Blessings!

Sorry for my bitter post yesterday.  I had just survived a particularly rough two weeks at work and in my crazy depressed head, but thankfully this weekend has been a lot better.  It feels like I mostly focus on surviving lately and have no desire to blog...or do much of anything, but here are some good things!  (Sorry if I've mentioned any of this before.  My memory isn't so hot lately.)


Nathan has a job - sort of.  Let me explain.  It's with the video department at his school.  Last semester he enjoyed his way through a video editing class.  The job is working with all of the departments and campuses to learn about upcoming events, suggest that the video students record the events, and place all of said events on the calendar.  He has to work 20 hours a week (meetings take up about 5 hours) and at the end of the semester, he gets paid $1000 as an independent contractor.  It's not much money for the time he puts in, but this really is fantastic and I'm proud of him.  This will give him experience, something recent for his resume considering how long he's been unemployed, and a big confidence boost.  So awesome!


After a year of dealing with water leaking into the car trunk whenever it rained, we finally found someone who found the problem.  Our car had been in a massive hail storm prior to us purchasing it.  When the rear window was replaced, it was not sealed properly.  The Honda dealer actually had to put a guy in the closed trunk and pour water over the car to locate the leak.  It was worth the cost.


Probably due to water getting into the rear speakers, the car radio has been working intermittently, with no rhyme or reason, for months.  Also one of the rear speakers blew.  Now that the leak is fixed, we can look at this.  I have a new friend who thinks he can fix it pretty easily (we have no experience in this regard) and will do it for the cost of a sushi dinner.  We're really excited for this, because the radio worked most of the way to CA, and none of the return trip.  That's a long trip to make without music.  Thank goodness for my laptop.


The same friend also retrieved all the data from our crashed hard drive that died when I accidentally killed my dying computer while trying to save it from a lightning storm.  We had lost our backup drive and I was upset to lose months of recent photos.  He did it for a batch of his favorite cookies.  Bless his heart.


This month was the first in a series of changes in the hiring/training process at work.  I had 8 new employees (plus a new supervisor that needed training) start on the same day, and overall the training center had...oh gosh I forgot already...I think 13 new employees?  I know that for large companies this is nothing, but our training center hasn't even existed for a year yet, and we have created everything from scratch with constant changes along the way.  It was a very busy two weeks for me, conducting a morning and afternoon session so as to give more personal attention.  Lots of drama mixed in, one employee who couldn't keep up and needed a separate training plan, technical difficulties...all of these things made it especially hard.

But by the end, I had learned valuable lessons and felt like I bonded okay.  That's part of my role as a trainer - to be their friend and help them feel comfortable and welcome.  I enjoy getting to know the new employees.  Even if I'm not their trainer, I usually at least meet them, and I prepare their welcome bags.  Some people I struggle to get along with during training and some turn into friends, like the radio/hard drive fixing guy who joined us for our holiday dinner along with his wife.  :-)


Finally, even though I'd had my share of sickness before Christmas, I managed to avoid getting a cold immediately after Christmas vacation.  This is a change from the last few years.  Yay!