I'm not too good with getting to bed early.
It never did snow this week.
Work has been going well. I'm still not as busy as I would like to be, but that will hopefully change soon. I have been told that they are happy with me so far.
Next week, I will be in insurance class Monday through Thursday and then off to Whistler. Wheee!

I went out to dinner with Teresa tonight. We went to this place on 45th called Kabul. It's Afgan cuisine - unlike anything I have had before. I had this really tasty eggplant. Yumyum.

This weekend will be pretty busy. Tomorrow night, we are going to a going-away party. Saturday - brunch, oil change, goodwill to drop off stuff, hang out with Stine and fix her computer/maybe get a massage. Sunday is snowboarding. Sweet.

Bad me not updating yet this week. I must go to bed now. Will post tomorrow night.

I have mad amounts of food in my kitchen now. Since I'm working once again, I should be able to get back on a schedule and eat regularly again. I made vegetable stew today to take to work with me. Mmmmm...stew.

This weekend was on the mellow side. Friday night, Tony and I hung out at his place watching the evil TV. He has a tentative phone interview tomorrow and wanted to study on Saturday, so I made a trip to Target where I spent too much money that I don't have yet. But it was all on stuff I needed. I came back home and dyed my hair. I think people at work are going to be shocked because I got the impression that they think I'm a natural red head. That night, I went over to Tony's and Chris & Amanda came over. We watched Underworld. We all thought it was entertaining for a vampire/werewolf movie which was surprising since it didn't do so well in the theaters.

Now I can't decide if I'm tired. Am I tired? I shall go read and try to go to sleep. I didn't sleep so well this weekend. My body has already adjusted to getting up at 7am even when I go to bed at 2am. Like last night. I hate to think that I can't sleep in on Saturdays and Sundays. I love the sleeping in.

It is meant to snow next week. Yay!

Work has been picking up. Debbie, operations manager (and also my boss), has been out of town the past couple of days. I've gotten to use her computer and have actually been working. There are lots of processes we do when it comes to insurance coverage & agent credentialling. Is that even a word? Anyway, I've been learning all of the procedures and stuff that I will be doing. It seems easy so far - it just takes good organizational skills. I have mad organizational skills.

The commute across the bridge is weird. It doesn't take me as long in the mornings, but I think that's normal. But, the time it takes me has varied by 10 minutes which annoys me a little bit. My commute home definitely takes longer. It took me an hour yesterday! I'm really not complaining, but I do think I'm going to look into the bus and also carpooling. I really don't like to drive that much.

Oh yeah. If you watched/listened/read the State of the Union on Tuesday, Bush mentioned Association Health Plans:
"On the critical issue of health care, our goal is to ensure that Americans can choose and afford private health care coverage that best fits their individual needs. To make insurance more affordable, Congress must act to address rapidly rising health care costs. Small businesses should be able to band together and negotiate for lower insurance rates so they can cover more workers with health insurance. I urge you to pass Association Health Plans."

If it does get passed, it means the company I work for could expand nationally. Now that's some growth!

I should try and get to bed now. I'm looking forward to sleeping in this weekend :-)

p.s.- AHP Services = Association Health Plan Services

First day of work = boring
I don't have access to a computer yet. There is not much for me to do w/o a computer. We hopes to have one soon.
I filled out new employee paperwork.
I read boring insurance stuff while fighting off the dozing.
I filed a little bit.
I made some nametags.
I watched Lynn, the woman I am replacing, do some stuff.
And that was my day.
Lynn informed me that it will be kinda boring for the first few weeks...especially before i get my insurance license. The class is the first week of February.

I kinda expected it to be boring at first. Most jobs are.

I got home from work shortly after 6. I changed clothes and went over to Sandi's to pick up my portion of our bi-weekly shipment of organic produce. I came back home, started some laundry, cleaned the leafy greens, cooked up some food, talked to Jenn, finished some laundry, cooked up food for lunch tomorrow, read some emails, painted my nails and chatted with Tony. I think it's time I go to bed now.

I can say with confidence that the interview today went well. I've been home for 30 minutes and have already received a call offereing me the position. I start tomorrow at AHP Services, LLC. I "interviewed" with the whole team today - 8 people to be exact. It was pretty much them seeing if they like me and it appears that they do. They seem like a good group of people that enjoy working together and like to laugh a lot. Yeah, I think I can get along in that environment. At first, I'll be doing general administrative work and will probably take over the Excel reporting part for the team. Also, the company is growing and they are having to fill the position because they are promoting the person who is currently dong the job. It seems that there is definite growth potential there which is one of the reasons why I accepted the job. The pay isn't what I was looking for, but it is enough for me to live off of. Saving up to buy a house will just take longer and I'm OK with that.

The Atkins diet causes gout?

I never heard from Paula after Thursday which means the PM did not contact her to schedule the final interview. Maybe I just not meant to work at Microsoft.

We watched Freaky Friday and Old School last night. Freaky Friday was funnier than I expected and I can't say I liked Old School. Nope. Not at all. After talking to Tony & Amanda about comedies, I've decided that I need to watch Zoolander.

Today, Tony & I went to Half Priced Books so he could sell a bunch of old computer books he no longer needs. I think he took in over 10 books and got $6.25. That's it. I can't imagine that outdated computer books sell well, so it makes sense. While there, I finally picked up The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. I've been wanting this book since seeing Bowling For Columbine but could never find it used. When I tried finding it at the library, there were 50+ people with a hold on the book! I'm pretty happy to have gotten it new for $8.

After the bookstore, we walked down to the revamped library on Capitol Hill. It looks much bigger on the outside than it actually is on the inside. They did have lots of fancy computers with flat panel monitors and everything. Unfortunately, they didn't have the book Tony was looking for.

To nap or not to nap - that is the question.

The Program Manager has yet to get back to Paula to confirm an interview. It was meant to be today or tomorrow. He's going back to Cincinnati next week. Maybe he decided not to do the final interview. I wish they would just tell Paula something. I can only hope that he will get back to her tonight/tomorrow morning to confirm the tentative interview for tomorrow afternoon.

My exciting life today: I helped Tony clean & organize his huge closet. It's really much more than a closet. It's a second room. I really didn't do much of the organizing - it was all him. But I helped with the cleaning because that's what I'm good at. Yesterday afternoon, I didn't get to cleaning my bedroom because the organizing of my storage unit took all of my energy. I finally put together those shelved that I bought when I first moved here. Progress!

Last night, we went to Julie's to watch Angel. We mostly go to make her happy. There gets to be so many people there and she doesn't have enough places to sit. Plus, her house smelled like they rarely clean the litterboxes. 5 humans & 6 cats live there. Anyhoo, Angel was funny last night.

Moose story of the day.

Ack. OK, I think the interviews went well. They weren't as tedious as the last ones I had at Microsoft for the Recruiting Coordinator position. I wish I knew if they liked my answers. I can never tell. I hope the people I interviewed with today give good feedback to the program manager. I should be meeting with him later this week. Ack. Knot in my stomach. I want this job.

I have my second interview at AHP on Monday with the sales team. This job sounds good to me also, but it still isn't my ideal. I think I could advance faster in my career if I were to work at Microsoft. The AHP job would be comfortable and nice and friendly and happy. The MS job would be intense and exciting and challenging. And that's why both would work for me.

So my view is, it will be easy for me to impress the AHP sales people on Monday. It will take more work for me to impress the PM at Microsoft. I am going to study up on DRM and stuff before my final interview with him. I felt like I talked to fast and didn't speak clearly at the interviews today. I was nervous. Blah.

I finally cleaned my car yesterday. It was very dirty from the snow last week and also taking it up to the mountains for snowboarding. I cleared out crap from the trunk and vacuumed the inside. It makes me happy to have a clean car. Today I do laundry and straighten up the messy corner in my bedroom. Now that I do not have to wait by the phone, I am going to start working on organizing my storage unit. Fun stuff.

OK...using new service now. Comments are back (obviously).

It appears that the person who was offering the comments feature stopped. I will look for another and get that worked out today.

I was doing so good with the thinking of doing updates and then I got busy and didn't spend much time at home in the past couple few days.

So let's see...Friday night, our friends Ira, Joel and Johnny had a martini party. We had to get all dressed up and everything. Johnny is a bartender and is getting ready to move to Miami. He's never lived anywhere other than the PNW. It will be such a culture shock for him! The party was great fun and I got to chat it up with people I had only briefly met before.

Saturday was spent recovering from the night before and going grocery shopping.

Sunday, of course, was snowboarding day. Here are the pictures. The visibility was really bad that day, so Tony took my camera and got some pictures of the peaks of the mountains above the cloud cover. I'm still not skilled enough to go up that high. I am getting better - we've decided that Stevens is my mountain. I'll prolly skip going with them when they go to Crystal until next season.

I must be getting better because I am in a lot less pain by the end of the day and the next day. I did get a horrendous bruise on my butt, though. Fortunately, no one can see it :-)

Yesterday, I had a non-Microsoft interview. It was for an admin position at a small health insurance company. The job sounds kinda boring, but the people were really nice and all seemed to really enjoy working there. I met with Debbie, the Office Manager, and she seemed to really like me. The interview was pretty casual - I should know in the next couple of days if they want to bring me in for a second interview. The pay isn't as much as I would like, but they are having to fill the position because the person currently in it is being promoted after 6 months. It is a direct hire position which means great benefits :-)

When I got home from the interview yesterday, I had a message on my machine from Paula. She's still trying to cement a time for my second interview for the Microsoft job. It could be this afternoon, but I still haven't heard from her yet. I just gave her a call and left a voicemail. I guess that means I'm going to stick around here today and wait for the phone to ring. I have some cleaning I need to do, but it seems that Persephone is permanently attached to my lap.

The snow didn't finish melting until last night. Boy was that slush a mess to walk in! The weather is warmer (40's) and it hasn't been raining too much.

I still don't have a confirmed interview date/time for that job. The people are at a conference. lalalala

So yeah. Not much going on. Screech is still a freak and Persephone is still a big sweetie. I've gained over 5 lbs since moving to Seattle. What's up with that?

Taking a walk in the snow was much fun! I was very surprised to see so many people out enjoying the weather. There is lots of sledding going on. I never realized how much dogs love snow. It was too cute. Here are the pictures I took. I also took a couple of movies. The snow stopped about 12:30pm but some light snow has started again. Tony says it's supposed to all melt tonight. Oh well.

SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW!!!!!!

Yes, dear readers, it is actively snowing and sticking here in Seattle. No one has to go to work today unless they can walk or have a 4-wheel drive. I plan on going out and taking pictures after I finish my coffee.

My flight back to Seattle on the 1st was fine. It had snowed in Seattle earlier in the day and the ground was covered. I could actually see it up in the plane at night! Unfortunately, it did cause quite the delay in getting my luggage.

As I'm sure you could guess, I've been hanging out with Tony since my return. We went snowboarding on Sunday at Crystal Mountain. It was bloody cold! I didn't get too many pictures because my fingers would freeze off every time I removed my hand from my glove. Check out the pictures and movie I did take. You should also look at the pictures Chris took. It has also been incredibly cold in the city. I think we had days where we were the coldest city in the continental U.S. It is supposed to warm up tomorrow after snowing all day today.

I have a big bruise on my butt from Sunday. I was using Julie's old board for the first time and it is just so different than the rental boards I am used to. I fell a lot and that was not fun. I was getting more used to it by the end of the day, but I totally felt like I took a step back. I still have so much to learn!

I had a tentative interview this morning for the job I had the phone interview for before the holidays. It wasn't confirmed, but it seems like that was a good thing with it snowing today. It would have been cancelled anyway! Now I get to wait to see when the interview will be. *twiddles thumbs*

Expect snow pictures later today!