting

Met Jenelle this afternoon at Food Matters for a Bordeaux wine tasting.

We had been once before to a tasting at Food Matters, and said afterwards that we'd make ourselves regular - we'd do one at least once every other month. Seven months later, this is the first we've made it back!

I wanted to go in the hopes of finding one little tid-bit of information on Bordeaux's. I know nothing. I was hoping for the piece of advice David had given me a while back on Pinot's ("If you don't recognize anything on the menu, buy the one from Willamette Valley, Or.").

Food Matters is very generous with their tastings, particularly with the food served.

(This was my first plate. And not my last.)

They do suggest an item of food with each wine, but it's all served at once, so we really just dug into all of it.

We were set up to taste 4 wines:

One white Bordeaux, two reds, and a white desert. We dove right into the tasting. Here's me trying to decide if I like the wine:

Okay, that's not really what I was deciding. I was actually contemplating how many bottles to buy.

I ended up with four bottles - two of the white, one of one of the reds, and the desert. Jenelle bought one of each of the whites. Here's our booty:

Such a large booty put me in a bit of a pinch, since we had walked to the tasting, about 30 minutes from my house. I hadn't counted on having to carry bottles for the walk back!

So we hopped on the bus instead. A quick trip down Duke Street for me, but a bit longer for Jenelle! Thanks for making the long trip, Jenelle!

I require stuff when I fly

(Here’s a side note before I even start this post. I contemplated writing a second work post today, because I’m on a flight home from Dallas, and am still on the high of the day. But I promised I wouldn’t talk work, and I think it’s a little obnoxious for me to scream, “I loooove my job,” ever other post.)

(But, wait, it was a big day! I’d be lying to you if I didn’t tell you I was excited about it! We’re doing lots of new stuff and I was part of the two-person team that did a four-hour long presentation to the board on a lot of it. I think the presentation rocked, if I do say so myself. And the board seemed pretty into it! Even the social media stuff. Most had never heard of Twitter, but when I threw up there three … yes, THREE… awesome interactions with some of our 140 followers in the first two days of being on Twitter, they perked up! So, I’m still riding high from it all.)






But I won’t post about work. Like, at all.

Instead, I’ll tell you about how much stuff I require when I fly. Because it’s a lot. I need to pare (pair?) it down a bit. Ok, a lot.

I have my Bose noise-canceling headphones. Totally frivolous and unnecessary (redundant), but really, really nice to have! Right now I’m listening to Coldplay and can’t hear a darn thing around me outside of Viva la Vida. The headphones aren’t really heavy, but they are rather bulky.

I have my laptop. And we all know it’s less than 3 pounds. But then the power cords add a bit. And while my work bag (which you all know I heart with a true passion) is oh-so-stylish, it doesn’t exactly have the most supportive straps.

So then I also need a magazine (rarely, with that other stuff, will a book fit in my bag also), my wallet, camera (I need to start pulling that sucker out a bit more, don’t I?), my Ziploc baggie of liquids, a bottle of water (even in first class I’m not that trusting of water on an airplane), and heaven forbid any work materials that are too important to the meeting I’m going to to risk checking, and it adds up!

I wonder if I didn’t travel as much as I do, if I’d require less stuff, or more. I mean, I know exactly what I need and what I don’t need now. I know I can get away with a particular length magazine, or that carrying snacks isn’t really necessary, or that I can’t do without a wrap for my shoulders (typed bitterly as I sit here, with an airline blanket around my shoulders, trying not to think so much about that, since I forgot one this trip).

But maybe if I didn’t travel as much I wouldn’t even own the headphones, or work wouldn’t have furnished me with a laptop (or two, whatev) to carry.

I just hope that I’m efficient with it all. It’s all got a place, and I still think, with having to take the laptop and liquids out of my bag at the security checkpoint, I’m faster than most.

But my shoulders and back do start to hurt from lugging it all around. So maybe I’ll cut back on some of the stuff for the next trip.

Or maybe I’ll just get a massage.

Work?

So I'm not really sure if this counts as a post about work.

It's kind of about work. But not really about the people at work.

Well, yeah, it's about the people at work. But it's not bad things about the people at work.

For example, it's not like I'm writing that I'm really mad because some new woman on our floor keeps peeing on the seat and not wiping it off. In an office building. (And for the record, I am really mad about that, because it's true. But it's not a colleague, so, again, not really about work.)

But, really, this is all about work.

I had planned to write about our new half-bath in the downstairs room. Also about watching the Superbowl over at David and Lauren's. And I need to fill you in on training for the American Odyssey Relay Race.

But as I sit down to update this blog, there's really something else on my mind, and it's work.

I kind of alluded to it last week. We're working on a social media project at work. It's a huge project, because, really, there's no end to social media. You have a Facebook profile, then a group, then friends, then networks... then you jump over to another social network and the process starts over.

We've been talking about doing this for what feels like ages. And talking and talking and planning and coming up with processes, and to-do's and ...

And now we're up. Today. February 3rd. It's, like, we're out there.

People are responding, which is good. Great, even. Fantastic! 61 followers on Twitter in 4 hours. I don't know for sure, but I think that's pretty good!

But there's that possibility that people might say something bad. Or comment in a negative way. We say we're prepared for that, with a plan of action, and a hierarchy of what comments can be dealt with by staff and which ones need to be forwarded up the chain of command.

Still. Someone's gonna say something bad. And that's going to really bother me!

So here I am, it's 10:12 p.m. on a night where I swore I'd be in bed super-early. Mike just walked in the bedroom (where I'm posting) and I shouted out, "61! We're up to 61!"

He responded, "Are you going to bed, or are you going to watch your Twitter followers like the stock market?"

I'm really sorry that I haven't done the posts I have been planning. But, this is what's on my mind, so this is what you get!

(And by the way, if you want to help a girl out! Follow NASEtweets or maureenpetron on Twitter, and join the NASE groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. And, by the way, when the blog is public, I'll ask you to add that to your reader, too! Thanks!)