Soon as I got home from vising family for Thanksgiving, I dove back into work and was up all night doing work.
Started at 6pm, worked all night until 8:30 am, got other stuff done too, did laundry, ran and emptied the dishwasher , put out our Christmas stuff.
At 8:30am, I wasn't tired so we went and ran errands and went grocery shopping.
Checked back into work from noon to 1ish then took a nap for 2 hours and then checked back into work for rest of night in between watching TV.
Went to bed for 2.5 hours got up at 2am and still up doing late night work and I have more late night work scheduled for tomorrow morning/tonight...whatever.
But I have things i want to do today.
I need to take Starbucks Jack out to lunch, his birthday was on Friday.
Starbucks Jill's shop opened on Friday, I want to get her some flowers, purple, cause thats the color theme of her shop.
Drop off shirts at the dry cleaners, stop by post office to mail movie, Menards to return kennel mat I got (its not big enough), I have more, written down in my daytimer, can't remember the rest.

Went to Toledo for Thanksgiving.
4 hour drive, not bad at all.
Enjoyed the visit with family.





My nephew is into stuff like Titanic, Pearl Harbor, Bismark and the Hindenburg.
And loves trains, but he doesnt just draw any generic train, he draw the Daylight, or the Hiawatha.
I drew with him but just drew over-sized ants chasing people on an island (inspired by Empire of the Ants)

This is Mitch!
He still needs to be neutered and spend a little time in a foster home for steps training

but in a few weeks he is ours!!!

Another accomplished day.
Up at 3am for scheduled maintenance.
I had licenses to install on 5 servers.
Then some other issues came up, worked some ticket and a server failover at 5am.
Went to bed for a few hours.

• Then to Meijer, for buy 1 get 1 free eggs, and 60 piece food containers set for $4.

• Menards for winterizer 9fertilizer)
  

• Wal-Mart - return a recalled bottle of aspirin, and got some pepto

• A Nissan dealership for a $10 debt card for just coming in with some letter

• Ulta - a new curling iron I wanted to try and some yankee candles
  

• Starbucks - to sit for a few with an iced coffee and my crossword

• Called Jill to see if she was gonna work in her shop today but she was out running errands

• Hallmark - but turns out I need to go back after Thanksgiving, cause my coupons aren't good until then

Last night I talked Brad into going out to a new place for dinner. I wanted to try something new and a little on the nicer side. It was a fancy sushi place, we split salad, miso soup, asparagus beef wraps, and a larger sampler plate of sushi. It was really good, a little on the expensive side, but a nice treat, enjoyable.

Tomorrow Brad is scheduled to give blood, go to the greyhound place, figure out what kind of menu we want for watching the OSU Michigan game.

GO BUCKS!

Feeling good.
Accomplished.

Got in some family time, and getting in time with my in-laws for Thanksgiving.

I am organizing how I do work better, keeping a daily work log to keep track of what I am doing, that's helped a lot.

Raked leaves yesterday

Called the Greyhound Rescue people, they have some boy dogs in, so Brad and I plan on stopping by Saturday to spend some time with them and see if they are a match for us.

I am on top of Christmas and birthday presents.

I was up last night for some work at 2am that got called off last minute because one of the servers was having issues. I can't go back to sleep right away after waking up, so I stayed up chatting online to 2 other work team members that I have been wanting to get to know better anyway because we will start cross-training soon between our groups soon. Then I looked out the window at 4am and saw trash blowing around our street (cause today was trash day and it was super windy last night) so I put on Brad's shoes and went out in my bathrobe collecting trash and recyclables. Only 1 car caught me. Did it again this morning before I headed out to Starbucks, but this time in real clothes.

Hung out with the gang at Starbucks for a bit, my boyfriends. On my way out saw Starbucks's Jill husband unloading stuff to her new shop so I stopped and help with the door. Her place should be ready to open day after Thanksgiving, I am really excited for her. I told her I'd call her this weekend and try to help her this weekend and/or Monday and Tuesday with tagging everything and any other last minute stuff that needs to be done.
I'll take pictures...I shoulda today but wasn't thinking.

Might go out for after work drinks tomorrow with some people I used to work with at the last place.

And have a friend visiting first weekend of December and plan on staying with her in a fancy schmancy downtown hotel that her company is putting her up at, and going out for a girls night out.

Have another late night work going on tonight at 3am, should just take me about an hour.

My mom, sister, brother-in-law, niece and 2 nephews were here for a visit over the weekend, just left yesterday morning.
My mom and sister visit, but it was the first time with all the kids.
It was a house-full, and a lot going with the kids, but it was all to be expected.
I enjoyed the visit, it helped me turn off the work stuff in my head and let go more. I only checked into work email a few time over the weekend, so it was really good for me.

I liked having people over, and doing things for them, prepping the house, buying stuff. I want to do a good job, make people comfortable. I even made a batch of my blue cheese spread.
Saturday we got to enjoy a really cool Veteran's ceremony with a dedication to some new veterans based sculptures to honor five local men who served in World War II and received high military honors; Mazza, Darfler, Bob Wehrli, Al Rubin and Leo Kuefler — a group of friends all served in the war and returned home safely. Leo Kuefler and Vince Mazza were at the ceremony.

Kuefler earned his Silver Star for saving the lives of his platoon members outside a small French village, where his tank platoon was scouting for German soldiers.
Kuefler's tank and two others were ambushed by a gunner waiting in one of the houses.
In the subsequent fight, with artillery fire from the hill bombarding the tanks, Kuefler realized one of the platoon's tanks was without a commander.
He ran three-quarters of a mile to the tank without a commander and helped the gunner continue to fire on the hill, and ultimately causing 18 German soldiers to surrender.

It was a really beautiful ceremony



This month is going fast, Thanksgiving just around the corner and Christmas/New Years before I know it.

I have already worked 90 hours this week.
On conference call now, like every night
except last night

Last night I got a full night sleep with only 1 call after midnight.

I worked the day or so before, 11am to 6:30 am the next day.

Had a meltdown, I was just tired and hadn't eaten (coffee and aspirin) and couldnt stop crying yesterday afternoon.
Left the house, took some time off after 4 hours of sleep from the marathon till 6am ish.
Got my coffee, had a wax done...at least something to take my mind off of things :)

Didnt eat until Brad got pizza for dinner, and sat in his lap. Was better after some food, get so busy and I can't figure out what to eat so I put it off, lost 5 pounds since last week. A work mate, took over some late night maintenance so I didn't have to do it, I couldnt anyway, I am useless when I am that tired and emotional, can't think straight to be helpful enough, and then I just feel stupid, not on top of my game.

So eating dinner and getting a mostly full nights sleep helped a lot.
I think another guy will help with on-call tomorrow after they started asking how many hours I have done. Boss's boss has been really cool, we talk on yahoo messenger and email, he says nice things to me about what a good job I am doing and hopes I stay on with the team. Hearing nice things helps too.

Took a bath this afternoon, and got an on-call call, called a team mate, told him I was in the bath and could he look at it for me. He stayed on the phone discussing what to do and explaining it to me that he ended up taking the bath with me.

So I am sitting here talking with vendors on a conf call and privately on messenger...I like doing that during conf calls.

Brad and I are trying to plan out Thanksgiving and Christmas plans. Staying home for Christmas, but want to plan a menu, a treat for ourselves, maybe a mini road trip in-between too, and then a bigger vacation sometime 1st quarter, but don't know what yet.

I do think work will get better, we just had a major switchover to a new system, so lots of tweaking to be done. And next week (starting sunday) I am no longer on call.

My mom and sister are coming for a visit in just a couple weeks (I scheduled on-call coverage)