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.

My (not-so-secret) Secret

I absolutely love to be utterly, crazy-assed busy. I do. No matter how much I bitch and moan (and I admit that I do probably more than my fair share), I thrive under the pressure. As a high school student, my Mom once marveled that my grades were better the busier I was. Take for example the quarter I had school, confirmation, musical, work, and volleyball. It was, perhaps, my best academic quarter! (And for those of you who noticed volleyball in there, it is not a lie. It only lasted the one season.)

So now that work is insanely busy; now that I worked 12-16 hours over the weekend...including during Dante's football game; now that I set an alarm for 4:30 this morning and was at my desk by 6, I can still say that. I. Love. To. Be. Busy!

I had a work "date" with my boss last night. We have a big presentation this morning that we found out about late last week. We were checking in around 10pm to see what else needed to be done. She thanked me profusely (in capital letters, no less) and called me a "life saver" due to my willingness to help and the hours I've worked to do it. I love that.

Phil will easily guess what's coming next.

I also love this because my GOD how it makes my performance review THAT MUCH MORE AWESOME! For those of you who don't know, I heart performance reviews. I have never, not once in my life, experienced any kind of trepidation over a review. It is an opportunity, at least once a year, for me to revel in kind, wonderful things being said about - and to - me. I have said many times that I don't work for the job I have. I have it...it's not a challenge or a goal to be attained anymore. I work for the job I want. The next job. And the next job I want is my boss' job (she knows this).

So, on this chilly September Monday morning, I say to you, I am looking forward to this day!

You know it's going to be a long day when...

It's going to be a long day. I know this for a few reasons. The most obvious being that I left the house around 6:30 this morning and I won't return until around 10:30 or 11 tonight. But it doesn't stop there, folks. I also know this because on my way to the bus, walking 2 or so blocks, I stepped wrong on a rock in my cute, comfy wedges. I was carrying my laptop bag, a bag for my lunch and softball gear, and my purse so my weight was thrown off and I fell. Hit the ground on all fours. Skinned my knee and my palm. My wrists hurt and I have a general feeling of soreness throughout my body that will likely be a problem tomorrow or the day after. Fail.

Oh, there's more!

The hem of one leg of my new, but already too long, dress pants came out so now I'm constantly stepping on, and tripping on, the left pant leg. I look like a hobo. Stay tuned...there's probably at least one more fall in my future today. Fail.

Then, I attempted to log into a virtual meeting room and spelled my own last name wrong. Fail.

This was all before 8am. Fail. Fail. FAIL!

I blame my morning escapades on the fact that my mind is never quite in the moment and focused on what I'm currently doing. Work is crazy these days. Not regular "everybody is busy" and "companies today expect too much from their employees" kind of busy but "holy sh!t, I'm drowning in a sea of to do lists and gasping for breath" kind of a busy. The system launch I have been working on for a year now (it was supposed to be 3 months) is releasing on October 22nd. Prior to that date, I'm working on data migration into that system (and managing two - truly fabulous - temps), the communication plan, the training plan/development, demos, final requirements gathering, user acceptance testing, report mock-up reviews, and the general "get your asses in gear people" kind of meetings, one-on-one's, and emails.

Did I mention that this is in addition to my regular, full-time job?

I'm working every night and every weekend day and don't anticipate this finishing until after the system release. I'm not working on my dissertation at all because I have to be 150% focused on work. My ability to get together with friends and family is non-existent and that is the ultimate reason for this post.

Please be patient with me over the next couple of months. Please understand that it's not you, it's me. Know that it's not for lack of wanting to see you that we may go longer than normal between visits. Know that this is hurting me more than it's hurting you. :p

And just to point out the obvious...I've now just lost 15 minutes of my workday to the writing of this blog. And THAT wasn't so smart.