New Space

For the past almost 4 years, I've worked for a fairly large company here in New Mexico, in the health care industry.  My job is not terribly exciting, but I don't mind it.  It's not too stressful, it's a variety of work and I like my boss.  However, we've been working in an old building that had a bunch of issues (bad plumbing, strange smells, no natural light, etc.).  Plus, it was wayyyy out by the airport, and it took me 20 minutes to get there each way.

Well, the wonderful company that I work for recently built a brand new complex approximately 6-7 minutes from my house.  HAPPY DANCE!!!  For the past two years, we've been hearing and watching the progress of this new complex being built.

Today was finally moving day.  Well, actually technically yesterday was moving day, but today was the first day we reported to the new building.

I am in love.  Yes, it is still cubicle land.  But there's not a bad seat in the house.  There are windows surrounding all of the buildings (it's 3 buildings that are all connected) so the light just POURS in.

Here's a picture of my space a few weeks ago, when me and my co-worker came to check it out:

And here was my space this morning:

Yikes.  Our IT Department was supposed to have our computers set up, however there was a miscommunication and they didn't.  So I set my own up, hee hee.  I didn't want to wait for them.

Here is the after (I still had a couple of random things to put away at this point):

I love my new space.  Yes, it's little.  But I love all of the light.  I have plenty of room and plenty of desktop space.  My supervisor offered to get me a new smaller scanner, but I declined.  I have an odd attachment to my large clunky scanner.  I've gotten used to it over the years and it seems to be right at home in it's new spot (seriously...it's like the size of a commercial printer ha ha).  I still have plenty of upper shelf space and one of my large drawers on the left is completely empty.

Our windows face the southeast...so if I turn my chair just a tad, I can see the mountains.  Nice!

The rest of the building is pretty cool too.  The cafeteria is really nice, and it has a Starbucks too!  There are cool chalkboard walls throughout the building.  There is a gym:

It's open 24/7 for employees and has showers and another fitness room in the back for group classes.

Right outside the gym is this:

Hmm...should I bring in pictures of our zoo?

And here is our 2nd floor break room:

There are more tables behind me in this shot and also five new stainless steel fridges all lined up.  Plenty of space!  

I am very excited about this new place.  It took me 6 minutes to get to work this morning and 7 minutes to go home.  That alone is worth getting excited about!  

A Typical Weekend

Once again, I have a whole list of things to blog about, but I'm sitting here on a Tuesday night watching 'Gravity' with my husband (a great but stressful movie) and I'm just going to blog randomly about our weekend.

It was kind of a typical weekend, except we didn't go out in service Saturday and we usually do.  My mother-in-law had called us Friday night and asked if we would go to Moriarty with her in the morning.  Moriarty is a small town about 40 miles east of here.  She works for an insurance agency and had to take pictures of a possible home to insure.

We decided to have breakfast first at Tim's Place:

(photos from timsplaceabq.com)

Tim is a man with Downs Syndrome that opened a restaurant a couple years ago.  He graduated high school, went to college, and wanted to open a restaurant.  So he did.  And it's really, really good.  Tim greets everyone at the door and gives free hugs.  He keeps track of them:

There is a hug counter on the wall.  At the time we were there, he was 96 hugs away from 50,000.  I gave him two that day to help out.

After breakfast we drove to Moriarty.  I'll be honest....there's not much there.  Not much to see.  In fact, if you blink, you'll miss it.  We found the house, took some pictures, and then on the way back I made my husband stop to take pictures of this street sign:

They spelled Scarlett wrong!  Grr.  Oh well.  The next street down was Twelve Oaks.  However....both of these streets had nothing but manufactured homes on them.  Hmm.  No grand plantations in sight.

We got home around 11:30, and had almost 4 hours before we had to leave for meeting.  So I did a little project.  When my family was here, my husband brought my niece a bouquet of flowers.  She loved them and was bummed she couldn't bring them home on the plane.  So I told her we would find a way to save a few of them.  So I pressed and dried a few of them for about 3 weeks and they were finally dry enough to be handled.  I picked out the best ones and framed them:

I hope they hold up.  The purple flower on the right is actually in two pieces.  !  Oops.  Oh well.  You can't really tell, ha ha.

Then I finished preparing for French meeting.  It was good.  My husband was the chairman.  The talk was all about marriage.

(Shawn-tawn  ah  Jhay-oh-vah)

After meeting we came home and found these two:

Awwww.

Sunday I made breakfast, got groceries, cleaned, did laundry, and tried to prepare for the week as much as I could.

And that, my friends, was a typical weekend!

The Difference (and a Chris Traeger reference of course)

Here's a little story about the difference between me and my husband.

Tonight we ordered a pizza.  We do this maybe once or twice a month.  We order online from Dominos (don't knock it....have you tried it lately???  Their handmade pan pizzas are AWESOME).  Tonight I ordered a medium handmade pan pizza with green chile and onions for the topping.  Our usual order.  It's $7.99.  AND, they are LITERALLY (in my best Chris Traeger from Parks & Rec voice) right around the corner from us.  

So I ordered the pizza online, it will be ready in 9 minutes.  Fine. I mop the kitchen floor, husband unloads the dishwasher, then I get in the car and leave to pick it up.

When I get home, I open the box and there is NO green chile.  I immediately said 'oh it's okay, they just forgot, I don't want to go back, I can put some of our green chile on it, it will still be good, etc.'  No big deal.  As I'm saying all this, my husband has my iPad in his hand (with my order page still pulled up), and he is dialing up Dominos on his phone.

During the next five minutes, he is speaking to the store manager.  Apparently, the green chile got recalled (as it has in numerous places around New Mexico I guess).  But that wasn't the problem.  The problem was that our order wasn't caught and we paid for a 2-topping pizza that had only one topping (and they didn't bother to tell us). 

Within 20 minutes, our doorbell rang, and we were delivered a FREE piping hot, TWO topping pizza (mushrooms and onions) and they threw in free cheesy bread too.

Now, my husband didn't get mad, he wasn't irritated, he spoke to the manager in a nice calm voice, etc.  And because he called (whereas I was ready to just let it go), we got TWO pizzas, and a nice loaf of cheesy bread for the low low price of $7.99.

And that is the difference between me and my husband.  He makes things right, and I just want to forget about them, ha ha.  I really want to try to be more like him though.  He gets us deals on EVERYTHING!!!

Digital Life Random Brain Dump

I seem to be back in project mode again.  I don't think I ever really stop actually, it just seems like I have 2-3 ongoing projects going on at all times.

I am, for the most part, an organized person.  But mostly it's things you can see:  closets, drawers, cabinets, bookshelves, etc.  However, my 'digital' life is kind of a mess.  That's what I'm working on right now.

Last year, we went paperless in an effort to eliminate extra paper in our household.  We've kept up with it for the most part, however I have a bunch of items that I need to scan and save to our computer.  That's definitely on the to-do list.

Next is my books and reading habits.  I used to keep an actual book journal when I was reading a lot (like 40+ books per year).  Then I got rid of that and just moved titles and authors onto an Excel spreadsheet.  Well, now I want to get rid of that too.  So I am in the process of moving everything over to goodreads.com.  It's basically a site that you can track the books you've read, the books you want to read, the books you own and the books you're currently reading.  You can write reviews, read other peoples reviews, rate your books and it keeps track of the date, etc. that you've read your books.  Plus, they have a really nice app that I can pull up at any time on my phone or iPad when I'm either at the bookstore or looking for a new ebook to read!

The next item on my digital organization list is, well, lists.  I have a whole notebook full of lists.  Things to do, projects to do, movies coming out to buy, grocery lists, coupon stuff, etc.  You name it, if I need to write it down it's in my notebook.  Well, I haul this stupid notebook around all the time, it's a mess, it's falling apart, it's huge, I could go on and on.  I need to utilize my Notability app more for lists and ditch the bulky notebook.

Another thing I need to organize is my passwords.  I currently use the Dashline app.  I only have to remember one password, and it keeps tracking of everything else for me.  I have a LOT of passwords - I pay all the bills online, I have Weight Watchers, Barnes & Noble, CVS, Walgreens, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, goodreads, email, etc.  I love the app.  But I need to add more, because I still have some written down (which is not good).

And lastly, and the largest item on my list is my photos.  I've definitely come a long way with them, but there is still much to do.  Right now I have all of my digital files on an external hard drive that just plugs into my laptop.  They are also on Shutterfly.  What I'm working on right now is all of the pictures from my iPhone.  Like over 2 years worth of pictures.  I started with 800, I'm now down to 400.  Basically, I'm going through all of them, deleting the crappy ones, and then putting the rest into folders by year, month and/or event.  I'm using iPhoto to do this.  Once I get them organized, then I'm going to move them to my external hard drive and Shutterfly.  THEN, I want to go through all of them and start making family yearbooks on MyPublisher.  Yes, it's ambitious.  I'm chipping away at it.  It will be nice to have it done.  And then I am going to MAKE myself plug in my iPhone at least once a month to my computer so it can download my new pictures.  I pretty much didn't do it for over 2 years, therefore I had to deal with 800+ photos.

So there is my random brain dump for the evening.  I'll keep you posted on my progress.  I'm sure you'll be waiting on the edge of your seat, ha ha.

And just because this is a very random blog, here are two random pictures:

Howie in the bathtub, yawning:

And Hannah when she was a baby:

Sprouts

I have other stuff to blog about, but it's getting late (for me) and instead of sorting through 50+ pictures, I just wanted to do a quick post, about nothing.  Just call me Seinfeld.  I guess it's about something though:  Sprouts.

Today was an unusual day.  It's a Wednesday, which is usually our meeting night.  However, it started snowing today around 11:30 a.m., and it hasn't stopped yet.  And while we aren't buried or anything, our Kingdom Hall sits at the base of a mountain, and it is no joke up there.  So therefore, meeting was cancelled.  Which meant that I had kind of a 'free' night.  So after I got home from work and took out the dogs, I wanted to make a quick trip to the store to stock up on fruits and veggies.  But I didn't want to go far.  The nearest Target/Walmart/Smiths/Albertsons is at least a 10-15 minute drive in NORMAL weather, but today it would have been worse.  So I went to Sprouts, which is about 6 blocks from our house.

The best way I can describe it is halfway between Trader Joe's and Whole Foods in both size and price.  They carry mostly organic and natural foods.  They have baked goods, meats, a great cheese selection, and their produce is why most people go there.  While they are pricey with their processed (boxes, cans) foods, their produce is always super reasonable, even for organic.

I stocked up.  I got bananas, celery, carrots, broccoli, grapes and strawberries.

In their cheese case, they have a basket that contains a whole selection of little cheeses.  By little, I mean like the size of a deck of cards or smaller.  It's where they put all of the odd pieces and ends cut off of larger pieces.  I like that I can get a nice selection of cheese for usually around $1 per 'hunk':

Sprouts is a vegetarians dream, because they carry an array of products like this:

They also carry their own brand of many foods:

Yum!

I definitely don't get the majority of my groceries here, but it is definitely my #1 choice for fruits and veggies and I love that it is so close to our house.  We could walk there if we had to.  And who knows, if the snow keeps up we may get that opportunity (kidding).