Howdy do, pilgrims!
Again, I have been very absent from the world of blogging, but I finally got a slow day at work (and the boss is out "sick") so I get to amuse myself by my means until there's actually work to do. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
I'm still working at the Audit Office, which, although there are three lovely ladies to work with, has become dull. When I say dull, I mean it has become extremely difficult to not scream from all of the ridiculously mundane tasks I am performing. Lately my most time-consuming tasks have consisted of working in our Access-like system (which is SO slow) and either updating contact information or (you ready for this excitement?) going into a file, copying a number, and pasting it into another file. Whoop dee doo, I almost can't contain myself...from internally combusting! Poor Marcus got the crazed email that formerly would have been an in-person rant to my gals at work about how I can't stand it anymore. I'm finally hitting my wall! One of my old bosses warned me to not take more than one (if that) admin position in the future as it's easy to get pin-pointed as an admin person. I was spoiled at CSF because although my tasks were often very administrative, my bosses gave me additional responsibility and could see through my job title and work and see that I have more brains that should be used. Here, one look at my resume and the only jobs I seem to be eligible are admin. Well, we'll see how this goes in the future. Until then, I have been told that from now until February people will not be hiring (or if they are, they'll be hiring summer interns out of the masses of college students that are now on summer vacation). I'm biting my lip for now and I have agreed to work here until the beginning of February while the boss lady is on vacation and while they start looking to hire a replacement for one of the other girls in the department whose last day is in a few weeks. I know they'd feel better knowing that they have someone here who knows how to do the job. I know that I would feel better knowing that I'll have a regular flow of income over Christmas time and before going on vacation in February (during which time there will be NO flow of income!). Not that I'm in dire straits by any means, but it seems that this is the better, if boring, route at the moment.
Big breath in. Okay. Moving on. How about something happy and exciting? Mmm, yes, my pretties, now for some fun reporting. We two little lovebirds have been keeping ourselves busy lately. We went to a Monet exhibit at the Art Gallery a few weeks ago which was fun, if led by an overly-excited and perhaps somewhat un-art-educated tour guide. She called a picture of fruit (not by Monet) "erotic". Um, I beg to differ, it was absolutely not an erotic bowl of fruit. Or maybe I'm lacking in imagination, but I think she was a little. I'm pretty sure that not a single painting there was any of the Monet paintings you'd see on a postcard or on a poster in a cheap print shop for wanna-be cultural college students on a budget. (Yes I went shopping there.) Though many of them were from the same series. Between the two of us, our favorite was a painting of a French church, from the early hours in the morning mostly in purple shadows. It was pretty amazing. Whenever looking at impressionist paintings, I'm always that kid that walks up as close as I can get before the museum buzzer will go off, to the point where the painting achieves its total blurriness and it doesn't look like there's any rhyme or reason, then slowly back up until it comes into cohesion. I did that to almost every single painting...I'm such a dork.
We also went to another exhibit that week done by Andrew Zuckerman. It was a collection of photographs of celebrities accompanied by a quote of their version of wisdom. It was a short one, but a goody.
And then, drumroll, this last weekend we went to a concert in a cave. A concert in a cave, you ask? Well yes, of course! There are these masses of caves up in the Blue Mountains, called Jenolan Caves. Marcus told me about them when we went up to see the Three Sisters way back when I first arrived and of course I love the idea of spelunking around in caves. I sort of forgot about it until two weeks ago when I was reading the public notice newsletter (courtesy of the wondrous Audit Office) and I saw an ad for concerts in the caves. Um, count me in. One of the concerts was a percussion/drumming group, which sounded pretty awesome, and it just happened to fall on a weekend that we were already planning on going out west. Perfect timing! Well, we headed up on Saturday after going to the wedding of one of Marcus's friends (the wedding was in a church that reminded me of an upside down viking ship, then the priest told us that the sandstone blocks behind the alter were recycled from a naval shipyard--this definitely goes down as one of my favorite churches). After the wedding, we headed further into the mountains, only to encounter ridiculous weather. Sunny patches, rainy patches, rainbow after rainbow, hail, and later on light snow flakes. It was crazy! When we got out of the car to check in at our hotel, I was still in summery dress, and it was not warm. I didn't think about mountain weather when I packed my shoes...so I left with my little silver peep toe heels, sans socks. When we actually got to the caves (driving through the aforementioned snow flakes), I was out of the car for maybe five minutes before my toes started going numb. Not good! I clip clopped my way to the gift shop, which was closed and locked, but there was still a good samaritan inside who let me come in a buy a pair of fluffy blue camping socks. Can I tell you how sexy my feet looked with the socks squishing out of the peep toe? I don't know how Marcus managed to contain himself. :) It was a grand idea, though, because it was freezing in the caves. It made me feel like I was in real Thanksgiving and Christmas weather, rather than this faux "warm" holiday weather. (I still maintain that I'm a summer baby even though it's winter here...nobody believes me...) Anyway, we sat on our little folding chairs wrapped up in blankets and eating candy. The show was...alright. There was one or two songs that I thought were good, with big drums and choreographed moves with the drumming, but other than that it was a bit too new agey for my taste. This was supposed to be a drumming show, but there was a sax and some sort of flute (both of which couldn't play very well because it was so dang cold, poor players). The worst part was when they started singing. It's a drum show, people, not a singing show! There was one point at which they all sat cross-legged, staring at the audience, singing the same line over and over again, swaying. It was almost like being at a cultish primary school concert. Yikes! But they played my favorite song of the whole concert right before intermission, which gave me hope that something good was awaiting us on the other side of the break, which was supposed to be 20 minutes and ended up being around 45 minutes. We could have left just then and left happily but we stayed...and I gave Marcus crazy eyes while we waited. After the final song, we clapped and clapped (because even though I didn't like the show, the performers had definitely worked hard) until the stupid MC suggested they do an encore. I looked at Marcus with crazy eyes and hissed, "Let's GO!" and we ran away. I'm happy that we went, because regardless of the music, it was still cool to go to a concert in a cave. Next time we go up there, though, we're going to have to do the ghost tour at night. Oooooooooooooooooooo!
We got home on Sunday afternoon just in time to help with the hosting of a Christmas lunch with all of the shop regulars. Good fun, full of charades, good food, and silly Christmas hats. This Thursday we're doing another shop event--Thanksgiving! I decided that I should still celebrate Thanksgiving, so I'm going to try to bake a turkey! It's a pretty small turkey, actually, which will work out well for me. It'll be my first Thanksgiving where I've actually helped prepare something other than the veggie tray or the pies. I'll let you know how it goes. :)
Again, I have been very absent from the world of blogging, but I finally got a slow day at work (and the boss is out "sick") so I get to amuse myself by my means until there's actually work to do. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
I'm still working at the Audit Office, which, although there are three lovely ladies to work with, has become dull. When I say dull, I mean it has become extremely difficult to not scream from all of the ridiculously mundane tasks I am performing. Lately my most time-consuming tasks have consisted of working in our Access-like system (which is SO slow) and either updating contact information or (you ready for this excitement?) going into a file, copying a number, and pasting it into another file. Whoop dee doo, I almost can't contain myself...from internally combusting! Poor Marcus got the crazed email that formerly would have been an in-person rant to my gals at work about how I can't stand it anymore. I'm finally hitting my wall! One of my old bosses warned me to not take more than one (if that) admin position in the future as it's easy to get pin-pointed as an admin person. I was spoiled at CSF because although my tasks were often very administrative, my bosses gave me additional responsibility and could see through my job title and work and see that I have more brains that should be used. Here, one look at my resume and the only jobs I seem to be eligible are admin. Well, we'll see how this goes in the future. Until then, I have been told that from now until February people will not be hiring (or if they are, they'll be hiring summer interns out of the masses of college students that are now on summer vacation). I'm biting my lip for now and I have agreed to work here until the beginning of February while the boss lady is on vacation and while they start looking to hire a replacement for one of the other girls in the department whose last day is in a few weeks. I know they'd feel better knowing that they have someone here who knows how to do the job. I know that I would feel better knowing that I'll have a regular flow of income over Christmas time and before going on vacation in February (during which time there will be NO flow of income!). Not that I'm in dire straits by any means, but it seems that this is the better, if boring, route at the moment.
Big breath in. Okay. Moving on. How about something happy and exciting? Mmm, yes, my pretties, now for some fun reporting. We two little lovebirds have been keeping ourselves busy lately. We went to a Monet exhibit at the Art Gallery a few weeks ago which was fun, if led by an overly-excited and perhaps somewhat un-art-educated tour guide. She called a picture of fruit (not by Monet) "erotic". Um, I beg to differ, it was absolutely not an erotic bowl of fruit. Or maybe I'm lacking in imagination, but I think she was a little
We also went to another exhibit that week done by Andrew Zuckerman. It was a collection of photographs of celebrities accompanied by a quote of their version of wisdom. It was a short one, but a goody.
And then, drumroll, this last weekend we went to a concert in a cave. A concert in a cave, you ask? Well yes, of course! There are these masses of caves up in the Blue Mountains, called Jenolan Caves. Marcus told me about them when we went up to see the Three Sisters way back when I first arrived and of course I love the idea of spelunking around in caves. I sort of forgot about it until two weeks ago when I was reading the public notice newsletter (courtesy of the wondrous Audit Office) and I saw an ad for concerts in the caves. Um, count me in. One of the concerts was a percussion/drumming group, which sounded pretty awesome, and it just happened to fall on a weekend that we were already planning on going out west. Perfect timing! Well, we headed up on Saturday after going to the wedding of one of Marcus's friends (the wedding was in a church that reminded me of an upside down viking ship, then the priest told us that the sandstone blocks behind the alter were recycled from a naval shipyard--this definitely goes down as one of my favorite churches). After the wedding, we headed further into the mountains, only to encounter ridiculous weather. Sunny patches, rainy patches, rainbow after rainbow, hail, and later on light snow flakes. It was crazy! When we got out of the car to check in at our hotel, I was still in summery dress, and it was not warm. I didn't think about mountain weather when I packed my shoes...so I left with my little silver peep toe heels, sans socks. When we actually got to the caves (driving through the aforementioned snow flakes), I was out of the car for maybe five minutes before my toes started going numb. Not good! I clip clopped my way to the gift shop, which was closed and locked, but there was still a good samaritan inside who let me come in a buy a pair of fluffy blue camping socks. Can I tell you how sexy my feet looked with the socks squishing out of the peep toe? I don't know how Marcus managed to contain himself. :) It was a grand idea, though, because it was freezing in the caves. It made me feel like I was in real Thanksgiving and Christmas weather, rather than this faux "warm" holiday weather. (I still maintain that I'm a summer baby even though it's winter here...nobody believes me...) Anyway, we sat on our little folding chairs wrapped up in blankets and eating candy. The show was...alright. There was one or two songs that I thought were good, with big drums and choreographed moves with the drumming, but other than that it was a bit too new agey for my taste. This was supposed to be a drumming show, but there was a sax and some sort of flute (both of which couldn't play very well because it was so dang cold, poor players). The worst part was when they started singing. It's a drum show, people, not a singing show! There was one point at which they all sat cross-legged, staring at the audience, singing the same line over and over again, swaying. It was almost like being at a cultish primary school concert. Yikes! But they played my favorite song of the whole concert right before intermission, which gave me hope that something good was awaiting us on the other side of the break, which was supposed to be 20 minutes and ended up being around 45 minutes. We could have left just then and left happily but we stayed...and I gave Marcus crazy eyes while we waited. After the final song, we clapped and clapped (because even though I didn't like the show, the performers had definitely worked hard) until the stupid MC suggested they do an encore. I looked at Marcus with crazy eyes and hissed, "Let's GO!" and we ran away. I'm happy that we went, because regardless of the music, it was still cool to go to a concert in a cave. Next time we go up there, though, we're going to have to do the ghost tour at night. Oooooooooooooooooooo!
We got home on Sunday afternoon just in time to help with the hosting of a Christmas lunch with all of the shop regulars. Good fun, full of charades, good food, and silly Christmas hats. This Thursday we're doing another shop event--Thanksgiving! I decided that I should still celebrate Thanksgiving, so I'm going to try to bake a turkey! It's a pretty small turkey, actually, which will work out well for me. It'll be my first Thanksgiving where I've actually helped prepare something other than the veggie tray or the pies. I'll let you know how it goes. :)
Comments
Good luck on the turkey. Try brining it - that's what all the Food Network people say to do.
And I will definitely be sending you 2 a piece of mail...