8th Grade Dance

Look at my little girl growing up!  Her first dance.  No date – just a bunch of girls hanging out.  They didn’t have this when I was in junior high.  School ended, and the next year we were in high school.  Nothing special.

High School!  Next year she will be in high school!

Prom

Jason took Amanda to prom in my car this year!  I’m glad he’s been driving for a while already because prom was downtown!  the “after-prom” party was at a place called Amazing Jakes.  That went until 3:30 AM!  They came back here by 2:30.

Traditional Wedding Photography

What a difference from the very unconventional wedding I shot last month! I was nervous about this one because I only knew the parents of the bride through church and because it was a traditional wedding. I was worried about getting all the right shots and about being too intrusive. I was fortunate to have a friend help me, though! She also loves photography, and her extra photos helped a lot – especially getting different angles at the same time.

We spent six hours shooting the wedding, and I spent another ten hours today eliminating 282 out of our combined total of 603 photos then cropping and editing the rest, converting over 80 of them to black & white, and burning all to CDs. I will resize some favorites (will be hard to choose) to upload to flikr later this week.

Paper Money Discriminates Against the Blind???

I heard a blurb on the news just now and had to “Google” it.  Read this!  On the one hand, I do get it.  On the other hand . . . Who’s next to cry, “Discrimination!”?

Door Mat for Everyone to Wipe Their Muddy Feet On

That’s what I feel like today.

I realize that I, personally, am not VRBO, but to people who call or write looking for a place to vent their frustrations, I may as well be the one who made all the decisions, rules, and regulations for the company. This was my first very bad day on the job. The cold, rainy, dreary weather did little to help with my mood today, and I’m just having a hard time shaking the miserable mood I’ve settled into thanks to many impatient, fed up, irritated, angry, hateful people I had to deal with on the phone this morning.

Now, let me go feel sorry for myself and lick my wounds the rest of the evening. Maybe a big breakfast for dinner will help me drown my sorrows. Of course there’s also Idol in 30 minutes! Today’s light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps? Will someone please make me laugh?

No Child Left Behind Act a Complete Mess!

I came across this article and totally agree. There’s no hope for my boys to see any change at this point with just one more year of high school left, and I doubt Ali will see many changes as she enters high school next year. Miranda might see some improvement in the education system if we get a democrat in the house to try and fix what has been falling apart for the last 7.5 years. The republican candidates have no plans on doing away with the No Child Left Behind Act.

They say the kids of today are the leaders of the future. With the level of education they are receiving today, that’s a little scary! All these programs that are supposedly for “advanced” kids are really what should be the norm. Many of those kids aren’t really advanced but rather right where they should be. I think it’s more accurate to say there are many kids who are performing below grade level, and they’ve become the new norm. I’m not saying this as a jealous mom. I have two who are “labeled” as advanced myself! I agree they are very bright, but I wouldn’t call them geniuses or abnormally gifted & talented. Of course I’m proud of them, but I’m also a realist.

Where Did Saturday Go?

I fell asleep on bits and pieces of “27 Dresses” last night, but I managed to make sense of it. I knew starting it at 9:00 after getting up at 6AM was a bad idea! So I went right straight to bed when it was over, where I must have fallen asleep immediately. I slept straight through until 9:00AM! (By the way, the date/time stamp on this blog is off for some reason, and it really is still Saturday right now.)

My original plan for today was to go to the Art Museum. The first Saturday of every month is free. However, the weather wasn’t as warm as I would like to be walking around downtown, plus I don’t feel well today anyway, so I decided to work instead. I didn’t plan on working eight hours, but that’s what I ended up doing.

I started working at 10:30 on email and worked until 1:30, when I stopped to eat lunch. I worked from 3:30 until 6:30 on listings (completed and published 20 listings in three hours). At that point, my time was divided equally between the two areas, but I couldn’t stop there! There are over 4,000 emails waiting to be answered, which is a challenge I can’t resist! Each email is considered a case, and I closed 64 cases today. Some are as easy as “NNTR” (no need to respond), but some take a lot more investigating and involve several steps before they can be closed. Most cases are somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.

So here it is after 9PM, and I think I’m just going to find a movie to watch in bed. Earlier I felt a little nauseous with that kind of headache you get when you throw up. Now I just feel a little weak and very dizzy when I move. That’s another reason I just kept working. As long as I sat still, I was okay. I could have laid in bed all day doing nothing or work and get paid overtime for it. Why not get paid for not feeling well? I put in a total of 15 hours of overtime this week and 13 hours last week! I wonder if that will be enough to cover materials needed to fix my kitchen walls?

Oh! Next Friday VRBO is paying for lunch at Chili’s and two hours of our time to attend the luncheon. There’s really no particular reason, other than a chance to get together and get to know one another better since we all work from home and don’t really get to socialize at the water cooler! It doesn’t hurt that we were 104% over forecast for first quarter.