Last Days of Work

As I approach my final day of work, I can't help but wonder what's next and reflect on what has past. 2 days from now, I will be unemployed - let go from a company of which I have 5 years of service. I started here when I was an intern and now my career here has run its course. I have a little countdown ticker on my computer that has been counting down the days for the past year or so. I never thought that it would make it to the end, but here it is only displaying 2 days left.

I can remember my first day as an intern in the credit department. This was my first big corporate job and I was excited to learn that I had a cubicle! My own wonderful cubicle! I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing and since I was still in college, my first day was only 4 hours long. I'm pretty sure all I did was learn how to log in to my computer and then sit and look through the office supply catalog that day. The next day was a full day and I was so excited to start training and meet new people.

There were about 6 other interns and admins who were all pretty tight with each other. It was lunch time and although I had brought food, I was secretly hoping that they would ask me to go to lunch with them. I waited and waited and I was starving, but finally as they were about to walk out the door, I was asked to join them. Yes! I was included! I interned for almost 2 years all the way through college. The group changed over the years, but there are still a few girls who I consider very good friends to this day. We all try to get together for lunch every now and again even though our schedules never seem to all work out. In fact, I'm having lunch with one of those intern girls on my last day of work...the same girl who asked me to go to lunch on one of my first days with the company.

I can also remember my first day with the catalog department. I was going to be working with a girl who I had worked with previously in the credit department. Having a little familiarity made my transition to this new team so easy. Also, I was going to be learning all new fun and creative stuff. It was awesome. It was the first time that I could say that I really loved my job. Unfortunately, the climate changed a bit a year or so later and the work I was doing was kind of killed. So I had to transition into more of a catalog role vs. flyers and smaller promotional pieces. I am so thankful for all that I have learned in this position. I am also so grateful to have made new relationships with coworkers. I have never seen and doubt I will ever see another group of people work as hard as the catalog team. Great people with lots of great abilities.

My job also provided me with lots of awesome perks. I only had an 8 mile commute to work, I had great benefits and it seemed that every time I turned around, I was getting a raise or a promotion. Sometimes the work kicked my ass and I hated working all those long hours, but I got through it and I am better for it. I know what I can accomplish and now I'm poised to go even further in my next career. And, like I've said in previous posts, I am so overwhelmingly thankful to have been given the opportunity to pursue my real dream. Layoffs can often be absolutely life shattering to some, but for me it was, is and will be incredibly freeing and a sign that I needed to take my life in a new direction.

My cube is all packed up except for a small Cranium desk calendar and a few office product odds and ends. Soon I will take my box of stuff and walk out the doors at 1 Environmental Way for the last time and take the first steps into my new life.

Wow, that was deep, wasn't it? Yeah, I'm pretty cool like that. :)

Dental work, illness, cleaning, packing = Vacation?

I took 3 days off this past week. Originally, the plan was to use those 3 days meticulously cleaning the house and packing up lots of stuff and generally being very productive. Well, I quickly learned that while I could clean some things, most things (like kitchen and bathrooms) would have to be touched up before we had a showing anyway, so no need to go crazy now. Then I realized that we had packed up the majority of the stuff we were going to store and at this point it's better to have stuff out and organized than stuffed into multiple boxes. So, needless to say, there wasn't a lot of packing and cleaning that I could do.

Since my benefits expire on my last day of work (Oct. 1st), I have about $1600 to use up before that date. I have a few teeth that need crowns, so I figure I might as well get that work done before I lose that money. So, what do I do? I schedule a crown appointment on one of my days off in addition to a regular cleaning on a different day. (I only got one crown because I'm not crazy.) Dental work is never fun, but for some reason I thought it would be a great thing to do in my time off. Oh yeah, BTW, that dang crown cost me about $500! GRR! Why on earth is dental work so damn expensive?! I submitted a form to get reimbursed out of that $1600, but I am extremely pessimistic about actually getting any money from the insurance company.

And then, the pièce de resistance, I get a cold. The day before my time off. So all three days (plus the weekend), I am coughing and blowing my nose like crazy. Not the worst cold I've had, admittedly, but still not very pleasant. So even if I had some cleaning and packing to do, I didn't have the energy to get any of it done. Oy.

However, some highlights of my week were:
-My sister and niece visiting me one morning
-Having a few lunches with my husband
-Moving a ton of boxes to storage
-Watching my nephew overnight
-watching the Broncos kick but against Cleveland!

Mission Gnocchi: Success!!

My sister and I have this thing where we get together and cook dinner every few weeks. The rule is the meals have to be something we've never made before and we switch back and forth between houses each time. So far, we've been pretty successful with only a few minor misses. Well, when my sister told me she wanted to try to make gnocchi (basically italian potato dumplings), I was very intimidated. However, she had a recipe and the confidence that the 2 of us could figure it out. So this past Labor Day, we decided to try it out. Usually our cooking nights are pretty casual and it's only the 4.5 of us, but this time we decided to invite the whole family = even more intimidated. Since we were all off for the holiday, we got started early. We arrived at my sister's house at 3pm and started cooking. Here was our process:

1. Got huge pot of water boiling
2. Made apple crisp dessert waiting for water to boil
3. Started to boil 9 whole, unpeeled potatoes
4. While potatoes were cooking, we made a pesto sauce (delish!)
5. Also whipped together and baked a carrot cake
6. Cleaned up and cooked some fresh green beans
7. After about 50 minutes, the potatoes were done, so they were drained and cooled.
8. We peeled the potatoes and mashed them with flour, eggs, parmesan cheese and nutmeg
9. Kneaded it until we had a dough
10. Then 3 of us took out portions of the dough, made long ropes, then cut 1 inch pieces and rolled them along the tines of a fork for texture of the gnocchi. (this process took awhile since we had tripled the recipe!)
11. Then in small batches we boiled the gnocchi until they floated.
12. Then we fried the batches in some butter.
13. Repeated several times until all the gnocchi was done.
14. Then we made a gorgonzola cream sauce (YUMMMMM!)
15. I assembled a salad of baby spinach, mixed greens, bacon, pears, gorgonzola crumbles and pine nuts in a balsamic vinaigrette dressing.
16. We also baked up some store bought garlic bread.
17. We tossed part of the gnocchi with the pesto, part of it with the cheese sauce and left a few plain.
18. Then, FINALLY at a little after 6pm (yes, 3 hours later!) we ate!!

AND IT WAS FRIGGIN' DELICIOUS!!!!!!! Whew!