Greetings from 2011!

Hello faithful readers,

I would go through the whole song-and-dance explaining why it's been so long since I last wrote and would follow that up with a pledge to regularly update, but let's be honest: the people who read this know me and understand what I've been up to the last 9 months. Here's a hint:

Abigail has done a pretty fair job updating you on Aveline from her blog, so you can read that if you're not up to date. I will say that Aveline is much more trouble now that she's crawling and grabbing and (very occasionally) standing up, but also much more fun. I do miss when she would lie down next to me while the video games were on, however.

At this point, I've almost taught her everything she needs to know, but now she needs to learn to use the controller, not eat it! Just kidding grandparents...she won't play those for a few years yet.

So aside from our little monkey, what's happened in the past nine months? For the first few months we settled into our new routine with her, and by the time Abigail went back to work I was totally an expert at being a dad. I'm kidding, but it really did surprised me how easy it is. People tell us that we are lucky to have such an "easy" baby, and that may be true, but I have noticed that babies can smell fear, just like werewolves. As long as Aveline knows that we're in control and that she's safe, she's generally pretty happy and calm. Exceptions include teething, the time I let her fall off  she totally jumped off the couch like a ninja, and a recent fever bug thingy, but in a general sense she is super happy, and so are we.

I think I started to talk about non-baby things, but that's sort of difficult. When I got married, I was annoyed the first few months when I would walk into a room and invariably hear one or more of the following: "Where's Abigail?", "How's married life?", and something to the effect of "Are you guys thinking about kids yet?". This was pretty annoying for a while but I got over it, and that's probably best since it prepared me for: "Where's the baby?", "Getting any sleep?", "When's the next one coming along?". I'm not kidding; that's really how it is, and because of it I haven't been too upset about missing social events (i.e. church). I'm never too upset about sleeping in on Sundays, but that's a whole other blog post.

So anyway, after the New Year, we were somewhat adjusted to parenthood and Abigail was back to work. Around February, I began to look into going back to school once again, and we did the budget to see if it would work. Without too much detail, we decided that I could work part time and go to school full time without any real hardship other than giving up my morning $4 coffee ritual. Bearing that in mind, I squared everything with the boss and registered for the Game Production program at Collins College, with the intent of starting full time in early March. Then I went back to the hospital.

Some time in March (I think the 8th, but it's fuzzy for obvious reasons), I was lying in bed with Abigail and Aveline not wanting to go to work. I guess God saw some humor in that because the next thing I remember was waking up in the ER of the hospital where Abigail works. I am told that I had 4 concurrent seizures and the doctor described the damage to my back (which was quite severe) as "sort of like getting in 4 car wrecks in a row." So instead of going to school, I stayed home for a couple of weeks. I started 2 online classes for the 10 week term instead, but my recovery time was cut a bit short when my boss resigned from his position. I learned about this on a Friday and due to a freakish sense of responsibility (thank you so much, parents!) I went back to work for a few hours a day in order to keep the new guy from drowning. I started physical therapy at about the same time.

A couple weeks later, Abigail and I decided I could quit work altogether and we would still be okay going to school, so I put in something like an 8-week notice and worked 3-4 days a week while going to physical therapy 3 times a week. My last day at the Marriott was May 25, although technically I am still on call should they need help. If you have a picture in your head right now of me growing a beard and playing games all day, go ahead and erase it. Abigail made me shave the beard after a week and a half and since school started I haven't had much time for gaming. I will do another blog post (possibly tonight) about school, but let me just say now that it's AWESOME!

This has run rather long, but I would be very thoughtless if I did not take the time to acknowledge the people that have been so supportive the past few months when I have really needed them. I do not have many friends for a reason: I prefer quality over quantity. My friends really stepped up to the plate, and Angela (my friend Matt's wife, and a friend in her own right) was there to drive me to work when I wasn't able to do it on my own. There were some days when I knew her schedule was tight and it was an inconvenience, but she did it gracefully and wouldn't even let me chip in for gas (she did let me buy her coffee on occasion). It was pretty depressing being stuck at the house, barely mobile, and Travis, Matt, and Andrew often visited or checked up on me when I needed it. Andrew even shared his DBacks fortune to take me to a few games, and managed not to injure me too severely during the 7th inning stretch!

My mother deserves a special mention for essentially living with us for about a month and a half. I think it's fair to say that the situation wasn't ideal for anyone, but she not only helped me move about when I needed it and took care of Aveline, she got up with her during the night and put her own plans on hold when ours changed. Abigail's parents were also there for us in different ways; they also watched her when needed and Al actually took care of the weeds in our yard when I wasn't able to (as did my brother Tim on multiple occasions!). I'm very thankful that Aveline has grandparents and other family that she can depend on when her daddy is being high maintenance!

Most importantly, however, I am so thankful for Abigail's constant support. She has supported my decision to go back to school from the beginning and has worked hard with me (I live here too so I get 1% credit) to redo our budget in order to make it possible. When I was hurt and unable to do much, she was very good with the situation and took great care of me, but did not let me fall back on my physical therapy and made sure I continued to move around and take care of things. It has not been an easy 3 months, but she has been invaluable. I think I'll keep her.

Okay, well I think that pretty much brings you to speed. I'll try to post at least one or two more topics in detail, but if not...see you in 9 months or so (no that is not a hint)!

Stay frosty,

Scott

Hard day at the job...

As I have said before, normally I don't care for my job. It's not really my cup of tea, and on a good day it can be boring. Not that I'm not grateful for it, and I definitely have learned from it, but I would not choose this as my lifetime career.

However, there are definitely some days that are better than others and yesterday was one of them. It was a very normal day up until lunch, but when Nate and I got back, my boss said we could spend the rest of our day building the gingerbreadhouse for our department's entry into the hotel-wide gingerbread house contest. w00t.

Here is a picture of the beginning.

We had a lot of ideas, so my boss went out to a few stores and bought some supplies-mostly candy. Nate and I did all the grunt work, but it was good times nonetheless, I must say.

It took us about 3.5 hours or so (not including clean up), and this was the end result:

The house from one side...

And from the other!

A close up of our diverse snowman...oy.

My one worry is that they made a "Home Forclosure" sign and put it next to the (chocolate colored) snowman, and since this is going to be judged by our guests, I hope no one gets offended. Not that I'll get in trouble or anything, but I would hate for something to ruin their impression of the hotel. OH well, it's not my problem.

Still, it was fun times, and it gave me an excuse to take all the stuff off my desk and scrub it with cleaner, which I haven't done in about a year or so. Seriously needed. Blech. It's not like I'm a neat freak, but you should have seen how much dust can accumulate behind a monitor in one year! Not to mention all the rubber bands Nate appears to have shot at me when I wasn't looking. Hmmm...

Scott is tired!

So yes, I really did have special plans on Sunday; I wasn't being flippant. I went to church, then came back and took on a project of monumental proportions if I do say so myself. I decided since my wife has been working so hard on finals and such that I would do something nice for her so I (with some unexpected help from my mom and my sister) shampooed pretty much all the carpet in the house (minus the bedrooms, which no one but us sees anyway). That required moving a lot of furniture, and I don't mind telling you I am still pretty sore. I'm not used to exercise anymore, so I was tired by the time we were done. Luckily that was still over an hour before Abigail came home. I also managed to do quite a bit of other cleaning as well so when she got here I was rather pleased with myself, as was she.

Matt and Angela came over that afternoon (just before Abigail, actually) and we had good times. Matt began a weight loss competition at work last week that involves measuring his total loss of poundage as well as body fat, so he is unofficially doing Weight Watchers as well as exercising. He went through how it's going with me and showed me how he is doing it, so I decided Monday would be Day 1 of my new diet. While I failed miserably (I had a cheeseburger at our restaurant, and regret nothing), I have taken to the project with much enthusiasm. I designed an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of everything, and so I've decided that in lieu of going to the meetings I will be posting the results here once a week. This is Day 2 (which has gone astronomically better, by the way), and I am really excited about it. The problem is Day 3 is my birthday, and Day 8 is my birthday party, so those two days I'm pretty much screwed. Oh well...

Anyway, it's the end of the month (EOM) at work so I have been super busy and stressed. I ended up getting off at 6:45 today, eep! Hopefully this will get better as the week goes by. My boss had talked about taking us to the movies tomorrow in honor of my birthday (and his 3 free movie passes that we gave him for HIS birthday last week) so we'll see. I'm still not sure we're going but it's a nice thought. I'm not planning on making a big deal about the day at work, but I don't know if it will be up to me. We'll see...

Corporate Speak

I used to keep a book of quotes called Random Jottings for instances like these. Actual quote from Nate (other Accounting guy) on the phone with a client:

"We process those using the processing process."

Priceless. :-)

New stuff

All right, good times. You may notice a couple of little changes. Hopefully there will be more tomorrow, time permitting, but the most important thing is I found out I can put my Gamertag on here! Yay!!! I've created a few albums on Picasa, but I still haven't quite figured out how to link them to here yet and I have more pictures to put up anyway so that should be tomorrow.

Right now my 360 is probably FUBAR so I have spent the last couple weeks playing off of other people's consoles when they didn't need them. My brother lent me his one week, then Matt lent me his last week when he was otherwise occupied. The next couple of weeks should be "dry" weeks, which makes me sad, but at least I managed to beat The Force Unleased last night. Abigail kinda freaked out last night when I explained I had already finished the $59.99 game, but apparently she does not understand replay value well. :-)

So I had my first day as a reservations person on Friday, but my boss's birthday is today so he decided to take Friday, a payday, off. What I didn't know was that would by default leave me stuck helping people distribute paychecks and paperwork, as well as giving change to every single employee (or so it seemed to me) of the hotel! I had come in early since I had two meetings to prepare for that day, so I went from 8:30 until about 2:45 before I was finally able to take a lunch break. Sheesh. All things considered it was actually a good day, and I got to learn a lot of things that I will get to apply next week. I ended up working until 6:45 and probably could have gone much later, but I ended up having the opportunity to have dinner with my friend Andrew which is something that had not occurred in some time.

Friday was also my little sister's 17th birthday. Today is my boss' (as mentioned above) as well as my friend Matt's mom's birthdays, and tomorrow is Abigail's mom's, although we celebrated it today. We will be celebrating Susan (my sister)'s tomorrow (Matt will be doing the same with his mom, strangely enough). My birthday is the next one in my family, I think, so mark your calendars for October 1st, people! (LOL)

Okay, so be excellent to each other, and party on dudes!

Well, this is weird...

"Normal" for the accounting position is a 40 hour week, roughly 9 to 5. The hours are somewhat flexible, but the amount of them was definitely 40 unless I needed to take off for a doctor's appointment. So when we hit slow season this summer, I still had 40 hours while other departments were getting cut...until about 6 weeks ago. Now I get 32 hours a week if I plot for it, but at least I get Fridays off.

So I'm going into work today to help out with a weird scheduling conflict. I'm working a mid shift in my old position but at my current pay (score!), which means I don't get the extra day off but I will get the normal paycheck (pretty much). With my birthday coming up and The Force Unleashed coming out sooner than that, a little extra cash is not a bad thing to be had. I don't buy my own gifts, but my wife has a list. :-) Hey, she asked for one!

My friend Aarik was one of the front office managers in my hotel, and he died on his birthday this year, so it will be really weird to go back to work on a busy day without him there. He was one of those people that energized the room whenever he was in it, and we still get repeat guests asking about him. I guess I'm just preparing myself for a weird day in general because it will be essentially the same job but with an entirely different group of people.

Anyway, gotta get ready!

Happy-ish Thanksgiving

Well, it's that time of year again. Thanksgiving is without a doubt my 2nd favorite holiday, the obvious first being Christmas, and for good reason. I love cooking and food, and most of all family, and usually they all come together. With the exception of this year.

For the second year in a row I am working Thanksgiving, albeit a different shift at a different job. Last year I worked day shift at the Movie Gallery in AJ. This year I work the night (or evening) shift at the Marriott. So I miss the big family dinner. (pouts)

Of course that doesn't mean it's a total loss. I work with a lot of cool people and the ones here with me tonight (yes, I'm typing this at work) are most likely going to try to make this a good day regardless. Of course, most of them got to see their families already. Nonetheless, some serious Monopoly playing will ensue if I get the opportunity to sneak off to get my board.

At any rate, a happy Thanksgiving to all of you. Hope all is well and that you don't get indigestion too bad. Remember: fish are friends, not food, but TURKEY is fair game!

Yes, I am still alive

I am, as you have guessed, not yet dead. However, I have been extraordinarily busy. Well, extraordinarily for me...lately. Um yeah, so I've been busy. Extraordinarily.

Kudos should go to me as I am at the same job. I haven't yet managed to get the manager to do my 90-day review, but since she spends most of her time in court with her son (don't ask, because I don't know), it's not exactly possible. I would be shocked if I got anything less than favorable since, after all, I still work there.

Abigail ran into said manager in Target the other day when we were doing our registry. (So for those of you who are reading this, we are registered at Target. Buy me stuff. And if you don't like what we picked out, give me-ahem- us a gift card. You know, for us. Not just me. ) That was, incidentally, great fun and amusement, mostly for me. I got to use the scanning gun for most of the time, but after a while she couldn't take it anymore and I had to give it up. Really, Meg, you should know by now: give a guy something to play with, and he will play. That's what we do. No guy reading this wouldn't have used the opportunity to shoot lazer beams at others. And random packages. And in your eye to see what happens. I think I've made my point.

Abigail and I also picked out a new apartment that I will move into in about a month. I will throw a moving party (read: help me move stuff) at that time. I will get to live there alone for about three months. Needless to say, I am psyched. Granted, less than three months of independent bachelorhood isn't that glamarous, but it is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

I haven't seen much of anyone lately, and for those of you I should be seeing, I apologize. Most of you have my new number, and if you don't and you would like it, let me know. Until next time, same Bat time, same Bat channel.