Yup.

The sales portion of the BIG HUGE TRAINING is at a local hotel’s ballroom which has been decorated in various shades of purple and peppered with balloons. Our tech training is in the C-P’s highly air-conditioned and very gray conference room. For the joint sessions, we have to drive to the hotel and then drive back when we have to break off again. Very Upstairs, Downstairs, no?

So I have to be at Panera Bread at 8am to pick up the breakfast I ordered for our in-house training group. (I did Dunkin’ Donuts yesterday & feel guilty feeding us donuts 2 days in a row.I also still have the corporate card from when I was a manager.) Then I have to get the conference room open and set up for our 8:30 session.

Now I have to go don my purple (I even bought 2 purple hair extensions for the training — the only thing good about getting older is being able to embrace my eccentricities), put on a happy face and get the party started.

* Oh! By the way, I moved our World of Warcraft blog from the C-P’s server to WordPress.com. I wanted more control over how it looked. I also will be redesigning this site in the next few months. I’m so tired of dozy girl in the header. I’m more tired of how the lines of text next to a right-aligned photo smoosh together. My CSS is a mess from constant patching up through the years, so a fresh slate will be fantastic for all of us. But mostly me.

After two years of Cute Overload calendars, I am officially burned out on cute animal photos. And that’s a sad sad thing. You could show me a picture of a wee baby bunny munching on a buttercup while wearing a sailor hat and I’d say, “meh.” That’s not good. I have to recharge.

The Urban Dictionary calendar I had last year was great fun and I would have bought it again, but I couldn’t find it at the mall’s calendar kiosk. So in addition to my beloved Page-a-Day notepad and a monthly desktop wallpaper from Smashing Magazine, I added this calendar to my workplace desk:

True or False for our jaded society.

WM and I are keeping track of how well we do. So far he has more correct.

At home, we’re using the World of Warcraft Trivia Calendar and a Mickey Mouse wall calendar in the kitchen.

Even with all of this, if you ask me what today’s date is, I will still hem and haw. But at least I’ll be able to tell you about Johnny Carson’s joke that caused a toilet paper panic!

*And Christmas cards. And Christmas wrapping paper.

Step 1: Touch the app’s icon to start it up. Wait a few sections as the screen loads.

Don't forget to mute the phone unless you want to hear the music.

Step 2: Duck and cover.

Blow up the county? There's an app for that!

I ‘m gonna need a bigger phone.

(Also posted at World of Warcraft Wanderings)

Today’s the Collingswood Book Fair. That’s where we’re headed as soon as … well, I get off of the computer. I should really take a pic for you of how my shelving has grown since I moved here 3 years ago. We have a LOT of books now!

Other plans for this weekend include the mythical, unattainable homemade apple pie, some earrings for friends/family, a bit of World of Warcraft and a LOT of tidying up.

Getting glares from behind. Books await!

***
Dreams:

1) One of the people I work with dies suddenly during her lunch break. It is very sad.

2) I seeing a “Pirates vs Sharks” live show at a Sea World-type establishment. It’s interactive, so we’re all dressed as pirates — easier than dressing as sharks, I gather — and we are on little boats on the water. It turns out the “sharks” are actually a bunch of happy killer whales. Dream ends with a chorus line of “Shamus” walking on their tails across the water.

3) Some new necklace ideas. Really. I dream of beads now. (shudder)

Friday Five: Turning

1. To whom do you normally turn when you need to complain about something?
My mother or WM, depending on the content of my complaint.

2. Which annual season-turning do you enjoy the most?
Winter into spring. It’s happening now. The teensy buds on the shrubs and trees are starting to appear. Easter flower signs are sprouting up everywhere. And it’s lighter later in the day (though I’d rather still have that in April – March to me was too early for DST). Yesterday, a bunch of dump trucks came by and landscapers spread new mulch all around the Dee-luxe apartment in the sky. (Ollie: For me to poop on!). The mulch stinks to high heaven, but it stinks like spring, and I’m okay with that.

3. Where can you get a really good turnover?
I don’t have pastry turnovers often at all. But there’s a place called Pizza Express that the ladies at work order from that makes great pizza turnovers.

4. What’s employee turnover like where you work?
They’re all running like rats from a sinking ship, thanks for asking!

I should probably mentioned that we all have to take a second unpaid furlough week this year; this time between April and June.

With my four weeks of vacation I already earn (great, isn’t it? If I were management, I’d scale that back before I started taking the private printers off peoples’ desks but what do I know?), the three personal days and the now two weeks extra unpaid time, I’m terrified they’re going to forget who I am.

But I’m still sticking with it, even though my shoulders are starting to bow from the workload and I dream of my task list with most of its items an angry red. Sharon and I used to be able to turn things around in a day or two. Now I’m 4-5 days behind. The sales reps laugh like I’m joking when I say, “I’ll get that to you next week.”

Do they not see the empty desk? Do they not remember?

Same workload / (old staff size/2) = Twice as long to get things done.

Forgive me, the last Friday of the fiscal period is generally the worst workday of the month for me.

Aren’t you glad you asked, Mister Friday Five?

5. One of the Wonder Twins could turn into any form of water, while the other could turn into any animal. Which of these powers would be more useful to you?

The Wonder Twins were lame, but I’d be a lioness over a puddle any day.

**
Thanks for still stopping by. I know it’s been dry here for a while, but I have nothing to write about. The Florida trip was great and is perfectly captured by the beach picture below.

I’ve been working on my jewelry making, but there’s really nothing I think that’s worth sharing. The World of Warcraft blog is growing like gangbusters (despite it not being worthy to promote above the scroll on the C-P site like the newsroom-written blogs are*), but I never really put that stuff here anyway.

Spring is here, though, which means more adventures out-of-doors and more things to write about. I have a 4-day Disney trip coming up, but I hate blogging about vacations in advance anymore for fear of jinxing them.

Hang in there. At worst, you have six years of archives to keep you busy.

MSNBC on Gamers: “these are the weirdos that you already knew”

We browsed a few shops and had lunch. Then Thor said, “Hey, let’s go look for a bedroom set.” I said, “OK, but let’s hit the candy shop first.”

(I had a Sugar Daddy pop. Cost 25 cents, and took me over an hour to finish. Mmmm)

We didn’t want to go to Levitz becuase they really screwed with us when we tried to get a cushion cover replaced last year. So we ended up at Raymour and Flanagan. And about an hour later, we purchased this:

Our first bedroom set! We have delivery scheduled for 5/15…the day after settlement. Ooo! Ooo! How exciting!

The Wings won their last home game of the season last night, and MomandI had a great time. Today we’re hanging out at home. I’m having dinner at Panera tonight w/Mom while Thor head to bed in prep for work tonight.

I’ve cancelled my Horizons subscription and am uninstalling it now. I found the gameplay boring and the graphics were choppy no matter what video card I used. Adios, Istaria.

I have a hard time dealing with Valentine’s Day. Part of me wants the whole nine yards — the fancy dinner w/me in a red dress and tumbling curls, the red roses, a pretty bracelet perhaps. The other part knows that VDay has turned into a commercial nightmare; placing horrific pressure on the menfolk in our lives and evolving into a way to make as much money as possible for Hallmark and the Entertainment Industry. And no matter which way the day turns out, I’m apathetic.

I played Horizons for a few hours. I’m losing my thrill for that game. No matter what setup I use, the lag is horrific and the frames per second never gets above 12. Characters are ugly. Monsters are repetitive. The rest of my guild is over level 20, and seems to have no time for low-level questions. There are plenty of live events, but if you’re under 30, fuggetaboutit.

To make matters worse, I’m worried about work already, and it’s only Saturday night. That sucks.

Meh. I’m just peevish all around. Time to take Max out for a spin and head to bed.

I did watch tonight’s episode of American Idol, and the one person who I thought was just horrible (Fantasia) got the best rating from the judges. Now I know how out of it I really am.

Not much bloggage. Sleepy. Is it Friday yet?

1) I started playing Dark Age of Camelot (again). I rolled a Cleric named Gynnett. Pronounced “Gannett,” natch. Every other name I created was already taken, and if with the “y” in place of the “a” the name looks pretty Anglo. Anyhow, Gynnett’s level 8.

2) I uninstalled Movable Type. Yes, after all the brouhaha I made about getting it working, I scrapped it. Why? For starters, my blog is pretty simple. Right now, I don’t really want comments, I don’t like TrackBack, and I don’t need an RSS feed. And it was taking me a tremendous amount of time to tweak the styles of my site through the MT product. I scrapped it, went back to Blogger, and had my own styles up in a less than an hour.

As I was walking Max around in the cold, I found myself looking into the ground-floor apartments. Hey, if it’s dark out, and the lights are on inside, AND the privacy blinds are opened, anyone can see in.

Some apartments were beautifully furnished and decorated. The small amount of ground outside were decorated and treated as a real yard. These people must have accepted the fact that they are here for a while, and that they are going to make the space their own.

Other apartments were very Spartan. A few furnishings, no clutter or touches of home. Looking like the owners could — and would — vacate at a moment’s notice. These owners know that they’ll eventually have someplace else to go.

And you have us. To be frank, I’ve given up on this apartment a long time ago. I used to keep it nicely decorated.I was proud of it. It’s my first place. But I’ve grown tired of trying. Seven years is too long to be here. In the past few years, when we bought furniture, we bought furniture that we could take with us into a house. So we were shedding our apartment-friendly furniture for larger, house-ready items. Our computer desks are bigger. Our loveseat’s bigger. Our TV’s bigger. Our dining room set is huge. We even graduated from a full mattress to a queen. There is very little room to walk around, which irritates me.

So it’s with a hopeful heart that I look forward to spring. Although my lease isn’t up until August, I hope to start the summer in our own little home. Without having to share walls with other people. And with our own patch of green.

I’m ready.