Summer is Right Around the Corner …

As the month of April ends and as our temperatures keep rising – we’ll see the start of summer down here sometime in May – no later than Memorial Day! The humidity hasn’t really set in yet but it will soon.

Tomorrow starts my third week at Staples. I wonder what undocumented job I’ll be expected to know how to do will crop up this week. There were several last week. There’s not anybody down here to train us in our jobs except for our supervisor who transferred down here from Massachusetts. And she has about 10 other people to deal with. Sure makes things tough at work. I’ve already been compared to my predecessor at the job. My thought is if she’s so good at the job why isn’t she down here doing it?

I’m not used to this much aggravation and frustration on the job. I spend four years temping where I pretty much picked up the job in a day or two. Of course those were normal accounts payable jobs. There’s very little normal about the job I now have.

Thank you for all the greetings and gifts that you sent for my birthday Saturday. You all made my day a little sweeter.

I’m been busy stitching some roses for my mother-in-law for Mother’s Day – which is right around the corner…

Take care & enjoy,

Florence

I’ve not even been on the job for two weeks yet and I am ready to quit. The job is unlike any accounts payable job that I’ve had so far. I’ve been told what my priorities are yet I’m not able to work on the high priority stuff for all the endless massaging of spreadsheets that the company requires to get the data from legacy systems into Oracle (which is used to process payments).

The stress from this job has me wide awake at three am - I usually don’t get stressed – especially about accounts payable – but here I am …

The temperatures have been rising steadily and once they got above 80 – we turned our air conditioner on. Even though the brick on the house is yellow, it still is a thermal mass that re-radiates heat in the evening – just as the breeze dies down. It’s probably going to be on for the summer since May is just around the corner – and summer usually comes in full force then.

Take care & enjoy,
Florence

April is Flying By …

Today I started my second week working at Staple’s Shared Financial Center that recently opened in this area. I’m working in Accounts Payable – handling freight bills. The company has a really nice set of benefits, which probably keep me working there for a while …

Before that I was busy getting my eBay records into order. I’m still not done – I still have 4 months of 2006, 2005 and 2004 to print up. This is a project that is taking longer than I would like.

I didn’t get any printing done this weekend – I got a new computer case as an early birthday gift. The power switch on the old case had gotten messed up so my hubby pulled off the switch cover and pulled out the actual switch. That wasn’t too bad but for some reason the switch was so messed up that it would cut my computer off – instantaneously! Last week it did it three times in less than a half an hour. Needless to say I’m happy to have a new case! The computer looks new even though everything inside is from my old computer.

I have gotten some stitching done – I’ve got one graduation sampler done and another one started. I’ve put the second graduation sampler down to stitch some roses for my mother-in-law’s mother’s day gift. It’s done all in shades of pink and is very pretty. I find roses pretty easy to stitch – just work from dark to light.

Just a short update for now -- things have become pretty busy.

Take care & enjoy,
Florence

A Week of Birthdays ...

I’m in the midst of what I call my week of birthdays – there are five family birthdays between the end of March and the 9th of April!  Two are my sisters and the other three are my husband’s relatives.  Yep, it’s a busy time of year!

I’ve been busy trying to get my eBay store inventory back up to 400 items.  I haven’t had up that high since last August – since every time I start posting. items start flying out of the store.  If I get a sunny day this week, I have a whole pile of things to take pictures of – these are things that won’t fit into the scanner!

I also have a lot of cross stitch fabric to sell – these are all the high thread count fabrics – ones that I can’t see too well anymore – ah – the joy of getting older.  I have a bunch of pictures that I took earlier but I didn’t write down the names of the fabric …  some of the colored ones I was able to match up and those have already sold – but the white and ivory fabrics are a little hard to determine which is which.

I still have more printing to do – as soon as the color ink cartridges come in.  I’ve been printing quite a few photos.  I have 2007 up to date – except for the past week or so.  I’ve got 2006 done through the first week of September.  Still have 2005 and 2004 to do.  I really hope to get this done before I start working on the 16th!

It’s been typical spring – 3 to 4 day of air conditioner and 2 to 3 days without.  We’re a fair bit above normal at the start of the week but the end of the week we’ll be below normal.  EVERYTHING is blooming – a ton of dogwoods, azaleas, red-tip bushes, our big cherry laurel in front of the house – and of course, lots of yellow pollen from the pine trees.  Somebody in the neighborhood has a cottonwood tree – I’ve seen that fuzz moving through the yard.  Our next-door neighbors used to have one but fortunately they cut it down.  Those are nasty trees – we were forever cutting out the runners that came into our yard.

Enough rambling for now … I hope everyone has a Blessed and Happy Easter!

Take care & enjoy,
Florence