stuff

Odin went to the vet the other day for his sneezing.  He's healthy, just has a bit of an upper respiratory infection, so we got some eye ointment and drops to give him for his goopy eyes and sneeze.  We've been trying to get the bad habits out of his system by using squirt bottles if he jumps on the table or tries to scratch things.  He's learning pretty quickly, so that's good.

One thing that has changed a lot in the last two days; his energy level.  Since he started getting better because of the medicines, he's got a LOT of energy now!  He's darting all over the apartment and chasing things and waking us up at two in the morning because he's hungry.  We don't want him to get fat, so we're only feeding him two times a day, despite his yowlings.  He's little, this is more than enough food for him.

Last night around 10:30, just as I was getting ready to call it a night, Aaron gets a phone call from someone at work.  I guess the air conditioners shut themselves off because it's been so cold, and the room with all the servers in it was at 100 degrees or more, and one of the servers had shut down.  Since he'd had a drink and didn't feel confident in driving, I had to drive.  We didn't get back and settled until close to midnight, so I went in to work an hour later than usual (which is fine, because I just stayed an hour later than usual).

Odin helped me clean out the drain last night in the bath tub...pulled out all the hair from the drain and tried to chew it up.  Gross, but efficient.  I had been saying to myself that I needed to clean the drain out, anyway.  Glad he could help.

Work is still going well.  I feel less overwhelmed every day by all the information that is being thrown at me, and we are starting to enter claims into the computer programs, so that is helping me to know where to look on the claims to get the right information...sort of.  There's about three different programs on the computer that you use to do that stuff, and it's just kind of confusing.  Anyway...that's my little update for now.  I haven't loaded any pictures of Odin yet, although I do have a particularly cute one of him nomming on one of my socks that I knit.  I am currently working on making him a catnip toy with the same yarn so he can have something to play with without destroying my sock.

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last night

Okay, so keeping Odin in the bathroom didn't work.  He yowled his little head off for the first five minutes, and even with the bathroom and bedroom doors closed, the fan on, and music, we could still hear him.  It made me sad, so we brought him into the bedroom and blocked the hallway with a hamper and a box so he would be deterred from going into the living room.

After a few minutes of checking out everything in the bedroom (as he had not yet been in there), he mewled at us from the floor to say "Let me up!" because he hasn't realized he can jump very high yet.  He stayed on the bed all night and was very good.  I guess that $20 cat bed isn't going to get a lot of use...

But we will for sure put him in the bathroom when we leave to run our errands today; there's no way he's going to be in the living room by himself until he figures out how to use the scratching post.

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Meet Odin

Napping with Aaron this afternoon

He has little smile lines of white along his muzzle

This was after he got squirted for scratching the ottoman, even though the scratching post was RIGHT NEXT TO IT.


After much research and help from Mom, we have decided upon the name Odin for our new kitteh. He is slightly sneezy, which means he might have an upper respiratory infection (a cold), but we need to get him checked out by a vet within two weeks in the off chance that it turns into pneumonia. He's a snuggly little guy and likes to hang out with you if you are on the couch (or even while you are eating dinner).

We'll have him sleep in the bathroom tonight so he can't get into any troubles while we are asleep, and we'll probably do that tomorrow as well while we are running our errands.

:) And there he is. Our little buddy.

new addition

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present the newest addition to the Rehm/Mravlja apartment, Juno!


Juno is 10 months old, and we rescued him from the animal shelter in Golden Valley today. He was a stray cat that was fed by someone who found him. After three weeks of searching for his owners, Juno was not claimed, and taken to the humane society at the beginning of January.

We aren't going to keep his name as Juno, as that is a feminine name, and we don't want him to be too wussy. If anyone has any ideas for a name, please feel free to share them. I'm trying to avoid "typical" cat names like Oreo or Tuxedo because he is black and white, but something that could be unique.

I'm very excited to have him!

kidnapping

During training today, I was kidnapped by a man named Mohammad and drug around the entire building to meet everyone in Long Term Disability and the nurses and stuff like that.  First stop; to see the nurses and doctors that work for us and help us with our cases.  "Everyone, this is Andrea Mravlja, she's our new girl in Short Term Disability."  And all the doctors said, "Oh!  Like fibromyalgia!"  (Which is a painful and debilitating disorder).  So I was Andrea Fibromyalgia all the rest of the day. 

I met everyone in the LTD area, although I'm not sure if Mohammad was calling any of them by their real name, because apparently he likes to make up names for everyone.  Everyone was "that thing" or Bobby King (from King of the Hill), or would call peoples' kids Dakota Fanning and weird stuff like that.  It was highly amusing, and slightly embarrassing. 

Then he took me over to Marin's office, and Marin is who I first interviewed with.  She had about six or seven other people in her office, and they were doing "triage" for the long term disability cases that were coming in.  Basically, they decided which cases they were going to keep for LTD, and which they were going to throw out.  Mohammad pulled me up a chair and had me sit in with them, then left me.

I managed to sit for about five minutes before I figured I should go back to my training, since it was only my second day there. 

So that was highly entertaining and silly.  Good times, and a little bit of learning and retention of that information happened, too. 

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First day of work

Whew, what a day it was.  First of all, I was due in at 8:30am, and traffic is HORRIBLE at that time of day!  I used to be out of the house by 7:00am for my old job, but today, I left at 7:40.  Big mistake.  From now on, I can come in any time between 7:00 and 9:30am, as long as I work my 8 hours for the day.  I will be going in much earlier than 8:30, that is for sure.

I started off by meeting a bunch of people and getting my desk and computer set up with the help of a couple of ladies.  Then I did a bit of introduction and training with Sharon, who is very nice and has been with the company for about six years, I think.  She informed me that I would have "lunch buddies" today who would take me out to lunch wherever I wanted.  Fabulous.  Except I don't know any of the restaurants in the area.   We ended up going to PF Chang's because I hadn't had Chinese food in a while.  It was good, and Josh and Karolyn were very nice and friendly and easy to talk to.

Then more training and Power Point presentations for the rest of the afternoon with Sharon.  The computer that I got is kinda cruddy and doesn't work very well, but hey, I'm the newbie, and didn't expect too much.  As long as the darn thing boots up, that's okay with me.

I'm going to try to take pictures of my desk.  I know it's probably not exciting to most of you, but to me it is.  It's MINE.  And it's my first one.  I feel like a grown up...sorta.  I think I'm the youngest person there. 

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dream

I had this dream this morning in between snoozes on the alarm clock that I was getting ready for my first day at my new job, and I couldn't find anything to wear!  I was back home at Mom and Dad's house, looking through my own closet for clothing, and nothing fit me because it was all from high school.  I was wandering around the house, trying to find something to wear, and nothing was working.  I even went into my sister's room to find some clothes, because I had just done laundry, and surely there must be something there, but there wasn't. 

By the time I woke up, the CD had played through four songs.  Yikes.  Usually I don't even let it get to the lyrics of the first song by the time I hit the snooze button.  Changing my schedule or having to be up for something important always does weird things to me.

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notes

No pictures yet.  I took a bunch of them and am going to post them this afternoon after I load them onto the computer and the internet.  I have two days left at Von Maur and am sad to go, and nervous to start at my new job.  But that is to be expected, I suppose.  I haven't even talked to my boss at the insurance company since my interview with him.  All my other communications have been through the human resources woman in Kansas City.  I am not SUPER nervous, but I'm sure that will change Tuesday morning when I'm taking a new route to work.

Tonight we are going to see the movie Juno with Nathan and Natalie, which I've heard is really good, so that will be fun.  I haven't been to the theatres since this summer when I saw Superman Returns.  Also, we haven't hung out with those guys in forever, not since the holidays, I think, because we've all just been so busy.  I"m happy that I'm going to be getting my weekends off all the time now, but unsure of when I'm going to be able to watch all my movies I've ordered on Netflix, since Aaron and I will be spending a lot more time together now. 

Not that movies are more important than Aaron, obviously, but it was just something I did when I had the day off on a week day. 

I'm sitting here, watching weird music videos by Barenaked Ladies that I have never seen before.  What a bunch of sillies. Also on my agenda: a long soak in the bath tub because my feet, legs, and hips are so sore from work.  We haven't been very busy at all, so there's been a lot of standing around, which is way worse than being busy and moving around a lot. 

Also, I got some speakers that plug into anything with a headphone jack and fit in your pillowcase under your pillow.  For a while last week I was having a really hard time falling asleep because there are a lot of noises in the apartment that keep me up, and my mind focuses on them, instead of just letting my brain calm down and fall asleep.  It even came with a sleepy sounds CD that I can load onto my iPod.  I've been using it the last few nights, and it definitely isn't keeping me awake, that's for sure.  But I've also been really tired when we go to bed lately, so that helps.

Anywho, enough rambling.  I will get those Origami pictures up soon!

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no pictures today

I haven't even been keeping up with my Origami of the day, sorry. Also, we haven't been cooking anything for dinner for the last week (save some boxed macaroni and cheese) because Aaron has been sick all week. He's spent a couple days home from work feeling miserable, and the rest of the days AT work feeling miserable. Hopefully he'll get better soon. It's hard sleeping next to his snoring and coughing.

I have a little more than a week until I start my new job, so I'm just trying to get through this last week at work. Fortunately, news does not spread like wild fire in this building, so only my immediate co-workers and upper management know I'm quitting, so I don't have to explain my new job a hundred times.

I bought a super cute dress at work Wednesday night for $7 (originally $72) because it was on the sale rounder from last season. It's a cotton, summery dress with kind of a retro orange, blue, and dark brown print on it, on a white background. Pretty much exactly what I've been looking for ever since our Girls department started getting spring clothes in a few weeks ago.

Well, not much more to say. I'll try to get those Origami figures made up and posted when I have some free time on Monday. Adios!

Not much to say

Well, I don't have a lot to put down, just thought I would check in on here to say, "Hi." I told my supervisor last night about the new job, and she was happy for me, and glad that I was going to be able to stay for inventory (otherwise she might have to kill herself, she said). I had been trying to find a time and place to tell her ALL DAY LONG yesterday, and it never happened. A customer would always come up to the counter as soon as it got quiet, the phone would ring, or something. So halfway through the day, I said, "Screw it, I'll just tell her when the store closes."

Just as the store closes, another employee comes up to use our register for a return of an item that was from our department. The lady he was helping was his aunt, and he asked her if she'd heard he got a new job. They chit chatted about it for a while, and my manager got in on the conversation, too, and was happy for him. So after they left, I said, "Sooo, speaking of new jobs..."

And that's how I told her. Ha. I'm such a chicken shit. Like I said, she's happy for me, glad she got to work with me for the time I was there, and obviously didn't expect me to work at Von Maur forever. "What, you don't want to spend the rest of your life at Von Maur?" she asks me. "Hell no." She said she didn't want to, either haha.

So yeah, by the time I told her, it was too late to talk to anyone in human resources, so I'll have to do that tomorrow when I'm in (at 5:45am...omg).

Okay, so it turned out I did have a little bit to say after all. I'm going to miss the people at Von Maur. It's the only retail job I enjoyed working at because of the environment, the customers (only a few are a pain in the arse), and my co-workers. It's one of the few customer service jobs I've worked that didn't leave me hating all human kind at the end of the day. And I learned a lot about customer service in that job that I didn't learn in any previous jobs. All in all, a good experience. And I will never have to wonder how to wrap a gift again! I have learned a life-long skill.

We are making salmon steaks and green bean casserole for dinner tonight. Pictures will be posted later. :)

January 3rd and 4th

Alright. I didn't post these each day because one; they needed to be combined for the full effect, and two, the battery on my camera went dead and i couldn't find the charger for a day. Whoops! Also, my calendar has no origami planned for today or tomorrow. So here are Thursday and Friday's Origami of the day:

Dog Head


Dog Body


Dog!


Alright, onto different news. I was able to get a hold of the human resources director for the insurance company on Wednesday during my lunch break. I will start work on Tuesday the 22nd of January because I wanted to be able to give Von Maur a full two weeks to try to find a replacement for me, since the department I work in is already short. Fortunately, I was able to help through the holiday season of insanity, and will still be there to help with inventory (I have to go in at 5:45am on Monday and start working on scanning EVERY SINGLE ITEM in our department). And then it should be pretty quiet after that.

Last night, a bunch of us went to an Indian place for dinner called Chutney's. It was really good, but spicy. I'll have some leftovers to bring to work for lunch/dinner today. Even the air in the diner was spicy; my eyes were watering, and by the end of the meal, I was getting a headache.

Well, I must be off; I have to get ready for work now.

oversleeping

So yesterday, I slept through my alarm, waking up at 7:16, when I usually leave the house at 7:00.  In my panicked frenzy, it took me a mere 10 minutes to get dressed and out of the house.  Aaron also got up upon learning that I'd overslept, getting dressed and going outside to start my car in the -4* weather.  Thank goodness for him!  I made it to work and clocked in with two minutes to spare. 

Aaron thinks I have mentally "punched out" from work now that I have been offered the job at the insurance company.  I don't think that's true.  I don't want to be that irresponsible person who slacks on her duties because she has something else coming up.  I want to keep doing my job well, and keep arriving for it on time until the time has come for me to leave.  I don't care if I've only been there for two and a half months, I'd like to keep a good rapport with my current employer.

I did receive something via FedEx from the insurance company yesterday; Lab paperwork that needs to be completed by a piss test.  Woo hoo!  I guess I know what I'm doing on my day off tomorrow! 

The Origami of the day will have to wait until this evening, as I am in the process of getting ready for work.  But, as I woke up on time today, I had a little bit of spare time to say hi.

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nightingale

Origami of the day, Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008



She wouldn't stay up on her own, hence my intervening fingers.

Update

Well, I hope everyone had a great New Year's evening and is ready to start the year off right. I know I'm ready.

I started off with making my Origami of the day:


Hopefully I will be able to keep track and make one (and post it!) each day here.

Also, we are still trying to take pictures of all the meals we have been making. Last night we made taco pizzas.



We have been continuing our game night, which usually involves a game or two of cribbage.


Well, that's about it for now!