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.

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.

First day of school

My first day of school was on Thursday. To celebrate my favorite tour guide took me to lunch. He also gave me a brand new lunch box. It is shiny black and has a skull and cross bones on it. The skull also has an eye patch. I love it. Reminds me of the gold eye patch with sequins I got my tour guide as a gag gift. Class itself was good and my classmates seem interesting. I'm not sure what I think of either just yet.

After class I met my tour guide for a late dinner. He wanted to take a first day of school picture so after dinner we grabbed my book and my new lunch box and walked to a local square. We took a couple photos and I have to say they were cute.

There were also a couple local musicians in the square practising. One was playing an accordion, and the song reminded me of being in Paris. It had rained earlier making the pavement shine and the blossoms in the trees sparkle. I set my belongings down and we danced until the musicians eventually wandered towards their gig, playing the song as they walked away. It was perfect, and I can't think of a better way to start grad school.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Today at work my boss suggested we sing Christmas carols. When I heard this I pulled out my ear pods and turned around to look at the crazy man. That's when I spotted cold, white, wet stuff falling out the window behind him. Yup. Its spring and snowing in Seattle. I may have lived through a winter here, but I still think snow is something you should visit- not the other way around.

Random moments

I had to post this picture of chickens. They are in the front yard of a house just a few houses down from the townhouse where my community group meets. The townhouse is not out in the country, it is in the middle of the city. This struck me as funny, and I didn’t think anyone would believe me, so I took a picture.
For date night a couple weeks ago we went to one of my favorite restaurants, The High Life, and then to a movie. Once we were seated my favorite tour guide told me that at first the theater owners couldn’t decide what to call their company. Eventually they named it Elttaes, which is Seattle spelled backwards. After the movie we started to walk a few blocks to his car. Halfway there he picked me up and carried me for a bit. What can I say? My guy is romantic and shares my love of trivia.
My orientation for class is Saturday. Once I’ve completed it I can sign up for the Pre-Calc course I want to take. I’m hoping to get it and Business Calc over with as soon as possible. As much as I’m dreading taking any kind of math course again I am looking forward to starting school. Partly in order to make friends, partly to enjoy being in class again.
The best for last: A few months ago I was visiting my family. As usual we were had a family dinner and afterwards my sister said she had presents for everyone. There didn’t seem to be a special reason but I didn’t really think anything of it. She then handed a children’s book to each of my parents. My mom got Katie No Pockets, which is her favorite. While she was flipping through the pages my dad softly called her name and told her to read the inscription on the first page. After she did my older sister and I got books as well. Mine is one of my favorites, Corduroy. In it she had written “For G, To read to your new niece or nephew.”
I couldn’t believe it. My younger sister is pregnant with her first baby! Since she’s discussing it on her blogs, I’m guessing it’s safe to talk about it on mine. She and her husband are very happy and are going to be great parents. They recently found out that they are having a boy, and I can’t wait to hold my brand new nephew. They won’t tell me what his name is yet, and I’m enjoying looking forward to being introduced to him all at once.