What Happened This Week?

I honestly can't recall.  Oh wait...yes, I know now.  For a long time, I have talked about how much I work...about all the hours I put in and how I can only take a few days of vacation time at a time and how they can normally only be during the 3rd week of the month because of obligations that fall during the other weeks of the month and how there is nobody that can fill in for me.  Well, that changed today.

A while back, I went to a Leadership Development class for work and during the class, we talked about a number of things that I can't really discuss in a public forum such as a blog, but I can say, it really gave me a lot to think about.  Earlier this year, after a number of disappointments all throughout last year, I made a commitment to myself that I was going to find a way to work less hours so I wouldn't be so stressed, so I could be home more frequently, and so I could find the time in my personal life to do the things I wanted and needed to do.  Well, after I came home from the LD class, I had a lot on my mind as to how I was going to make my commitment come to fruition.  I tried some of the tactics we learned in the class, but after a couple of discussions, I still was feeling uncomfortable with the situation.  Finally, I decided to talk to one of my leaders about it.  I offered a suggestion as it related to the situation and they were very excited about my suggestion.  So, immediately they went to work helping me to implement it.  This week was the beginning of that process.

Tracy is one of my "dotted line" employees in our Ohio office.  She and I work closely on a number of things and so I had her come out and begin to learn the forecast process.  She and I worked diligently all day on Tuesday, had a bunch of system access issues on Wednesday and only were able to do what we needed to do for about four hours, and then worked all day again on Thursday.  She was nervous, but did really well.  We didn't have enough time to really get her up to full speed so she's coming out again next month.  By then, I think I'll pretty much be able to feel comfortable taking some time off if I need to during forecast time or if I need to ask her to help out due to other obligations.

I took Tracy, Jackie, and Tina out for a team dinner on Tuesday night.  We went to Logan's Roadhouse for dinner.  The conversation was good and the ladies had a nice time getting to know Tracy.  We, of course, had to take pictures....

My dad would have LOVED this salad.  I asked for bleu cheese dressing and when they brought it out, I about died with how big the bleu cheese chunks were!  I mean, they were SO big that I had to actually break them up!  Yes, those two big chunks at the bottom of the picture are bleu cheese!

This is my dinner.  I ordered the grilled salmon with this lemon pesto sauce and a baked potato.  It was really good.

Tracy ordered the same salmon, but with rice and a loaded sweet potato instead.  It was her first time eating one.  She liked it.

Tina with her chicken, mashed potatoes, and I'm not sure what's in the little ramekin...coleslaw?  It's a pretty white dinner for Tina.  She's really into veggies and healthy food.

I tried to get a picture of Jackie's steak, but it didn't come out well enough to include.  Bummer.  Oh....you can't forget the yummy rolls they have here.  We all loved them.

After dinner, the four of us decided to split a dessert.  It was SO good.  It was a warm cinnamon roll made out of their regular roll dough, on top of hot apple pie filling, with ice cream on the side.  Oh. My. Gosh.  Yum.

Speaking of other obligations, I posted for a new position at work and have had a number of interviews, including one with the VP of Finance.  Since I am the only one that posted for the position (at this point anyway), I'm pretty sure I have a good shot at the position, plus the team members know me, like me, and know I can do the job already without having a learning curve ahead of me.  I will find out next week while I am in Chicago, I hope, whether or not I got the job.  If I get the position, I will leave behind all of my extemporaneous work that I currently do and then will take on the rest of the cost centers for my division of the company which will be a total of about 60+ cost centers that I will now be responsible for budgeting for.  I will be managing a $60 million P&L.  I will have even more interaction with the leadership of our company.  Plus, I will get a promotion and nice raise!!!  Yay!

Saturday, I got up early, got ready, and drove to Chandler to meet up with Auntie, Lisa, and Cindy at the Honeyville Grain store.  I think I've blogged about that place before.  I hadn't bought any food storage stuff yet this year and I was feeling a little bad about that!  Plus, I wanted to be part of girls' day.  We all met up there at 9 AM and browsed through the store.  After that, we browsed around Cracker Barrel, but didn't find anything we just had to have.  At that time, I parted ways with them and headed for home. 

I stopped in at Catherine's to pick up the blouse I had them hold for me when I went out shopping on Friday night looking for some new work pants and then I ended up actually buying a few other things.  Got some cute necklaces to match the stuff too.  Probably spent more than I should have, but it's been an awfully long time since I've clothes shopped.  And, I felt like I really needed to dress a little better while I was in Chicago, especially when/if I get offered the new job.  So, I spent some time at Catherine's and then stopped by Wienerschnitzl for 2 chili dogs and then headed off to Payless to look for some new dress shoes.  Little did I know, but Auntie, Lisa, and Cindy also stopped at a different Wienerschnitzl for chili dogs too! 

Never found anything I liked at Payless.  This added to my little bout of feeling sorry for myself because of my weight.  I'd had the worst time getting things to fit while clothes shopping.  I'm right between two different sizes so it was not fun.  Plus, Catherine's, for some unknown reason, has decided that they will now only sell their "Right-Fit" size 11 and 12 pants via special order.  What?  How is one to know if those sizes are the correct sizes if they can't try them on?  What if someone, like me, for example, needs a pair of pants right here, right now, and can't wait?  I guess I'm out of luck.  Now, I couldn't find shoes either.  This was going down as a sucky day except the Honeyville trip.  So...what did I do to try to make me feel better?

Um, yeah, the same thing I always do when I feel deeply down about something...I went and got 5 inches chopped off my hair.  Yep, I did.  I think if I look back over the last couple of years of blog entries, I'd see that each time I do that it's when I'm having some sort of sadness/wo is me situation.  Some people are emotional eaters....I'm an emotional hair chopper.  I never do anything super drastic with it, I just go from pretty long to short. 

After that, I headed home and got some laundry done and a few other things to get ready for this week's trip to Chicago.  I'm going to be there until Saturday so I have to take a lot of clothes and such.  I am going to miss Melon Man and the doggies.  Of course, it's supposed to rain a bunch and be cool while I'm gone so I will end up missing all of that.  Bummer.  Oh well, it's supposed to be in the upper 40s and low 50s with rain while I'm in Chicago so that will be really nice.  I don't even plan on taking a coat!

So, that's what happened this week. Whew!