It was pretty easy getting out of bed this morning. I knew I only had to work 4 hours today, and I knew that I wouldn’t have to get up with the alarm for three days in a row. Sweet!
When I got to work at 8:00am, my boss was already there! First time in 4 months he beat me to work! He was already on what he said would be a long conference call (must be a NY call to start so early in SD!). Since he was busy on the phone, he didn’t give me much to do all morning.
At 10:30am they had a tutorial on the new copy machines we got in the office. They just replaced every single machine -- b/w and color -- with a new machine. Pretty luxurious! These new machines are so fabulous, they do everything but shine your shoes!
I stood there with 4-5 other girls while a cute young guy taught us all the ins and outs and showed us all the bells and whistles (which are plentiful). I told the guy I was having a problem with this copier and the color copier on our floor. Whenever I sent a document to be printed 2-sided, if it had an uneven number of pages, it would print the first page of the next copy on the last page of the document before.
So, for example, page 1 would print on the back of page 7, which would mess up every document after that. There were many times I’d forget and have to recycle all the pages, and do it all over again, sending each document to print separately – one at a time.
So, after the tutorial was over, he asked me to show him. I took him to my desk, found a 3-page document, sent it to print and we walked back to the b/w copier. Of course it did it perfectly. So, I said, “Okay, maybe it’s okay on the black/white printer, but I KNOW it messes it up on the color printer.” We went back to my desk and I sent the 3-page document to the color printer. AGAIN – perfect! Now, I don’t know if he thinks I’m crazy, or just trying to spend more time with him. Anyway, I’ll never know why it happened – but I actually had witnesses, because I would show the documents to people to ask them if they knew why it was happening and what I could do to stop it. They said they'd never seen that before!
Isn’t it typical that the problem you have never shows itself when the person who can help is around?
I was supposed to work until 12:30pm and was looking at some magazines at my desk (a lot of people at work bring their magazines to work and leave them in the kitchen when they’re done, so others can enjoy them) when my boss gave me something to type at 11:30am.
It’s a quarterly letter that is updated each quarter with new numbers. It shows results for the quarter and then 1 year, 3 year, and 5 year results (all in percentages). All he wanted me to do today was find the letter and then on Tuesday I could start implementing all the changes.
I searched everywhere and could only find the fourth quarter 2007 letter, even though we had already worked on the first quarter 2008 letter. The last time it was edited was on April 18th and I think I thought it was finalized and deleted it because the woman I kept sending it to for review sent me back an email saying to be sure to only keep the latest version. I think I accidentally deleted the wrong thing.
So, since I had hard copy of the first quarter 2008 letter, I told my boss I would take the fourth quarter 2007 letter I had in WORD and update THAT to reflect the 1st quarter numbers. It was a complicated job, because there are about 8 charts with numbers and each number changes completely – sometimes from a positive to a negative and vice versa.
I asked him if he needed me to stay today to do it and he said I could do it first thing Tuesday morning. I was relieved, but then asked him if I could email it to myself at home and work on it over the weekend. I thought it would be easier to do at leisure over the weekend and I wouldn’t worry about it, which I would do if I knew it was hanging over my head all weekend and I had to do it the first thing on Tuesday after a holiday weekend!
I opened the document at home and it looks fine, but I have a much older version of WORD, so I don’t know if there will be any problems saving it here, emailing it back and opening it again at work on Tuesday. If so, I’ll have to do it all over again anyway, but I think it will be okay. This is the first time I’ve lost a document, or messed up in any major way, and I feel horrible.
I try never have that “I’m just a temp” mentality and I always want to do a perfect job. I also could have said, “I have no idea where the document went,” but I do have an idea (although I’m not sure) and I admitted that it was my fault. I think he respected that!
Anyway, I got to leave at 12:30pm and it was nasty and raining out. That’s typical for Memorial Day weekends in NY, but you really wouldn’t expect it in San Diego! Eric told me they said it hasn’t rained Memorial Day weekend for 25 years. Just our luck it’s supposed to rain all weekend!
When I got home, Eric and I went back out to go to the library, pick up my check, and deposit it at CITIBANK. Eric said the library was closed, because the library around the corner closes at 12:30pm on Friday and Eric was already there. I told him we should go to the other one (which is about 2 miles down Clairemont Drive), because I thought that one would have extended hours. The one around the corner is smaller, and their hours are reduced. I was right. The one down Clairemont Drive was open until 2:30pm today.
I got two more DICK FRANCIS mysteries. Each one continues a character already introduced in another book, which is like seeing a good friend again!
Eric got another DEAN KOONTZ book – COLD FIRE. He just finished THE HUSBAND and really enjoyed it. I might try it, since I always liked DEAN KOONTZ a lot, too.
When we got back from running our errands, it stopped raining, but it was damp, cold and nasty – only about 58 degrees! We came into the apartment and got into bed. Eric took a nap while I watched DR. PHIL and some TOP CHEF episodes. Then, at 6:00pm when his basketball game came on, I took a nap and he woke me up at 8:00pm.
We had snacked when I came home, and I still felt full, so I didn’t really have a proper lunch or dinner – just a big afternoon snack of some salad and hummus and chips and then a WEIGHT WATCHER’S dessert at 9:00pm.
Eric said he’ll take me out tomorrow and Sunday, so I have to go online and find something interesting for us to do. I just hope the weather’s nice, because it’s no fun running around in the rain. If it is raining, I’ll go see INDIANA JONES or IRON MAN, which I think we’ll both enjoy. If it’s nice out, I’ll try to find some kind of fair or festival to go to.
I also want to do some major organizing this weekend, because I’m usually too tired during the week and the long weekend is the perfect opportunity. I have ALL my crafting stuff in the dining room and I have plenty of storage space to put it all away. Eric is so patient, because he never mentions it, but I think it would be good to put it all away and then just take stuff out as I need it. I really haven’t crafted since the SPRING LINE UP on March 30th. I worked so hard for the month before that, so I would have lots of merchandise, and I still have eight pieces at GILI ANNA’S in La Jolla, so it’s not like I need to do something.
I’d like to do some decoupage, just because I so enjoy the work, but I think it’s more important to organize the room and make it look nice again. Right now, it looks more like a craft corner than a dining room!
I hope everyone has a fabulous MEMORIAL DAY weekend – filled with fun, family and maybe some barbecues. ENJOY!