Bunch of brief updates!
Here's the "Cliffs Notes" version of some interesting things that went on in the last two days.
I had the day off from Diddams yesterday, so I used it to be productive -- especially in honour of it being "ADHD Awareness Day". *grin* One thing I did was pick up the $200 Yahoo (in Sunnyvale) owed my mom and I for doing a user (not usability) study almost two months ago. It was a week-long "communications diary" thing. We did it from home, and it was enjoyable and interesting, but still, we were promised compensation, so we should get what was promised.
There apparently was a big snafu because the gal who organized the studies was a summer intern but we didn't know she'd left until we tried calling her at Yahoo and they said there was no one there by that name. When we completed the study, she told us she sent the payment request to payroll or accounting, but then all the time passed and we never got it. Long story short, someone else picked up the ball that the intern dropped. The other person also told me that the accounting department had recently moved, which might be why they had no record of the intern even submitting the payment request! But, all's well that ends well. :)
Other things I did included shopping at Costco, indulging in a java chip frappuccino at Starbucks and doing a few hours of work on a freelance writing project that's due in a little over a week. I really wanted to be more productive than this, and also clean up more of the tornado-struck-packrat-nest that my bedroom has become, because it's so bad it literally makes me feel paralyzed and depressed to even LOOK at it, let alone try to clear it up. :(
Goober is back! :D As everyone knows, I've been seeing Peanut quite a bit lately (and was worried about her darkening muzzle and dark/matted chin fur until I made this happy discovery earlier in the week. (I discovered certain trees in the complex are dropping certain "fruits" that have a dark, oily juice that stains almost anything. To learn the sleuth-like way I solved the riddle, and what the offending tree is, you'll have to click the link! *grin*)
So, I've been seeing Peanut around, but I realized this week that I haven't seen Goober in a few weeks. That's normal for him sometimes, so I wasn't really worried. Just a little. :) I love my squirrel friends, after all! Plus, I think Goober is the father of Pea's babies! Anyhoo, yesterday around 4:30 p.m. I saw a squirrel dibbing around in the landscaping, went outside with my peanuts, apples and blueberries, and sure enough -- it was Goober! That big boy literally RAN over when he saw/heard me! :) I noticed he has a bit of the same staining I saw on Peanut, but not nearly as much. He probably doesn't eat the offending fruit as much. He really enjoyed the nuts I gave him, but for some reason dissed the apple chunks. Normally he loves them. Then I rolled him a blueberry, which he sniffed, picked up, took a small bite of, and then dropped. Too bad about that, because blueberries are VERY healthy! I think he's protesting the fact that cherries are now out of season (heehee). He and Peanut both were WILD about cherries! (Peanut peeled them; Goober ate the skins. I love how they have their own unique habits!)
An hour or two after Goober dropped by, who should I see but Pea? :D She also RAN over joyfully, and she not only ate the nuts but very eagerly ate all the apples! (She is still nursing the kids, I think). Unfortunately, she would not eat the blueberry, even though I remember her eating one several months ago. :( Maybe she just needs to get used to them again? I'll try next time and see!
Today at work I met not one, but TWO women with my name! How crazy is that? What are the odds against that? ;D Well, okay, the first woman's name was spelled "Sharie", but she pronounced it the same as mine (rhymes with "Scary", duh) and she too said she hates it when folks mispronounce it like "Shah-ree". She also mentioned how it's impossible to ever find personalized things in stores with her name. I've actually found SHARI once in a great while (*cheer*), but SHARIE -- well, you can forget that! Then later today, another customer came in, and her name was SHARI, with the same pronunciation as mine. And she too doesn't like the other pronunciation of the name; in fact, it annoys her! Same here! :) I told her she was the second person with my name to come in today, and she too thought it was a very funny/weird coincidence!
The third cool coincidence was when one of my co-workers, "SW", was doing a cash-out of her register before going home. I'm calling her "SW" because there's more than one person at work whose name starts with "S". Anyhoo, she pulled a $1 bill from the drawer and said "Look at this! This bill is all stamped!" (or something like that). I looked and it was a bill stamped with Where'sGeorge.com -- The Great Dollar Bill Locator! (You can use other bills too, but most folks use $1). I've been participating in circulating, recording and tracking Where's George bills for more than a year now, I think. Every now and then I'll take a crisp bill and write, in small writing along the margin: "www.wheresgeorge.com -- track this bill online!" Then I go and spend it, kind of like the message-in-a-bottle concept. HOWEVER, it's extremely rare for me to EVER come in contact with a Where's George bill. Kind of disappointing. :( But today I did! *cheer* Of course, I took one of my own dollars and gave it to SW in exchange for the stamped bill I took. And now, after all of this excitement, guess where the bill originated?
In another part of San Jose! The Willow Glen neighborhood, to be exact. It was stamped 233 days and 23 hours ago by some guy who calls himself "The Bank of Frank". :) He wrote the following message online about it (you enter a bill's serial number and track it that way) -- "Welcome to WheresGeorge and thanks for entering this lucky bill which was received brand new in Willow Glen. Watch where it travels next."
It's hard to believe that Frank stamped and recorded this bill so long ago, that no one else entered it online in all this time, and that it STILL hasn't made it out of San Jose! But, at least I gave it a second entry. Hopefully when I spend it, it'll continue on its adventure. Or perhaps I should trade it with beckerbuns, a fellow Where's George lover! At least I know SHE will enter it online! :D
And now I'm going to get ready for some shut-eye. I work 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. tomorrow (with a lunch break of course), then I'm going out with my mom that night. On Saturday I'm not working, but I'm having lunch with Tony at one of our fave independent diners, and then we are FINALLY going to plant the first oak tree on his new property in the mountains! Well, actually, *I* am going to plant it. Tony doesn't want to plant any other trees, plants or flowers until I "christen" (for lack of a better word) the property with this beautiful little coast live oak sapling, which I happen to have germinated myself several years ago! *blush* Coast live oaks are true California natives. This one's been growing in a one-gallon plastic nursery can, so I'm sure it'll jump for joy to get in the ground.
Saturday with Tony will certainly be a nice break from a week of working! :D Sunday and Monday I'm at work again, but then I'm definitely NOT working Tuesday or Wednesday, due to various appointments (one doctor, one dentist) that had the awkwardness of being scheduled mid-day. I couldn't change by the time I got the Diddams job. Fortunately, the assistant manager (who makes up the schedules) is very cool about working around things like this, as long as we give her a heads-up several weeks in advance. That's the courteous thing for us to do anyway -- no one likes to have a last-minute request thrown at them!
It's 10:38 p.m., and I am really ready for BED! Happy Friday all! :)
I had the day off from Diddams yesterday, so I used it to be productive -- especially in honour of it being "ADHD Awareness Day". *grin* One thing I did was pick up the $200 Yahoo (in Sunnyvale) owed my mom and I for doing a user (not usability) study almost two months ago. It was a week-long "communications diary" thing. We did it from home, and it was enjoyable and interesting, but still, we were promised compensation, so we should get what was promised.
There apparently was a big snafu because the gal who organized the studies was a summer intern but we didn't know she'd left until we tried calling her at Yahoo and they said there was no one there by that name. When we completed the study, she told us she sent the payment request to payroll or accounting, but then all the time passed and we never got it. Long story short, someone else picked up the ball that the intern dropped. The other person also told me that the accounting department had recently moved, which might be why they had no record of the intern even submitting the payment request! But, all's well that ends well. :)
Other things I did included shopping at Costco, indulging in a java chip frappuccino at Starbucks and doing a few hours of work on a freelance writing project that's due in a little over a week. I really wanted to be more productive than this, and also clean up more of the tornado-struck-packrat-nest that my bedroom has become, because it's so bad it literally makes me feel paralyzed and depressed to even LOOK at it, let alone try to clear it up. :(
Goober is back! :D As everyone knows, I've been seeing Peanut quite a bit lately (and was worried about her darkening muzzle and dark/matted chin fur until I made this happy discovery earlier in the week. (I discovered certain trees in the complex are dropping certain "fruits" that have a dark, oily juice that stains almost anything. To learn the sleuth-like way I solved the riddle, and what the offending tree is, you'll have to click the link! *grin*)
So, I've been seeing Peanut around, but I realized this week that I haven't seen Goober in a few weeks. That's normal for him sometimes, so I wasn't really worried. Just a little. :) I love my squirrel friends, after all! Plus, I think Goober is the father of Pea's babies! Anyhoo, yesterday around 4:30 p.m. I saw a squirrel dibbing around in the landscaping, went outside with my peanuts, apples and blueberries, and sure enough -- it was Goober! That big boy literally RAN over when he saw/heard me! :) I noticed he has a bit of the same staining I saw on Peanut, but not nearly as much. He probably doesn't eat the offending fruit as much. He really enjoyed the nuts I gave him, but for some reason dissed the apple chunks. Normally he loves them. Then I rolled him a blueberry, which he sniffed, picked up, took a small bite of, and then dropped. Too bad about that, because blueberries are VERY healthy! I think he's protesting the fact that cherries are now out of season (heehee). He and Peanut both were WILD about cherries! (Peanut peeled them; Goober ate the skins. I love how they have their own unique habits!)
An hour or two after Goober dropped by, who should I see but Pea? :D She also RAN over joyfully, and she not only ate the nuts but very eagerly ate all the apples! (She is still nursing the kids, I think). Unfortunately, she would not eat the blueberry, even though I remember her eating one several months ago. :( Maybe she just needs to get used to them again? I'll try next time and see!
Today at work I met not one, but TWO women with my name! How crazy is that? What are the odds against that? ;D Well, okay, the first woman's name was spelled "Sharie", but she pronounced it the same as mine (rhymes with "Scary", duh) and she too said she hates it when folks mispronounce it like "Shah-ree". She also mentioned how it's impossible to ever find personalized things in stores with her name. I've actually found SHARI once in a great while (*cheer*), but SHARIE -- well, you can forget that! Then later today, another customer came in, and her name was SHARI, with the same pronunciation as mine. And she too doesn't like the other pronunciation of the name; in fact, it annoys her! Same here! :) I told her she was the second person with my name to come in today, and she too thought it was a very funny/weird coincidence!
The third cool coincidence was when one of my co-workers, "SW", was doing a cash-out of her register before going home. I'm calling her "SW" because there's more than one person at work whose name starts with "S". Anyhoo, she pulled a $1 bill from the drawer and said "Look at this! This bill is all stamped!" (or something like that). I looked and it was a bill stamped with Where'sGeorge.com -- The Great Dollar Bill Locator! (You can use other bills too, but most folks use $1). I've been participating in circulating, recording and tracking Where's George bills for more than a year now, I think. Every now and then I'll take a crisp bill and write, in small writing along the margin: "www.wheresgeorge.com -- track this bill online!" Then I go and spend it, kind of like the message-in-a-bottle concept. HOWEVER, it's extremely rare for me to EVER come in contact with a Where's George bill. Kind of disappointing. :( But today I did! *cheer* Of course, I took one of my own dollars and gave it to SW in exchange for the stamped bill I took. And now, after all of this excitement, guess where the bill originated?
In another part of San Jose! The Willow Glen neighborhood, to be exact. It was stamped 233 days and 23 hours ago by some guy who calls himself "The Bank of Frank". :) He wrote the following message online about it (you enter a bill's serial number and track it that way) -- "Welcome to WheresGeorge and thanks for entering this lucky bill which was received brand new in Willow Glen. Watch where it travels next."
It's hard to believe that Frank stamped and recorded this bill so long ago, that no one else entered it online in all this time, and that it STILL hasn't made it out of San Jose! But, at least I gave it a second entry. Hopefully when I spend it, it'll continue on its adventure. Or perhaps I should trade it with beckerbuns, a fellow Where's George lover! At least I know SHE will enter it online! :D
And now I'm going to get ready for some shut-eye. I work 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. tomorrow (with a lunch break of course), then I'm going out with my mom that night. On Saturday I'm not working, but I'm having lunch with Tony at one of our fave independent diners, and then we are FINALLY going to plant the first oak tree on his new property in the mountains! Well, actually, *I* am going to plant it. Tony doesn't want to plant any other trees, plants or flowers until I "christen" (for lack of a better word) the property with this beautiful little coast live oak sapling, which I happen to have germinated myself several years ago! *blush* Coast live oaks are true California natives. This one's been growing in a one-gallon plastic nursery can, so I'm sure it'll jump for joy to get in the ground.
Saturday with Tony will certainly be a nice break from a week of working! :D Sunday and Monday I'm at work again, but then I'm definitely NOT working Tuesday or Wednesday, due to various appointments (one doctor, one dentist) that had the awkwardness of being scheduled mid-day. I couldn't change by the time I got the Diddams job. Fortunately, the assistant manager (who makes up the schedules) is very cool about working around things like this, as long as we give her a heads-up several weeks in advance. That's the courteous thing for us to do anyway -- no one likes to have a last-minute request thrown at them!
It's 10:38 p.m., and I am really ready for BED! Happy Friday all! :)