Being thankful

Last night, I saw something on Facebook that made me smile. A friend had posted the following as her status and I in turn did the same:

Let's see how many people can do this. Every day this month until Thanksgiving, think of one thing that you are thankful for and post it as your status. "Today I am thankful for..." The longer you do it, the harder it gets! Now if you think you can do it then repost this message as your status to invite others to take ...the challenge, then post what YOU are thankful for today.

I love this. I love this because too many of us (yours truly included) tend to focus on the negative in our statuses. We're tired, we don't want to be at work, we're frustrated with co-workers and/or friends and the list goes on. What we don't take time to do is state what we're thankful for or happy about. So I took this challenge to heart and I will be focusing on the positive and my blessings for the next few weeks (and hopefully longer than that).

Normally I would wait to post my blessings on Thanksgiving but...

1) I'm thankful for my upcoming trip to Cape Cod for Thanksgiving! I'm thankful that my in-laws chose to take us all on this trip, for the opportunity to go somewhere I've never been, and to be able to have a change of scenery for awhile!

2) I'm thankful for my employment. At a time when the reported unemployment rate is 10.2%, I'm very happy to say that I have a job and a job that I love. I am thankful that I am consistently challenged and that my job has afforded me the opportunity to get a masters degree and (eventually) a doctorate.

3) I'm thankful for my friends. You know who you are. I'm thankful for your humor, your love for life, and the way that you make me laugh. I'm thankful for knowing that you all have my back should I pick a fight with a biker in Sturgis. No? Well, it was worth a shot.

4) I'm thankful for opportunity. Everyday I see opportunity whether it be the opportunity to save 50 cents at the grocery store "INSTANTLY" or an opportunity for a new challenge. I need to get better about taking them.

5) I'm thankful for Mr. Wonderful who wouldn't have this title without everything he does for me. Some of it is tangible and some of it is not but he puts a smile on my face everyday and makes it easier for me to sleep at night. Thank you Bradley Cooper! *giggles* Okay, srsly, thanks baby!

There's so much more and maybe that will be a part 2. Right now, I'm thankful for the fact that I'm on vacation in 4 hours. Huzzah!

Organized religion and that whole thing

When I was 4, my parents bought their first house and moved us to Cottage Grove. They had decided they needed the space to raise their children and build a family. My sister was born 2 months later.

When they had chosen where they would raise their children, they also chose a church. St. Luke was a small, relatively new church located a few miles from home. It is here that Kari (my sister) was baptised, where we both took first communion and confirmation, and where Adam and I were married. Over the course of all those years, we were active members with my Mom and I both serving on church council, running many, many Easter breakfasts, and leading a variety of groups and events. Today, my parents have been members of St. Luke for 26 years.

Back in August, the ELCA synod (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) voted to allow gay and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as ministers in ELCA churches. While I think it's a bullshit decision, it's not the point of this blog.

St. Luke council voted un-unanimously to withhold its benevolence payments to the ELCA as a stand against the decision. This council decision was not brought to the congregation for notification or discussion until this afternoon. An open forum took place today which allowed congregational members to speak out. While I wasn't there, I received the play-by-play from my Mom.

This whole mess bothers me. It's because of things like this that the majority of my generation says they are "spiritual, not religious" or that they dislike organized religion. It's when we take a social issue and build rules around them "in the name of God." For a church that had such a positive impact on my life and my family, I'm deeply disappointed that it has lost its way. While I'm not a member anymore and while I don't attend church anymore, it still greatly bothers me.

What's "Christian" about this whole mess?

I think I'm one of those really scary stalkers...

...or this is a fine example of the "small world" in which we live.

I'm leaning towards the former, for what it's worth.

So there's a blog I read that is truly a random chick from out in the interwebs with whom I would love to be friends. I am a follower and so I read her blogs on a regular basis and giggle at her quick wit. She's also on twitter and recently I've started reading her tweets.

Today I was reading her recent tweets and she had a congratulations tweet to some random. I don't know why folks, but I chose to click on the name and find out who this random is. Random #2 has a picture on her twitter page and she looked vaguely familiar. Lo and behold, she lives in Minneapolis. Now I'm really curious. She's not smart on the interwebs thing and announced the birth of her new baby with the full name...including last. So now that I have her last name *facepalm* I searched for her on Capella's intranet. Sure enough, she's a Capella employee whom I know (but don't work with).

So now the question, do I send her an email of congratulations and describe the stalkerish way in which I found her? Or do I let it go?

And we're launched!

It's official. On Thursday, October 22nd the project I have been working on for a year finally launched ... to silence. What's that you say? No hiccups? No fanfare? No freak outs? Nope, none of the above. Which is a good thing. A very, very good thing. It appears that for the most part, all systems are go. The environment works (huzzah!) and is being met with little fear or confusion.

*sigh*

Do you hear that? That, my friends, is what you call sweet relaxation.

It was touch and go there for awhile. I mean, think back to my post where I was told we had a 30% chance of success. Oy. And then the fact that I got sick ... deathly sick ... for the two days pre-launch and had to reschedule team training. But it's Sunday night and tomorrow I head back to work to start the two week post-launch clean-up phase. Yes, we'll find problems. Yes, we'll have some work to do yet. But I have dedicated Business Analysts and Developers to help get these things fixed and for that I am extremely grateful!

So what's next on the docket? Tomorrow night is a launch party happy hour and should be a great opportunity to get everyone into one room to thank them for all of their hard work over the past year. And soon, I will have some serious time off to dedicate towards my dissertation since my proposal is due no later than January 27th. Thank God. It'll be nice to get that hurdle behind me.

The holidays are quickly approaching and I love me some Christmas!

Things are looking up and looking good. I'm feeling a little more relaxed (and a bit pleased with myself too, I might add).

Onward and upward!

Mr. Wonderful

After 4 glorious days off (and a 5th if you count the work from home Monday due to a cold) of nothing more than hanging out with my main squeeze, I must say that he is a-maz-ing! I'm one lucky lady.

That is all.

I think this is what one might call an "epic fail"

We are two weeks from release of the authoring environment I have been working on for over a year. Two weeks. I'm now in an official state of "tizzy" where I'm currently running around trying to mitigate risks associated with data integrity/migration and the fires that are raging each and every day.

I have two days off making for a glorious 4 day weekend. It's a horrid time to be doing this but I'm burning out and burning out quick.

So, prior to leaving the office this afternoon, I decided to stop in the "war room" where all of the developers work. My plan was to check in and see if they needed anything from me prior to leaving on PTO. They were not at their desks so I smiled, waved to the project manager and said I'd be on my way. He responded with "let's have a seat and talk." Never, ever good. He proceeds to tell me that the final build of the environment...the build that will be used in the production environment as of October 22nd...is ready. The developers, business analysts and others were shut in a conference room this afternoon (when I visited) and they were "banging" on the environment doing some load testing. Okay, makes sense. He continues to tell me that when the environment is pointed at the dummy data, the speed was improved and everything was working fabulously. When they pointed the environment to our data (1200+ courses, 34 degree programs, 122+ specializations, 25+ certificates...) the environment crashes and burns. It burns so hard, there aren't even any error logs on the server to give any indication where the problem is.

I'm still not very alarmed. I mean, they'll figure it out right?

He proceeds to tell me that I shouldn't be alarmed...that he hopes he'll be emailing me while I'm out to tell me that they've found the problem, fixed it, and everything is hunky dory. Great! I say. So what are the chances I'm going to get this email? He says, 30%.

WHAT?!

He follows that up by saying that if worse comes to worst, we'll just fail the project and move onto a scalability build.

WHAT?!

I left the office in a daze realizing that an entire year of work could be deemed a failure. How did this happen?!

So tonight I sit here wondering what will unfold over the next couple of days. I'm still on PTO though I'm reachable and will be waiting with bated breath for every email that arrives in my inbox.

Say a prayer folks. Say a prayer.

It's all tied together

I can always tell when something in my life is a little out of whack (or at least different than the norm). If one aspect is crazy and a bit unpredictable, then the other aspects tend to suffer because my energy is no longer distributed across all of my responsibilities.

While work requires much more time, energy, and focus all I need to do is stop for just a minute or so and look around. My house is a mess. It is in complete disarray. Dishes need to be washed, laundry needs to be done and the floor (love my dogs but srsly!) needs a vacuuming very, very badly. That's just one aspect. Another is how I eat. I eat TERRIBLY when things get out of whack. Pizza, pasta, and sweets galore. Seriously, it's out of control.

For some of you there is the more obvious fact that my social life suffers and I don't see my friends as much as I need to or should.

Today is the day I take a deep breath get my house in order, do a little work, and take care of myself so that I can start the week in a better place than I ended the last.