Saturday, June 6, 2009
The end of my vacation back in October did not end as wonderfully as it started with our trip to Vegas.

The Friday before I had to go back to work, we went to a get-together at a friend's house. Around 2 in the morning we decided to be silly and find somewhere to go bowling. As we were driving around, someone ran a red light hitting my poor Toyota Matrix on the passenger side. It knocked us clear across all the lanes of oncoming traffic. The car wound up on the sidewalk about 6 inches away from a light pole. Luckily there was no oncoming traffic at the time so no other cars were damaged.

Thankfully both my friend and I walked away from the accident with nothing but extremely frazzled nerves and lots and lots and lots of bruises!


My poor car that was ALMOST paid off was totalled. With the insurance payoff, I was able to get a great deal on the 2009 version of the same car. I looked and looked and looked and couldn't find anything in my price range that I liked better than the Matrix.
posted by Jessica at 6:28 AM | 3 comments
Friday, June 5, 2009
....winds up on my blog many many months later!!





We had a great time in Vegas (Back in October!!!!). We spent a lot of time exploring the hotels. Andy hasn't spent much time in Vegas, so it was a lot of fun showing him all the cool things to do there that don't involve gambling or large amounts of alcohol. I took him to see the tigers at the MGM Grand, we saw the M&M factory. We watched the pirate show at Treasure Island. We walked down to the Wynn and explored the stores and casino there.








We stayed at the Monte Carlo. The hotel was nice enough. There was a lot of construction everywhere along the strip so the pool was not a good place to be and we spent a long time walking through construction tunnels along the strip trying to get from casino to casino. I got to take a lot of pictures. It was a great way to kick off my weeklong vacation.

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posted by Jessica at 7:09 PM | 0 comments
I will be posting a few blogs to get the blog caught up with the goings on in my life!
posted by Jessica at 7:06 PM | 0 comments
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
I have so much to post and almost no time to do it. So many pictures, so much news. I will get to it one of these days!!!! I promise!
posted by Jessica at 12:26 PM | 0 comments
Thursday, October 2, 2008
So next week I have the whole week off from work. It has been a long long time coming. My usual vacation time between summer school ending and fall semester starting was preempted by the move from our old Learning Center to our new beautiful albeit small Multidisciplinary Success Center ( Try spitting that out when you answer the phone!). During the summer when it was determined that we would not be allowed to take our vacations during the break I told my boss I would be taking mine once things died down with the semester.

The move itself was stressful and chaotic enough. On top of that, we have completely changed the focus of our center. A lot of it has been done on the fly, learning and fine-tuning the process as we go. I am not typically a learn/train/fix as you go kinda person, so this has been a very challenging, exhausting and enlightening experience. When the semester first started, there were days that I came home in tears, ready to quit, just HATING everything about my job. I have never been much of a sleeper, and lately I would even say that I could even be categorize as insomniac... well since the semester started, sleep has been something that I can't seem to get enough of. My new hours and all the chaos at work seem to have cured my sleepless nights.

So when the time came, I filled out my vacation request and turned it in to my boss. Her reaction was priceless, and has been duplicated many times from many different people over the past few weeks. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!" and "WHY???????" and "WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO???"
It kinda makes me giggle a lot... and it really makes me feel good that people realize how hard I do work to make things run as smooth as they do amidst all the chaos of pioneering a new program.

So the big question is what am I going to do with that week off... I did feel kinda guilty telling people that I was just planning on not being at work and not really going anywhere even though I did have a few things planned. So I got to thinking, and Andy has Sundays and Mondays off, and works from home Tuesdays and Wednesdays. So I mentioned to Andy that we should go somewhere for a couple days. Well we never really discussed where to go until...

Yesterday I was sitting at work frantically trying to get things ready for the staff for next week while I am gone, making things as easy as possible for everyone while I am gone, my phone rang and it was Andy.... Hey Jess, wanna go to Vegas??? OF COURSE I DO!!!! He said he was looking at packages and they were very reasonable. We fly out Sunday afternoon and fly back in on Wednesday afternoon. We are staying at the Monte Carlo.

I will be taking my super cool camera so I can take loads of pictures. I don't think I have been this excited about a vacation since my honeymoon!!!!

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posted by Jessica at 9:52 AM | 1 comments
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
... no not that Office!

My new office! Before the Fall semester started, we moved into our new building here at the PCC campus. It had been a very, very, very long time coming. The planning started almost 10 years ago, and while I have only been here for two years, "the new building" was always referred to as some quasi-mythical creature that one might be lucky to see in their lifetime. When my co-workers would mention "the new building" you could see a spark of hope in their eyes while hearing a dash of bitterness in their voices over the many promises that had never come to fruition.

Now don't get me wrong, our old center was very nice... spacious, lots of storage, and very easily accessible for the students. My work area (it doesn't deserve the term office) always seemed as though it had been a bit of an afterthought, a storage area that was turned into a work area because they had run out of desks. There were holes in the wall to allow cables to be run into other areas, the 40 year old paint was peeling off the walls, and the servers for the internet for our center in the wall panel were always creating a cacophony of buzzing, whirring and clicking. On more than one occasion, we caught tiny rodent friends (once one ran across my keyboard as I was typing). I also had no view of the outside world. People were constantly sneaking up on me while I was working on my computer and scaring the daylights out of me!
Below are photos of our old building, and my old work area.


Suddenly, we were all caught in a flurry of approving blueprints, picking color schemes, furniture and other storage options. We were deciding where we were going to be putting our desks and all sorts of exciting stuff. It seemed like that in no time at all it was time to move. And the most exciting part, I was going to have a desk in an office! Not just a desk stuck in a corner as an afterthought.

The move was a very hectic time. Furniture ended up back-ordered, plans were constantly changing. We ended up with just under a week to get everything unpacked and ready to be used for the first day of the fall semester.

Our new center is beautiful, clean, and modern... and VERY SMALL. We have had to downsize several times over to accommodate being in an area that is roughly half the size with roughly 1/3 of the storage we used to have. We have adapted well though. And I LOVE LOVE LOVE my new office! The hardest change has been my new hours. I used to work 7:30 - 4:30 Monday through Thursday and 7:30-2 on Fridays. Now I am 6:30 - 3:15 and 6:30 - 2. But I love that I am off work and have some of the afternoon. I don't feel like I am coming home going straight to the kitchen to cook dinner, then cleaning up, then going straight to bed. There is time in the afternoon to unwind.

Here are some photos of the new building and my new office!

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posted by Jessica at 1:54 PM | 0 comments
I thought it would be good to jump on the bandwagon and start one of these. To help people keep up with my life and to help clear my head of all the chaos that flies around my head daily. I may back post a bit with some photos I have taken or whatnot. Hopefully it's not too chaotic for others.
posted by Jessica at 12:32 PM | 0 comments