I don't like Mondays, in general, and I don't like this Monday (today) in specific.
I woke up with a cold (thanks to the freezing place where I went to see a boring theatre play on Saturday) and allergies (ah, don't you love it, when spring arrives, your nose starts to run and your eyes tear?)
I must say, I really don't feel fine. My head hurts, my whole body hurts. I drank hot tea all day long (and had to run to the restroom all day long because of the tea) but it didn't help in making me feel better.
And my nose is so red, although I use the expensive Kleenex balsem tissues (are supposed to be soft for my nose).
I so want to go home and to my bed... I wonder if I could leave work early? It's not like I have anything to do here...
So, I don't like Mondays. Weekends are way too short, and I usually wake up on Mondays thinking "5 more days and it is weekend again"!
However, I'm sure I'll like next Monday, in New York. And the Monday after that, on the cruise. But not the Monday after that, since I will be so jetlagged after spending all night on a flight. But I will not think about that right now!!
Monday, April 06, 2009
Sunday, April 05, 2009
The "after" pictures of my living room
I have made some pictures of my living room after the remodelling.
Of course, it includes a lot of Mickey, and a lot of Ikea, but it is a place where I feel at home, and that is the most important!
First of all, I will show you an "in between" picture, from during the remodelling. I must say, each and every single time I entered the appartment during that period, I got depressed, because it seemed each single time, there was more "stuff" in there and it seemed like it would never get ready!
The following are "in between" pictures when I just moved in and hadn't all my furniture yet. Pictures are made on my birthday:
The dining room part of my living room, ready to host some (ex)-colleagues (the space pig convention, lol):
And this is the other side of my living room:
A close-up of a part of my Disney-collection:
And this is how it looked like the morning after the "space pig convention":
It's a good thing I didn't take pictures of my kitchen (Mount Everest was nothing compared to the mount of dishes in there. That will teach me serving everything on tiny little plates and in little glasses).
But it was so much fun, I would do it again in a heart beat. And I will, in some months.
Of course, it includes a lot of Mickey, and a lot of Ikea, but it is a place where I feel at home, and that is the most important!
First of all, I will show you an "in between" picture, from during the remodelling. I must say, each and every single time I entered the appartment during that period, I got depressed, because it seemed each single time, there was more "stuff" in there and it seemed like it would never get ready!
The following are "in between" pictures when I just moved in and hadn't all my furniture yet. Pictures are made on my birthday:
The dining room part of my living room, ready to host some (ex)-colleagues (the space pig convention, lol):
And this is the other side of my living room:
A close-up of a part of my Disney-collection:
And this is how it looked like the morning after the "space pig convention":
It's a good thing I didn't take pictures of my kitchen (Mount Everest was nothing compared to the mount of dishes in there. That will teach me serving everything on tiny little plates and in little glasses).
But it was so much fun, I would do it again in a heart beat. And I will, in some months.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Today I almost died of a heart attack
It's Saturday. One week before going on vacation. It's something I wanted to brag about on my "roll call" on Cruisecritic, and to even be more specific, I went on Travelocity to look up what time our flights leave, to be able to say "in one week, we'll be already doing some duty free shopping at Heathrow" or something like it.
So, I open a new tab in IE, www.travelocity.com, log in, and... WTF?????????? No trip in my account????
I go to my email, look for the confirmation email I received and WTF?????????? Instead of the overview I used to have in there of all teh flights (6 in total), it only says "Thank you"?? Where are my freaking flights???
I can tell you, at this point I am panicking. Sweating. And panicking some more. I have this instant migraine from the stress and feel like I have to throw up.
Since I was still in pyjamas, I throw some real clothes on, go to the parking, get my notebook out of my car and start looking for print outs I have made when I booked everything.
I find some confirmation numbers and start calling around and looking up flights on the airline websites, ...
On the British Airways website, I find our flights back, and am so releaved, at least we'll end up IN the USA. That's a good start. But, WTF?????? Why is my name spelled as Dra San instead of Sandra??? *heart attack number 2 almost happening*
I call them, am forever and ever on hold (they don't even have nice music like Mobistar has :-( ). In the end it turns out my name is registered as Sandra in their systems, why it turned up as DraSan on my screen, only the internet-gods know.
Next I look up is US Airways, their website says I am on their flights, cool, so I'll be able to go from NY to Miami.
Next is American Airlines. *3rd heart attack almost happening* I can't find my booking, it always says there is no booking with my reservation number and name, oh my God, what am I going to do? Oh, yes, call them! WTF??? They don't work during the weekend? Oh yes, this is Belgium, no customer service during the weekend...
Then I see in very small print that on their website you can only look up flights being made through their own website. Which I did not, I used Travelocity, but in this day and age of integrated systems??? I am going to call them on Monday, to find out what is going on, worst case I'll go to their check in at the airport, I work there very close by (can see the airport terminal from my desk).
This is the flight I least stress about (hey, if we are not on it, we'll just stay in Florida ;-) ) but this is not a good way to start a Saturday.
It's 10 am now, is that too early to start drinking? Because I really could use a drink now...
So, I open a new tab in IE, www.travelocity.com, log in, and... WTF?????????? No trip in my account????
I go to my email, look for the confirmation email I received and WTF?????????? Instead of the overview I used to have in there of all teh flights (6 in total), it only says "Thank you"?? Where are my freaking flights???
I can tell you, at this point I am panicking. Sweating. And panicking some more. I have this instant migraine from the stress and feel like I have to throw up.
Since I was still in pyjamas, I throw some real clothes on, go to the parking, get my notebook out of my car and start looking for print outs I have made when I booked everything.
I find some confirmation numbers and start calling around and looking up flights on the airline websites, ...
On the British Airways website, I find our flights back, and am so releaved, at least we'll end up IN the USA. That's a good start. But, WTF?????? Why is my name spelled as Dra San instead of Sandra??? *heart attack number 2 almost happening*
I call them, am forever and ever on hold (they don't even have nice music like Mobistar has :-( ). In the end it turns out my name is registered as Sandra in their systems, why it turned up as DraSan on my screen, only the internet-gods know.
Next I look up is US Airways, their website says I am on their flights, cool, so I'll be able to go from NY to Miami.
Next is American Airlines. *3rd heart attack almost happening* I can't find my booking, it always says there is no booking with my reservation number and name, oh my God, what am I going to do? Oh, yes, call them! WTF??? They don't work during the weekend? Oh yes, this is Belgium, no customer service during the weekend...
Then I see in very small print that on their website you can only look up flights being made through their own website. Which I did not, I used Travelocity, but in this day and age of integrated systems??? I am going to call them on Monday, to find out what is going on, worst case I'll go to their check in at the airport, I work there very close by (can see the airport terminal from my desk).
This is the flight I least stress about (hey, if we are not on it, we'll just stay in Florida ;-) ) but this is not a good way to start a Saturday.
It's 10 am now, is that too early to start drinking? Because I really could use a drink now...
Friday, April 03, 2009
I will survive... I have survived!
I have survived my dream team meeting, aka the space pig convention.
I ha dtaken the afternoon off on Wednesday, was home at about 2 pm, my mom came around 3.30 pm and together we prepared quite some little "bites".
One of the new recipes I tried out was a feta-salad, and it was really good. Want the recipe?
- Half a cucumber, seeds out, in little cubes
- 1 green pepper, seeds out, in little cubes
- 2 tomatoes, seeds out, in little cubes (do you see a trend here? lol)
- 1 red oignon, in thin slices, and then each slice cut in half to have "half moons"
- 100 grams of feta cheese, in little cubes
- 1 table spoon of olive oil
- juice of 1 lemon
- 1 teaspoon of oregano
- black pepper
- sea salt
Mix everything together, and serve in little glasses.
My guests arrived later than I thought they would (may I say that at some point I kind of panicked and feared that they wouldn't come? I'm so insecure at times :-( )
But we had a great evening. We laughed so much at times, that my stomach hurted (sp??). Thank goodness they liked everything I prepared and ate pretty much everything (good thing I don't have to eat the leftovers until my vacation, lol!)
Everyone left around 1.30 am, I was in bed by 2 am and I woke up with the worst hangover I have ever had. Unbelievable! I felt so sick all day Thursday until... I had some wine at the company's happy hour, then my head cleared up! So one really has to fight evil with more evil, haha!
Now that this evening is over, I can really focus on my vacation. On Friday's we may leave the office early and I'm going to try to find a dress for formal night on the cruise. I also have to start packing the "small" things like batteries, sun screen, etc etc etc.
What I don't feel like doing is to find out WHAT to do at NYC, I told my mom that that is her task. After reading a gazillion hotel descriptions, I'm done reading for the vacation. Really.
And I'm at the point where I don't care too much whether I'll see "everything" or not, as long as I'll see Saks Fifth Avenue, I'll be happy ;-))
I ha dtaken the afternoon off on Wednesday, was home at about 2 pm, my mom came around 3.30 pm and together we prepared quite some little "bites".
One of the new recipes I tried out was a feta-salad, and it was really good. Want the recipe?
- Half a cucumber, seeds out, in little cubes
- 1 green pepper, seeds out, in little cubes
- 2 tomatoes, seeds out, in little cubes (do you see a trend here? lol)
- 1 red oignon, in thin slices, and then each slice cut in half to have "half moons"
- 100 grams of feta cheese, in little cubes
- 1 table spoon of olive oil
- juice of 1 lemon
- 1 teaspoon of oregano
- black pepper
- sea salt
Mix everything together, and serve in little glasses.
My guests arrived later than I thought they would (may I say that at some point I kind of panicked and feared that they wouldn't come? I'm so insecure at times :-( )
But we had a great evening. We laughed so much at times, that my stomach hurted (sp??). Thank goodness they liked everything I prepared and ate pretty much everything (good thing I don't have to eat the leftovers until my vacation, lol!)
Everyone left around 1.30 am, I was in bed by 2 am and I woke up with the worst hangover I have ever had. Unbelievable! I felt so sick all day Thursday until... I had some wine at the company's happy hour, then my head cleared up! So one really has to fight evil with more evil, haha!
Now that this evening is over, I can really focus on my vacation. On Friday's we may leave the office early and I'm going to try to find a dress for formal night on the cruise. I also have to start packing the "small" things like batteries, sun screen, etc etc etc.
What I don't feel like doing is to find out WHAT to do at NYC, I told my mom that that is her task. After reading a gazillion hotel descriptions, I'm done reading for the vacation. Really.
And I'm at the point where I don't care too much whether I'll see "everything" or not, as long as I'll see Saks Fifth Avenue, I'll be happy ;-))
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Dream team meeting. Aka space pig convention
Tonight, I am organizing a "dream team meeting". Also known as the "space pig convention".
To "get" this, you might want to know some background.
I work as a consultant, project-based, in team with other colleagues. In October, I changed jobs and started on a new client/ new project together with some other people, all of us new to the company. We got along well together, and imho, we did well on our project. For some reason though, management didn't like the fact that we got along so well, and decided they were going to break our team.
In January, first person got fired. In February, I transferred to another department (it was that or commit suicide, I was really at that point) and just last week, they fired another person. No decent reason at all. Just because they wanted to break up our team. I guess they reached their goal now.
When I was looking for another job (in another department or even an other company) I told the others that I would invite them for a drink/party when I got away. On March 1, I switched departments, but with deadlines the others had, we decided on April 1 to be THE day.
Why dream team or space pigs? Well, in our opinion we are a dream team, in management's opinion we are a nightmare team (lol). Space pigs... that story is too long to write down here, but it included lots of laughing!
So, this afternoon, I have taken some hours off from work to prepare all the snacks, bites, munchies, whatever you call them. Champagne and wine are already cooling in the fridge. I'm already excited about it.
Not only will we have the opportunity to see each other again but also to catch up on gossip etc.
I really miss the fired people. And I don't miss at all the previous department. I can't handle management-by-terror.
But it will be a great topic to talk about tonight!!
To "get" this, you might want to know some background.
I work as a consultant, project-based, in team with other colleagues. In October, I changed jobs and started on a new client/ new project together with some other people, all of us new to the company. We got along well together, and imho, we did well on our project. For some reason though, management didn't like the fact that we got along so well, and decided they were going to break our team.
In January, first person got fired. In February, I transferred to another department (it was that or commit suicide, I was really at that point) and just last week, they fired another person. No decent reason at all. Just because they wanted to break up our team. I guess they reached their goal now.
When I was looking for another job (in another department or even an other company) I told the others that I would invite them for a drink/party when I got away. On March 1, I switched departments, but with deadlines the others had, we decided on April 1 to be THE day.
Why dream team or space pigs? Well, in our opinion we are a dream team, in management's opinion we are a nightmare team (lol). Space pigs... that story is too long to write down here, but it included lots of laughing!
So, this afternoon, I have taken some hours off from work to prepare all the snacks, bites, munchies, whatever you call them. Champagne and wine are already cooling in the fridge. I'm already excited about it.
Not only will we have the opportunity to see each other again but also to catch up on gossip etc.
I really miss the fired people. And I don't miss at all the previous department. I can't handle management-by-terror.
But it will be a great topic to talk about tonight!!
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