Same Shit, Different Day

Phew, thank goodness it is finally the weekend! I feel like I definitely deserve a good rest. I feel like I have been going non-stop for the better part of the last six weeks or so. Could it be, the year is already six weeks old? When did that happen?

We had our one year anniversary almost a month ago, haha. We went out to dinner to celebrate. I took the idea of making a journal for Travis, and he got me a wooden jewelry box that I had been wanting…Talk about time flying by. I definitely wish we would have been able to travel somewhere, maybe even back to Vegas, but money needs to be saved for when we go to Miami in April and to Hawaii in November. Those are certainly greatly anticipated!! I just cannot wait. Of course no one has to twist my arm to get me to Florida – all you have to say is “Liz, do you want to go to Mia….” and I am there! Especially lately that I have been more and more homesick than ever…And, I don’t want Novemeber to be here and the year to end already, but I certainly want to be out in Hawaii!!

Work has kept me very busy. So far I have helped facilitate three sessions of orientations for new hires, as well as taught my first class of Excel Basics and also Word Basics. I got rave reviews from both classes, a lot of evaluations marking me as “excellent” and also with great positive praise from my boss! In fact, I just taught the Word class yesterday afternoon, and in our report this week for HIS boss, he said he didn’t have one suggestion for how I could improve!!….I have also done a ton of preparations for my next classes that I will be teaching, which are Computer and Windows Basics, GroupWise Basics (our ghetto version of Outlook), and PowerPoint Basics. There is a ton more preparation that goes into these classes than what I thought was necessary. For starters, I have designed handouts with tips and advice for the participants in each class that I feel will give them a great bonus to the instruction I provide. The classes are four hours long, except the Computer and Windows Basics class which is eight hours, so only so much can be covered. And I feel like I can’t cover everything needed in that short amount of time.

For the Computer and Windows Basics course I even redesigned the class manual, because I thought it was horribly incomplete, so I now made it about 40 pages, plus doubled the size of the PowerPoint presentation that goes with that class! It has taken me quite a bit of time to do all this research, mostly because I am so comfortable working with the basics of computers that I have to go find simple and nontechnical ways to explain things so I don’t confuse people!! And what has been happening is that I will find a fact I want to include, and then I find I need four more facts to go along with that and kinda clarify what I am trying to say! It certainly is providing a great challenge for me in many ways – patience, understanding, knowing how to explain things, how to not get easily frustrated, how to design lesson plans and agendas, how to manage time, how to be super detail-oriented (even more so than I am now, if that’s even possible, hahaha), and how to do this with zillions of interruptions.

The classes do wear me out, especially when we do new hire orientations or other morning classes and I have to be there at 7 AM to set up. So a lot of times I end up coming home and zonking out, and I haven’t been a lot of fun of late.

So far I have been getting along pretty decently with my new coworkers. About the only significant stresses have been my boss, both when he “dumbs down” instructions to me, which thankfully are getting less and less often, and when he interrupts my work. I have tried to tactfully say that I work best when I am left to my own devices and don’t have someone breathing down my throat and stopping me in the middle of a creative thought, but so far iut hasn’t always done the trick. Now granted, business dictates that there will be some interruptions that can’t be avoided, but other shit I don’t need to know or care to know about. Half the time I’m thinking, okay what’s the point of this??…But for the most part relations are well. I have tried to be extra nice and helpful, and that has seemed to do the trick. That, and being efficient with my work certainly helps. It’s weird working in an HR environment, everyone is so politically correct. I really have to watch what I say, at least until I totally feel comfortable around people!!

I am a bit wary of a couple of people who are friendly with that woman who I had race problems with last year, that had accused me of being racist; I think some people may have heard wrong facts about that issue and thus are acting sorta standoff-ish. But hopefully if that’s the case, I can prove the accusations were BS. And if they want to judge before getting to know me, well then that’s too bad!

Aside from that, last week we got to start our semester for our D(iscipleship) Team for our church…we are encouraged to sign up for these D teams that help us build fellowship as we study the Word, and they are divided up by what side of town you live on, as well as being single sex or coed. We joined a coed one that’s about a mile from our house, and had our first session on Tuesday. It was fabulous!! We met some great new people from our church and felt like we had an instant group of friends. I know especially for me, since it has been so hard to make new friends in Indy, it felt great to talk to other people we go to church with. Yay!! And the group highlighted some of the things about our church that I love – a lot of people my age, like me, that are going through the same life struggles and challenges. It really is a blessing, and now I know why our lead pastor Daron is always encouraging us to go to D teams!! I love it, I have been riding that wave of energy for three days now! We get together just about every Tuesday night, one hour for food and friendship, one hour for study, and we will be studying the gospel of John.

And I definitely need all the energy I can get. I haven’t been sleeping all that well recently, coupled with work wearing me out. I haven’t been working out the way I should, but that’s a separate issue…I’ve been having a lot of bad dreams again recently that wake me up, and I’m not entirely sure what that’s about. I could choose to speculate and form some ideas, but I choose not to. All I know is they are messing with my mind and it sucks ass. Plus Monday night Travis and I had a pretty good fight – something we hadn’t done in a while, and that took a lot out of me…

Well, I think I will be wrapping this entry up here shortly. I am currently not at home but in a hotel near the Purdue campus in West Lafayette. Travis was assigned to cover three high school basketball games this weekend, and I tagged along because I want to go to his old college haunt, the Cactus. It’s easier to get a hotel than drive back and forth, plus we get airline miles this way. And, I haven’t had a good cup of watered down college beer in ages, and I need to get out and have some fun!! So, while he goes and works, I am using our laptop and just chillin’, listening to music and surfing the web. But the hotel’s wireless access is pissing me off, it’s supposed to be high speed and it’s slower than my old dial-up connection! Arggh! I am se

riously spoiled by high speed internet access, I don’t think I’d ever go back!!