Bragging about my Sweetie

Yeah, we don’t post here a lot, but I’m going to try and get that to change.  In that effort, here is an email that Jamie received today at work:

 

Hi,

I am the web liaison for our bureau and as such am frequently submitting requests for web updates to the DIT team. Even though I’ve always found the entire team to be efficient in their response, one member, Jamie Howell, never ceases to amaze me. She’s always quick to respond, knowledgeable and willing to work with anyone to get the job done.

Here’s just one example of what I’m talking about:

I submitted a request this week for a new page to be added to our bureau site. I wanted the page to have a specific layout with links to 83 separate files. Jamie told me the layout I wanted wasn’t possible with standard templates available in the web software, but she should be able to manipulate the software to get close to the result I was looking for. She also said she was working on a high priority project and it might be a couple of days before she could get my page done. I confirmed that the couple of days would be fine and I was willing to accept whatever layout she could come up with to house the links to my 83 files. To my surprise and delight, she finished the new web page that same day and exactly in the layout I had requested … did I mention she’s amazing.

While shouting her praise to a co-worker, I was told I was “preaching to the choir” which shows I’m not the only one who notices and truly appreciates all of Jamie’s hard work. She cares for her customers and that always shows in the special attention she gives to each and every one.

Thank you Jamie for making our jobs a little easier, we truly appreciate you. You are one of the gems at Treasury. Please don’t ever leave us.

She’s a great worker and she cares so much about her quality of work; it’s great to see it being recognized!

My New Cubicle

Yup, it looks exactly like my old cubicle. I only moved down the hallway a bit. Maybe about 3 cubes away. You never realize how much junk you've collected until you have to move it all in a single afternoon.

My old cubie they're giving to some folks to group some project people in a single area. I don't mind the new area too much except I'm kind of in the center of a hallway and have a feeling am going to be having the back of my head stared at a lot.

Right now I'm just glad I'm moved. I'm pooped out! Luckily it ate away most of my Friday so I don't have too much longer before it's time to go!

Paper Love

So imagine my surprise today when I came into work and there was an oragami heart laying on my keyboard!  Now I know for a fact that this was a project that took my wife several days to learn how to make!  (It was a multiple part piece of the previously mentioned oragami calendar.)

Now I would like to say that it's been a very long time since I had someone been able to leave me something like this and keep it a secret from me.  It was so great to walk into my second day of work and find a little "I love you" in my cubicle.  

Thank you Jamie!

Pooping Toy Collection

Here is a photo of my growing "Pooping Toy" collection. Technically only 2 of these items are mine. Dodge is the proud owner of the reindeer and polar bear but he's really ok we me keeping our poop in a group at my desk at work.

It started three years ago when I got Matt's gift in the work gift exchange. A pooping santa and some other little gag gifts. Lovely. It was last year's Christmas that I got the pooping snowman from Matt to add to my collection. Very funny joke, Matt. How did you know I needed more pooping toys?

Also last year my sister, Christy, had purchased a pooping reindeer for Dodge. She was unaware of my other toys which made it even funnier. Our family is cursed to collect pooping items!

This year our work decided to skip the gift exchange. Matt was relieved because he didn't think he could find any more pooping toys for me. However, Christy did not disappoint us by finding Dodge a Poo-lar Bear. I'm keeping it in the packaging. I don't want to ruin it's value by playing with it.

I've brought all the pooing toys to work so they can all hang out happily on my toy shelf together. The santa and snowman candies are long gone but today I realized the reindeer still has some poop left in him. The brown jelly beans look very old and nasty (fossilized poo?) so I don't think I'll be tempted into eating it.

I Can Haz Signal!

Since I've moved to our current building, (ohhh maybe 5 or so years ago) I've had zero cell phone service while inside. I dunno. It's some sort of anti-cell-signal eater building.

It was annoying to try to train people to just call my work phone to reach me while at work. Some people felt awkward about calling my desk phone and I guess hearing my "professional" voice answer instead of just calling my cell. My brother has been an exceptionally slow study in this task. On the plus side, annoying sales calls or head hunter contacts automatically get shuffled to voicemail without me ever knowing they called.

I had pretty much resigned to my fate that my cell phone was darn near useless once I entered this building. It was irritating (especially when trying to post something about Matt) but it wasn't crushing my soul or anything. Besides I could still use it as an ipod for music so it wasn't a total waste to continue to carry it.

Last week I noticed a strange device on the ceiling here at work only about a cube away from mine. It looked like a small pop can sized traffic cone. It was all white and stuck to the ceiling upside down. I stared at it for a while. Asked Matt what it was. He stared too. No one was sure. We guessed maybe work was getting with the new century and giving us wi-fi. I picked up my iphone and searched for a signal with no luck. Shucks.

Today though I noticed that my cell phone actually buzzed when Ed sent me a text about this weekend. Activity from my phone at work? How odd! I checked it and wonder of wonders I had a full 5 bars of signal and connection to the Edge network!

It's a miracle and I'm very happy! Thank you work people that decided we needed this!

Skunked Again!

Today was a work Christmas Pot Luck / Party. It was a lot of fun with a ton of food and little fun games. This is a picture of some of the few items left after everyone had eaten. I didn't bring my phone with me to get a picture of it before hand.

They secretly stole some items from people's desks and we had to guess who's it was. I did horribly. There was a game of "Family Feud" where we had to guess some top answers from a survey that was handed out to everyone. My team lost big time. Then we did a story game passing presents around. Karen next to me got a gift certificate for a pizza from a local restaurant. The lady on the other side of me got a gas card. I open my envelop and found a piece of paper that said "Happy Holidays" on it. Bleh.

Now my belly is full and I still have a couple of hours of work left that I have to keep my eyes open. Lets hope I can do it!

New Monitor

Karen and I got monitor upgrades today just out of the blue. It is such a technical leap from the monitor I had I'm feeling all high tech today!

The Culprit

See? It's not even that burnt!

Excitement!

Today we had a visit from the local Fire Department, Police Department, and Security Office. Why? Well, because someone toasted a bagel which set off the fire alarm in the building. The person who toasted the bagel didn't even burn it that badly. In fact, I'll post a picture of it afterwards. However, nevertheless they claimed the bagel set off the fire alarm causing everyone in the building to evacuate. It was interesting to see the response to a suspected fire.

First a single security personelle enters the building, by himself. Then a police officer enters the building, by himself. Then a firement enters the building, by himself. Apparently these three then join together to form Captain Planet and extinguish the fire.

Anyway, just a bit of excitement to start the day.

Italian Day

Today we had "Italian Day" at work since our boss is Italian and she invited some people we work with from downstairs to come have lunch with us. We all had to bring in Italian food. Well what the frick do I know about Italian food so I made these pizza bite things. Ghetto Italian!

That's a picture of Shankar helping himself to panna cotta, or what we affectionately called "Boob Pudding" due to it's shape. It was really tasty.

We played a game where we had to guess things about Italy. I ended up winning and now am proudly displaying my "Italian Day 2008 Guessing Game Winner" certificate. How I won, I'm not sure. The guys were picking on me for my answers.

The biggest news of the day though was:

I ATE TOMATOES AND LIKED IT.

One of the guys from downstairs brought a crusty Italian bread that he rubbed with garlic and then a bowl of mozzarella, basil and tomatoes to put on top for a bruschetta. Honestly the pot was mostly tomatoes and I must of looked a bit woeful as I knew I was going to have to try some so the dude didn't feel bad.

I ate the crap out of it. In fact, I went back for seconds. I explained to him how I dislike tomatoes and that I consider them evil but I really liked his bruschetta (meaning it as a compliment). He was a bit of a smartypantsknowitall and explained that the roma tomatoes he used was why I liked it because of the diddlingdo and the doodlyblah. I didn't listen too hard.

So there you have it. Proof that all tomatoes are not the devil. Just most of them.