Year in Review

I stole this Idea from Abbey. Basically I will take the first sentence from the first post of each month of last year.

January- Just wanted to wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year. I didn't have much to say in that post. I submitted my dissertation for publication that month, too bad it was rejected in April.

February- . Work:- was okay. Seem to be making a little bit of progress. Had a presentation accepted for national research organization and submitted another one.ah yes, my progress and productivity goals for 2009. 5 ares of my life I wanted to work on last year, although I didn't give up on the goals, I did quit posting about them after 10 weeks.

March- I am NOT happy about this. I was talking about the foot of snow we got on the first. I can very much relate to these feelings right now, given that I'm in the midst of a weekend long snow storm. I am very intolerant of snow in March, every year i ready for Spring to begin. I hope there's no snow this year.

April- My life is full of unbloggable infuriating work situations right now, so here are some long awaited vacation pics to hold you over until I am no longer as angry and find something I can actually blog about. This month began with a bunch of BS at work that has continued on even today. These issue still plague me and make me wonder how much time I have left at ANJ. Additionally I started going through an unbloggable personal situation that lead to some of the worst days of my life to date in June.

May- I'm hanging out at home alone on a Saturday night. I was writing in bullets alot during April/May. Unbloggable personal situation was dominating my life which made it hard to have something to write about.

June- Yesterday was the worst day of my life (so far and I hope, hope, hope for a lifetime). Only two posts in June, it was a really hard month for me and one of those times in my life where I was just hoping time would pass me by so I could get some space in between me all that I experienced during that time. The quiet on my blog reflected the quietness I needed in my life to get through this experience.

July- It's been almost a month since I last wrote. Just starting to talk and share again. July was better than June, but still slow going.

August- Dear Hubby, I'm writing this here because if I don't write it down here, I might just have to strangle you. ah yes, I remember this day well. I can actually relate very much to these feelings right now. For some reason hubby's travel decisions never go well. I was much better during August, spent the last week and a half on a much needed beach vacation.

September- Came home a day early. Late August beach weather is quite variable in the North East so we headed back a day early. I did a lot of thinking about ANJ on this vacation. I took some action after the vacation to try and make things better at ANJ, there have been some changes since then but overall things aren't much better for me.

October- Tomorrow is my annual review with my boss. and it goes on and on. :)

November- I really do enjoy blogging but haven't been very good about it the last couple of months so I've decided to give NaBloPoMo a try.I tried, but ended up with 11 posts in 30 days. It was a great month for me, I got some great news (haven't blogged about that), took a weekend trip that turned into an amazing experience and overall had a good month.

December- I didn't post at all! But if you got to my post from yesterday you can see what I have been up to.

Here's to 2010!

Hello January...

Where did December go and why haven't I blogged? I'm not quite sure! Here's what I've been up to

• My 35th birthday
• Girl's weekend shopping and a Spa Day
• My Mom's birthday, one of my best friend's birthday, company Holiday party (all one weekend).
• Sisters annual holiday party.
• Concert for my favorite band.
• Hosted a Christmas Eve brunch
• Got sick (and I still am, 10 days and counting).
  

I guess all that didn't leave much time for blog writing or reading (over 500 posts in my reader). I hope to be better during January.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you're day is filled with good food and those you love.

My kind of Sunday

• Laying on the couch catching up on blogs and drinking coffee.
• Breakfast w/ friends who are in town for a conference (haven't seen them in a year!)
• Catch up on work
  
• FOOTBALL

Oh, and it's pretty warm here. Would not know it's November.

What's up for your Sunday?

Couple of Updates

1. I noticed many of the links to the blogs I recommend were no longer active. I've deleted those that I know were deleted. If you are a follower and would like me to put you up there, please leave me a comment and I'll add you.

2. Work is still crazy, better with my colleagues back but still crazy and probably will be that way until COB on Wed.

3. I don't miss my supervisor. Project Director (who takes over when my supervisor is gone) is decisive and responsive Shit gets done when they're in charge and I am a HUGE fan of shit getting done.

4. I was so excited to be able to sleep in on Thanksgiving, then I remembered my nephew is playing in the varsity football game. So much for sleeping in, at least I can do it on Friday. :)

I don't wanna be the boss

My supervisor is visiting home town far, far away for the next month.

My two equal status colleagues have been out of town for a work related meeting for the last two days.

We have a MAJOR, non-negotiable deadline close of business next Wednesday.

And I had jury duty yesterday (which I postponed from the time this project's first draft was due). Luckily, there were no trials needing jurors yesterday so I was out 1.5 hours.

My work life is insane right now. Everyone needs me every second of the day and I have a number of tasks that I need to complete (and can't delegate to anyone else) on this major project. Needless to say, I'm spending all my time troubleshooting everyone's stuff and getting none of my own stuff done.

My equal status colleagues return to the office tomorrow, I can't wait! I'm going to push the rest of the team off on them so I can get some work done. :)

Home!!

I got home last night, it was a relatively uneventful flight except it was super foggy at home and I didn't realize we were landing when we did. Was glad it was just the plane tires hitting the ground and not the entire plane! :)

I've realized that traveling for work sucks. When I first took this job I thought it sounded like an adventure but the novelty has worn off. I primarily travel for conferences and each time has been with a different set of colleagues.

I went to quite a few conferences in graduate school and my experiences always equaled a really good time. It was an opportunity to learn new stuff, present my work, get some time away from the office and hang out with people I really liked. This is the complete opposite of my work travel experience.

• Although some of the conferences I have learned a lot, it's not as intellectually interesting to me as the ones I went to in grad school and this last conference was not all that informative for me.
  
• I always feel the pressure to both attend sessions and do some actual work (unfortunately the work does not go away while I'm away and there really is not anyone else to do my work while I'm gone). So I end up conferencing from 8am-7-8pm and then going back to my hotel room to work for a few hours and when I'm on the West coast, that is just a disaster for me.
  
• I am very fortunate to have great colleagues... but they're not my friends. I have a good time with them sharing meals and having someone to hang out with during breaks but it still feels very lonely.
• I've been a co-author on a few of the presentations that we've given but I it's not as rewards as presenting my own work. I've mentioned previously here, here and here about the crazy restrictions I deal with at work which takes away a lot of the joy of sharing what we do.
  

Moral of the story, I am so glad that right now I don't have any work travel plans in the future! I am working on a conference proposal right now but it's not until late next summer and maybe by then I'll be okay with traveling again.