Last year, because of the economy, Henry Schein canceled all Christmas parties.  We weren’t sure if this year would be the same.  About a month ago, Henry Schein sent an e-mail to all of its divisions stating that company-wide Christmas parties were still canceled, but individual department parties were okay.

My team decided to go to the Rodizio Grill for lunch and see A Christmas Carol afterward.  When I found this out, I was both excited and worried.  I love the Rodizio Grill, but have you seen their menu?  Welcome to Calorie City! I decided to enjoy myself, though, because I haven’t been to the Rodizio Grill in more than five years.

When we got there, Megan gave everyone a cracker, which is a brightly colored paper tube, twisted at both ends.  It usually contains a party hat, joke, and some type of trinket.  If two people pull it, it’s supposed to give good luck to whoever has the larger end, kind of like a wishbone from a turkey.  They’re traditional in England around the holidays.

My cracker contained a green crown, a joke of Laffy Taffy quality, and a plastic compass. When I saw that Gentry got a purple crown, I quickly said, “Hey-Gentry-can-I-trade-you-crowns-kay-thanks!” At that point, I basically commandeered his crown without waiting for an answer. He had to know it was inevitable with my obsession with purple.

If you haven’t been to the Rodizio Grill, I recommend you try it at least once … unless your a vegetarian because servers bring around a variety of meats grilled in a traditional Brazilian way.  As you can imagine, this can be quite delicious and very fattening. Luckily, I’m not much of a meat person, so I only ate some of it while shying away from the chicken hearts completely.  Not my idea of a good time.

I did eat a lot of the awesome grilled pineapple.  It’s glazed with brown sugar and grilled to perfection.  In pineapple, there’s an enzyme that causes your tongue to become raw when you eat too much of it.  However, that enzyme is neutralized during the cooking process, so you can eat as much of the grilled pineapple as you want without killing your tongue and I definitely did.  I think I ate an entire pineapple, but I don’t feel guilty about it because it was so yummy and worth the amount of calories I consumed.

After lunch, I had a meeting with a financial aid adviser at BYU, so I wasn’t able to go to the movie.  Honestly, I wasn’t too heart broken about it because I’m not much of a Christmas movie fan.  I do like the story of A Christmas Carol, though, so I might go see it with Corey some time.

All in all, I think I can speak for everyone when I say, “We had a great time.”

Happy belated birthday, Dayna!

I didn’t think I was going to make it back to school in January because of recent events.  But, miracle of miracles happened and I still get to go! I’m so excited and nervous all at once!

Today, I finished confirming my schedule for Winter Semester 2010.  I’m taking 9 credits, which makes me a 3/4 time student.  I figure that since I’ll be working full-time I shouldn’t take anymore credits than I’m already taking.  The classes I’m taking are Japanese, Doctrine and Covenants, and Writing & Rhetoric.

So I can still work full time, I’m taking evening classes and working during the day.  I’ll be going to work at the butt-crack of dawn–6:30 am. I don’t want getting up that early to be a huge shock to my system when I start school, so I’ll be going to work 30 minutes earlier than the week before each week until school starts.  I hope my body will adjust quickly.  Wish me luck because I’m going to need it!

Even though this looks to be a strenuous and busy schedule, I’m looking forward to it.  I have wanted to go back to school for nearly the entire time–10 years–I’ve been gone.  I’m looking forward to a different kind of challenge.  And, I think only the English class will give me a challenge, if it even does.  I guess I’ll see what the semester holds.

Happy birthday, Dax!

I feel like Halloween was/is kind of a bust this year.  I didn’t really like my Halloween blog theme all that much. So, I started to customize a new design about a week ago because I wanted to be ready to switch to it on November 1. But, once I was done customizing it, I was way too excited about it to wait until Sunday.

My work canceled trick-or-treating and thus … decorating.  The management team is worried about the swine flu.  They’ve been putting all kinds of procedures in place to help limit its spread at work, which I’m very thankful for.  So, they had the employees vote on whether trick-or-treating should remain the same or whether the company should just send the employees home with treat bags for their kids.  The latter option won.  I was a little bummed and a little relieved at the same time.

Because trick-or-treating was canceled, I decided not to go all out on a costume this year.  And, because my brain slugs were a big hit and are so awesome, I decided to wear one again this year.

I feel like I’ve changed a lot over the past year.  So, I decided to take a picture with the brain slug on my head in as close to the exact same position as possible as last year’s picture.

I think you can tell I’ve lost weight when looking at these pictures side by side.  It would’ve been better if I had full body shots, but I don’t think my face is as full as it used to be.  (I wonder if that’s because my hair’s longer, though.)

I haven’t posted an update about my weight loss for a while, so I guess now is as good of a time as any.  I have almost lost 40 lbs. I’m trying to decide what I want as my reward for hitting my second benchmark. But, I have a couple of weeks to decide if I continue to lose weight at the same rate I have been.  Do you have any ideas?

I’m really worried about the holiday season that’s approaching rapidly.  My cravings for sweets have become stronger over the last month.  I’ve had a very hard time saying no to things and I feel like my resolve is slipping.  Don’t get me wrong; I really want to lose the 60 lbs I’m still striving to lose, but I don’t feel like my motivation to have self control and to exercise is as strong as it was.  I’m hoping with Daylight Saving Time ending on Sunday, I can get back into exercising before I go to work in the morning.  Why does Daylight Saving Time ending matter?  Read the post “What the Crap?” and you’ll find out. Then, all I’ll have to worry about is my self control with my eating habits.

Oh, and by the way, happy Halloween!

Yesterday, I posted a new picture of me on my Facebook profile.

I took these pictures with my Macbook while I was at work yesterday.  Fridays are a little more relaxed than most days because I’ve usually finished my weekly projects by then.  So, this week, I decided to take a couple of minutes to goof around.

Anyway, when my friend Debbie saw my photo, she noticed the picture of Jack Skellington on my wall and said she’d love to see a video blog of my cubicle. I thought this was a great idea, except the only ability I have to record video is with my cell phone, an old Nokia 5300.  I decided it was going to have to do, but I’d supplement it with some pictures too.

As you can see (sort of), I have an L-shaped cubicle.  And, because I spend most of my life at work, which is sad yet true, I have completely personalized my workspace.  I want to feel comfortable and at home while I’m working.

Not only have I personalized everything on or in my cubicle, I have customized my Desktops too.  Right now, I’m sporting Halloween-themed backgrounds.  Next week, I’ll probably change my background back to my Ewan McGregor collage. Who wouldn’t want to stare at his pretty face all day!

My magnet board doubles as a dry erase board.  I have a few Twilight-inspired magnets I received from Debbie; her husband, Tarl, designed them.  I also have a couple of magnets my co-workers have brought back for me on some of their trips.

In 2001, I received the Support Tech of the Year award and in 2003, I received the Team Schein Award for my work with certification.

I used to travel a lot (as I’ve mentioned before).  When I traveled, I wanted to bring back a souvenir of each place I went, so I chose magnets because they wouldn’t take up too much space.

While I was in the Support department, my team decorated our cubicles like The Nightmare Before Christmas for Halloween.  I drew the Jack Skellington on my wall as part of the decorations.  Jack Skellington is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters, so I had to keep my rendition of him.

Anyway, now you know where I work.

Happy birthday, Joely!

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, my work has asked the employees to wear pink to show support.  They’ve done this for the past three years and each time they’ve taken a picture. (Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of the picture from 2007 or 2008.)  I have participated all three times because even though wearing pink is such a small gesture, it means something to someone somewhere.

I thought I’d post a little good news to combat all the bad news that’s been going on. Also, bonus points if you know where the quote in the title comes from.

I’m a little less stressed today.  I worked long hours, or it felt like long hours, yesterday and got most of my project done.  I should be able to get the rest of the stuff done today without any problems.  Phew!

Our car isn’t going to die, thank goodness.  However, our air conditioner, that was just fixed a month ago, is gone for good.  It’s okay, though.  Summer’s almost over and we still have a car that runs.

And, finally, Froyo passed its inspections! Not without incident, but it still passed.  We thought the building inspector was bad.  Yeah, he was a lamb compared to the health inspector! His boss was really nice to work with and we’re glad he was available yesterday.  Otherwise, Froyo would’ve failed our health inspection too and, again, not for anything substantial. Oh well.  It’s over and done with and we’re glad about that!

So, I bet everyone wants to know when the big day is.  Well, we’re not positive. Ha! We don’t have an official date for the grand opening, so I’ll post something when we know for sure.  However, the store will more than likely open tomorrow.  (I’ll post an update later to let you know the final word.)  If it doesn’t open tomorrow, we’ll open on Monday.  Corey just wants to make sure a few last-minute things get done before he decides to open the doors for business.

Anyway, thanks for all your support and patience!  We really appreciate it!

Updated: We’re going to open on Monday just so we don’t feel rushed.  We open at 11:00 am!  Come see us!

This is going to be my last vent for a while because I want my blog to be more positive after this.  Yesterday, my stress level hit an amazing high level and it’ll continue until after work on Friday (at least).  Why is my stress level so high?

1. Work: I have a project due on Friday that I’ve been working on for the past few weeks.  It was supposed to be done last Friday, but other things came up that I had to work on instead, so I got a reprieve for a week.  This project is taking so long to do.  It feels like I’ve been working non-stop, even though I haven’t.  I just can’t seem to focus because I’m so burned out.  At this point, I just want to quit, so it’s one less thing to deal with right now.  But, I’m going to stick it out for more reasons than the obvious ones.
2. Car: Our one and only car has been making strange sounds for the past couple of days.  Unfortunately, we haven’t had time to take it into the shop because of work and Froyo.  And, when we do take it in, we don’t have the time to sit around and wait for it to be fixed.  So, we tried to get a rental car yesterday for a couple of days.  Yeah, that was a no go.  There isn’t a single car within a 60-mile radius of where we live for rent. There’s some stupid conference going on at BYU right now and I guess all three cars at each of the rental places in Utah are being used. *grumble grumble* Corey’s taking the car in today and we’re hoping it won’t take too long to fix.
3. Froyo: Read the post American Fork Building Inspector = FAIL for details.

I’ve canceled both my personal training sessions this week because I’ve had to stay at work longer than usual and because of everything else going on this week.  I’m really feeling the lack of going.  Even though I feel tired when I’m done, it’s a good tired and I feel so much happier and calm when I go.  I tried to work it out so I could go today, but it just ain’t gonna happen.  I’m going to do three sessions next week to make up for the lack this week.  Maybe, I’ll be super happy and calm next week.  That would be a good thing after this week’s hectic events.

Well, it’s time to start working today, so I can get this project done and over with!  Thanks for “listening” and bearing with my stressful, grumpy mood.