I'm hungry, but too lazy to go to the grocery store.  What's that say about me?

Happy New Year!

Ok, I think I will do this post in 3 parts...I might break it down into three separate parts because of the what all I need to say, so belly up to your computer and stay along for the ride!

Happy New Year!  I'm sure this is actually a post card for someone and I'm sure the message is something like "Happy New Year, JinLie"...who knows whose post card I just stole, but the sentiment is the same Happy New Year!!!!!!

Weather Woes

It has been a sucky week for weather!  My sympathy goes out to Angie whose home state was horribly struck by tornadoes on Tuesday, and Kris who is currently stuck in the house after 20 inches of white stuff has fallen (and not the stuff you snort, you sickies) and snow drifts have slowed things down considerably.  It's pretty bad when even the postman can't make it!

On Tuesday I was chatting with a friend before bed when I heard things hitting my roof.  Unfortunately, it wasn't because I had tree branches hanging over the house (my trees are cut back).  Things were literally dropping on my house!  it got so scary that I finally told my friend that it was time to hide under the covers and pretend it was not happening--again.  It shut down my electricity some time during the night and I didn't get much sleep as I was worried that I wouldn't wake up in time to go to work.  When light finally came, I did have have branches from other trees on my roof.  Today I learned the reason: there was a tornado touch down 2 miles from my house.  Explains why things were getting dropped on my house.  My poor yard is trashed.  I also learned that a town about 30 miles west of here was horribly hit--a tornado 50 yards wide went through the town knocking down houses, trees, and everything in between.  Evidently there were more things in trees than on the ground where they should have been.  There were injuries, but no deaths have been reported so far.  I would just like to know why I didn't hear tornado sirens?  I'm not that sound of  a sleeper!   Evidently living outside city limits has some drawbacks. 

Soulless piranhas or swimming with sharks?

 

I haven't talked much about my job, partly because I work in tech now and I don't want my co-workers finding this blog, but also because things at home have occupied a lot more of my emotional energy.  There is no question in my mind why I have suddenly had a horrendous IBS flare-up or why a blood vessel in my right eye keeps rupturing making me look like I have some sort of hemorrhagic fever.  The rupturing has occurred about every other week since early December.  I'm afraid to even tell my eye doctor about it.

I've been involved a project at work that is destined to fail.  It's a crappy product and nothing any of us do on this end can make it better.  Unfortunately, the vendor won't let us upgrade any of our other products until this piece of crap is updated, but the update they have given us hasn't been tried out by any other health institution in the US.  There was one other hospital that was supposed to go live a year ago, and scrapped the plan.  it just isn't well enough built, but regardless, we are going through with it.  On go live day it's going to look like that turkey on Christmas Vacation.  The bird looked so beautiful, but dissolved into a puff of smoke it was cut in to. 

I have felt like I have been set up from the beginning--I was brought onto the project in early December, even though they knew I would be out for several weeks for training.  It's worth noting that they have been working on this project since LAST spring and should have gone live last summer. I wasn't told exactly what to do or what they needed and I was excluded from all the meetings and weekly conference calls to the vendor until 3 weeks ago.  It's amazing that I did such a kick ass job without any input. 

I have kept the PM abreast of what all I have done (once she returned 3 weeks ago from her extended leave--it was the first time I had met her since I started my job).  Last Thursday my boss called a meeting with the PM and me to discuss my contribution.  Ok, that sounds ominous.  I ended up having to defend myself.  My boss wanted to know why I was so busy all the time (uh, because I'm testing 4+ hours a day on top of my regular duties).  She wanted to know why I was testing--uh, because I was told to (and I later learned from my preceptor that my boss DID know that I was testing and that she approved it!  Evidently my preceptor has written proof in the event I need it).  My boss and the PM also wanted to know why I set up a meeting with someone in another department about the product when the PM told me not to.  Uh, because I didn't.  The other department head set up the meeting and invited me (for those of you intimately familiar with Outlook E-mail you know what I'm talking about).   I told her I couldn't help her and forwarded the meeting invite to the PM.  On several occasions during the meeting my boss said to me "you are swimming with sharks".  I couldn't help but think I was probably sitting next to at least one of them. 

I was told that they didn't need me for any further testing and the only thing they needed was my workflow--which I could only partially complete until testing was done.  I made sure to explain this and then I completed the workflow like a mad woman last Friday and sent it off.  I get an e-mail from the PM on Tuesday asking what the state of the workflow was and where were the flowsheets (she used multiple exclamation points and unless I know you and am excited, I don't use multiples).  After feeling the blood vessel in my eye pop once again, I replied very nicely to her email telling her that I had sent her the present and future state workflows on Friday and that I couldn't complete certain flowsheets until we had decided something or tested it.  If that didn't meet her needs, I offered to meet with her immediately so that I could satisfy what she needed (get your mind out of the gutter).  I also carbon copied my boss.  I'm tired of this s***.  Hours and hours pass and she finally sends a really nice, sugary-gaggy-sweet email about how they couldn't have managed without me or my flowsheets.  It was, of course, also cc'd to my boss.  The following day my boss, who was out of town, emailed to say it was the best email she had gotten out of our town all day.  I hope she was being facetious. 

Well, the PM didn't invite me into any of the meetings this week or the testing so I don't know the workflow and now I need to have it completed by tomorrow.  I did drop in on one meeting today and I already solicited an invite to the workflow meeting tomorrow.  How asinine is it to not invite the workflow person to a workflow meeting?? 

It gets better.  The PM and one of the builders have nearly identical names.  All of us involved with the project were sent an e-mail detailing the workflow issues.  I thought the builder (a woman I trust and gotten to know really well) sent it so I emailed back:

I couldn't have said it better myself.  Thanks for doing that.  How are the meetings going this week?

Well, evidently it wasn't from the builder--it was from the PM, the woman that accused me of not doing the workflows and the woman that excluded me from the workflow meetings!  Woops.  I'm so glad I didn't make a nasty comment, which would be my normal behavior.

It gets better.  We are supposed to save all our documents on the network drive under our own personal folder.  It's like that scene from The Firm where they try to hurry and get copies of the documents made before the other lawyers and security know what they have done.  Actually, I guess it can be any movie where two parties are both trying to get to something before the other.  I suddenly realized that she could easily go into my file and alter or destroy those files.  I started making copies, sending them and all these emails to my home email address and saving things to my laptop's hard drive. 

So, now I at least have a record of everything--both in email and on here.  Hopefully that won't come back to bite me.  Until then, I am going to try to avoid swimming with the sharks and the piranhas. 

Healthier Habits

They say it takes 4 weeks to develop a habit, good or bad.  I hope that isn't really true because I'm really digging my new routine.  It's no secret I am a night owl.  I always have been.  I always will be.  I blame it on my mom for working night shift when she was pregnant with me.  It is truly painful for me to be up and alert before the sun is high in the sky. 

For almost a week now I have successfully gone to bed between 10-11 PM, but most nights I am tucked in by 10:15.  For those that don't know, I usually don't go to bed until after midnight and I get up at 6 am or earlier.  I am definitely one of those girls that needs 7 1/2-9 hours of sleep.  Even this weekend I was in bed by 11 PM all 3 nights.  Whoo hoo. 

My other good habit is drinking more fluids.  I am drinking 6-8 glasses of flavored water (baby steps, people) and I have actually been caffeine free for nearly a week.  This was not intentional, but I ran out of soda and since I wasn't terribly sleepy in the morning at work, I just stuck with it.  I really don't like relying on things like that--it truly is like a drug. 

As a result of going to bed earlier, I'm not watching my usually 3-4 hours of TV a week.  Last week I taped LOST and watched it when my mom visited Friday.  I have developed a new evening ritual that involves reading my Bible and journaling...something I haven't done much of in a very long time.  I want to record this time in my life--good or bad.  Someday I will be able to look back at it and see it through different eyes. 

Poor kitty

My poor kitty.  We have lived in peaceful coexistence for 8 1/2 years now, but we didn't really become buddies until I lost my job last summer and we spent lots of quality time together. 

I find myself talking to her more and more often, and last Friday in the middle of my IBS crisis I actually uttered the words "baby, you gotta move out of the way.  Mama doesn't want to poop on you."  In that moment I realized two things:

1. I hope I never actually utter those words to my child.
2. I'm ready for a kid.

This evening her stomach was bothering her because she ate something she shouldn't have.  As she was hunching her back from all the heaving, I started petting her back or just putting my hand on her back as she puked.  And this is coming from the woman who for years would gag and puke any time she saw one of her patient's puke.  Not only that, I was able to clean it without gagging.  Fortunately it wasn't too gross and there certainly wasn't any food bits in it.  That always makes me gag a little harder. 

Snow storm? What snow storm?

Yeah, so the snow storm of 2008 was waaaayyyy overblown.  It was funny because they had news teams down from the state capitol for the 10 and 11 PM news because evidently it was supposed to hit us first and worst.  You could just see the reporters were begging for one itsy bitsy snowflake the whole time the weather man was saying we were getting "dusted with snow at this time".  Snow, what snow? I didn't see any snow.  I went to bed and didn't see any snow, I woke up during the night to use the bathroom (ok, I actually woke up to check to see if it was snowing) and there was still no snow.  When I finally did get up in the morning, I could tell we'd had freezing rain during the night and I nearly broke a hip as I walked my gravel driveway to get my newspaper.  Yeah, the gravel was slick. 

Since I don't live in city limits, I was not sure if we would see salt/sand trucks or plows today and since I live on a hill I opted to wait before going to work.  Glad I did.  I got an email from a colleague stating that cars were sliding into each other while parked.  Yeah, unattended vehicles were sliding across our hilly parking lot into one another.  Lovely.  It didn't help that my IBS has been in high gear this week and was especially bad on Friday.  Not sure it was smart to navigate the slow, slick roads when I didn't know how soon I would get to a bathroom.  It worked out alright.  I had taken my laptop home from work and managed to work on my project and get it submitted right as it was due.  Whew.  Maybe I need to rename this blog to the IBS Chronicles?