Fall is in the air.

Can you feel it? Can you smell it?

Here in lovely East Tennessee the fall season has come in like a lion! The weather is gorgeous, just absolutely gorgeous. The over night lows have been in the 30’s and the air is crisp and cool. I feel like I can finally breathe.

We have had so much rain this year. We’re 10+ inches of rain over the normal rainfall totals for this time of year. The rain, combined with the cool temperatures has created a spectacular autumn. The leaves are changing colors, everywhere I look are vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows. It really has made me feel so very glad to be alive.

I do have some news, dear readers. I went last night and formally signed papers to put an offer in on a house. It’s a 31-year-old brick front rancher. 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms. It’s on about a quarter acre of property which is fenced in the back yard. It has an attached 1 car garage.

We went and viewed the home on Monday, and while there are a few things that would need to be changed (paint & wallpaper) mainly, both Mr. Nascar and I liked the house. It’s closer to Bert©’s school than we are now. It’s just up the street from where she attends daycare afterschool. The front yard is gorgeous with the miniature roses and the flower beds. We could tell the house has been taken care of. I met last night with the Seller’s real estate agent to put in an offer on the home. We should have a response from her by Thursday at noon. I have already been pre-qualified for a loan by one company, but submitted an application to another mortgage broker yesterday afternoon to see if we could get an even better rate. Hopefully all of this will click into place and we can be closed on the house by Nov. 27th. We would then give our 30 day notice to our landlord and use that time to repaint, and to slowly move items into the new house.

Bert© has been doing wonderfully in school. We should be getting her first formal report card home on Thursday. At my parent teacher conference, the teacher mentioned she would like to start Bert© on an accelerated reading program. She is the top reader in her class. I hardly have to help her figure out a word when she’s reading anymore. I couldn’t be more pleased. I love reading and often can be found with a book somewhere near me. I’m glad to see that my daughter cause also caught my love for words. Her scores in math are not as high as in reading & spelling, however they are excellent scores for a child who just turned 6 years old in August. I am very proud of her.

I am doing well. However, I am exhausted. I feel like there is never enough time to do everything that needs to be done. I have picked up a little extra work on the side, so I have worked every day for the last two weeks. While the paycheck is nice, I still have plenty of household chores that need to be completed. I am quickly running out of clean laundry! Oh the bane of the existence of a working woman. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I pretty much rush back out of the house as soon as I get home. Bert© has Girl Scouts on Tuesdays (she’s a daisy) and on Wednesday she has catechism classes at church. We’re even thinking about adding in basketball practice for her, two nights a week. Gosh I sure would like just one day to be able to sleep in and relax.

Speaking of sleeping in and relaxing…hopefully if all goes according to plan, Mr. Nascar and I will be escaping this weekend. We are planning on going to Tunica, MS to one of the casinos down there. Mr.Nascar will be turning 43 years old this week! This trip will be one of his presents, as I hate gambling and find it very boring to watch him lose our money. I might just spend the evening in our hotel room, enjoying a nice bubbly jacuzzi bath! Mmm that sounds wonderful.

I need to get back to work now, so I shall bring this to a close. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

January 20, 2009

Today the United States of America welcomed a new president. Congratulations to Mr. Barak Obama.

I was unable to watch the inauguration today because I’m hardly working, I mean hard at work. We were allowed to log onto a news website to watch the live coverage but unfortunately most places couldn’t support the crush of people wanting to watch the new president talk. I did manage to catch Mr. Obama’s speech on the local radio station though. The man sure can give a good speech. He is probably the most convincing public speaker I have heard in a very long time. I would have to say that Michelle Obama must be incredibly proud of her husband right now.

Today is a new day. The possibilities for the future are endless. Our lives will be what we make of them. Myself, personally I am going to try and be more positive about things and to really work on worrying less. I saw an interesting marquee at a local church the other day; “Why worry when you can pray.” I wholeheartedly agree and that will be my practice going forward.

Welcome 2009 and President Obama, I can’t wait to see what you have in store for me!

Pink on politics

Pink on politics

Jeff was the one that introduced me to Pink’s music. He became interested through his 11 year old daughter, and passed that interest on to me.

I love that she felt strongly enough to put her feelings about Mr. Bush into words. This song never really became “mainstream” but it is my favorite song on her album “I’m not dead yet!” I think the line I like most is “What do you feel when you look in the mirror…are you proud?” That is such a compelling lyric to me, because you have to wonder, can he really hold his head up high and be proud of what he has done for our country the last 8 years?I don’t have any more to say on the subject. The music speaks louder than I ever could.

Todays post is brought to you by the letter E and the number 100

Look what I got!!! YankeeChick so kindly bestowed this award on my blog. I am honored, and really kind of dumbfounded. I mean, I hardly write any more, and when I do it’s mostly about Bert© or my most recent dating experiences. How excellent or interesting can that be? Regardless, I appreciate the kudos. You are the best, YC. I’m so glad I found you through your blog.

I need to pass this award on to some of the people on my blog that I love to read, I check their sites daily for updates:

1. Charlie
2. GuiltySecret, what’s next
3. Awittykitty
4. Cloudy

Each of these bloggers, have an incredible way with words. Their true personalities come alive in their posts. Each has, at one point or another, made me laugh out loud, or feel heartbroken for their pain. These are real people who write about their real lives. These are excellent blogs and I highly recommend you check them out at your first opportunity.

Now for the part about 100. Beginning in February at MyCompany™ they started recording and evaluating our inbound phone calls. The recordings are supposedly random, therefore you’re supposed to be on your best behaviour at all times because there is a chance this call can be recorded for training purposes. Each recorded call captures the voice data, as well as “real time” video of our computer screens. Basically the QA person sees exactly what I would see when on a call. The QA then evaluates our calls based on certain departmental criteria they have deemed could be applicable to any call. For example they have certain things they are looking for if I place an order via the phone. Did I verify the customers contact information, did I use my resources to check availability on the item, and so forth.

During the month of March I had approximately 50 calls recorded. On average 2 a day, sometimes more. 4 of those calls were selected to be evaluated by the QA. There is a possibility to score more than 100% on each of your calls, if you get the bonus point. This months bonus point is using the callers name at least once during the call. On 3 of my 4 calls, I scored 105/100. The 4th call, I missed a step and only received 99.47% when you factor in my bonus question. So yesterday, I get an email letting me know that I had the highest overall average score for evaluations during March, at BOTH of our locations. I was stoked to say the least. They came down and took my picture this morning, they are going to put a little blurb on our internal broadcasting system about my accomplishment. It feels so good to put so much effort into something, and finally be recognized for it. I know deep down I’m good at my job. Sometimes though, you do need that extra little bit of validation.

So all in all I had a terrific day! That’s it for right now. I’m not nearly as long winded as I have been in the past. I really hope to start blogging again regularly as I miss it.

 

Celebrities Sneezing?

I had to chuckle today when I was checking my blog stats. Again someone had wandered across my site using the search phrase “Celebrity Sneeze“.  Cardiogirl had commented that she couldn’t understand why people are interested seeing pictures of celebrities sneezing, or eating, or vomiting (OK I added that last one). I didn’t really think about it that way at first, but why are people fascinated by that?

In my opinion, anyone who knowingly becomes a celebrity; meaning someone who starred in a movie, recorded a song, strutted down the runway etc has opened themselves up to the scrutiny of the public eye. By signing their respective contracts, they have ensured that their name and face will be exploited as a trademark. They will be photographed constantly. The most intimate details of their personal lives will be aired for the enjoyment of all. Basically anything they say or do, will ultimately be held against them. Do I think that’s right? No. I think if people could just back off for a second and remember that celebrities are, after all, only human beings, they might relinquish their constant quest for private details. I don’t know if people obsess about celebrities to search for similarities between them or to confirm the differences.

Either way, I firmly believe that because of their social status, celebrities have a responsibility to be role models for younger generations who will be looking up to them for guidance. Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton. All these young ladies have this wonderful opportunity to use their famous faces for good. Do we see pictures of them sitting in the library studying hard to get good grades? Or volunteering at the local homeless shelter? No, we are bombarded of videos of them binge drinking, partying, and drunk driving. I wonder if maybe when they do try to do some good, it gets over shadowed the minute they do something wrong?

Tampaxofdoom posted the video of Britney Spears at the MTV music awards. Granted I had heard a lot about it on the radio but had not seen the video footage. Her performance was less than stellar, but you know what I doubt any single person who was commenting on how lackluster her dancing was, could have done half as well. There were all kinds of snide remarks about her body not being what it used to be. Again, she still looks better than 60% of American women. Why is it that people care so much? I do not understand.

I read an article after seeing that video that said Britney was running around pantyless again that evening. Now, I’d heard snip-its about Britney’s night on the town going commando but hadn’t thought anything about it. There have been times I didn’t do my laundry and there was not a clean pair of granny panties to be found, so I went without. No big deal! I searched around online a little bit, to see if I could find the pictures that were taken of Ms. Spears. I did, and literally got an eyeful. Now here’s where it gets tricky. Although I said that celebrities should understand that they will lack privacy when they sign on the dotted line, nowhere did I say that they shouldn’t be afforded basic human decency. From the angle of several of the photos, you could tell that the photographers had gotten down onto the ground in order to get a better shot of Britney’s vagina. That is DISGUSTING! I could understand 1 picture being accidentally taken and then everyone realizing what they had just seen so they back off and let her pull herself together. Taking multiple photos from every possible angle, trying to push aside the person shielding Britney as she got out of the car, and almost laying on the ground so you can photograph up her skirt is despicable. These people should be branded for being completely unethical and magazine editors should refuse to use their work. These so called photographers aren’t professionals, they are dirty scum bags who are trying to get that $1,000,000 glory shot.

These people who are desperately searching online of pictures of celebrities sneezing, are the same people who fuel a multimillion dollar industry that is hell bent on exploiting every insignificant detail of someone’s lives. I think we need to be ashamed of ourselves. Do we not have feelings anymore? What if Ms. Spears was your wife, daughter, aunt, cousin? Would you want people treating her that way? No, probably not. Perhaps we all just need to back off, mellow out, and remember: celebrities are just people too, just like you and me.

Besides, if you really want to worship someone I think God initially signed up for that job.