Memorial Day in Glastonbury

We had a great weekend in Glastonbury - the pic is of the main crew - from left to right: Trev, me, Pauline, Gary, Melissa, Randy and Pat. Even though the mosquitoes were out in force, we had a great time.

We hung out a lot with Melissa and the dogs, did a ton of shopping and generally relaxed. It was a lot of fun. The weather was fantastic - about 80 degrees, not humid and beautifully sunny. I managed to avoid the sun for the most part and even look like a little bit of a tan.

In other news, we went and saw Pirates of the Caribbean 3 - Trev enjoyed it but i was really disappointed. Johnny Depp was still cool:) However the movie was way more serious than the others and i was really disappointed. Oh well, at least I saw it.

My giving up chocolate has been going well. It's been 10 days now and I've eaten one chocolate chip granola bar and about 5 cadbury's chocolate fingers... but that's it. I've supplemented it with a few sweet things but actually I'm doing really well.

I have done badly with my gym stuff. I went to a yoga class Friday but since then have done the square root of bugger all. That all changes tomorrow when I meet Billy tomorrow - I'll do a lot of cardio and get my butt whooped. i need it.

Work is crazy. More people have been promoted - of which I'm proud - but I feel that I'm on a permanent recruitment drive and it's never ending. I don't have any fun as there's too much crap going on. While I thought I'd pissed off my boss I hadn't of which I'm happy but she keeps delaying me getting managers. I need support and while I'm clear on the behaviours I'm after in those managers I can't keep delaying. In all honesty I'm looking around and looking for some shit-hot job that i'd like to do. In the mean time, I'll keep my head down, wait for our green card and see what happens. My resume will be updated - maybe that's something we'll do when i'm with Tim in Jamaica in July.

Talking of holidays, Mum and Dad have their tickets booked so they'll be here for a month at the end of June. That will be cool because they'll be here and will have loads of time to checkout Hoboken, New York, and loads of other stuff too. We're also off to Jamaica for a week - Mum, Dad, Tim, Peter and Rachel. Looks also like Carrieanne will make it too so am very excited.

Trev's been on a call all night with Asia so i've been overdosing on Gordon Ramsey's F Word - a cooking show on BBCAmerica.

I'm off for a drink.

Day 6

Well, I made it to Saturday. No chocolate for nearly a week. I can't remember the last time I did that:)

It's not like I didn't eat anything without sugar - I did. So next week I'll try cutting back on that - yogurt and fruit will still be OK. So will sugar free jello.

Let's see how it goes.

Idiot

Ok, now I know I need a holiday.

I sit 2 desks away from my boss' office. She's out on vacation this week. The painters are in, and all the walls are getting a once-over. Now, I had a meeting scheduled in my boss' office and the painter was right next to her office, painting the walls. As I was walking to her office, the admin asked me if someone else was in there. I stopped so I could just put my head around the corner (rather than just walk in).

How did I forget that the wall was wet. My almost new Ann Taylor twinset is ruined.

What an idiot!!!

I think my boss is mad at me...

Ok, well I know it doesn't happen often, but I always feel terrible when it does. I don't think I did anything wrong, however in hindsight I think I should have done things differently.

Last week when my boss and I chatted about headcount and recruitment we agreed that we'd post for a manager (to help me with my 50+ employees) and also some specialists (senior trainers). OK so far, right? So...off I went to my recruiter who posted the 2 positions. While I have about 10 vacancies, for budget reasons I can only hire 50% - even so, that's better than none.

Well....the manager position posts and for whatever reason I didn't tell my team in advance..... so, either they were pinging the manager who currently works for me or they were chatting among themselves, but essentially they thought I was leaving. Hahah - if only! To counteract that in my monthly communications email I send to my team I mentioned we were hiring for a manager - I figured if they heard it from me, they'd stop gossiping.

My boss is currently sitting on a beach in Aruba. She emails and says "why did you post that, we haven't agreed what they'd do, we need approval" etc etc etc. We talked last week and I swear up and down we agreed that we could worry about that later. Talk about rewriting history.

Anyway....why I feel bad i don't know. I explained that perhaps I misunderstood - and she's fine about it. Why do I feel so bad....

On another note, it was beautiful here last night in the city. Someone who used to work for me in STL was in town and along with a few other peeps we went and had a few beers. Started off in my favourite bar and then went to Bryant Park which is outside drinking establishment. It was about 72 degrees, not a stitch of humidity. It was lovely. It's nights like that I'm thankful I'm always 30 mins from home. It was a really nice night.

2 new challenges

I must be a glutton for punishment, but here goes.

1) I'm trying not to eat chocolate for a week. I can still eat sweet stuff (like yogurt, chewy candy), but I want to prove to myself I'm not addicted. Yesterday was my first day.....and we're doing OK so far.

2) I've added another day to my exercise routine....so my week looks like:

Saturday - 1 hr with Trainer, 1 hr pilates
Sunday - 1 hr Yoga
Monday - 30-40 cardio (ski machine, stairmaster, arc trainer)
Tuesday - 1 hr Pilates
Wednesday - off
Thursday 1 hr with Trainer
Friday - off

Note: all days at the gym there's 10-20 mins of cardio on the ski machine or stairmaster) in addition to the class/session.

We'll see how this goes. ....at some point I must get thinner too, right?

If you ever needed to speak another language

Check out this website http://translation2.paralink.com/

My sources tell me it's really good at translation. I'm about to use it on my cleaner as she doesn't speak a word of English and I need to tell her she's buggered up my wood floors:)

Mantra of the day

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems but it will annoy enough people to make it worthwhile. - Herm Albright

Women bus drivers...

should be banned! There - I've said it. I know I've whined before and I'm all for equality (as you know!), but if you can't drive a freaking bus, leave it to the men!

This morning was unbelieveable. Now, I feel for the woman because she definitely got flustered. I will try and remember all the details.

It started off OK, with us picking up people along the straight road....but when she had to make a turn into 12th St (which is not easy, I admit) even I could figure out she hadn't take the turn wide enough, and then she sat there, then she got out, then she moved her mirror, then she sat again, then she inched forward, then she reversed, then she went forward....well, you get the idea. It would have made sense if she had been straightening the bus up when she reversed, but oh no - she had to just reverse from where she came from. Well DUH! The bus wouldn't go around the corner. So after 4 or 5 attempts at this, she decided she'd go straight and turn later.

So....we went along another block, and then she tried to turn into a road that would only let you turn right at the lights (we would want to go left). By this time the passengers were yelling at her not to go there. So, she stops. Then she decides she'll go to the next road (yippee!!), except that there's a bridge on the way, and it's only tall enough on one side of the road. What does she do? Go under it on the short side. By now us passengers are well pissed off and are yelling at her again.

It's not over yet....

So, we get under the bridge, back onto the right route and now we're at the Lincoln tunnel to get into Manhattan. Here the bus has to take a specific lane to bypass all the backed up car traffic. Again, we passengers are yelling at her to take the right lane, as she didn't know....

By now the stress is high, we're all rolling our eyes and huffing. Oh yeah, and thinking "why isn't it a guy, they never have these problems"! So, we get through the tunnel at breakneck speed, she takes the turning into the bus station way too fast and then catches the back wheel up a kerb. She screeches to a halt (again) and then starts off really slowly.

Now, you would think we're at the bus station what more could go wrong? Well, it did. So when we enter the bus station there are loads and loads of buses and they park on the right hand side to let passengers off. There are also many other buses who pass on the left. What does she do? She parks at an angle so the buses who want to fly by can't. Well.....can you imagine what it was like for her to try and shut the doors to move the bus along? The passengers are ignoring her, the buses behind her have their horns on full blast and it's mayhem.

I couldn't even thank her as I got off the bus. That was a first.

Now it's 8.08am and I'm supposed to be relaxed from the weekend.......yeah, right! Hope the rest of my day is better.

I nearly peed my pants...

Last night was fantastic...we had tickets to go and see Ricky Gervais at the Madison Square Garden Theater. So, against our usual habit, we arrive an hour early, have a couple of cocktails, walk around the stands that are about (picked up a couple of free magazines etc) and go and sit down. We have brilliant tickets - right of stage about 8 rows from the front - and as we're sitting there (remember, we're very early) I look over and see a guy in his 60s, white shaggy hair, pointy goatee......well, whaddayaknow it was BILLY CONNOLLY! Aaaaaggghhhh! I was sooooo excited. He's my favourite comedian, so I then spent the next hour trying to figure out how to get the seats next to him. The worst of it? The people who sat next to him didn't even know who he was.

So, that set me up for a great night. It's 8pm, the lights go out....and here comes the next surprise. DAVID BOWIE walks on the stage - all dressed up in a tux looking absolutely gorgeous. At that point Trev and I are both going crazy - he comes on, starts singing and then brings on Ricky Gervais.

I tell ya - Billy Connolly, David Bowie and Ricky Gervais all in the same evening....it was too much for me to bear. The best bit? As we left Trev and I got to shake Billy's hand and tell him how fabulous we thought he was.

Oh yeah...Ricky Gervais? Pretty funny in places, we had a good laugh - but quite frankly Billy and David trumped him. The worst bit? For the first time ever i didn't bring a camera to take pictures of all this. Oh well....

I have not felt that excited in years. Bloody brilliant.

Life on Mars - part 2

OK, so I ordered from amazon.co.uk the two series of Life on Mars. What a blinking brilliant TV series. For those that didn't read the previous post - a detective from 2006 has a car accident and wakes up in 1973. It's all about the differences in cultures (how women are treated, different ethnic backgrounds, police brutality) and also about how he gets back. You don't really know if he's in a coma or barking mad, but it's brilliant.

We've watched series 1, we're now on episode 2 of series 2. We are hooked. It's consuming us - I guess by the end of the weekend we'll have watched the last 6 episodes.

Tonight we're off to see Ricky Gervais in NY - so I'll let you know how that goes.

I'm excited at work - i've been given approval to recruit another manager. Yippee.... maybe I'll be happier about my job.

One thing I forgot to mention. Ordering from amazon.co.uk means that I don't have to pay the 17.5% sales tax....even better. All you need is a multi-region DVD player. of course, if you can find it on BBCAmerica then that's easier of course - I couldn't wait though. I just love it when you find something that fascinating.

At long last...

It's the week of women bus drivers... I have to say that yesterday morning and this morning they both did a fine job. I thought it was only fair that I mention this given I'd been moaning earlier in the week.

Nice...my Q1 bonus finally came through. I hope the people who work for me recognize the work that I've been doing to make sure that the full bonus got paid. Between my boss and I we did a fine job lobbying for that.

I think I need a new job though - I can see that I'm letting my personal frustration show through - and I know that's not good. I'm hoping the work we did in London will come to fruition and i'll get more of a management team that will take some of the administratia away from me. Even so....I'm still not convinced I want to do this. I'm good at Project/Program Management - I want to do that again. Question is, can I find that role with my salary?

Disgusted

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=455248&in_page_id=1811

Check out the link. This is when I really don't understand the "right to bear arms". WTF

Trusting people..

It's an important time for us. Trevor's labor certification came through - the first stage of getting a green card. We're now preparing paperwork ready for stage two and three. Now, given that Trev's company has hired a lawyer and they prepare everything ...so you would think that all the details would be great, right?

Yeah well....going through the paperwork we found errors. 1) My social security # was wrong, 2) they had my father's name down as my ex-husband's father's name 3) ditto for my mother.

That's as far as I got - but things that are pretty flipping serious. Can you imagine getting this far and it getting kicked back because the info was wrong. I'm so mad about that.

OK, scene over....

Two for two

I hate to say it. It goes against everything I believe in. It's sexist. But...WOMEN SHOULD NOT BE BUS DRIVERS. There! I've said it. I posted a couple of months back about a bad experience....and once again today. I usually get to work around 7.10am-7.15am. Today - 7.35am. The bus was late (not a good start) by 5 mins (when they run every 10mins that's quite a lot late!), I was with Trevor who was picking up the car in Manhattan this morning and I was telling him how fabulous the bus service was, the driver gets in the wrong lane at the Holland Tunnel, waits several minutes then decides she's going to drive over the cones and get into the proper bus lane. She does that....only to get stopped by the police. We wait 15 mins. Hmmmmmm. That's all I have to say about that.

On a better note my boss and I have been lobbying to get part of our quarterly bonus paid - yeah! It worked. Excited or what!!!!!

Catch up

The week flew by - I can'tbelieve I haven't done a single update. So here goes.

The weekend was awesome - spent most of my time with Tim except for Sunday morning when I met Diana for coffee to catch up. We never got to update our CVs/resumes which is a tradition of ours - usually copious amounts of gin and tonic and a lot of laughing. We ended up watching James Bond's movie instead. It was great.

Monday's trip to London was horrible. I'd bought a first class ticket so I could work, and apparently because it was a bank holiday they had closed part of the train line (!). This resulted in the journey being part done on a bus. It was horrible. The usually 1 hour 15 min journey was 2.5 hours. It sucked. Once I got to London it was chucking down with rain - given I was meeting a colleague to show her around London that wasn't fun. We went out to London Bridge, walked past the Tower of London and then over Tower Bridge (the pretty one!). Was pretty good. Before dinner I actually got some exercise in - 20 mins on a stair master. Unheard of that I actually choose to exercise rather than veg out.

On Tuesday the work part of my trip began. While it was long days it was fruitful. It was great to meet other colleagues from around the world and put plans in place for the next year or so. I won't bore you with details here but it was good working with these people - although apparently I'm too creative and not falling in line with the global view. This is not what my boss thinks, but her "functional" manager. Essentially I'm doing what I'm asked....but they don't like it. Hey ho - I wouldn't want it easy, would I?

Now's the time I'm looking for Jamaica. I wish I knew if Peter and Carrieanne were going to come with us - I truly hope so - we'll find out soon enough. Mum and Dad are now booking their tickets so they're planning for their month long trip - not only NYC but up to New England, probably Niagara Falls etc etc.

Trev got back home last night so we plan on having a pretty quiet weekend. An hour from now I'll be getting my ass kicked in the gym. I can honestly say I've missed it - which is kinda scary, right?

Inside the room of your soul...

What Your Soul Really Looks Like

You are a wanderer. You constantly long for a new adventure, challenge, or eve a completely different life. You are a grounded person, but you also leave room for imagination and dreams. You feet may be on the ground, but you're head is in the clouds. You see yourself with pretty objective eyes. How you view yourself is almost exactly how other people view you. Your near future is likely to be filled with great successes and accomplishments. You just need to figure out how to get there. For you, love is all about caring and comfort. You couldn't fall in love with someone you didn't trust.

Inside the Room of Your Soul

My trip so far

So after the rush and the upgrade my trip has been Ok so far. First class didn't seem that much different to business class, although I'm not an expert by any means. It was nice not being overlooked and in my own little area. I had a duvet and a proper pillow along with a flat bed which was very nice. I had a nice dinner and drinks and then fell asleep - until I smelt the coffee and eggs. Made for the fastest trip to the Uk ever.

Friday I worked for a lot of the day (remember, I'm not on holiday!!) and then Tim and I had a few drinks. Today (Saturday) we had a great fry-up at Kesgrave Kitchen followed by Fish and Chips for dinner. We're now going to watch Borat. More updates later.

Who knew..

So this is funny - just as I leave for the airport for my UK trip.

British Airways calls me this afternoon around 1pm. My flight is scheduled for 9.15pm. They call to tell me that they're overbooked and that there's no room on the flight for me. I start to get agitated....then.....they tell me that if I can get to the 6.30pm flight that they'll upgrade me from Business to First Class.

Enough said. I got home early - and I'm waiting for the car to take me there. I'll let everyone know what it's like as I've never flown first class before.

Giving massage a try..

OK, so I thought I felt better, which I did. However I still don't feel right. My gut is weird - I can't tell if I'm getting sick and I just feel funny, or there's something about my job that's churning me around. I left early tonight, I've organized a massage with Wesley to see if that'll make me feel better. I think I"m just mentally exhausted. I'm really looking forward to my trip to the UK - not so much for work, although that'll be OK, but to hang out with Tim for a few days. It'll be a good rest for me.

First notes on the engineering survey done on our building is not looking good - we've been advised to retain a lawyer and start upping the anti. Oh yeah....!

A bit happier

You know, i've never been one to go on about the gym, but I have to tell you that I was in a very pissy mood last night and just couldn't cope. I got my ass off the couch and went out to an 8pm pilates class. Only got 5 mins on the ski machine...but man, when I got home I felt so much better - I even slept pretty well.

Does that mean I'm now nutty? i think so:)

2 things to rant and rave about

My brain hurts. I haven't felt this down in ages. Things are just on top of me and I can't get myself out of it. I'm really looking forward to my UK trip this week, even though it's really for business. Be prepared for a long one.

First - home. You know we've been having issues with our builders. It's getting worse. For ourselves, while we're involved and may end up parting with craploads of money, it's nothing compared to some of our neighbours. We have walls down, excessive mold, ceilings damaged etc etc. We have enlisted a structural engineer and tomorrow we get an assessment. Comments I've heard so far are "I can't believe this passed inspection" (to the fact that there are gaps in the flashing on the roof), "I'm amazed the damage isn't worse", "I wonder what else is done"....the list goes on. It's sooo depressing. I love our place and I just don't know what this means. It's something we just don't need. Last night we had another emergency meeting in the guy's apartment upstairs - they're great, we all get on so well. One thing the four of us are finding is that the other members of the building are a little immature in dealing with serious issues like this. Here's an email that one of them sent yesterday to the guy who's owning this issue for us:

"I'm back from vacation. Where are we with the assessment of the property from the new contractor. Both Mikes were very accurate in saying that TCB did nothing but waste our time and take our money. Why did you let this happen? How do you recommend this situation gets remedied. Please provide us with a time line of assessments and scope of work that needs to be completed. Who is the new contractor? When will you and they be on site at our property with the new contractor/engineer to complete the assessment. It may be in your best interest to do this sooner then later...that's if you would like to satisfy the urgent needs of your clients?"

Now, this is to the guy on our side......not sure what you think - but this in my mind is just nuts. What an idiot. Luckily the guys upstairs got hold of this and sorted it out. We had a productive meeting and I'm looking forward to hearing what the engineer says. It's just additional headache we don't need.

Second. Work. I don't even know where to start here. At least with home it's a single thing that's bugging my ass. For work I'm just burnt out. I lose. I cannot manage 60 people. I've had meetings with all of them in groups the past week or so and they are just such a whiny bunch. They spew up on you and complain and don't ever want to try and fix it. I don't ever ever ever remember being like that. I've fed up expending all my effort trying to get them what they want - when they don't even realize. I want to be a project manager again - it's easy and straight forward. I'm also really fed up because everyone's fed up that the bonus is crap this year. For me personally I'm losing about $15k in bonuses just because the structure is crap. For others in my team it's about $17k....and quite frankly I have a manager who works for me who does nothing but incessantly complain about it. Not that I blame her, but as a manager int he group you always must have the "half full" approach. I can't do it all on my own. And I want a change. I'm looking at the job postings daily and have feelers out. I like working for my boss and I'm really hoping that my trip to London where we're looking at the overall structure of the groups will really help. I have a vision - I want 4 managers in my team team, responsible for about 15 people each. I think that the specialists should be in the sales team - and driven by them. I'm fed up - i want can do people. I just can't imagine whining that much to my boss or my bosses boss - I would be embarrassed.

Man, I'm done. Off to pilates - hopefully I'll feel better.