Articles tagged ‘work’

I love my job. Today, I was given tickets by my work to go and enjoy a baseball game in the middle of the day. Sometime after the first inning, however, it started to rain. It was my first time experiencing a rain delay at a game. In fact, a couple years ago I went to a game that rained the whole way through and they didn’t call it. Anyhow, I sat through the rain delay.

“This can’t last more than 15 minutes,” I said.

And it didn’t. Well, the rain didn’t. It took a good 20 minutes after the rain stopped to de-tarp the field and prep it for play again.

Arizonans are so weird when it comes to rain. At the slightest sprinkle they go running for cover. A lady sitting close to me said that there were a bunch of “wicked witches of the West” (actually, I think she said “wicked witch of the Wests”).

It started raining again in the 4th inning and they stopped the game again mid-batter. I told the guy I was with that we were probably done, so we headed to the car. Before we even got out of the park, it was pouring. We walked/jogged as fast as we could to my car, but by the time we got there we were soaked. We would have been drier jumping into a pool fully-clothed.

As we were driving away, the clouds went away and out came the sun. Hilarious how the weather works sometimes.

We finished a major project at work this past week – one that’s been a few years in the making. It would be nice to have some downtime now, but it’s just nonstop. I’ll probably be burning some vacation soon before I go crazy.

So what better way to finish a long week than with a long weekend? Darla and I spent Friday night with some friends at the new group hangout. We spent all afternoon on Saturday at softball practice. After a quick dinner, we headed to a park to play a couple hours of volleyball. Then we capped the night with a mental workout – Trivial Pursuit, Genii Edition (circa 1984). It’s tough answering questions about game show hosts from the 50’s and Soviet Russia.

Today was a recovery day. Church, family lunch, lots of recorded NBA All Star weekend TV… The real question is whether I’ll get a wakeup call from work tomorrow morning. I received two unwelcome calls last week, and I don’t want to repeat the pattern.

I miss e-mail from friends. Someone e-mail me and tell me what’s going on in your life. Or go on MySpace and leave me a comment. Or just leave a comment here. I could use some electronic interaction.

I was in Las Vegas, Nevada (not to be confused with Las Vegas, Kansas) for the past few days. I was there on business, meeting people from corporate and our affiliates. The meetings were great, but there was a lot of fun “after hours”.

When I checked in to Treasure Island on Sunday, I was told that I had two reservations. I told the guy something like, “I’m only one person, so you could probably cancel one of those.” But apparently he felt obligated to upgrade my room to a panoramic room – two walls had windows – overlooking the strip on the 19th floor. I distinctly remember telling him that I would prefer a lower floor, but whatever. Anyway, the upgrade sounded great until about 9 p.m. the first night. There’s some pirate show that was very loud that was 19 floors beneath my window. The pirate show, I was told, was just a bit of clothing away from a porn show. I can’t remember the name of the show… something about sirens. Anyway, I didn’t go see the show but I did hear it while I was working in my room. I just reminded myself of a Modest Mouse song, but I’ll spare you.

Monday night, after our meetings, we were treated to a great six course Italian meal at Canaletto’s restaurant at the Venetian. After the meal, we went as a group to see the Blue Man Group. I sat in the fourth row – about 10 feet from the stage – and it was amazing. I won’t go into all the details, but it was one of the best shows I’ve seen. Darla and I are seeing them in Phoenix in February. After the show, we came across one of the performers in the lobby and I had my picture taken with him.

After the show, one of the corporate project managers bought a few of us gelato and we walked around for a while. We went back to our hotel’s casino and I watched people lose – and sometimes win – their money.

My greatest accomplishment on the trip is that I didn’t gamble one bit. For those of you that know me, you know that it was not an easy task.

I spent my plane ride back talking with a nice gentleman about life. We talked the entire time sharing experiences, etc. It was a great trip, but I’m so glad to be back.

I’m forcing myself to write something. I need to.

Has everyone seen my cool weekly music chart? Thanks to last.fm I can track my listening habits and display them however I see fit. It’s kinda like a music recommendation system on steroids. You get all these listening stats from users and then you can get suggested music based on what other people listen to. It has some cool Web 2.0 features built-in too.

I was just getting links for Furious and Gordy’s last.fm pages and I saw Gordy’s recent track listing. Hilarious.

Work has been exceedingly busy. I’m not sure why it’s like this all of a sudden. As soon as I got some help, I got swamped. Of course, I was gone for two weeks too and work piled up. But I’m caught up from that.

I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep lately. Well, good sleep anyway. I slept 10 hours last night, but most of that was tossing and turning. Maybe I’ll start taking sleeping pills. Maybe I’ll start working out. Maybe I’ll just drink warm milk and pray for sleep.