MY SERVER WAS DOWN AGAIN LAST NIGHT. SORRY!
Today is my Dad’s 80th birthday. I can’t even believe it. He’s in great shape. He plays tennis 3-4 times a week, bowls once a week, plays poker once a week. He rides his bicycle. He works out at the gym. He’s amazing. We wish him the happiest birthday ever and a year filled with good times!
My parents are flying up to New Paltz on Friday night to stay with my sister, Lenae, and Audrey will be coming down from Albany. Everyone in our immediate family will be there, except me and Eric. Boo hoo. We hate to miss the family reunion, but we just couldn’t fly out there and back in one weekend, and I can’t miss more work right now. I only have three weeks left at this job and I’m not sure yet where I’m going next.
Today was a pretty busy day. My boss is out tomorrow and Friday on business. My trainee is out tomorrow and Friday on vacation. So, everything had to be done by the end of today. I’m happy to report that it was!
This afternoon my trainee got trained by someone else and I just sat and watched. She had to produce some PowerPoint slides, which are populated with numbers from an Excel spreadsheet. First, she had to run some reports, take the numbers, plug them into the Excel Spreadsheet and then they created the graphs in PowerPoint. I had not only never done that before, but I had no idea how those graphs were created!
My trainee did a great job. She’s weak on PowerPoint, but very strong on Excel. I’m good at Excel and PowerPoint and I told my boss that I don’t think I could have done as well as she did. She really picks things up very quickly and she’s a fast worker.
My boss had been in most of the past 2 weeks and that’s very unusual. He will only be in about 4 days for the entire rest of the month and we’ve been busy preparing presentations for all the different meetings he will be attending.
Tomorrow and Friday will be very quiet. I shouldn’t have much to do at all. I started my 9th Dick Francis book today. As usual – great! I don’t know how he comes up with all his ideas. Each book, although centered around the world of horse-racing, always has focuses on a different field. In one, it was all about a man who owns a shop selling wine and liquor. He’s a wine expert and is asked to help with a criminal case involving bootleg booze. He is able to discern the real stuff from the fake stuff. It almost ends up getting him killed!
In another book the lead character is a jockey who is an avid photographer. His skill with a camera, and knowing how to develop film, gets him involved with murderers and thieves and almost ends his life!
In most of them, the lead character is a jockey, or an ex-jockey, or someone who was raised around horse-racing. In this book, the character is someone who works as the “eyes and ears” of the Jockey Club at the track. He goes to the races all the time and sees things and hears things, which he passes along to the authorities who can then arrest the criminals.
He is sent to Canada to travel on a luxury train through all the provinces of Canada to all the great race tracks with the owners of top race horses. The guests will include the owners, the trainers, the jockeys, the stable boys and other guests who can afford the trip.
On board the train, they will be entertained with a murder mystery, which will be acted out during the entire trip. You won’t know which people on the train are the actors, so when something happens, it might be real, it might not! Since he’s sent to ride the train to make sure nothing goes awry, the murder mystery will make his job extra hard! It’s like those murder mystery dinners that were very popular a few years ago.
Anyway, I got to read a few chapters today, but I know tomorrow and Friday I will really make a dent in that book – if I don’t finish it completely!
When I got home tonight, I jumped in the car and drove to the shopping center 3 miles away on Clairemont Drive. I wanted to go to a dry cleaner that also does alterations. I had a dress and a cardigan that I needed fixed. It tried them both on and she pinned them. It took about 5 minutes and she said I can pick them up on Tuesday. She’s charging me $25 for both, which I thought was minimal. I’m so happy, because I had found someone at work to do alterations for me, but she took over two months and I just don’t like to wait that long!
After I got home, Eric and I made NUTRISYSTEM veggie fajitas. Eric had already had a NUTRISYSTEM chicken fajita and I had already had a NUTRISYSTEM veggie fajita. Out of all the food they provide, the fajitas are the worst. We really didn’t want to make them, but we had a lot (since we don’t like them). Eric figured if we added some cheese, avocado and fresh steamed broccoli it would make them better. It did, but they’re still pretty bad. I don't think we'll be eating them again!
After that, Eric cut up some honeydew and it was a delicious, refreshing dessert. I watched two hours of SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE. I really enjoy watching these young guys and girls dance, especially when they are asked to perform dances that are outside their comfort zone. The hip-hop dancer doing a waltz, or the modern dancer doing disco. It’s a lot of fun!
After I finish blogging, I’m going to watch the season finale of TOP CHEF. I have a definite favorite. Let’s see if she wins!