thanksgiving

I'm in St. Louis right now, visiting with the family for Thankgiving. I feel so lucky to be able to be home. I know, I know, "lucky" isn't a feeling. I left on Tuesday and drove Boulder to Lawrence, KS. I made really good time, only exiting the highway 10 minutes in Colby, KS for gas, and another 10 minutes in Salina for a peebreak. Total trip time, 8.25 hours. I stayed in Lawrence at a friend of a friend's house and drove with Steve (the friend of a friend) to St. Louis on Wednesday.

The first day back was challenging, but things have been really great the last few days. It has been so nice to see my parents, my grandparents, and my sibs. The last 2 nights I've stayed up WAY too late in snuggle puddles with my sibs watching dvds.

I ate WAY too much at the Thanksgiving dinner, but well, that doesn't seem too surprising. My contribution to the meal was an ugly, but tasty apple pie.

Yesterday, we went to my grandma Betty's gravesite for her headstone unveiling. I can't believe she's been gone 11 months.

Over the last 2 days, I taught my sister Courtney how to knit, and realized how far I've progressed on the knitting learning curve since I learned how in February. I see how she's getting stuck and struggling, and I remember why it took me months and months to complete my first scarf. Hats are SO much easier. I just started making a new scarf with a fancypants cable pattern with two cables on one side, three cables on the other with a seed stich border. This is by far the most complex thing I've ever attempted. There is a pattern that is 12-rows long before it repeats. I think this one might take a while. I'm making it from some gorgeous oatmeal colored wool, Cascade Yarns EcoWool #9008 .

So the drama story in brief: My house is currently being "rented". I put that in quotes because the people who are currently living in my house signed a contract and moved in over a month ago, but haven't actually paid anything. Yes, their security deposit check bounced, their October rent check bounced, and they didn't even bother writing a check for November rent. I'm working with my property management company to get them evicted, but it won't even go to court for another week.
sigh...

Another highlight was breakfast with Doug and Susie! Yay for seeing good friends! :)

Tomorrow I drive back from St. Louis to Boulder, approx. 13 hours and 870 miles.

excel geeks r us

This has been a crazy, emotional, interesting week. I don't want to go on and on about work, but well, there was some stuff going on there this week.

Monday I went up to the Longmont house to sell a piece of farm equipment. It was weird being on my property and not being able to go into the house (it is being rented). The new tenants have dogs and chickens and goats and a horse. It was so weird to see animals running around the yard that aren't mine. More letting go!

For my Tuesday story, I need to give some background. Part of my job is to create and maintain the instructional budget for the department. The instructional budgeting process begins about a year in advance of when it is needed. So I (and all the other people in my position at my university) are in the midst of budget creation for 2008-2009. We had heard from Academic Affairs that there would be a new budget creation process this year and that changes were coming. A few weeks ago, we had a presentation of the proposed new budget process. The meeting was helpful to hear about how the current process has been a beast for the folks in AA and they really need to simplify some stuff to make their work more managable. That seemed very reasonable. However, when it came down to actually looking at the proposed spreadsheet formats, there were a bunch of things that just didn't make sense to me...some things would be simplified for the folks in AA, but a lot more work would be put on the plates of the folks in the departments. I had some ideas about what could make things better, and met with the Dean to talk about what could be done. I found out that I know a lot more about Microsoft Excel that she did, and I ended up creating a bunch of new and exciting formulas and pivot tables and other fancy stuff to automatically grab data and put it in the summary format that AA needs. I got to geek out doing excel stuff for a few hours last week, and on Tuesday, she and I presented the new spreadsheets to the group of people who will actually be using the spreadsheets. I was shocked that people actually "ooh"ed and "aah"ed and applauded. I wasn't expecting that. All they have to do is cut and paste their data into the template and add data to one new column, and the template formulas do the rest. I'm pretty proud of myself, and pretty excited that I was able to create a new system/process that will benefit a bunch of people at my workplace by reducing workload. I got people talking about excel, and people are asking me to do some excel training. It was fun to do the excel geek thing, and fun to demonstrate how it works...a nice reminder that I do enjoy teaching. I hope that I do get an opportunity to teach others skills that will be useful to them. Ah, geekitude.

Wednesday was Halloween...one of my favorite nights of the year. YAY!

Thursday, I said goodbye to one of my staff. I'm really sad to see her go. I learned a lot from working with her. I learned a lot about myself and also about how I want to be. She has some amazing qualities that I would like to work on in myself. Sigh.

After work on Thursday, I drove up to my house in Longmont to talk to my un-responsive tenants. I will be very glad when that house is sold!

Yesterday, I went to say farewell to Pokie, her baby Sophi, and Amcharo. Today I said my last goodbye to them. I met up with the people from Kansas who have purchased them at the ranch where Amcharo was boarded. They had already gotten Pokie and Sophi. The hardest part was seeing Dash trying to follow Amcharo as he was being led away. I was glad to meet the Kansans...they seem like good people. They said that anytime I want an update on them or photos, or want to come visit, just to let them know. I feel better about saying goodbye knowing they are going to go someplace where they will be loved.