Christi and I will start working live/real quotes tomorrow for the first time - kind of scary and very exciting. We both are glad we can finally feel we are helping our team. We will do live quotes for 2-3 weeks and then go back to training to learn long and short term disability - evidently this is the hardest/most complicated of our non-med coverages to learn to quote. I've not been told officially but the trainer believes I will eventually have the Denver office to do their quoting - and the Denver office helps support the Phoenix office - and those two offices have some "unique" twists to dental quoting. I will work these two offices on my own when I am released from training, checking, etc. Christi will partner with one of her team members to work the Philly office.
We had some snow Thursday evening and I planned to get up a little early Friday morning to try to shovel a path on the sidewalk and a little of the driveway before work. Looked outside and half my driveway had snow and half didn't - cool. Before leaving I went outside and ran the shovel up and down the sidewalk to get some of the light covering of snow out of the way - the same with the driveway. By the time I got home from work Friday, it was all melted. Still haven't used my snowblower this winter. SO glad I didn't fill it with gas last fall - just enough gas to make sure it started up ok.
Yesterday I went to the Jake's Journey (aka Life Is Good) store in West Glen to see if there were any bargains. The owner is closing the store which is kind of sad but I can understand why - I don't think he got a lot of business to offset his rent in that area. In his email to tell of the store closing, the owner mentioned he would be keeping the Altoona store open - yesterday he told me he had decided to close that store too. Looks like I'll be ordering my shirts online.........
After running my errands and going to Jake's Journey - I headed to the Fairgrounds for a craft show. The Fairgrounds were hopping with a scrapbooking deal plus some fishing thing going on. I love our Fairgrounds - I think they are beautiful and I'm glad to see it gets used a lot when the State Fair isn't going on. The craft show was INSANE! People EVERYWHERE! I made the mistake of stopping at the place that makes personal vinyl sayings that you can put on walls and had the guy find a greyhound for me. His booth was at the beginning of the craft show from where I entered the Varied Industries building so I thought by the time I wandered through the rest of the booths, my dealie would be ready - nope. I don't think the guy and his wife realized how popular he would be - they live in Highland Park so I'll stop by tomorrow night after work to pick up my dealie. I also stopped at a bead/pendant booth that I've visited different times. I was talking to the young lady that creates the pendants saying I had a couple of her stones and she said she recognized me - kind of threw me. She said it was my scarf - the one I wear with my long jeans coat that is made with the funky yarn that sticks out all over. She said her mother, who helps her at her booth, noticed it a couple of shows back, admired it and tried to make one herself.
Today was the day I'd been waiting for since mid-November...............the Daytona 500. I had ironed my Dale Jarrett UPS crew members shirt to wear to church. I figure we have Jersey Sunday for the Superbowl - I'd have NASCAR Sunday with my DJ shirt. I had to educate my pastor that today was the Daytona 500..... But some of the guys got a kick out of my shirt and we talked racing before the service. Came home, turned on the tv, and found out it was raining at Daytona. About 4:00ish NASCAR said the race would be postponed until tomorrow at noon. :( I don't know if I'll DVR the race or not. For a while I thought the rain would stop and they would get the track dry to run the race today so tonight I would have the Daytona 500, Amazing Race/Celebrity Apprentice and the Oscars to flip from channel to channel. Guess I'll settle on the Oscars..................
Oh ya - for a special Daytona 500 treat I stopped by McDonald's after church to get a double cheese burger meal deal with sweet ice tea and two packages of McDonald's cookies (for Butler and me to share). I also had the moon roof wide open because it was like 50 degrees. Well, the snow was melting like crazy off the roof of the McDonald's and it took me a second to figure out what was leaking in my car - dripping on my head - as I sat in the drive up. Oh ya - the moon roof was wide open. Closed that baby up and reopened it after leaving McDonald's parking lot. The sad news was when the girl handed me my sack of food and sweet tea, she had $2.00 in her hand. I was just getting ready to say I already received my change at the first window when she told me it was my refund for the cookies - they didn't have any - bummer.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
South Africa
First - NASCAR is finally back with the Bud Shootout last night! Too bad Kyle B won it but you have to admit the turd can drive a race car with the way he saved it not once but twice....but still.... Next Sunday is the Daytona 500!!!!!!!
For the past two weeks our Pastor has been in South Africa visiting his best college buddy and wife that are running Restoring Hope International (http://www.restoringhopeint.org/) which is an orphanage in Welkom, S.A. As Louie blogged, Josh was his point guard in college and today I told Josh that he was Johnny P to Louie's M.J. - if you aren't an old-school Bulls fan, forgetaboutit :)
Anyway....Josh got to meet the children at the orphanage, kids/young people that Louie and Amber are mentoring, preach at a church, help construct Louie and Amber's house and more. Today after church Josh had reserved the party room at Okoboji's on SE 14th for us from Noon to 3:00 pm to eat, fellowship and he would share his experience/answer our questions. The pix below are of the group in the party room.
Some interesting tidbits Josh shared:
For the past two weeks our Pastor has been in South Africa visiting his best college buddy and wife that are running Restoring Hope International (http://www.restoringhopeint.org/) which is an orphanage in Welkom, S.A. As Louie blogged, Josh was his point guard in college and today I told Josh that he was Johnny P to Louie's M.J. - if you aren't an old-school Bulls fan, forgetaboutit :)
Anyway....Josh got to meet the children at the orphanage, kids/young people that Louie and Amber are mentoring, preach at a church, help construct Louie and Amber's house and more. Today after church Josh had reserved the party room at Okoboji's on SE 14th for us from Noon to 3:00 pm to eat, fellowship and he would share his experience/answer our questions. The pix below are of the group in the party room.
Some interesting tidbits Josh shared:
- Mothers can have their child for one, two, three or more years and then decide they no longer can care for them, etc., and try to get them placed in an orphanage.
- There are 11 languages spoken in the region: English, Afrikan, something else and the rest are tribal languages. Most children can speak three languages - fluently.
- Hospitals are private.
- No government assistance - of any kind.
- For an international adoption there are many hoops to jump through - even though there are many children available for adoption.
- Promiscuity/sexual immorality is the norm and because of that AIDS is prevelant.
- For 90% of the high school students to graduate, a 30% grade is what is acceptable - think about that one for a minute.
- A year or so ago South Africa had its only submarine that came into port and needed to be charged. It was 500 volts (amps or something) and the person that plugged it in had a 1000 volt/amp outlet so he plugged the submarine into it thinking it would charge twice as fast............ Shorted out the submarine and it sank - must be that 30% passing high school deal.
In the far, right background - the guy standing in the short sleeve green shirt with yellow collar is our Pastor.
The kiddy table otherwise known as "LWF church of the future".
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Only Me
First if any of you bloggers out there know how I can get rid of the extra spaces in my Church Chuckles "gadget" so there isn't so much space between it and my pictures, PLEASE let me know. I've tried a couple of things and nothing is working.
These two instances I'm going to share could only happen to me and I wish Mike was here to share them with because he would laugh and laugh and laugh.
After seeing "One For The Money" we all walked out of the theater together and I wasn't really sure which aisle I had parked my car in - it didn't help that I had also pulled through the space I pulled in so I could head out. I knew I was down the aisle a little, so as we walked I used my panic button on my key chain and "heard" my car - in the next row over. So I said good-bye and headed over a row - and couldn't find my car - anywhere. Great. So I once again used my panic button and "heard" my car - in the row I had just walked through to get to the row I "knew" my car was in. The sad thing was I had to keep the panic button going for a few seconds to find my car in the other row because I hadn't walked down far enough - talk about embarassing.
Then at work this past week my manager has called me her problem child and you'll find out why. If you've read my Facebook post from this week you already know. The software system we use (GPS) to do our quotes was kicking me out maybe every fifth quote but it got to the point it was kicking me out during every quote. Luckily it kicked me out when I went from the first screen to the second screen and only wiped out a couple of pieces of information I had entered but still that was a pain. My trainer gave me the name of someone to call and do a live meeting through our IM system. I installed the live meeting but found out I couldn't access the live meeting function in our IM system (it was greyed out). I was told to call Tech Support. Well....I found out my phone didn't make out going phone calls. So how do I call someone to fix my phone, so I can call Tech Support to fix live meeting in our IM system so I can have the lady see my computer screen to try to fix GPS so it won't kick me out? WOW. Somehow - I honestly don't remember - a phone person called me and told me he had done something behind the scenes to my phone - oh ya my manager had to request the fix. The phone guy told me to call out and then call him back to tell him if it worked. I called out - didn't work - called phone guy back to tell him. Phone guy asked if I could call out again and he would watch my line as I called out to see if he could figure out the problem - ok. I called out - didn't work - called phone guy who said, "did you call out?" Yep. He said he didn't see me even pick up my line to call out but he saw me call him and "I've never seen this before." Aren't I the lucky one :) So a phone guy had to come to my desk to fix my phone, so I could call Tech Support to give me access to live meeting so I could communicate with the lady to see why GPS was kicking me out. We think we know what I'm doing to get kicked out (copy and pasting the template number I need to use - which shouldn't kick me out) but we don't know why................ Baby steps.
The kicker is both the trainer and my manager asked if I was dialing 9 (for an outside line) then 1 (since Tech Services is an 800#). I'm like, "yep". And they both proceeded to come to my phone to try to call out too. I don't blame them I'd probably have done the same thing. It was while my manager was at my phone that she said I was her problem child. And then when we met in the bathroom later in the day - she also said she was blaming me for the bank of lights that weren't working over some of the toilets. She said the light had worked just fine before I started......... I told her I had big shoulders. Actually I used the one stall that is the darkest due to the lights being out and found it quite relaxing.
We learned part of Dental coverage this week - yep it will take over a week to learn Dental. We did some practice quotes Thursday afternoon and one was a doozy that fried both Christi and my brains at the end of the day. When we started Friday morning to finish our quotes I IMed Christi and told her it was a Pizza Hut day for lunch because I deserved a pizza after a couple of the quotes we had just done and she agreed. And while at Pizza Hut in Corporate 1 I got a punch card. Only six more pizzas to go for a free one - knowing me and how cheap I am - that will take a while.
Because even our trainer was fried after working our quotes and she didn't want to start the last part of Dental Friday afternoon we did some fun things to see how observant we were - from the Highlights web site. Highlights the magazine for kids - yep we went to the web site and did the hunt for things in the picture and some what's different between the two pictures. That was a nice way to end the week.
These two instances I'm going to share could only happen to me and I wish Mike was here to share them with because he would laugh and laugh and laugh.
After seeing "One For The Money" we all walked out of the theater together and I wasn't really sure which aisle I had parked my car in - it didn't help that I had also pulled through the space I pulled in so I could head out. I knew I was down the aisle a little, so as we walked I used my panic button on my key chain and "heard" my car - in the next row over. So I said good-bye and headed over a row - and couldn't find my car - anywhere. Great. So I once again used my panic button and "heard" my car - in the row I had just walked through to get to the row I "knew" my car was in. The sad thing was I had to keep the panic button going for a few seconds to find my car in the other row because I hadn't walked down far enough - talk about embarassing.
Then at work this past week my manager has called me her problem child and you'll find out why. If you've read my Facebook post from this week you already know. The software system we use (GPS) to do our quotes was kicking me out maybe every fifth quote but it got to the point it was kicking me out during every quote. Luckily it kicked me out when I went from the first screen to the second screen and only wiped out a couple of pieces of information I had entered but still that was a pain. My trainer gave me the name of someone to call and do a live meeting through our IM system. I installed the live meeting but found out I couldn't access the live meeting function in our IM system (it was greyed out). I was told to call Tech Support. Well....I found out my phone didn't make out going phone calls. So how do I call someone to fix my phone, so I can call Tech Support to fix live meeting in our IM system so I can have the lady see my computer screen to try to fix GPS so it won't kick me out? WOW. Somehow - I honestly don't remember - a phone person called me and told me he had done something behind the scenes to my phone - oh ya my manager had to request the fix. The phone guy told me to call out and then call him back to tell him if it worked. I called out - didn't work - called phone guy back to tell him. Phone guy asked if I could call out again and he would watch my line as I called out to see if he could figure out the problem - ok. I called out - didn't work - called phone guy who said, "did you call out?" Yep. He said he didn't see me even pick up my line to call out but he saw me call him and "I've never seen this before." Aren't I the lucky one :) So a phone guy had to come to my desk to fix my phone, so I could call Tech Support to give me access to live meeting so I could communicate with the lady to see why GPS was kicking me out. We think we know what I'm doing to get kicked out (copy and pasting the template number I need to use - which shouldn't kick me out) but we don't know why................ Baby steps.
The kicker is both the trainer and my manager asked if I was dialing 9 (for an outside line) then 1 (since Tech Services is an 800#). I'm like, "yep". And they both proceeded to come to my phone to try to call out too. I don't blame them I'd probably have done the same thing. It was while my manager was at my phone that she said I was her problem child. And then when we met in the bathroom later in the day - she also said she was blaming me for the bank of lights that weren't working over some of the toilets. She said the light had worked just fine before I started......... I told her I had big shoulders. Actually I used the one stall that is the darkest due to the lights being out and found it quite relaxing.
We learned part of Dental coverage this week - yep it will take over a week to learn Dental. We did some practice quotes Thursday afternoon and one was a doozy that fried both Christi and my brains at the end of the day. When we started Friday morning to finish our quotes I IMed Christi and told her it was a Pizza Hut day for lunch because I deserved a pizza after a couple of the quotes we had just done and she agreed. And while at Pizza Hut in Corporate 1 I got a punch card. Only six more pizzas to go for a free one - knowing me and how cheap I am - that will take a while.
Because even our trainer was fried after working our quotes and she didn't want to start the last part of Dental Friday afternoon we did some fun things to see how observant we were - from the Highlights web site. Highlights the magazine for kids - yep we went to the web site and did the hunt for things in the picture and some what's different between the two pictures. That was a nice way to end the week.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Super Bowl, Awesome Weather Early This Week and More
To say I like my job, department and manager is an understatement. Monday it was somewhere in the mid 60's - in Iowa - the end of January. My manager is also the department's manager and she sent an email telling everyone that when all their quotes were done, if they wanted to leave early to enjoy the weather, they could and make up the time (mut) during the week. Since Christi and I were in training we didn't have quotes that had to be done and asked our trainer how we fit in that scenario. She emailed my manager and the reply was - it was up to our trainer - so at 2:00 p.m. Christi and I ran out of the building like little kids getting out of school early to enjoy the weather!
Our manager also told the department that since wearing jeans every day ended January 31st (Tuesday) and we could start paying $1 to wear jeans on Thursdays along with company jeans day on Fridays - if we paid $1 this week we could wear jeans Wednesday and Thursday so we wouldn't have to worry about wearing business casual until this coming week. I'm all about that.
I now know how to quote three of our non-med products with the last one learned making both Christi and I have dazed deer in the headlights looks Thursday morning. But we both did pretty good on the practice quotes we did that were graded. While we have quotes that are graded during training - they don't go on our official record. The grading is to see how well we understand the process.
Tuesday night after work I zoomed to the WDM City Hall to say good-bye to the Chief of Police who was retiring. As I was zipping by the WDM PD I thought it might not be too good to get a speeding ticket on my way to the Police Chief's retirement open house, so I slowed down a little. I saw lots of the officers that I had known through the years and everyone of them gave me a hug.
Thursday we had a department lunch/meeting with pizza provided. Everyone figured on a 30 minute "working lunch" - which I was using as part of my mut time from leaving early Monday. Well, our manager emailed everyone telling us our working lunch really lasted an hour. I'm thinking to myself, "I have mutted (I still don't know if that's an actual word) all my time from Monday with the 30 minutes lunch from today. The additional 30 minutes we are getting, maybe I can leave 30 minutes early Friday." So I checked with my manager and she said "yep" I was good to leave 30 minutes early Friday!
Thursday night a couple of gal pals from the WDM PD and I went to see "One For The Money" and it was - ok. Mike loved and I still love reading Janet Evanovich's novels about Stephanie Plum and what all happens to her and Lula - Mike used to and I still laugh out loud while reading the book. I guess I thought the movie would make me laugh like that and it didn't. It was cute though.
Friday the weather started to turn on us and Saturday I woke up to some snow. I had done my grocery run Friday night after work so Butler and I huddled under the blanket Saturday. The only time I went outside was to shovel the driveway and sidewalk between 4:30 and 5:00. While we got several inches of snow on the ground, the cement hardly had anything on it at all. My steps going up to my front door didn't have any snow. I just pushed the shovel along the driveway or sidewalk until I'd run into an uneven crack in the cement, toss the snow to the side and push some more. The guy two houses to the south actually used his snow blower. I'm like "really"?
Today was Jersey Sunday at church for the Super Bowl and I had looked some for my Pella High football jersey earlier in the week but didn't find it. Senior year in high school we could buy actual practice jerseys from the football team. Yesterday I found it - and washed it. I got to calculating how old the jersey was this morning (33 years) and told myself that my jersey was probably older than half the congregation :) There were several Chicago Bears jerseys in attendance this morning.
I'm sure I'll have the Super Bowl on tonight - don't really care who wins. This year I think I'll be more interested in the commercials.
Our manager also told the department that since wearing jeans every day ended January 31st (Tuesday) and we could start paying $1 to wear jeans on Thursdays along with company jeans day on Fridays - if we paid $1 this week we could wear jeans Wednesday and Thursday so we wouldn't have to worry about wearing business casual until this coming week. I'm all about that.
I now know how to quote three of our non-med products with the last one learned making both Christi and I have dazed deer in the headlights looks Thursday morning. But we both did pretty good on the practice quotes we did that were graded. While we have quotes that are graded during training - they don't go on our official record. The grading is to see how well we understand the process.
Tuesday night after work I zoomed to the WDM City Hall to say good-bye to the Chief of Police who was retiring. As I was zipping by the WDM PD I thought it might not be too good to get a speeding ticket on my way to the Police Chief's retirement open house, so I slowed down a little. I saw lots of the officers that I had known through the years and everyone of them gave me a hug.
Thursday we had a department lunch/meeting with pizza provided. Everyone figured on a 30 minute "working lunch" - which I was using as part of my mut time from leaving early Monday. Well, our manager emailed everyone telling us our working lunch really lasted an hour. I'm thinking to myself, "I have mutted (I still don't know if that's an actual word) all my time from Monday with the 30 minutes lunch from today. The additional 30 minutes we are getting, maybe I can leave 30 minutes early Friday." So I checked with my manager and she said "yep" I was good to leave 30 minutes early Friday!
Thursday night a couple of gal pals from the WDM PD and I went to see "One For The Money" and it was - ok. Mike loved and I still love reading Janet Evanovich's novels about Stephanie Plum and what all happens to her and Lula - Mike used to and I still laugh out loud while reading the book. I guess I thought the movie would make me laugh like that and it didn't. It was cute though.
Friday the weather started to turn on us and Saturday I woke up to some snow. I had done my grocery run Friday night after work so Butler and I huddled under the blanket Saturday. The only time I went outside was to shovel the driveway and sidewalk between 4:30 and 5:00. While we got several inches of snow on the ground, the cement hardly had anything on it at all. My steps going up to my front door didn't have any snow. I just pushed the shovel along the driveway or sidewalk until I'd run into an uneven crack in the cement, toss the snow to the side and push some more. The guy two houses to the south actually used his snow blower. I'm like "really"?
Today was Jersey Sunday at church for the Super Bowl and I had looked some for my Pella High football jersey earlier in the week but didn't find it. Senior year in high school we could buy actual practice jerseys from the football team. Yesterday I found it - and washed it. I got to calculating how old the jersey was this morning (33 years) and told myself that my jersey was probably older than half the congregation :) There were several Chicago Bears jerseys in attendance this morning.
I'm sure I'll have the Super Bowl on tonight - don't really care who wins. This year I think I'll be more interested in the commercials.
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