On the move at work--but not up the corporate ladder

I found out last Friday that my cohorts at work and I would have to move "soon" so that we can accomodate the 30 new employees that are moving into our office as a result of an acquisition that we made. We hadn't heard much more about it yet this week, except from the occasional coworker who will be moving into our area as they came by to scope out our real estate. Turns out they're moving into our spots over the weekend, which left us wondering when someone was going to tell us when and where we're moving. We finally found out that we're moving into offices (hello windows, bye-bye cube), but we have to share them with someone else. That's cool though. At least I won't have to stare at an inside wall anymore. Now I just have to finish packing--I'm up to 7 boxes so far--and get moved as soon as the person currently in my new space moves out. This will be my seventh location in the 4.5 years I've worked at Timberline. Crazy.

The sad thing about moving into an office is that I'm not going to have a good place to hang my maps anymore. I have US and world maps that I've kept on my cube walls at work. I mark with colored pins the places I've lived and visited. It's a neat reminder of how big our country and our world is and just how much there is out there to see and do.

It's a cool 80 degrees here today. Much better than earlier this week!

Hot hot heat

Yesterday it was 101 degrees in Portland. Today it was hotter, I think. I don't know for sure at this point though because around 5:30 tonight, our power went out for 4 hours, interrupting our evening news viewing. Fortunately, we'd just finished dinner, so we didn't have to worry about cooking. But while the AC had kept our house right around 73 degrees up to that point, we watched it climb up after everything shut off. Marc called PGE a few times, and they were actually predicting that they wouldn't have things fixed for us until midnight. At that point we contemplated setting up "camp" downstairs to sleep for the night since it was even warmer upstairs. I took what I thought was a cold shower, but it still steamed up the bathroom. Lucky for us, everything came back on just before 10:00 tonight.

It's sad how my home life comes to a crashing halt when the power goes out. No TV. No internet. No computer at all after my laptop battery dies in 15 minutes. No good reading light after the sun sets. We did take advantage of this as a good excuse to partake in a couple of adult beverages out on our porch, though, which we barely even go out and sit on.

Grandpa is still holding on, even in the big heat these past couple of days. Work is busy as usual, with more projects on the way. Nothing too exciting to report there. Now, with the sweet, cool air blowing from the vents again, I'm heading off to bed.

Nacho worth your time

Usually I enjoy stupid funny movies. Nacho Libre didn't cut it. Don't waste your time with it in the theater. At least we had a gift certificate...

Be envious of the massage

To relieve some of the stress we've been going through lately, we splurged a little yesterday afternoon by stopping at the local Massage Envy. While the quality may not have matched that of Portland Spa's, the price can't be beat for an hour massage. I highly recommend it. And if you go, put my or Marc's name in as your referral, and we might get a free massage for it.

So the stress lately has to do with Grandpa (Marc's). He had a stroke a week and a half ago and is now in a coma. We've spent a lot of time in the hospital with him, and then this past Monday he got transferred to his home to live out his last days with hospice care. It's been hard on the whole family, but we just hope that he can go peacefully.

On a different note, I got my new teeth torqued in this afternoon, so my new smile is now permanent. One of these days I'll get some new pictures up.

Drunkenness as a spectator sport

Last night I felt like I was back in college again. We hung out with some coworkers and experienced the glory of drinking games. Beer Pong reigned for the first part of the afternoon. Kings took over in the evening. And in a blast from my past, I took on the role of the only person who could go buy more beer when they ran out. That led to a bit of confusion for me when I drove someone else's car to the store and then couldn't remember what kind of car it was when I came back out in the parking lot. (I swear, I didn't drink a drop.) Thank goodness for remote entries that make the car beep. The evening was fun in that weird way that watching other people have fun is fun.

For "dinner" (which finally happened later than I usually go to sleep), we went back to Macaroni Grill for our favorite happy hour. Pablo wasn't the most efficient or accurate waiter, but he sure was enthusiastic about the World Cup.

Today we're getting stuff packed up for a one-nighter camping trip up at Mt. Hood with Slimey. It'll be cold, but I'm looking forward to it. And, we have our portable Mr. Heater Buddy, so the tent won't be too cold for Marc. Seriously. :)

My new teeth are here!

I got my new front teeth today. I feel like I have to learn how to talk and eat again. They're a completely different shape and depth than they were before. During dinner, I kept mashing my teeth together. It's a strange feeling, but it's worth it knowing that my tooth drama is finally over. I think they look really good, and Marc agrees, so that's a good thing. :)

We picked up a new cooler and new camping pillows tonight in preparation for a night up at Mt. Hood on Saturday. I'm totally looking forward to getting out and camping.

I didn't win the Powerball last night. That was a real bummer. I don't usually buy tickets until it's over $100 million, but I just had a feeling the other day and bought one anyway. No luck. I think I only got one number. Boo.

Over-eating and under-sleeping

What a crappy couple of days. I haven't slept well. I don't know why. Of course my big mistake yesterday was falling asleep on the couch for about 90 minutes after work. That made it impossible for me to fall asleep last night, which just compounded the effects of the past few nights. I don't know how little sleep I got though because I have this weird obsession about not looking at the clock when I can't fall asleep so that I don't officially know how little sleep I'm gonna get. Yeah, I'm weird.

We've been a bit gluttonous the past couple nights. Yesterday we were lazy and got some Chinese take out. Tonight we went to Chili's for their new happy hour specials with Chris and Slimey. We haven't seen them in forever, so it was good to catch up.

At least we did work out today, though my body was really resistant to the whole idea.

Work has been busy. I'm looking forward to the weekend already. :) Hopefully we'll be going camping on Saturday.

Lazy Weekend

Another weekend gone. Sunday evenings always stink, but we had a good lazy weekend. Yesterday Ben came over and we went to Helvetia Tavern for burgers for lunch. It's been a long time since I've been there. Later in the evening we went to Bugatti's for some cocktails, and then we hit Macaroni Grill for the late happy hour specials. Marc tried to set Ben up to get our waitress's phone number, but he didn't bite. Wuss.

We bought some new dumbbells yesterday--they're the neat ones where you just turn the outside of each dumbbell to the weight you want and lift them out of their holder. Good space saver, considering the spare room that we use as our workout room isn't all that big. We're also contemplating getting a rowing machine to help vary our fitness routine (and I really want one). We'll have to see where it will fit though.

That's all for now. There's just nothing extremely exciting to report today. :)

All I want for Christmas... errrr... whatever holiday comes up next...

For those of you who don't know, I have four fake front teeth. See, I was a stupid 7-year-old once, and I thought I was a daredevil. There was this hill in my neighborhood in St. Louis that we all thought was huge. We liked to ride our bikes down it, and I liked doing it as fast as possible. One day, with my friend Laura (the one whose wedding I just went to in St. Louis), I rode down that hill with my eyes closed--for extra adventure!--and I'm still suffering the wrath of that adventure 21 years later.

I knocked out a permanent front tooth that day. An oral surgeron put it back in. About 7 years later, they took it out again for good, and I had a perfectly good bridge. To make a long story shorter, I ended up with a cracked root and a couple other cracked teeth. In the past couple years, I've had three more front teeth extracted and two implants put it. It's always fun talking about my implants around people when they don't know I'm talking about teeth. HA!

Today was a milestone of sorts. Since I had to let the implants heal and fuse to bone for several months, I've had a kinda gimpy temporary bridge. Today I went to the dentist and got fitted with my permanent bridge. In another week, I'll have it in my mouth for good. Then, if the tooth fairy smiles down on me, I will be through with all of this tooth business for good.

On a completely different subject, I've been asked by a British coworker to write a front-page introduction for a technical writing newsletter that's distributed worldwide to tech writers in my company. I agreed. But now I need something clever to say so that I'm not just another boring newsletter contributor. Let me know if you have any ideas.