12.29.2004

Anyone Else Smell Burning?

If you do, that's a few of my brain cells going up in smoke. I just had one of my rare outbursts at work, due to a phone call from a team of monkeys in Houston, TX.
I won't go into the particulars, but I just narrowly avoided a #%&* load of work due to some other people's incompetence. Monkey #1 wanted every file we had on a particular building and Monkey #2 assumed he couldn't open the files I had already sent them. Boss Monkey hadn't even told them to expect a CD of files I overnighted to them last night.
Few things irritate me more than having to do extra work because of someone else's idiocy.

In other news, Christmas was a little weird feeling, but good.
It felt weird because it was our first Christmas away from the family homestead. My parents sold the house we grew up in this year, so it was our first Christmas in 23 years not in that house. We had all the pieces of Christmas -- food, family, pets, presents, etc. -- but it wasn't quite the same.
My parents came up from Oklahoma and we commandeered the house of my brother's best friend. He and his wife were very nice about letting us stay there for a couple days so we could all be together. (Yay Gabe and Krissy!)
I got some nice things: silverware (hey, I'm not a college student anymore), Peewee's Big Adventure on DVD, a CD of Celtic music, a CD of awesome theme songs stolen off the internet, Jon Stewart's book America: The Book, a great snowboarding hat, and some other odds and ends. I also got a cool present [item description removed to prevent spoilers for the Australian readers] from Karen and Co.(thanks, guys!) and a hand-quilted runner from Gregg and Amy (thanks, guys!).

I still have some tidying up to do in my life before the new year, but I'm hoping in January to set a new task -- either finishing the novel I have in progress or editing the one I finished. We'll see.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We have heard from Australian contingent that their calendar has arrived. So no worries about ruining the surprise. I'd love to hear what you thought of the project. It really was fun to do.
I hear you took the kitties along to Gabe and Krissy's, that sounds like an interesting adventure. How did they like it?
Karen

Anne C. said...

I thought the calendar was very nice. You used some great quotes and some really beautiful photos! Thanks for all the hard work you put into it.
The cats travelled very well and once they got comfortable in Krissy and Gabe's basement (a matter of hours), they were itching to explore the rest of the house. They were confined to the basement because although they're comfortable around dogs, Gabe pointed out that thier dog, Nina, could easily kill one of them by accident. They did great and socialized with anyone who came down to visit them. I think they prefer thier own house though. :)