Catching Up

First things first. I moved. Currently I live about three blocks uphill from my work. This is great right now and will really be annoying in the winter. I will try to track the number of bruises from slipping then. For now I enjoy seeing the beautiful sky on the way down hill to work, and I like working off my frustrations on the way up hill to home. Other than that the current draw back is no internet access at home. It likely won't get it set up for another month, maybe more.
Forth of July was nice, though I miss the fireworks in my favorite aunt's small town. A really good friend came up that weekend and it was nice to have a girlfriend around again. I did get to see fireworks, but it wasn't impressive.
I'm still working too much. My computer system at work has decided to go haywire. The day we discovered the scope of it I nearly cried. All the work I had done over the previous month, all the long hours and lost weekends, down the drain. I had manager after manager call and ask what had happened to the pricing. Finally the pricing manager sent out a message explaining what had gone kablewy. Sadly that was July 3. Not a great start to the holiday. On the flip side when I told my boss that I was taking a the afternoon off his only response was "me too, don't tell."
My boss is great. He got an iphone and was so impressed with himself when he finally downloaded a song that he announced it to everyone. He even walked from cube to cube to show us. It was cute.
I went camping this past weekend for the first time in a very long time. My favorite tour guide's entire extended family goes every year. That was interesting. For the most part I had fun just hanging out with him, and occasionally one of his cousins. His mother is still campaigning for a wedding, but she's getting better about being subtle. Largely I pretend I don't notice and try to chalk it up to her being nice.
There's more, but it will have to wait. The cafe I'm at is closing.

Playing catch up

School: For the most part I like it. My prof is great. He has two different MBA's and a law degree. He leads the class discussion well and I love the subject matter. I enjoy the class discussions more now that it is not just myself and two others talking. The draw back is my classmates don't talk to me. When I pass them at break they turn away slightly. Not much, but enough to discourage me from joining the conversation. I'm hoping the fall will be better.

Birthday: Very good. My boyfriend and I met some friends at my favorite wine bar on the night of my birthday. The next day a really good friend and I went on a weekend cruise. It was my first cruise and I really liked it. I had to pretend that I was on a spaceship in order to fall asleep at night. It also helped to do that when we hit rough water.

Work: Overwhelming. I know enough now to get stuff done, I just can't seem to do so. It drives me nuts and I don't know where to start. My co-workers are better now that the character who used to help me is gone. Without his continually antagonizing ways the department gets along as a whole much better. It has meant a lot more cooperation between everyone so we're doing much more cross training than before. Mostly I like that the tension in the department has dropped and its really nice.

Home life: I've found a new place to live. Right now I have the best roommate I've ever had. The only problem is she is engaged and her fiance owns our home. That means that when the get married he is going to be living here. So, I will be moving July 4th weekend to a place much closer to work. I will be renting a daylight basement with a walk in closet and a full bathroom. It is close enough to work that I'll be able to walk there. Better yet, I'll be able to walk to church.

Favorite Tour guide: Make me laugh all the time. We went to the Ballard Locks again yesterday. The sun was out and it was gorgeous out. I finally managed to tickle him by twirling a blade of grass against his skin. He took my toy away from me and tickled me back. It was a lot of fun. We sat and talked for hours enjoying the sunshine and each other's company. Then we went to a friend's house for a bbq. Dinner was filled with more laughing and really good food.

Best for last: My younger sister is on her way to the hospital to have her baby!

Sometimes the best we can do is breathe and reboot. SJP

Easily entertained

A huge part of what I do is "clean" product lines. Cleaning involves making sure each item is in the system only once, has the correct price listed, and most importantly has a unique identifier. Normally the identifier is a catalog number assigned by the vendor, but if I'm lucky its a 12 digit code called a UPC. Most of my lines have had some sort of attention in the last three years, so while difficult there is not a "bang head on keyboard" level of frustration.

I can handle duplications very easily. I just merge the items into a single code. Pricing being off doesn't phase me. Most of the time I'm cleaning the line because the price is going to be changed by the vendor soon anyway. However, a catalog number or UPC is needed. Outside of product lines that have a handful of items, I can't get around it.

Today it was my vendor NWC's turn. I do not like NWC for a number of reasons. The main reason is that no one has gone through and "cleaned" this product line, ever. NWC has over 1000 items active in my system, and has over 4000 items on the pricing spreadsheet they sent me. Of all of the items in my system less than a quarter have an identifier, and there are more duplicates than I want to think about.

While this would be a very good reason to bang my head on my keyboard I decided to take a better approach. I decided to play what I like to call "The Delete Game." To start, I download all of the items in my computer system that I buy from one vendor. Next I sort out the ones that still have the codes from the old system as these are most likely to be obsolete. (Even if they aren't I still have to remove the old code so it is a two for one.) Then, one by one, I enter the item into the system and hit Alt+Del.

Best case, the system tells me to confirm that I want to delete the item by entering DELETE. For reasons hard to explain I find it fun when I get to enter DELETE. Today I got to delete 60% of the items I looked at. This means I'm winning. From the looks of things I'm going to keep winning. I could be upset by all of the bad data, or I could be happy that I don't have to find codes for as many items. I'm going with the latter.

Somewhere Betwen Raising Hell and Amazing Grace

A lot has happened since I last posted. The most entertaining is that today the Denny's in Ballard was been declared a historic landmark. I'm not kidding. Ballard is my favorite neighborhood due to things like this. It’s a quirky area that still sports "Free Ballard" shirt, bumper stickers, and posters. A few weeks ago I went to a wine bar there with my boyfriend and a few friends. We each ordered different wines and sampled each other's choice. We also split a cheese platter and chacutrie. It felt like I was back in Paris.
I also had two really good friends come and visit me. The first was a friend that I've known since I was 13. We got sushi for dinner and it was great to actually have someone around that enjoys the stuff. Afterwards we went to my friend's house to hang out. My boyfriend arrived just after we did. Before the front door opened he had caught my attention, walked up to us, and picked up my friend (literally) and turned her upside down. He has a wicked sense of humor. Luckily she found this hilarious and the two of them got along.
The second friend is the person who inspired me to move to Seattle. She is also a great cook and gave me a couple of cooking lessons while she was here. We went to Pike Place Market for our supplies and had fun poking around the stalls. I discovered a couple of hidden alleys that have really great shops. Everything there is produced locally and is cheaper than going to the grocery store. To an extent the market is a tourist destination, but a lot of locals use it for their weekly shopping. As much fun as shopping was the best part was having girlfriends around again. I love my life here, but I miss having girlfriends closer than on the other end of the phone.
One of the best things to happen recently is that I finally found a church to call home. For the first time in years I found a church where I feel comfortable. I don't believe blindly, and this church encourages questions. It’s also the first time that I've heard a new approach to verses I've heard all my life. They also have small groups, somewhat like a bible study group, for different age groups. I've contacted one of them and hopefully it will be a way to make Christian friends.
In other news work is getting better. I’m learning now in leaps and bounds and I’m making headway. The mountain of work doesn’t seem to decrease any, but that’s okay. I’m just happy that I can function somewhat on my own. Sadly the old guy that I used to work with has decided that because I’m now getting trained by someone he profoundly dislikes that I have gone to the dark side. When he told me this I laughed and told him, “of course I did, they have cookies.” He didn't find that as funny as I did. Mostly because he thought he was missing out on actual cookies.
As for Valentines it was great, but the week started off pretty bad. My boyfriend had been having headaches for weeks. When he finally went into the doctor the doctor became concerned it could be a blood vessel causing the problem. A couple appointments and an MRI later it was discovered that it was a nerve that got infected. He was put on a round of steroids and everything is fine now. The unfortunate result of all this is that he was unable to go on a business trip.
Since he was in town he had to be point man for those that did go and told me that he would have to work late. He called me about eight that night. He told me that he had just got home and asked if I wanted to do a late dinner. I said yes and he asked that I call him when I was leaving. A few min later I grabbed by coat, set the alarm, and then opened my front door with my phone in hand. Sitting in front of my door was a bouquet of flower, a box of chocolates, and a chocolate espresso bar. He was standing around the corner and grinning.
We went to dinner at a local place and he was chatty through the whole thing. This is a guy that has been nicknamed “Silent Bob” by my friend from college. He was also bouncing in his seat and fiddling with everything. When I took the last piece of silverware away from him he finally told me that the side effect of his meds was abundant energy. I laughed and then offered to take him for a walk. After a long tour of the area we ended up at a two story book store. So while the week started off rocky, the holiday for me consisted of roses, chocolate, dinner, wine, and books. I couldn’t have asked for a better night.

Fake it 'till you make it

I've learned that if you pretend to know what you're doing few will question it. I've also learned to speak with confidence when at work, no matter the situation. This week alone both have gotten me out of trouble at least three times. It helps that I actually had answers to my boss' questions, and that I was in the process of fixing what people were complaining about. So when a branch manager called and asked questions about package quantities I confidently answered his questions without thinking. At one point after asserting something I offered to go and double check on it for him. He responded that it wasn't necessary and that he trusted me. That's when I blew my cover by laughing. As short lived as it was, it was nice to have someone treat me like a knowledgeable source again. Hopefully next time I won't blow my cover.

"This way."
"You don't really know, do you ?"
"What ?"
"I mean, you are acting like you know exactly which way to go, but you are only guessing. Do you do this all the time ?"
"No, but there ... are times when it is necessary for a captain to give the appearance of confidence." -- Picard and Beverly in ST:TNG "Attached"

I believe you have my stapler

When I interviewed for my current job I was told that I had a huge mess to clean up. They weren't kidding. I buy 130 lines of product, and so far I've managed to clean up two. Not a great ratio, and the only reason I've gotten that far is that I've conned someone else into doing it. You could be negative and call this cheating. I choose to be positive and call this delegating.

The coworker in question is this great old Jewish guy that thinks the only thing wrong with me is that I'm not Jewish. What made us friends was when I overheard him asking "you know what WC Fields said, right?" Without missing a beat I piped up with "kid can't hold his liquor." He gave me a funny look so I asked him if he meant the one about parboiling children. Then he gave me a curious look and said that he had forgotten what he was talking about. Since then he's been asking me random trivia questions just to see what I know. I find it fairly entertaining. My dad taught us kids tons of trivia growing up and its coming in really handy. So is the fact that I love old movies and read voraciously. Every time I get something right my coworker shakes his head asks "where did you go wrong?"

Other than that work has been incredibly frustrating. I know it takes about six months to get into the groove of a new job, but I'm impatient. It doesn't help that at my last job I was the "it" girl. Granted I worked there for about four years so I had lots of time to learn a ton of stuff. Yes, at the beginning of that job I was just as frustrated and had to face a learning curve. Yes, at least this time I know something about buying and have become good at it. That doesn't change the fact that I constantly feel overwhelmed in my position as "new girl."

Speakng of, the girl who was supposed to train me was less than effective. She went through everything at break-neck speed so right now I'm having to teach myself a great deal. My other coworkers (the only people around my age in the office) aren't seated near me so I barely interact with them. I keep trying to talk to them, but I don't get much of a response. Today I was grudgingly invited to lunch and I accepted hoping to break the ice a bit more. Not sure if it worked or not but it was worth a shot. I don't know if their reserve is a reaction to my personality, the fact that the pricing manager (who no one likes for good reason) seems buddy buddy with me, my obvious friendship with the old Jewish guy, or the fact that my position has had a lot of turn over.

Just to make matters more interesting I found out that the one guy near my age that I sit next to is the nephew of the owner. Oh, and his dad is a top level executive. While I've dealt with family related to the company owner before this is a very different scenario. To put it bluntly, he sucks as a buyer. Worse, he is in my way. In order to get my monstrosity of a mess cleaned up I have to get him to upload information into our computer system. He wants every idy bity detail in order and set up in a specific way on a spreadsheet. Four years of buying experience tells me that isn't ever going to happen. Due to his connections I can't simply do what I would normally do: bulldoze over him. I have to be politic, sweet talk the Jewish guy into doing the dirty work for now, and learn how to do the idiots job as well as mine. Without showing the nephew up of course. It has been made clear that we must avoid junior loosing face at all costs.

Ug. I really don't like being told I can't simply dismiss idiots from existing in my universe. Growing up simply sucks sometimes.

Same song, different verse

We had our weekly purchasing meeting today. I shouldn't have been surprised by it, my boss announced last week that we would be having them on a weekly basis. The problem is that my last boss claimed the same thing and never followed through. So this morning when my coworkers started heading towards the conference room I was a bit surprised. Sitting at the table though things began to seem more and more familiar. My boss began talking about the downturn in the market and that we should be pulling stock from our warehouses rather than buying from vendors. We have to do so without putting our warehouse's saftey stock in jepardy, or risking loosing customer orders. I had to bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from laughing. I can't begin to count the number of times I've gotten this lecture. It shouldn't be amusing, but it is. All I could think is "no, really? Cause I was going to pick up another container of stock just for fun." While my last boss may have let me sass at him in our small department meetings, my current one might have fired me on the spot. Still, all day the camp song kept repeating in my head,

Fried ham, fried ham / cheese and bologna / and after the macaroni...

Ready or not

Tomorrow I start a new job. I will once again be working in the construction industry, and this time I get to clean up a very big mess. No idea how to do it, but I'm going to get two weeks training- maybe. I haven't even started and I know I'm in over my head. The next few months will be interesting as I learn an entirely new system, memorize countless specs, and convince vendors that unlike my predecessor I'm not evil. Fortunately I have some experience with the last part, just not on this scale. I’m intimidated, and more than a bit nervous. I’m also looking forward to kicking butt.