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Thursday, November 30, 2006
When it rains it pours
Yeah it's been a while since my last post again. It's one of those "When it rains it pours" situations I guess. I had a new person starting on Monday plus one of my other employees all of a sudden disappeared. Yes, these things really do happen and they always seem to be happening to me. So to fix this situation quickly since we'll be going away on vacation next week I asked Mike's sister Kristina to come in and help me out with working here for a little while. She started Tuesday so I have been really busy training. Been at work till 7 every night as well. I will be really glad to have this vacation :)
Even though it hasn't quite sunk in yet that we'll be on a plane in only a few days. I am SO not ready. I have sooo much left to do. I am still crazy behind on my mail and I need to wrap up the gifts that I am bringing to Austria with me and the ones that I am mailing. Argh.
Short mail update. Letters went out this week so far to: Barbara/Linz, Alison/UK, Kirsty/UK, Caroline/Scotland, Nicki/OZ, Jessica/DE, Carmen/Germany and Natalia/Poland. Still owe replies to: Michelle/Winnipeg, Nova/UT, Alex/Germany, Nadine/Tenerife, Syvill/PA, Lene/UK, Celia/MA, Jo/UK, Tiffany/OK and Lotte/Denmark. Hope I am not forgetting anyone.
Posted by Hanna at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sunday, November 26, 2006
It's starting to feel a little like Christmas ...
Another short update. Since Thanksgiving is done and over now everything has pretty much turned into a Christmas wonderland overnight now. Some stores already had Christmas displays out before Thanksgiving but now they all do. I have actually decided that it might not be such a bad idea to get into the Christmas spirit. I am feeling christmassy. :)
I am guessing part of the reason is that I have been surfing various Austrian Christmas market websites and looking forward to our trip to Austria in only a week and a half. The weather seems to be terrible in Vienna right now (fog and drizzle) so I hope that clears up before we go. But otherwise I am very excited. :)
There is still a lot to do before we go especially at work but I am trying not to focus on that too much until at least tomorrow. Not much I can do about that right now anyway.
Let's see what other news I can report ? I actually decided to brave the mall for an hour Friday. I usually avoid any kind of shops on Black Friday. But I had to get my hair trimmed and Friday was the only day where it was a little slower at work so I could escape for an hour without causing too much chaos. I actually wandered into JC Penny's and stood in line for 20 minutes to get two nice sweaters at 60% off. After that I was ready to get the hell out of there though. I don't do crowds very well. :)
Managed to finish all my Christmas cards yesterday. I will probably start mailing them out throughout next week. The ones that are waiting for letters I am probably going to mail out as I get the letters written. So let's hope that gets done before we leave. Today's project will be to get my Christmas decorations out and possibly decorate the tree. I also want to finish some of my Christmas shopping if possible and of course catch up on my mail.
Short mail update. Haven't written any letters. :( Received letters from/still owe replies to: Michelle/Winnipeg, Nova/UT, Barbara/Linz, Alison/UK, Alex/Germany, Caroline/Scotland, Nadine/Tenerife, Nicki/Oz, Carmen/Germany, Natalia/Poland, Syvill/PA, Jessica/DE, Kirsty/UK, Lene/UK and Lotte/Denmark.
PS: Here's a picture of Mike and me from Thanksgiving after we got back from our dinner at the Spinning Wheel Inn.
Posted by Hanna at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Happy Thanksgiving !
Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends. :)
Sorry I haven't been updating much lately. I meant to post a lot more but life just got crazy hectic over the last week. Everything was fine up until Sunday. Then Monday came around and everything kind of fell apart.
I had finally had someone fully trained but received a call on Monday that he had gotten in a car accident over the weekend and wouldn't be able to come back to work any time soon. So the search for a new person began, the resume reading, interviewing, all the fun stuff. And this time with the added time pressure of knowing that we will go away in less than two weeks.
Anyway, after working crazy hours for three days straight - partly because I am short-handed and partly because of extra workload due to Thanksgiving - I got a day off today which was nice. We went to the Spinning Wheel Inn in Redding, CT for a really nice Thanksgiving dinner. It's the same inn we got married at so it holds some special memories of course. :)
I am going to have to work till 7 pretty much all next week training the new person. Let's hope it all works out before we leave for Austria. I don't like to leave things in limbo while we are gone.
Short mail update for today. Wrote letters last Sunday and mailed out to: Charles, TN, Lexi/DC, Kirsty/UK, Pamela/FL and Celia/MA. Received letters from/still owe replies to: Michelle/Winnipeg, Nova/UT, Barbara/Linz, Alison/UK, Alex/Germany, Caroline/Scotland, Nadine/Tenerife, Nicki/Oz, Carmen/Germany, Natalia/Poland, Syvill/PA, Jessica/DE and Lotte/Denmark.
Posted by Hanna at 09:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Great Mail Day
Today was a great mail day. :) I received 5 letters and the first copy of my Rachael Ray magazine. Yay. One of letters that came was from Carmen/Germany. We had thought the letter had been lost but it finally turned up. God, I am so behind on my mail now - it's crazy. Here's my short mail update for today. Received letters from/still owe replies to: Michelle/Winnipeg, Nova/UT, Pamela/FL, Barbara/Linz, Alison/UK, Alex/Germany, Caroline/Scotland, Kirsty/UK, Nadine/Tenerife, Charles/TN, Nicki/Oz, Carmen/Germany, Lexi/DC, Natalia/Poland and Celia/MA.
It's already almost 4 pm and I haven't really accomplished all that much on my day off so far. Well, I did make a yummy lunch for myself, had lots of tea and managed to write emails to most of my friends that I want to meet up with while we are in Austria in December. Also played around with my LJ userpics for a while and surfed the web looking at all the different Christmas markets in Austria.
I need to stop procrastinating now and start my Christmas cards. I am going to try and get at least half of my European ones done now. Maybe I'll get a letter or two done later as well.
Posted by Hanna at 03:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Midweek Update
I have been meaning to update the beginning of this week but somehow that didn't happen. Monday was just super crazy as I was down 3 people in my department so I was running around like crazy of course. Yesterday wasn't too bad and today wasn't all that bad either. I did have to work till 7 Monday + Tuesday though so that of course made the day drag even more. Today will be my last 7 o'clock day. Yay. :)
And the best part is that I am off tomorrow. (I am working Saturday) Originally I had myself scheduled for 6 days this week due to the pre-holiday craziness but decided to take the day off since everything seems fairly taken care of (knocks on wood *g*). So it will be nice to be off tomorrow. I am going to try and write some Christmas cards, send some emails and maybe get some letters done.
Short mail update. Wrote letters to Steff/Maine and Becki/MI Sunday night. A letter went out o Angela/VA today.
Received letters from/still owe replies to: Michelle/Winnipeg, Nova/UT, Pamela/FL, Barbara/Linz, Alison/UK, Alex/Germany, Caroline/Scotland, Kirsty/UK, Nadine/Tenerife, Charles/TN, Nicki/Oz. I hope I am not missing anyone.
Posted by Hanna at 05:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sunday, November 12, 2006
And another weekend gone by - Happy Birthday Mom
And another week has gone by. Where does all this time go ? First of all I should say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my mom. It's her birthday today. :)
The weather has been pretty miserable today. Really dark where you had to have the lights on even during the day, some rain, just very gloomy altogether. Somehow I feel like I didn't accomplish anything this weekend even though I guess I did manage to sort out a few things.
Yesterday's project was to sort out my Christmas card stuff, sort through my cards (see if I need to buy any more), sort my stickers/address labels etc. and go through my address list, make sure everything is up-to-date and figure out who I am going to send a card this year. Right now I am at a whopping 75 cards for this year. Yes call me crazy ... I really tried to trim my list and only send cards to the people that really matter to me but somehow I just couldn't trim it any further. Now after sorting it all out the challenge will be to actually get them all written out before Christmas. :)
Today's project was to go through the huge pile of catalogs that I received over the past weeks/months and start shopping for Christmas presents. I like to get done fairly early and this year is even more critical as we will be in Austria starting Dec. 6th so I should try and get some of my European Christmas gifts together before then. Kirsty and I will be exchanging our gifts in Miami so that's one less worry. But I should try and get together most of the gifts for my friends in Austria who I usually exchange gifts with and maybe some of my other European pals if I want to mail the gifts while in Europe.
So my whole day today was pretty much spent with browsing through a stack of catalogs trying to pick out Christmas gifts. I can say that I found a bunch of nice things and made fairly good progress even though it did take me all day. :( But I found some nice stuff for Mike, Kristina, Joanne, Kirsty, Lexi, Sharon, .... and a bunch of other people. :) Now the key will be to hope that these items arrive in a timely manner. One of the websites I ordered from is notorious for taking ages to ship. I ran into that issue last year with them but it didn't stop me from ordering there again (I guess some people don't learn *g*). So I am just crossing my fingers and hope it works out. :)
Short mail update. Wrote a letter to Jetta/Finland. Going to try and maybe write one or two more when I am done with this post.
Received letters from/still owe replies to: Michelle/Winnipeg, Nova/UT, Steff/Maine, Becki/MI, Pamela/FL, Barbara/Linz, Alison/UK, Alex/Germany, Caroline/Scotland and Angela/VA. I might be missing someone there. Sorry in advance. :(
Posted by Hanna at 08:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Crazy week
And another weekend is almost over. I know my updates have been sort of sporadic lately. This past week has just been crazy. It was one of those weeks that just felt like it would never ever end. It was just one thing after another. Been working on lots of different things plus all the crazy stuff that happened throughout the week. Friday was especially nutty - we didn't leave work until about 7 pm.
And even Saturday, although we were off from work, the madness continued as we received phone call after phone call about different problems and even ended up going into work for a little bit to fix something. I have a feeling that next week won't be much better. I already have a long list of issues that I need to deal with ASAP on Monday. So wish me luck.
Went for a nice walk in Tarrywhile Park today. Just a short 1 mile walk but it was nice to be outside in the fresh air. It was cool but still sunny and nice to be walking outside.
I am going to write some letter now and maybe watch some more Rachael Ray or maybe I'll watch a DVD. We'll see. :)
PS: Short mail update: Throughout the week wrote letters and mailed letters to: Hayley/UK, Lexi/DC and Celia/MA. Yesterday wrote to: Syvil, PA.
Received letters from/still owe replies to: Jetta/Finland, Michelle/Winnipeg, Nova/UT, Deanna/PA, Alison/UK, Jessica/DE, Kirsty/UK, Alex/Germany and Caroline/Scotland.
Posted by Hanna at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack