Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Tuesday Thoughts

I'm feeling pretty random today so this post is pretty much guaranteed to be all over the place!

Work is surprisingly busy for the start of another summer on a college campus. Normally it's a time for catching up, cleaning, organizing, etc. However, the director for one of our programs leaving the day before graduation for bigger and better things, she leaves us with a headache. So much in terms of procedures and day-to-day activities for this program were in her head and as secretaries, we many times would get requests to complete tasks and just did them without much thought to a process. This might be boring you, I promise to end this portion soon...anyway, I'm the chosen one, oh yes, I am the secretary chosen to take on the task of helping the interim program director and advisors clean up, create processes, procedures, forms, databases, files, etc. I felt like puking after our meeting yesterday, we need this checklist, these files, these forms, shared folders, lists of this and that, checklists, AGHHH! My head was spinning, I don't know where to begin other than the top of my list, or the item that looks smallest and easiest and work my way to the harder stuff. Problem is, it's not my only work!

In addition to this work, I have clinical instructor and agency evaluations that I'm tallying and making a database for...from Fall semester, this means there is more to come from Spring semester...I have a few other miscellaneous documents to create and update from end of semester and another committee I'm on that has a ginormous meeting on June 5th...I take minutes and send out student letters for that one and the May/June meeting is always the biggest lot of letters. *gagging again*

Furthermore, the other secretary is taking a really well-deserved vacation the last week in June/1st few days of July. She deserves it, I don't blame her and we have our own vacation planned tentatively for mid-September. But, I just dread this next month or so at work.

On to happier things, the list of things we've planted or have waiting to be planted in our garden and yard follows...I'm so excited that we're expanding our veggie selection and flowers this year, I hope they all come up successfully without being destroyed by bunnies and other critters! Here's the list...

  • Sugar Baby Watermelon
  • Honeydew melon

  • Beets (icky, these are for Trevor)
  • Lemon Cucumber (SO YUMMY!)
  • Peas
  • Green Beans/Bush Beans

  • Whopper Tomatoes (big, juicy and crack resistant)
  • Sweet 100 Cherry Tomatoes (Emma loves them, just her size!)
  • Carrots
  • Radishes (mostly for Trevor, I might only eat a couple, salted)
  • Poppies (Oriental Orange Scarlet)
  • Blazing Star (Liatris)
  • Red Hot Pokers (Tritoma or Torch Lily)
  • Mini Roses (pictured in my last post's slideshow)
  • Begonias (also in the slideshow and my header)
  • Asparagus (a patch existed next to our garden when we moved in)
  • Dill (mmm, gotta love dill, that comes up in little whisps all around the edges of our garden and driveway so that's cool!)
  • Other (we planted some seeds of some flowers I forgot about that came up and are a cool purply spray on top of a roughly 2 foot slim stem, plus we have the stuff that was there when we moved in last spring like hostas of a few different varieties, day lillies, daffodils, tulips, etc.)

We are new to this gardening thing since we only have owned our house for just over a year now and didn't have much space to do much of anything at the duplex we lived in before. Plus, I think it's great for Emma to get involved in gardening and eating homegrown veggies and fruit. It will be fun to try new things each year and keep our old favorites too. I specifically chose mostly perennials for the flowers so that they will come up again on their own each year. I just have to go online to print of some stuff about each thing so I know how to maintain everything!

In other news, I've been giving some thought to a theme for Emma's 2nd birthday party, which is just our family and Emma's Godparents, nothing huge but so much fun of course! Last year we grilled out and had Curious George themed plates, napkins, decor and cake, it was really cute! This year, with her now getting more opinionated and into varoius characters, I'm tossing around the ideas of Nemo or Mickey Mouse, she LOVES both of those most of anything, and is pretty in Shrek also. I found a few neat cakes from a local place and WalMart also does great decorated cakes, probably in any of those three themes. Her cake last year was from there and it was delicious. The links for the cakes show pictures of what I found this year, so we'll see what we finally decide on, another month yet until then anyway! Hard to believe she is exactly ONE month away from being 2 years old! When I look at pictures of her when she was just born, and even other pictures from the last two years, it's hard to believe it's the same little girl...she's changed so much and every day amazes us with something new!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is SO weird! SM is exactly one month from being 3 years old. I had no idea they have the same birthday.

Those purple-y flowers on the long stems are bulbs and they are called...darnit, I can't remember, I'll have to look it up. I have some planted in my front bed and I love them. --- A Ha! Allium. I knew it started with an A.

That stinks about work. I had a job in college where the woman in charge, but who didn't do the actual lab work, would let whoever came in start their own system for this, that and the other thing. Stupid! Then you don't know where anything this come the next person and there is no set system for record-keeping etc. I feel your pain! Good luck with all that, I hope it goes well.

Melissa said...

Ooh. work sounds kinda rough right now. Hope it gets better SOON!

Is the local place Brianna's? Because they have the best! Cake! EVAR! :)

Unknown said...

I'm right there with ya on the work overload. Sigh. Not enough hours in the day! :)

Mary said...

I'm sorry to hear about your work, that stinks! It's kind of irresponsible for a person of such position to leave like that with so much work left undone, in my opinion.


I wish I could grow like you! Do you start from seeds or baby plants? Anna really has been wanting to grow something but we have a lot of bunnies and squirrels too! I love tomatoes, I thought about trying those first. Anna brought home some watermelon seeds from class to plant... the other thing to consider is little feet trampling what we are growing. :D

I love those cakes! Anna's 3rd bday was Nemo, for emma we did blues clues this year.

Unknown said...

Your letter is P.

Have fun with it and a great Memorial Day weekend!