Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving was very relaxing--especially after all the things that happened this week...

Locking the keys in the car, dealing with a broken washing machine, and staying up until 3:00am waiting for work to be over... all that fun stuff.

We spent the day before and the holiday with my parents and Alyssa, and also had a wonderful time with my grandparents. We had celebrated my sister's birthday the weekend before, so it hadn't been too long since we'd been home.

We gave mom her present a little early this year--we got her one of those fancy pants Red Apple Yankee Candle Oil and Reed sets. She says she's using it to make the corner where Alyssa's achievements sit smell better, and I'll have to admit, it does smell pretty good. I think the red apple flavor is the best one they make.

After a night of baking pies with mom, Tiffany made some green bean casserole for Thanksgiving dinner--pretty good stuff might I add. I used to be resistant to the stuff, now I think it's starting to grow on me a little bit.

Dinner and the pies were pretty good. The time we spent together afterward was pretty relaxing. After discussing the impending future of digital television and trying to make closed captioning work (with no avail) we watched Miracle on 34th Street and The Santa Claus to get in the mood for Christmas time.

The ride home was pretty uneventful. Tiffany and I discussed names for a puppy when we get one. We're pretty stuck on Neo (from the Matrix) or Subaru (sounds fun). We threw around a lot of stupid names, most of them had something to do with road signs we saw or towns that we were driving through. It was a lot of fun.

We got to sleep in the following morning, and for lunch we went to Grandma Kinnersley's house. I heard all about Renee's trip to Africa and got a couple souvineers! I got a wooden giraffe statue and I keychain from Etheopia. Tiffany got an Arimaian Coke bottle and a scarf. I also got to spend some time with Tiffany's extended family. Renee, Amy Jo, Anna and Timothy all came back to our place to see our new furniture and play the Wii. Renee had a few computer questions for me, and I got to see all her pictures from Africa.

After lunch, Tiffany went to work and the Kindles, the Hollywoods and I went to see the new Disney movie, Bolt. I thought it was pretty good. I'll probably buy it when it comes out on video.

I uploaded some pictures of the holiday season to my picasa web albums just now, so most of you should be getting an email invitation to see them. (If I forgot to send you one, just let me know and I'll get you one.)

So now I'm just waiting for Tiffany to get home... Looks like I've got quite a day ahead of me tomorrow. 10 pages of term paper about DHCP for networking are waiting to be written for Monday. :-p Blah...

Updates

So we haven't written for a while so I thought I'd write a bit.

So Wednesday we went out just to do some window shopping and look for Christmas presents and ended up putting a mattress on layaway. We got a queen sized Sealy and we're pretty excited. We have about half of it paid off already and are hoping to finish it off so they'll deliver it. We CAN'T wait!!

John and Jeanette came last weekend and we had so much fun. We went out for dinner, checked out some furniture and went to Oberweiss(yum!!) They also brought us some more furniture, which is awesome! They brought us another couch(which has a pull out bed which we're now sleeping on- a lot better than the floor!!) a coffee table and a lamp. It was a pretty awesome weekend!

Last week I had a couple days off in a row. Got kinda boring but it was good to rest a relax. Got a lot of things done though, laundry and dishes etc. Kohls is really being affected by the economy so its hard for them to give out so many hours. But I'm still getting a decent amount so I'm not complaning. I did apply for a supervisor position but didn't get it because I need more experience. But that's ok, I feel like not getting it will push me to start subbing which will probably be better in the long run.

I'm no longer at Burger King, a couple weeks back reminded me why I quit in the first place. Plus the working environment wasn't so great there either and that's why I quit the daycare so I decided it was best to leave. Not to mention I almost asked someone at Kohls whether it was for"here or to go" ... not a good sign :-p

So now we're getting ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas, I can't beleive it's Novemmber already!! And tomorrow we have to vote!! I'm kinda nervous to see the outcome... I guess we'll just have to wait and see. So we'll be working on Thanksgiving and Christmas plans. I have to work Black Friday at Kohls again- yuck! Ah the joys of retail....lol

Guess that's it!
Love Tiffany

SO much better...

So like Paul said I've started back at Kohl's and I can't express how much better it is. Not dreading going to work is much less stressful. Everyone is excited to see me back and lots of people have already told me I'm doing an awesome job. A couple of things the other place lacked.

Since I told them I'd work anywhere and have open availability I've been placed in a couple of areas that are totally new to me. Even though that means I have to learn lots of new things its actually kinda fun because I'm doing something different almost everyday so things won't get boring. I helped the design person for a couple days and that was the most fun so far. I got to set up towel and dish displays which is fun.

Hour wise I'm doing pretty good. This week I wasn't even on the schedule and I got more than 30 hours so between this and Burger King I'll be doing great. Plus since Black Friday (yikes!) and Christmas are coming up hours at Kohls will be plentiful.

Speaking of Burger King I start there hopefully this coming week because they don't make their schedule for the next week until the day before the old one runs out. Last time I was in though the Assistant Manager offered to make me a manager, which would be awesome. After Christmas hours at both places are hard to get but as a manager they could offer me 40 hours especially if I do a good job. So I'll work hard the next few months and hopefully get lots of hours after Christmas.

In general I'm just glad to be done at the other place. It is sad because I love working with kids and it stings a little not to be doing that. But the place I was at was cutting me down and just crushing my spirit so I knew it was time to get out. Its taking some time to rebound because a lot of what they said hurt. I'm getting over it though. My amazing husband keeps telling me that I'm great despite what they think and everyone at Kohls is telling me I'm doing great so I'll get there soon.

I'm hoping to still work with kids until I get another job in a school. I want to work at our church in the kids program and talk to a couple teachers I know in the area to see if I can volunteer in their classrooms. So I won't be totally out of the loop when I got to interview for jobs.

So basically I'm doing great and am so much happier. Thanks for everyone's support.

AMP Is Very Bad.

I don't know if many of you have experienced AMP, that wretched drink by Mountain Dew... It seriously messed with me last night. I experienced the shortest highest high I've ever gotten out of a caffeinated beverage, followed by one of the lowest mental crashes I can remember--definitely not what I was aiming for last night. I drank it hoping that I could finish my ENGL210 critique assignment and go to bed, not having to worry about it. I went to the lab last night at about 7:30 hoping to crank it out... but my brain just felt like mud. Futilely I tried to read the article I was supposed to be critiquing, but the AssultCube, World of Warcraft and some other generic World War II FPS that Steve and Adan were playing looked way more exciting. I couldn't concentrate at all.

So I woke up at 6:00 this morning and finished the whole paper in one sitting. Yay!

So... just for future reference, I'll document it here--if only for myself.

AMP is very bad.

I just sent the love of my life off to her new job this morning. She looks so much happier, and I can definitely tell that she's more excited to be going to work. I gave her a kiss and told her to have a good day at her new job. Instead of a sigh, this time I got a smile back. Things are looking up.

The house is clean, and I'm off to school. Looks like English, Web Programming and Old Testament are on the schedule today--nothing too tough.

C~ya

Check Out My New Stress Ball!

Life is changing a little bit around here. I got a new stress ball, a new pair of shoes and Tiffany got a couple new jobs.

I think it's going to be for the better. We've spent some time talking and praying about it. Turns out she couldn't take working there much longer... so for sanity's sake, we thought it would be a good idea if she went to work somewhere else. We may have to pinch a few pennies to make it work, but I think it's going to be a better deal in the long run. Maybe now she'll be able to get that Special Ed. certification over the summer. I'm sure she'll have plenty of time to work on her references and polish up her resume before next year.

We spent some time at the mall tonight. That was fun. It felt like a date.

...So I almost bought presents and pizza for Amy Jo on Saturday--I accidentally gave her read and write access to my Google Calendar, and some events I didn't remember putting on my personal agenda started popping up. :-p

Yes, I love technology...

I had a pretty swell day at work today. I got to learn a little more about Linux and shell scripting at work. The backup server now creates the backup folders, then purges the week-old ones automatically (leaving me more time to do more difficult work. yay!)

I even wrote a new module today that grabs advanced statistics from Popsicle. It's pretty swell. Utilizing loops, it dynamically writes 224 queries in under a second... which is cool on one hand, but on the other, I shouldn't have to use so many queries to get the data that I need.

select sum(numberofpeople) as sum, count(numberofpeople) as count, avg(numberofpeople) as avg
from #tableName#
where dateof > dateadd('m', -1, Now())
and datepart('w', [dateof]) = '#numweekday#'
and datepart('h', [dateof]) = '#hour#'
and datepart('n', [dateof]) = '#minute#';

"Select sum(numberofpoeple) as sum" gets the number of people who have been in the lab for each half hour mark in the past month. "Count(numberofpeople) as count" gets the number of population counts taken in the lab for each half hour mark in the past month. "Avg(numberofpeople) as avg" gets the average number of people in the lab for each half hour mark in the past month.

I'd say I'm learning a lot about database in my CSIS 245 class. A month ago I wouldn't have been able to write something like this, so I guess I've learned something from Dr. Bareiss.

Database is Killing Me

CSIS 245 will be the end of me.

CSIS 326 isn't fun.

I don't mind BLIT 202.

ENGL 210 doesn't take much effort.

CSIS 480 is probably my favorite.

Classes aren't going so well right now... turns out my partner forgot to turn in the last lab report for Network Admin and Theory... Big Fat 0 for that. The lab before that one didn't go so well either. I just wish it wasn't so hard to do well in that class to begin with.

I Beat Portal!

I just beat Portal. It was pretty good. The artificial intelligence says some funny things during the last level. It's creepy because that whole level takes place in the dark. I didn't think it was going to end... The robot definitely lied about the cake... There was no cake, but the song during the end credits made up for it. ^_^

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_(video_game)

EDIT:
Oh, and we just got Wall-e for the Wii. We've noticed that the gameplay is kinda buggy--so much so that two or three times we've been forced to shut the system off because Wall-e got stuck in a wall or in the floor. But, it's still fun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E_(video_game)

Made it Home

What a ride! Tiffany and I drove down IL-26 hoping to get home on time for me to get to work, but right before we got to Princeton, the road was flooded... We ended up going back to Ohio, through Mendota, and I think we got on I-92... I'm not really sure. Somehow, we ended up in Morris and we took 80 until we got to IL-53 or something like that, we went through Coal City and got to Wilmington... IL-113 was flooded too! So we ended up driving back again so we could find Morris... we didn't really know where we were going still... 'cause we followed the signs to Morris, and somehow missed it...

...Anyway, we eventually made it back to Bourbonnais, after a long, frustrating trip. I ended up missing an hour of work, but no worries, AmyJo was able to give me Grace's phone number and she covered the lab for me.

I had a lot of fun at home this weekend. Living Well had their 3rd Anniversary Service. I got to sing and play in the worship set.

I don't think I've been home since Tiff and I have been married. We'll have to visit more often. I miss home sometimes...