A quiet night

After work tonight, I dropped D off at the airport so he could fly back to Michigan to visit his grandparents for the next 4 days.  I can't take the time off of work right now and he's been wanting to make a trip up since he hasn't seen this side of the family since last Christmas, so off he went.  Of course in true girl fashion, I bawled my eyes out as soon as we pulled into the departures area and he tried his best to crack jokes to make me laugh.  It's not like he's not been gone before but with the work stress and everything else going on, this time is way harder on me.
On my way back downtown, I stopped into a beauty supply store to pick up new shampoo and conditioner and then made my way home to Kinny.  We've had a quiet evening so far, she's confused as to why I didn't bring dad home with me but she's now firmly planted on the couch next to me and we're watching Game 7 of the World Series.   (Go Royals!!)
We also started our online Christmas shopping tonight.  She's a pro at picking out gifts and typing my credit card info into each site, she even knows her home address.  I might leave the rest of the shopping up to her.  Afterall, she is home all day!

The other exciting news this week is this....

....after nearly 32 years as a blonde, I decided to switch it up last night at my hair appointment.  I'm not sure why I was too chicken to do this before last night.  Besides my mom, who is just having a hard time picturing me with dark hair and prefers my blonde highlights, everyone else seems to love it and so do I.

Another One Bites The Dust

It was just a few short months ago, when I explained one of the other Sales Accountants left the company and a new person was starting.  I think everyone in our group thought it would be good to have someone new with prior experience joining our team.  The past 3 months haven't really gone as planned with the new girl.  She seemed like she would just jump in and be able to pick up most of what we do on a daily basis since she had worked in the industry before but after the first month and asking question after question and then the same questions day after day, I knew she was struggling.  The one thing about the company we work for is that it's extremely fast paced and really, you have to come in and hit the ground running otherwise you will be miserable or working a lot of additional hours.  (Yes, I work a lot of extra time but that's because there haven't been 3 strong Sales Accountants since I started 2.5 years ago and somehow I have proven I can handle my normal job and the projects and reports necessary for upper management.)
While I was trying to get out of the office the Friday when D's family was in town, my co-worker decided that she needed to give her notice.  Now, this would have been sufficient had our actual boss been in the office but she did it via email and then decides to tell the rest of the office before our boss even has a chance to respond.  (Not good.)  On top of it being a day I'm supposed to be getting out early, she wants to sit and chit-chat to all of us about why she's leaving, when she's leaving and other BS that truly doesn't matter.  She then makes a snide comment about me not caring because I'm not sitting there chit-chatting to her and the other people about her resignation but in fact, I am working trying to get my job finished to the point where I can leave.
Trust me, I care.  I care quite a bit because her last day is October 31st, exactly 1 business day before she was supposed to close her facility for October sales and now that she'll be gone, I'm officially closing the facility she was the Sales Accountant for.  A facility that is the same size as the 4 facilities that I handle on a monthly basis.  Oh yes, I care....I care so much that I will be spending all of next weekend working so I can get everything completed in 1 days time so that we can officially close out the month and train the new person on November activity without excessively overwhelming her on the first day.

Sometimes I feel like this job should have a warning on it for all interviewees and potential new hires...don't take this job if you aren't crazy, organized and highly detailed and can't handle an extremely fast paced, on demand environment.

A Beer-filled Weekend

Last weekend, D's dad and step-mom came to visit us from Michigan.  It was the first time they've been down here since D moved here 3 years ago and actually it was their 1st visit to the city ever.  We tried to take advantage of showing them some of our favorite spots and also visit other St. Louis attractions.
They came to town Thursday afternoon and after showing them our place we were off to the historic and haunted Lemp Mansion for an evening tour.
The Lemps were well known for their brewery in the mid 1800s up until Prohibition but unfortunately the family faced a lot of tragedy and ultimately are more known for the Lemp family curse more than anything else.  This intrigued D's dad and step-mom and they wanted us to visit the Mansion with them.

I was stuck at work for most of the day on Friday (a long story for another post) so D played St. Louis Tour Guide until I could finally make my way home.  That evening we went out for pizza and for a few drinks with Andy and Amy before the guys played hockey.  D's dad hasn't seen him play hockey since he moved here so it was a treat for him to back out on the ice and playing on a team with Andy instead of against him like they did when they were kids.  The good news is that TNT shows off their skills that night and posted a huge win for the fans.

On Saturday after a quick stop in to show off the office, we decided to tour the well known St. Louis brewery, the Anheuser Busch Budweiser brewery.  In D's 3 years in St. Louis, he still had never been on a tour and I hadn't been since I was a teenager, so it was the perfect opportunity to visit the St. Louis landmark located only a few short miles from home.

D especially enjoyed the complimentary beer after completing the tour....

...and part of my complimentary beer too!

Sunday morning we had to say goodbye to our guests so they could make the 7 hour drive back home.  We had a blast hanging out with them and were so glad they made the trip down to visit us.
After seeing D's dad and step-mom off in the morning, we waited for my cousin Sam and his girlfriend to make their way downtown for the Rams-Seahawks game.  It was family day at the game for our company and D and I decided that our family football star would have fun getting to take in the game in style in a suite.

Not only that, it ended up being one of the most exciting Rams games I've ever been to and the team pulled off a huge win against the Hawks!

I'm only sad that I didn't pick them in my weekly football picks but I'll take the loss there to see my home team take down the Super Bowl champs!

After a whirlwind weekend, I was hoping the week ahead would be a calm one but soon found out, it would be another week of pure craziness and long hours....more to come on that soon.

Blinded by the Light

A year ago today I was suffering from a really bad GI infection that caused me to be hospitalized and off of work for a week.  I knew going into this week that one year ago I was battling that bad infection and was hoping that I wouldn't have to face something like than again any time soon.  While I am not hospitalized, I was faced with another medical issue this same week, one year later.  It all started yesterday morning, when I woke up I couldn't see out of my left eye.  I quickly tried to splash water into it in hopes that I just was dealing with allergies or maybe a head cold.  As the day progressed, my eye continued to turn more and more red and my eye and eyelid felt on fire, I tried everything possible to make the pain stop -- warm cloth, ice pack, tea bags, a home-made eye patch.  You name it, I tried it.  Nothing helped, so this morning, I decided to call the eye doctor just a few blocks from the office and see if I could get an emergency appointment.  Luckily, I was able to score a 9 am appointment, so I got as much as I could done at work and then headed to my appointment.  Thankfully, my boss gave me the rest of the day off just after looking at my eye when I went to explain that I needed to leave for a bit. Actually she told me, she couldn't even look at me with my horrible looking eye but in the nicest way possible.
Come to find out, I have a severe case of corneal infiltrates caused by my excessive wear of contact lenses.  I was given an antibiotic and told to take the rest of the day off from work by the optometrist. I was also told that I need to come back in tomorrow and Friday and probably also next week for further follow up and I can't wear contacts for at least 2 weeks.  That would be okay but since I always wear my contacts, I don't have a pair of glasses with a current prescription.  My glasses have a prescription from my college days. 

I had been talking to D about getting in to the eye doctor to update my glasses for the past month.  Unfortunately, I didn't get it taken care of before this little issue happened and I could kick myself in the butt for this right now.  I guess the one good thing to come out of this is that this is going to force me to get new glasses as now I have multiple appointments for this problem.
For the time being though, if you see me walking down the street, you may want to point me in the right direction because who knows what I can or can't see.