Groundhog's Day and Ender's Game

Yay for Grounghog's Day! I love watching this every year. Hopefully one year I will actually be able to go. It was a great birthday this year. I got to sleep in, I didn't have to work or go to school, sweet AJ made me breakfast, then we got me 2 new shirts, and 2 new books: Little Women, and The Red Tent. We also went to dinner and came home and watched some movies, I loved spending that entire day with AJ, he is so much fun.

I also finished Ender's Game yesterday. I really like that book (thanks for the suggestion Megan!) and am really glad I read it. There were so many surprises and twists at the end that it was impossible to put it down. Ender was such an amazing character and I loved his story. I also loved how this author wrote. He had such a captivating way of writing that when he would describe what Ender was going through or the exhaustion that had overwhelmed him it was as though I was going through the exact same thing. I love when authors can captivate me so that I really feel as though I have left my body and am living through someone else's eyes. That is the best thing about books and why I love reading.

I'm reading Little Women next. I wanted to read a classic. I think I may try to read a book once a month or faster, but at least once a month. Even with school and work, I have found that if I don't have something to read I slowly lose some sanity and some of my self. I need to have a book that I can escape to every once in a while. I'll let you know how it is!

Goodbye and Good Ridance 2009

I may be a little spitefull towards 2009 because of all the sucky events that happened. Its not really the years fault but it just hasn't been a good year for me. But their have been some really cool things that happened too so here is a look back and the format for this was taken from my sister, thanks Kateka!

Funnest Event

• My anniversary
• The Lewis Reunion

Biggest Purchase

• Running shoes - I bought these this year and I love them but they were quite the purchase I'm thinking around $100, but they were totally worth it and I love them.
• Swimming suit - It is a really nice one that I'm sure will last me a while but again totally worth it, I love it and I can't wait for warm weather so I can go swimming again.
• Glasses - I hate wearing my glasses but it is nice to know that if the contacts run out I have something that will help me see. I have like the worst vision and so because of that they got really expensive, lame.

Favorite Movie(s)

• Star Trek - best summer movie totally loved it.
• UP - I have never cried so many times in one movie and felt such an array of emotions, love that movie.
• Avatar - totally awesome and definitely worth seeing in 3D. Thanks for going with me Travie (brother) it was so fun hanging out with you!

Least Favorite Movie

• Year One - pretty much the lamest movie ever, not funny and gross.

Guilty Pleasures

• Chocolate
• Sleeping

Saddest Moment(s)

• Getting in fights with AJ
• My sister and AJ losing their jobs and me almost losing mine, thanks for all the love "Company"! (still a little bitter about that)
• Grandpa Bill dying - I love you Grandpa, I miss you.

Sickest Moment

Luckily I haven't come down with anything too bad this year, I did have a nasty cold a little while back but I have been good. AJ had a crazy thing though. He couldn't hear out of his left ear around the summer time and after like a week of not being able to hear we finally went in to the doctor. They took a look in his ear and said, "No wonder you cant hear you have a huge ball of wax blocking your eardrum." They said it would be easy to get it out and they sprayed some water in his ear and ta-da...out fell the nastiest black ball of wax. AJ was good and could hear just fine! Sorry if your puking right now over that story.

Favorite Songs

• Fireflies - Owl City
• Hot Air Balloon - Owl City
• Comptine D'un Autre Ette - L'Apre - From Amelie
• Exploration - From Coraline
• Poker Face - Lady Gaga
• Love Letters to Japan - Birds and the Bees
• Battlefield - Jordin Sparks
• If I Were a Boy - Beyonce
• You're Gonna Go Far Kid - The Offspring
• I Just Haven't Met You Yet - Michael Buble

Songs I Hated

• Party in the USA - Miley Cirus
• Who Says - John Mayer
• There are plenty of others but since I don't hear them often I don't remember.

Achievments

• Lost 25 pounds - that was hard and here is to losing a lot more this year!
• Was able to bike 4 miles, swim for 30 minutes, then bike home another 4 miles.
• Started back to school - totally scary but I did a great job and ended my first semester back with a 3.6 GPA!

Things I've Learned

• Even if you don't like your job, its a job and if you don't work really hard at it you may lose it.
• Communication is the key to a great marriage.
• I really don't have any interest in buildings and no longer want to be an architect.
• I really like math.
• The best way to stop hating someone or get over anger is to pray for that person and find ways to serve them. It is hard but it works and it works fast.
• There are always two sides to every story.
• The best way to push yourself when your working out is constant self-encouragment. I was a lot stonger than I thought I was and if I told myself, "You can make it over this hill, keep biking, your almost there, you are strong enough!" I would make it, but if even for a moment I doubted myself, I wouldn't make it. This actually could be applied to a ton of stuff in life.

You know I guess 2009 wasn't that bad. I guess I was really just focusing on the bad things through out the year, but there was so much great stuff that happened too. Hopefully 2010 will be a great year.

Happy Turkey Day!

I love Thanksgiving and thought I would tell you what I'm grateful for...

• My husband. He means everything to me and I can't imagine life with out him. He is kind, thoughtful, understanding, loving, fun, entertaining, humorous, and all together one of the best people I have known.
• My mom. She is my inspiration and I always want to be just like her. She believes in me and helps me to do my best. She is the best mom.
• My family and AJ's family. My sisters and brother are the best people for advice and comfort, I love them and their spouses so much, especially love new baby niece, nephew and niece. AJ's family is wonderful support and has been so relaxing and fun to hang out with lately.
• Ernie, and when he sleeps on my lap while I work.
• Ibuprofen
• Kermit the Frog
• Sock Monkeys
• Really good books that take me away from reality
• New jobs
• Scriptures
• Prayers
• The Prophet and 12 Apostles
• Love
• Hope
• Heavenly Father
• Jesus Christ
• Angels
• Christmas Trees
• Cute fabric
• Food to eat and a warm house to live in
• Inspiration
• Hugs
• Kisses
• Babies
• Warm hoodies
• Wool socks
• Friends
• Strawberries
• My red bike (I miss riding you)
• Swimming
• Cars
• An education
• Computers
• Movies
• Yarn
• My green eyes
• My health
• Laughter
• Chocolate
• Josh Groban
• Michael Buble
• Bing Crosby
• Piano's

Two Minutes and Seventeen Seconds

To really prevent myself from getting fired I am not going to be using the name of the company I work for or the name of my manager, or people involved in this story.

On Monday I received a text from my sister saying that she had just spoken with one of my co-workers, we will call her Jiminy, who had said that one of our other team members, we will call Batman, had been fired on Friday and that Manager was planning on firing 2 more employees from our team for work avoidance.


Now what "Company" is considering work avoidance is this: I am a chat agent and can receive 3 chats at a time. So basically I can help 3 different people at one time. When I have helped the customer and they say goodbye, they can leave the chat, but it will still stay open on my end which is considered a "completed chat" and all I need to do at this point is close the completed chat. Seems pretty easy right, well it kind of is. But sometimes when I am working I will work on other projects when I am waiting for the customer to respond and sometimes the customer will just leave the chat but this program is set up in such a way that it alerts me when the customer has responded to me, but not when the customer has left the chat. So I can be working on a project for a few minutes and the customer left a while ago. When I realize that they did leave I will leave the chat as soon as I see they have left. This doesn't happen all the time, only every once in a while. But if you don't close a "completed chat" as soon as the customer leaves they consider this work avoidance. Even if you only have the one chat going and can still help two other customers, you are still considered to be avoiding your work. Why? I have no idea! Also just to let you know my current availability to customers is 98% of the time. Do you think that I'm avoiding work in the slightest?


So know that you have some background knowledge, the time that "Company" wants you to close a completed chat is 2 minutes. When I had heard that they were going to fire 2 people from our team of course I got scared, I know that I'm not the perfect employee but I work hard and I know that I do a good job at what I do. I was pretty upset about it Monday and cried to my mom for the worry of losing my job, and cried to my husband, who has recently lost his job from the same company. I know that they are firing people because they are overstaffed and don't want to lay anyone off so they are finding the most ridiculous reasons to fire people so that they don't have to pay unemployment. I started texting Jiminy back and forth and she called me and calmed me down and said that I had nothing to worry about and said that I would be just fine.

Tuesday I worked my entire shift and had heard nothing from Manager and so I figured I was in the clear for that day. But the last 30 minutes of my shift I get an e-mail from Manager asking me for my extension, so that he can call me on my work phone. My heart started pounding out of my chest. Not even kidding, I thought I was going to pass out because I started to get so scared. Then he calls me and lets me know that my time to close out of completed chats is ridiculously high and that this is grounds for termination. He wants to set up a time for me to come in to talk to him and HR. Also, he lets me know that my average time to close a completed chat was 2 minutes and 17 seconds. I couldn't believe that he was having such a cow over 17 seconds. When I got off of the phone with him I was seriously shaking so hard that I couldn't type to my customers and sobbing so hard I couldn't breathe. I was so furious for being put in the situation and at him and so upset and myself for not being perfect.

I got myself ready and managed to replace my sadness with pure anger. I didn't really care if they fired me, I was expecting it. I got to the building met up with my manager and we went down to HR. He told me numerous times that he expected more of me and that these numbers were outrageous and ridiculous and "I would have thought that under the circumstances, you would have performed better." I don't know if he meant that my husband had been just fired or if my sister had been fired for this same thing, but what a jerk for even bringing that into this situation. I pleaded my case and said that I didn't know that I was to close out of a completed chat after 2 minutes, that I was never intentionally sitting on a completed chat and that I thought that I was doing just fine because I had never received a warning. Manager continuously wanted me to admit that I was in the wrong and I never did because I didn't know that I was doing bad, and 2 minutes and 17 seconds isn't bad!

They had me leave the room and when I came back in Manager said, "We want to make sure that you know that you were in the wrong, can you admit that?" I wasn't going to beg and grovel for this job because it isn't worth my dignity and pride and so I said, "I know that my numbers aren't great, but no, I didn't know that I was doing bad and this was never intentional." Then HR man said, "We just want to make sure you wont do this again." So I said, "No, I will be watching myself more closely and will make sure that I close out of chats faster, now that I know I wasn't doing so good." Then they told me that I am on final written warning and that one slip up and I'm gone.

I'm currently looking for a new job not because I think I will slip up but because I don't want to be here any more. If you know any jobs that would be good for me, let me know immediately. I don't want to be here another second. I really have come to understand how much "Company" values their employees and that Manager is not there to represent me or help me but to watch my every move so that he can fire me. I honestly think that the only reason I still have this job is because they knew I would get unemployment with that situation. Seriously, I need a new job ASAP!

Possible Break-In?

So I work at home and last night was at home working alone. My mom was out to dinner and AJ at his dad's hanging out until I got off at 9PM. AJ and his dad came of for a little to get some games on the Wii and headed back over to his dads. My mom had called me like an hour before this, and said that she was going to dinner and would be home soon.

So after AJ and his dad left, about a half hour later around 8 PM, I heard the same noises downstairs. The same noises I hear when my mom comes home and does some stuff down in her room. My work room is right above her room and bathroom. So I heard these noises for about 10 minutes waiting for her to yell up at me as she usually does to tell me she is home or something of that sort. But she never did. I knew I wasn't just hearing things either because Ernie, my dog, was reacting to the noises to as though mom had come home. When she does come home he digs at the floor in the other room that is right above the garage. He only does this when she comes home and he can hear her down stairs and he was doing this when I heard the noises too. So from all the evidence it made sense that my mom was home. But she wasn't.

I called her and asked her where she was and she said, "I'm at the restaurant." Panic struck my heart when I realized that the noises down stairs weren't her. I told her, "Mom, I can hear someone down stairs." She immediately said to stay upstairs and that she would call 911. I, being completely petrified at this point, burst into tears.

She hangs up with me and I poke my head outside of my room and hear some wind, and think, "Maybe I'm just crazy? Is it just the wind?" So I call the friend my mom is with since she was still on the phone with 911, and tell him, "I think it might just be the wind." But he tells me that it is better to be safe than sorry and that he is going to stay on the phone with me until the police arrive.

When the police do come they scared me even more. Remember that I am upstairs and Ernie is with me and I'm looking at them over the banister since they came right in because the front door was open. The conversation went something like this:

Cop1: WHO ARE YOU?!
Me: (complete hysterics, I don't know how they understood me) I'm Tazia.
Cop1: WHO ARE YOU?! WHERE IS THE MALE?
Me: I'm (sob) Tazia, (sob) I don't know where the (sob) male is, did you (sob) see a male?
Cop1: WHERE IS YOUR MOTHER?
Me: She's at a restaurant, she is the one that called 911 (sob and try to stop Ernie from barking)
Cop1: WHERE IS THE MALE? COME DOWN HERE WHERE WE CAN SEE YOU!
Me: (I frantically put Ernie in my bedroom and go down stairs with tears still streaming down face and shaking) I'm the only one home, or so I thought, I don't know what male you are talking about, did you see someone?
Cop1: (finally not yelling at me) No, but you are home alone? Did you call in the break-in?
Me: No (sob), my mom did, and she is out to dinner.
Cop1: So she isn't here? They might have told us that (he says this to his partner).
Cop2: We want to go through the house and check to make sure no one is here, you go out and wait in the car with the cop outside, unless you feel safe in that room upstairs.
Me: I am working right now and need to finish real quick.
Cop1: Okay go back upstairs and stay there while we search the rest of the house.
Cop2: Get your dog too, and keep him in the same room with you.

So I run back upstairs, grab Ernie, close the door, end my chats, and sit panicking in my room while I listen to them search the house. Finally they come upstairs and search too, then they go back down stairs and yell for me to do the same. They told me that they didn't find anyone and walk around with me and lock all the doors. They said that it could have been the wind but that they are glad that I called because better safe than sorry. They make sure I'm okay and then left.

Moments later Jim, my father-in-law, and AJ came in and said that mom had called them and they came over here as fast as possible. AJ held me as I bawled in his arms, I love him. They calmed me down while we waited for my mom to come home, and then we all calmed down together.

I don't know if it was the wind or if it was really someone downstairs, I'm just glad that I wasn't hurt and that nobody died. Thanks for watching over me angels and Heavenly Father.

Dilemma

So I'm having a bit of a dilemma with myself. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I thought I wanted to be an architect because you get to be artsy and do math. Come to find out that while I'm taking these architect classes, I hate learning about buildings and think they are extremely boring. I don't want to just draw buildings for the rest of my life. I don't enjoy it in the slightest.

I'm wanting to pick a new major. I am considering being a math teacher and getting a minor in art so that I can teach art too. But I want to get paid more than $30,000 a year and I can't really teach and stay home with the kids, when I have them. I do think that would be really fun and I would enjoy it ... I think.

I also thought about going for an English major and becoming an editor. I would love to be payed to read books and give my opinions on them. I could do this from home and I'm not sure of the pay but with this I wouldn't get to do any math, which I love.

On top of all of this, I really like to make things. I like to make costumes, skirts, design pencil cases and really what ever. I like being crafty, but should that be a profession? Or should that just be a hobby?

So basically I guess there are pro's and cons to every decision and maybe I should just face that and pick what ever. I took one of those aptitude tests hoping that at the end it would say something like, "Your ideal profession is (blank)," but unfortunately it said nothing of the kind. It just told me exactly what I already know. You like Art, Math and English. Great! Thanks a heap aptitude test. Maybe I should just be an elementary teacher where I get to do all of that. ARGH! Can someone just tell me my future and what I will be happiest doing? I really don't want to make the decision and regret it when I'm 45 or older.

Is there any profession that you have seen for me that you've thought, "That would be perfect for Tazia!"? Because I know that I'm on your mind like 24/7 :)

Anyway here are some pictures of the costume I made for Ernie. He was Yoshi and I was Mario for Halloween. He was such a good sport about it, hated the costume and would shake every time I put it on him but at least he let me put it on him. Sweet Ernie.

The New Beatles

Okay they aren't the new Beatles, but that is why I like them because they sound so much like them. This is Locksley and I have a new favorite song and band.