1. What do you do in your spare time?
2. Do you have any church or community affiliations?
3. Have you won any awards or commendations?
4. What are your personal goals?

Part of me wanted to say, “Can you please just take my name off the list?” I didn’t want to answer any of these questions. But that would be rude.

I went to meet with the VP of Marketing. Sweet woman, probably around my age, and very friendly. She interviewed several people who had been nominated. We all had this set of questions to answer, along with several work-related or company-related questions.

She asked me about my contribution to my team. I mentioned something about communication and documentation and being team-oriented.

She said..

“One thing I’ve noticed about you is that you’re always on an even keel. It doesn’t matter what’s going on.. you could be really frazzled inside, for all I know, but you never show it. You just float gracefully along.”

You can’t beat that.

I remember a couple of years ago when I never thought I would find a better job than the one I had. I laugh at that now.

I attended a conference for some healthcare software my company uses, and a national user group meeting.  There were some boring spots, but I also learned some things, too.    It was interesting to hear about how other healthcare agencies dealt with scheduling issues and technical issues.    And we had lots of food.   And even some beer.

Here’s something not to do, though.  You see, I was very exhausted the last morning.    I missed my daughter and therefore would not sleep past 4am.   After day 3, I was worn completely out.   So… I made coffee in my room with the automatic coffee maker.    I poured the water in the receptacle, put the coffee in the spot where the coffee goes, turned on the machine, and totally neglected putting the carafe where it goes.

This is not to be tried at home.   Coffee goes everywhere.    Trust me on this.

Sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself (instead of calling yourself a complete idiot).  

It’s good to be back at my normal job, though…    because I get to pass out some stuff I was doing before that I have to get off my plate so I can begin to support this software the conference was all about.   Yay!

No more Microsoft Licensing and no more hardware purchasing.   And no more computer loading.   Life is good.      I love Ian.

I was reading an email from my mother and leaving voice mail for an inhouse end user at the same time.   

At some point during the voice mail, I lost track of who I was talking to, and said “Love you… no…er… WAIT!  Sorry about that.. I was just reading an email..”   Then, it occurred to me that I have the ability to DELETE VOICE MAIL!    So I ran back to the end user’s desk and deleted the voicemail.

This was only AFTER the manager on the other side of my cubicle heard the whole thing.

Yesterday, she decided to share this with my friends in IT while I was sitting there… “Hey, Lisa?  Did you tell them what you did the other day?   It was SO funny!”

Her way of recanting the story was SO hilarious.    I was in tears because I laughed so hard.  

 My manager then said, “I’ve done that same thing.. only with my boss… while I was standing in the room with him.”

Which caused me to laugh again!   I said, “How could you do that standing right in front of the person you were saying it to??” 

He said, “I was distracted and had a lot going on.”  (I can understand this, actually)

“What did your boss say?”

“He said, ‘Well, I’m quite fond of you, too.’   Then I apologized and explained that I had been preoccupied.”

The HR lady had come in during the conversation and also said, “I’ve done that, too!   I had my ex-husband on the phone and said it out of habit.  When I realised what I’d done, I said, ‘Uhh… sorry about that…  No I don’t’.   And then he said, ‘I know’.”

So I’m not alone.   But the whole concept of “not paying attention enough” is just hilarious.

What silly thing have you said while preoccupied with something else?

The network admin and I have the type of work relationship where we could vent and we knew it would stay confidential.   It was nice to be trusted that much.     

Within 15 minutes, I was LMAO, as the manager who sits on the other side of my cubicle saw fit to tell my manager a story about the funniest, stupidest thing I have done in a long time.   I can’t even tell you what it was.   (ok, maybe later…)     I laughed so hard, I cried.    And then, my manager with a wistful smile said, “I’ve done that same thing… only not over the phone.. in person.”

Which made me laugh harder.

I suppose this was a pretty standard Monday.  It’s the first Monday I’ve worked in 2 weeks.    I haven’t missed it, really.   Plus, as Gem mentioned, I may require chocolate today, which is her way of saying that I am either stressed out or experiencing the early stages of PMS.  (which was it?  huh?)

I’d completely forgotten that someone was going to be out all day, so sat around a little concerned for part of the day.       Couple hour drive + couple hour drive + fixing/selling stuff inbetween = most of the workday… just to confirm the math does actually work out to “most of the workday”.

I was walking into Walgreen’s after work to pic up some photos and hear this man shouting from across the parking lot… “Lisa!  Is that you?”   I had to look twice because it was my old workmate Mario, who used to be a good friend of mine before I was “let go” from a place I like to call “Hell”. 

Haven’t seen my friend in ages, so we talked in the parking lot for a good 15 minutes.  I caught up on all the work gossip at his work and the work gossip at my work (someone I used to work with in Hell now actually works with me at my current job), his wife is pregnant (sweet girl.. really like her).. all good stuff.     I had thought Mario had written me off or put me in some category of useless people who get let go from their jobs.   Or… I had been convinced of that by someone else… something I had bought into at a really vulnerable point in my life.     Losing a job is not fun.. especially after being there for 20 years.  Even if it IS Hell. 

At the end of the conversation, he apologized for not keeping in touch.   He’s always been really bad at email and I’ve always been really bad at picking up the phone.   I’m learning to use the phone, though.   Had lots of practice lately.   Thank God.     (with a capital “G”, mind you).

What was interesting about this conversation is that it left me feeling like, “Hey, things are not always as they seem and you shouldn’t let anyone impose their beliefs on you.  Trust your own instincts about people.”   This is a good thing.   It was something I needed to know.

So… my day.. so far… in a nutshell.   How was yours?

You see, someone had the idea to provide Blackberry devices to management, which is very nice, but then it came to my attention that the website didn’t display quite right on them, and the java menu we’d been using for navigation was not available via the Blackberry.

 So, after some Googling (strange how that’s a slang term now for “searching the Internet”, isn’t it?), I figured out how to write a cascading stylesheet for handheld devices.    It tested out quite nicely, but I ended up having to poke around Google again to get some special media coding to apply site-wide.

It wasn’t too much of a mystery really… just a find/replace procedure.  (duh!)

And I got the java menu sorted out by applying an element only visible to handheld devices.. a menu of sorts, written in HTML.  It sounds all boring, but I didn’t even have to Google that part of it, so I was quite happy when it just turned out right.

I could spend hours on web design of this sort alone (sorry.. no fancy Flash, PHP or CGI, for you programming people).      Those hours and hours of work with blog design and HTML/CSS coding ages ago finally turned out something I actually get paid to do.   Which is nice.

 This will end my technical speech of the day.  Sorry.

Overall, it’s a really good job.   The rules are reasonably lax.  My coworkers have me laughing almost every day, except when I’m frustrated that the Microsoft Open License website will not give me my downloads  (this is where I whine to one of my favourite Microsoft Partners and I’m told “yes, it’s Microsoft.  Get used to it.”)   Or, there was that one instance where I had to update over 100 job postings on the Intranet at one time and I was not in the mood to be disturbed for anything but life-threatening emergencies.

I can see, somedays, where it would pay to be a programmer, iPod carefully affixed to my ears, while programming lines and lines of code that created something useful in the end.   I imagine a “Do Not Disturb Me.    I’m in THE ZONE” sign hanging on the wall.

As it is, I’m mostly a customer service person, with a technical background, who gets interrupted a lot and figures out which thing is the most important thing to do first, without much supervision.   But that’s ok.  Apparently, I’m doing an ok job of it.  

Everything else was shit. Pardon my English. And some of it was my own fault. Some of it was too many help desk calls. All at the same time. Some of it was just because people “lost the plot”, as Gem would say. I mean… seriously… how long can one ramble on about nothing during the day and expect somewhat normal people to listen to it?

About an hour left to my day, I decided to go to the stock room and unpack boxes. I shut the door. It was quiet work.

Now we just need the UPS guy to deliver more boxes…

Thanks for visiting Lisa’s Place.

I left the person in charge of hardware acquisitions a note explaining the problem in detail and referring him to HP for swapping out the printer or having a certified repair person come out and fix it.

He chose to have his son come out and look at it, where he came to the same conclusion I did.

The hardware failed.

When I first got wind of the impending second opinion, frankly I thought, go ahead and waste more time trying to figure out how to fix something the HP repair person is going to have to fix.

Which they did.

Thanks for visiting Lisa’s Place.

I gave notice at my current job and really hated doing it. My boss was understanding. My coworker was sad to see me go.

There was a big meeting at the new employer. They asked me why I worked at my current job for 27 years. I told them I’d been there for a year and 1/2. I asked what my salary was going to be, and they started asking me all kinds of questions about my work experience.

I thought, “Great… it doesn’t sound like they’re sure about hiring me and I already quit my other job.” I never did end up with an answer about my salary. They made fun of working at the small company. I told them I loved working at the small company I was at, and I could go back there if I wanted to.

A few weeks ago, I wondered (for real) what it would be like to leave my place of employment and work for a big company. What would it be like to quit? What would it be like to have a bigger salary? Then I decided that I didn’t need to leave because I enjoy where I am.

The only thing I would like to do better is work from home.

Thanks for visiting Lisa’s Place.