Why NPH is awesome:

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

NPH in a musical??  That is so awesome!  I can’t wait to see it.  You can read more about it on Valleywag.

My photo of the sunset surrounded by the smoke from the fire in the west valley made it on to AZFamily.com!  Yeah me!

Wait for it....DARY!!!!

Click for the full size image

These are the chewy chocolate cookies from Martha Stewart Cookies.  They are suppose to be rolled in sanding sugar but I didn’t have that so I used granulated instead.  Well during baking the sugar melted.  I don’t know why I didn’t see that coming.  I grabbed the Heidi Swapp chipboard and used the negative space as a template.  I think it turned out rather well and they are still really yummy.

I was reading this week’s Entertainment Weekly, the issue lists out the greatest pop culture moments from the last twenty-five years.  As another birthday is looms around the corner, I thought about how much of a pop culture whore I am and decided to put together my list of pop culture defining moments for the last thirty-seven years.  In no particular order her is my list…

The dude who never gets sick has a really bad case of the Flu. 

Karma = 1 Snapper = 0.

Cripes!  it’s been freaking hot over the last few days.  I guess I needed more sleep than I normally get today.  I didn’t roll out of bed until 7am and that’s normally when I’m headed out the door for work, so I worked from home today.  We had the swamp coolers running but today they were pretty much useless so time to switch over to AC.  Normally when I work form home I usually have stuff around the house that needs to be done, but today I was pretty busy with work stuff. 

This past weekend I attended a scrapbooking class at Melrose Vintage.  Jeni Bowlin was the teacher and I had such a great time.  There were only like 10 of us in the class and Jeni gave us a lot of one on one time to help us through our projects.  I love going to Melrose Vintage, they have such great stuff and I get so much inpiration just walking around the store.  I’m so glad that they are incorporating paper crafts.  It was just nice to be creative.

My relationship with Snapper is still hanging by threads.  I tried to talk to him on Thursday, he was still being a jerk and he was making me upset all over again.  I didn’t hear from him all weekend, not that I thought I would but I had hoped.  I need to let him go.  But that’s easier said than done.

A few years back I went through a phase and put some distance between myself and the people that were toxic for me.  I am one of those friends that will stick by someone to the end, that’s who I am, and I’ve always thought that it was an endearing quality to have....but a quality that can easily be taken advantage of.  So I have this friend, and I’m going to call him out on this blog because he’s just pissed me off for the last time.  Snapper and I met at work and he was the one that went through all the CISCO classes with me for the past year.  I love my friend Snapper dearly, just as I do with all my friends, but when his manic twin comes out of hiding he is the biggest dick I’ve ever known.  I continually put up with his crap and behavior during this periods because I like to think that it’s not possible for one person to be that much of a dick at any given time.  He does this every few months or so, then he’ll get excited about something and wants to tell me about it, I listen and give the support that any good friend would do.

Now that Snapper is in a new job he finds himself under pressure to impress.  Snapper tends to perform at 300% when all that is expected of him is 100%.  I get pressure, and I don’t fault him for that.  What pushed it over the edge for me this time is that I expressed concern for his overall well-being and work/life balance and he just crapped all over me.  He started spewing on his diatribe about how he has three things in his life that matter to him, his dogs, running and work...anything outside of that is not worth his time.  I got crapped on all because I asked him if he wanted to go get a mocha with me at lunch today.  Again this is not the first time that he has acted like this to me, but this time I’m done taking this behavior from him.  I don’t need it and I certainly don’t deserve it from him.

Ending friendships are the worst for me.  It makes me feel like poop, it really does.  Am I overreacting?  I don’t think that I am.  I’m just tired feeling like crap when I all did was care about someone.

Can you believe that it’s been almost two months since I’ve scrapbooked?  Let alone done anything remotely creative.  I went to the scrapbook store today for the first time since early April hoping to be inspired.  My scrapbook table is a mess and my supplies are all over the place from when I was trying to organize everything.  I started the organization project with such enthusiasm and then all the motivation blew alway with the summer wind.  So if I’m not being crafty what have I been doing?  I’ve actually been spending a lot of time with family and friends.  There isn’t anything special going on, we’ve just had dinner and hung out like every weekend.  It’s been really nice.  I am so lucky to be a part of such a great family, something I missed out on as a kid.  All this family time has got me wanting kids again.  I’ll be 37 in two months, I don’t have much time.  Shit or get off the pot Elisabet.

I want to say happy birthday to two very special people, Brian and Dayle.  They are the most amazing friends a girl could have.

The doc has bumped up my drugs and that seems to be going well.  I can think without having a million thoughts running through my head all at the same time.  The weight loss has been moving downward for the past month which is awesome.  When I went to try on my dress it was really big all over.  And the dress....oh man it’s really beautiful.  Thank goodness it’s at Brian’s house because I would probably be wearing it all the time.  All the boys have their suits, cufflinks are on the way.  Courtney needs to figure out what shoes he wants to wear.  I say Vans, but he’s leaning towards All-Stars.  Looks like there will be twenty-five people attending the wedding.  It’s going to be a nice party with such a small crowd. 

It’s getting late.  Have a great weekend.  Don’t forget the sunblock!

The dress is here!  I’m so excited!  I haven’t seen it since I bought it back in February and I didn’t take any pictures of it since it didn’t really fit all that great.  I can’t wait to see it now that it’s in my size.  Dayle, Brian and I are going tomorrow afternoon for a fitting.  YEAH!

Wedding plans are moving right along.  I feel like there is a lot that still needs to get done but there really isn’t.  All the groomsmen have their suits and ties.  Courtney still has to get his and figure out what shoes he’s going to want to wear.  It looks like there will be about 23 people attending the wedding...not to shabby.  I am bummed that my BFF Meghan can’t be there.  We’ll have to plan a girls lunch so I can catch her up on the details.

That’s all for now.  Work is calling.

Because Gavin is so AWESOME
“The Love Remains the Same"

Genius.
“Again & Again” - The Bird and The Bee

The last two days have kicked my ass all over the place.  I have never felt so stupid, so out of place, so dumbfounded as I have the last two days at work.  The scale better show a weight loss tomorrow at WW because I don’t have any part of my ass left.  I rely on other people to provide me information.  When I’m not included on an email chain, how am I suppose to know that something was updated?  It was totally obvious that I wasn’t included, I said that I urged my peers to keep me in the loop, what more can one person do?  It was a scene from Office Space in my cube yesterday afternoon.  The emails started coming, one after another wanted to know why there was a breakdown in communication.  I took it personally because I thought I was being so careful and diligent with my record keeping.  I took my meds everyday last week, I was catching all the details.  It’s just so frustrating.  Ok it’s out...I’m done.

I finished my CCNA classes!  Now I just need to keep up the studying over the summer so I can take the certification test after the wedding.  I hope to get back on the path for my degree classes in the fall.  Hopefully I can work something out with the instructors since classes start the week of my wedding.

Now with a little free time on the weekends Courtney and I have been trying really hard to get things done around the house.  Baseboards and crown molding are top on the list.  Then the backyard needs tending to.  We’ve been pretty lucky here in the desert this year, triple digits have yet to hit us.  That will all change this weekend I’m sure.

I’ve been working on a new design for this place.  My goal is to clean up my coding, make everything according to web standards and pretty up the place.  Maybe hang a picture or two.  Dayle’s website will also be going through changes over the next few weeks.  I might as well knock them both out at the same time.  Working on the redesign has really been an enjoyable process for me.  I’m thinking more and more that this is the route I want to take in my career.  It seems to fit.

That’s all for now folks!

I have a ton of crap to get done today and what am I doing..browsing the blogs.  Maybe the meds take the weekend off?

Brian, Dayle and I had an awesome afternoon yesterday browsing thrift and antique shops all along 7th Ave and Melrose.  Lots of cute stuff out there.  Then Brian and went to see Made of Honor.  It’s entertaining and cute, we had a good time.

I spent some time on iTunes and updated my music library with some new stuff from the hottie Gavin Rossdale.  I’ve been playing around with the wedding mix, making sure that everything has a good flow.  Courtney will probably change it up when I’m not looking.  For those attending the wedding don’t worry it’s got a little bit of everything. 

A longtime friend is going through some drama and for once I really have no idea what the hell is going on.  Seriously I don’t know a thing.  Nothing is making any kind of sense.  I am taking the stance of just being there if they both need it.  I’m OK with not knowing the details at this point.  I just hope that whatever it is resolved by wedding time or I’m going to go all bridezilla on their ass.

I gained .2lbs this week, not too shabby.  Still no soda since mid February, YEAH!  Now I just need to exercise.

Have I mentioned that I love my MacBook?  I’ve named him Pauly.

I’m done rambling now.

I’ve been watching the Marcus Buckingham workshop that was featured on Oprah a few weeks back.  Now that the meds have kicked in I am finding that I can concentrate on what I need to do to find the right balance in my job and life.  The workshop asks you to examine the things that make you feel invigorated and the things that make you feel weak in your job.  Once you have identified your strengths you can then start to move towards doing those things.  I took a look at the things that I do every day at work, here is what I have come up with:

I feel strong when...
I compile and complete the weekly reporting.
I have all the incoming projects assigned to the right resource
I have discussions about subjects that I know a lot about

I feel weak when...
I am asked to perform a task without a clear understanding of what needs to be accomplished
I have to ask for project statuses
I am not knowledgeable about the topic that is being discussed

There.  I’ve put it all out on the table.  I still feel like I am in a learning phase of my current role and until I can master the basics I don’t want to move on to something else.  I believe my biggest struggle is asking for help when I don’t understand something.  This week I had two projects come into our queue that confused the heck out of me and I didn’t know how to assign them.  After reading the requests a few times I went to my boss and she walked me through the details that were going on behind the scenes.  I need to find the confidence to not be afraid to ask her or my peers for an explanation.  Another struggle is that the team that I support does not respect the contributions I make to the team.  They don’t understand that if it wasn’t for the work that I do we would not have been able to bring on additional help.  I was able to put numbers behind the amount of work that they have and that gives my boss the tools she needs to fight for more help.  Some of the team is really good about communicating their needs to me and the others don’t give a flying poo.

I loved the work I was doing in my last job but I left because it was turning into something completely different and if I did not get out fast I would end up sabotaging myself.  I was good at all the report building and building relationships with the managers but I hated that every aspect of the job could impact someone’s bonus.  I hated all the corporate rah-rah crap.  I hated being micromanaged even though I helped managers micromanage their teams.  And I hated that when I showed the tiniest bit of resistance to an idea or process that it would come back to bite me in the ass.

I’m not in a position to completely change my job because I still need to put a roof over our heads but I hope that I can make the job more tolerable.  School is ending next week and I really want to focus on doing things that I love like scrapbooking and photography.  Speaking of photography, I was referred by a friend for a job!  That’s exciting and scary for me.  I’m going to take a bunch of practice shots this weekend to make sure I’m on top of my game.

Its a big movie weekend for us, Ironman and then I’m going to see Made of Honor with my MOH Brian.  Have a safe weekend!