Tired, Overwhelmed and Jealous

I work a lot. Some weekends I go into work, some I don't. On normal days I work a little more than 8 hours. Most days I'm doing normal stuff. Placing orders, transferring excess inventory, and taking care of whatever problems pop up. On good days I find time to clean up lines a bit. On bad days I don't finishing placing orders. Today I worked 12 hours. I managed to get my orders out and transfer out excess inventory all before my official end of day. I even had time to work on a line clean up that was due two months ago.
Yeah. I'm behind, and not just a little. I've got two price increases that were due back in early April, and another increase due on the same lines on Aug 7. Just to make things more fun I have about ten more increases due between July 1 and 7. Recently I've had to work hard at not feeling overwhelmed. For the past couple of days I haven't had much luck. The good news is that I made some progress today. Not much, but some. The bad news is that I have about four weeks of work, and three business days to do it in. Sadly that means I'll likely be working through the entire weekend, and that only gives me two more days.
There is one bright spot this weekend. My one friend from work is dragging me to some event downtown so I'll see some of the rare sunshine.
In other news my younger sister had a little boy a few weeks ago. He is so very precious and has a full head of hair. I got to see him for a bit, and wish I got to spend more time with him. I talked to my mom today. My newest nephew is opening his eyes now and starting to look around. He is growing like a weed and I wish I could be there to see it.
I’m looking forward to the next time I get to go home. He’ll be even bigger and hopefully more awake. Although I did have fun squeezing his cheeks so he made a fish face while he slept. Mostly because he would curl his lip afterwards and looked like a cute baby Elvis. It was adorable.

Found it!

I came to Seattle a few years ago to visit a friend. While here I was shown around Seattle Pacific University. It is a beautiful campus, and I was impressed by one court yard in particular. The acoustics of the court yard were set up so that if you stood in the middle it would amplify your voice and everyone sitting on the surrounding steps could hear you easily.

I've wanted to go back and see it. Mostly because it is the one place here that I knew. It is something I could show to someone else for once. There are signs posted clearly (for once) on a couple streets I use pointing the way towards SPU. I never followed them, I only seemed to spot them when I was expected somewhere.

Yesterday my church group met at Gas Works Park for a bbq. I grabbed directions off the net and went straight from work. Starting out I drove up a steep hill and just over the other side was a view that took my breath away. Two blocks later I found SPU. Somehow I wound up driving through the center of it by accident. I was so excited when I found it I stopped the car. Fortunately no one was around. A couple blocks farther I found a road I knew and eventually I made my way to the bbq. That means I'll be able to find my way back.

Should have known that it would be in the last neighborhood I explored.

Are you kidding?

My grade in my first grad school class was based 10% on a one page paper, 30% on participation, and %60 on a term paper. I got an A on the first paper and got full credit for participation. That means I may have alienated my classmates, but it turned out to be for a good cause.

Then there is my term paper. It is no where near my best work. I've done much better. The hard part about it is that I've gotten used to business style writing. So now when I write on serious topics it tends to be short and sweet. Flowery emails and memo's annoy me so I keep mine straight to the point. This resulted in my paper only being 12 pages long. I wasn't really bothered by that until I got to class and my classmates had all written 15-20 page papers. All I could think was that not only had I done a poor job writing it, it hadn't even been long enough.

Fortunately I long ago learned to not stress about papers I have turned in. There is no point. It is literally out of my hands so I might as well move on and not think about it. Which I did, until today. Today I went on-line and checked to see if grades were posted yet. I got 58 out of 60 on my paper. My first thought was: I got an A for that?

I think grad school is going to be easier than I thought it would be.

One, maybe two

I think I finally have friends here that I haven't met through my tour guide.
Last weekend my department went to a professional baseball game. Since I was given two tickets I decided to invite my roommate. I haven't seen a lot of her lately. She is pretty much living in another town right now, about 45 min away without traffic. She got a summer job working as a juvenile defender. It is a really long commute so she is staying with her fiance most of the time. When we were at the game we spent most of the time laughing at talking and having fun. Afterwards we walked home and part way I realized we had managed to form a friendship while living together.
The other friend (maybe) is the woman who has been training me at work. I enjoy her company and we are supposed to go to a concert soon. Unfortunately I'm not sure I can trust her to be more than someone to hang out with. She's a bit of a gossip and there are some things I would rather not have people at work know.
Other than that I still just have acquaintances at church. Haven't really connected with anyone yet, but I'm not giving up. School seems to be the only place I'm not making headway. My classmates won't talk to me. I'm not really sure why, but now that I'm at the end of the school quarter I know its not in my head. As people file in and out of class they ignore me. During break they will slightly turn away as I pass, just enough to discourage me from joining the conversation. Worse, a couple of them make comments under their breath whenever I speak in class. At this point I'm writing the class off and looking forward to the fall. Hopefully the next group of classmates are kinder.