Archive of Marcia's Musings December 9-15, 2002
Sunday, December 15, 2002
Rude Awakening
It suddenly occurred to me that yesterday was December 14 and today was December 15 and I didn't have all of my Christmas presents wrapped, let alone, ready for shipment!!!!!!!! ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's about the time I thought I'd better buckle down and get to it soooo . . . today has been a busy day.
We slept until nearly 9 this morning due to the fact that we didn't get home and in bed until after 1am-- that's been awhile and we're definitely not used to it anymore!! After getting a shower, I took off for parts unknown and a fabric store and the grocery run getting home two hours later with all of my Christmas shopping completely finished and the groceries done, too.
Since Brian was vacuuming and I didn't feel like being totally underfoot, I went into the dining room to wrap some gifts. I finished my cousin's box up and then moved on to Pat & Nathan's-- I'm worried about their gift since it was purchased at one of the craft fairs. I've got it pretty well packed with bubble wrap so it should get there in one piece. (I just got off the phone with Pat and we've decided that I'll bring it with me when I go to California in January-- that'll keep it from breaking!!) Then it was on to Brian's family's gifts and now those are all finished.
The fun part was that in between the wrapping of presents, I made chocolate chip cookies for Brian!! Its been about four years since I've made him cookies-- not a lot of baking goes on here, needless to say! He has about two dozen BIG chocolate chip cookies for himself (they're made with butter so I won't be having any!) so he's a happy camper! The next thing I did was prepare some vegetables for my lunches. I usually eat a Healthy Choice Duos lunch but, given the name, they only have a meat and side dish without a vegetable. There are some vegetables that I like that Brian won't eat (big surprise-- he's not a big vegetable guy!) so I made those up for my lunch: red cabbage and butternut squash!
I found that after I had finished all of that cooking and baking, my back was killing me however so I went to the living room and laid down for an hour before making dinner: fresh green beans, rice and cod fillets. NOW, I've got bills to pay and this post to publish so, if you'll excuse me . . .
Have a great night!
Saturday, December 14, 2002
So Here's What Happened to "Yesterday" . . .
Yesterday started out normal enough: I got dressed for meeting with a client in the afternoon. Judy and I and one of the sales managers (the one from Atlanta who was flying up to join us) had a meeting with a client that has been particularly difficult to deal with in negotiations. They deleted massive amounts of language from a document I'd created without any explanation whatsoever. Obviously, someone didn't have an understanding of the deal but neither Judy nor I knew who was wrong about the deal. (More on that in a minute.)
Judy was supposed to meet me at the office at 9:30 and then we were supposed to drive to the Reston, Virginia office to have this meeting. Well, 9:40 came and still no Judy so I called her cell phone hoping that it meant that she was driving to work. Nope, she'd still not left her house!! Well, the Yahoo map that I'd run said that I'd have to take the Outer Loop to get to the Reston office anyway so I told her I'd leave then and pick her up. I was in my car by 9:50 and at her house by 10:30; by 11:15, with little help from her (she's more geographically challenged than I am!!), we were in the Reston office in time to order sandwiches for lunch and strategize.
Don, Judy and I strategized and discussed the contract and then waited for the attorney and end user to arrive. The end user soon called to let us know that she was running late-- the rain was affecting traffic, as usual-- but the attorney arrived on time. We went through the first document without the end user (which was fine-- not a problem) and that negotiation went fairly easily. When the end user arrived, we started on the second document which wasn't going to be as easy.
It turns out that our sales guy and the attorney and the end user knew the deal and how it was going to work-- who didn't know? The people (Judy and me) who were going to write the document! Perfect, don'tcha think? Yeah, well, after two hours of discussions, we're now familiar enough with the deal to be able to craft a document with the appropriate language and we'll start that on Monday-- sorry, I need a weekend!
Why do I need a weekend? Because we left the Reston office at 3:45 and I dropped Judy at her house at 6:30; I went in to "use the facilities" and got a cup of coffee to go from her husband (Thanks again, Jim!). I was back on the road by 6:45 and arrived home at 7:45. Through a 12 hour day, I spent approximately 5-1/2 hours of it driving!!! ARGH!!! The traffic kept moving, which is not something I'm used to from the Bay Area but it was still annoying that people freak out so bad when it rains.
The best result from the "horrific" drive home was that I never felt the need to have a cigarette!! I can say that Bay Area traffic did do that to me from time to time so it is good a Good Thing that I survived this drive without that "need". I'm rather proud of myself, thank you!
By the time I got home however, my neck was killing me and all I could do was eat a little dinner of cheese and crackers and take a shower to reduce the tightness of my neck. I felt better but when I hit the pillow at 10:30, I was gonnnnne!!!!
That Brings Us To Today
Tonight we have the office holiday party to attend. Not that any of us are going to get wasted but, Lee and her husband and I are riding and letting Brian do the driving since he doesn't drink anyway. It should be a fun time and, of course, another driving adventure in Maryland: its in Clarksville, wherever that is!!
So this will probably be the last post you'll get from me today-- I've got some sewing to do and a nap to get before I get ready to go to the party.
Have a great Saturday-- do take care!
Thursday, December 12, 2002
Busy Day!!
You know how I like having a busy day? Well, today was definitely a busy day!! I knew it would be mostly because, by the time I shut down shop here last night, I had three hours of appointments for this morning and then, it just went down hill from there!
My first appointment was a conference call with a customer who was pleasant enough but, they want a lot of changes to the document. Unfortunately, the guy that is the business end user is not the brightest light bulb in the box (except possibly for computers) so it was difficult getting him to understand that the infringement indemnification exclusions didn't apply to warranty work. Yes, it was a fun conversation!
Then, I went into a meeting with my manager to discuss a contract that is extremely intense. It is a relationship with a company that we've had problems with in the past so it is a high visibility, highly sensitive agreement. I am not paid enough to be out on that wing by myself so, I made her help with the negotiations and drafting.
When we were finished with that, I went back to my desk to find eight voicemail messages and 14 new emails. Oh, joy! I had one sales rep send me an "IM" message saying he wanted to talk to me-- no problem-- what's say you call me at 1pm? (This was at 11:45am!) He agreed. I did finish up the rest of the stuff quicker than I thought so I ended up calling him earlier than expected.
Two agreements later (review, revise, and re-draft) and a few phone calls, along with a couple of product schedules and I was finally ready to hit the road. Yeesh!! What a day!!! (No, I'm not complaining-- by any means!)
January Skit
One of the reasons that I'm going to California in January is for a legal conference with the entire company's negotiators and attorneys (not necessarily the same thing). During this conference, Judy (my manager) wants Lee and I to do a skit based on a conversation that I had with a sales rep of mine today.
The situation was hilarious-- he calls and wants advice on how to word the warranty into his quote, which is (or can be) considered to be a legally binding document. It seems that a company bought our software back in March of 2001; they were a part of the "Dot Com Dot Bomb" and were re-absorbed by the parent company, transferring the software to the parent company, without proper documentation from us, in the process. (Do you see this starting?)
It seems that the customer wanted language that said that we would "repair, replace or refund" if the software didn't work. Excuse me? They want a warranty-- NOW and AGAIN-- on software purchased more than 18 months ago? Can you say "NO"?? (I knew that you could!)
The conversation and plot thickened from there-- I swear: they all take a number and, in turn, go home at night and think of ridiculous questions to ask me!
As I was telling Judy and Lee about this conversation, they were laughing hysterically so Judy came up with the idea that we should do this as a skit for the conference. I'm game-- what the heck?
SOOOOO, that's going to be a project for this weekend, I think.
*****
I got home late which made dinner late which has made me late for the entire evening! I'm going to sign off so I can do something else as productive as this!!
As usual, thanks for stopping by and have a great evening!
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
Netscrape 7.x
Well, I have converted, I think, to Netscrape 7.x. So far, I'm not impressed with the composing tool but at least I'll be able to read someone's website without any kinks on the part of my elderly browser. The buttons are all different and, short of copying a word from a previous post, I can't figure out how to adjust the style and size of the font. Oh, yes, this could be very interesting over time.
What's Next?
Okay, last week there was 10" of snow. Today, there was freezing rain! (What have we gotten into here?) I watched in fascination as the world became coated with glass today. It looked really cool but, it was quite limiting in the amount of movement we did in the Bilbrey Belfry. Poor Sally still had to go outside for the facilities but the rest of us (Brian and me) just did our respective work or whatevers. Once again, I brought home my computer and headset battery so that I could function normally and, for the most part, it worked. I had problems with running out of things to do that I could do from here but that will be resolved tomorrow, I'm sure.
Other than that . . .
There's some sewing on the agenda and maybe some crocheting-- I haven't decided yet. Its still raining but at least it has stopped freezing. Tomorrow I will be happily off to the office-- I hope nothing new develops next week!
Have a great evening and a wonderful night!
Tuesday, December 10, 2002Popcorn Puppy
Remember me telling you that Sally won't eat popcorn? I had never heard of such a thing-- I thought dog's had a gene in them that made them loooooovvvvvve popcorn!! Somehow, our Sally, had missed that gene thinking that they had said pop-horn and, goodness knows she didn't want to get popped by a horn!!
This past weekend when Ebony was over, I made popcorn. I knew that he was allowed to eat it since I had seen his Mom, my co-worker, feed him some in limited quantities, of course. So, I tossed him a piece of popcorn and boy, did I get "A Look"-- I'm giving him something but not her!! How DARE I?!?!?!? So I tossed her a piece, too. At first, she reluctantly ate the one piece but soon enough, she was enjoying herself with it-- chomping each and every piece until she had her fill and that was all she wanted. That equalled out to the quantity that I thought I should limit Ebony to as well so I stopped giving any to the dogs.
Sunday night, after Ebony left, Brian and I wanted some popcorn to share-- guess who was almost pushing her face into the bowl to get at some??? Yes, indeedy!! She FINALLY loves popcorn, like any other "normal" dog!!
Oh, the things that she has learned in the last year!!
Getting There
With Brian's help, we're getting closer to Christmas being mailed and/or shipped! He did the cards tonight while I wrapped more presents. I've got four boxes ready for shipment and have only got another three packages to go. That's not too bad, right? We'll make it but it isn't going to be as quick as I'd hoped it would be-- I've still got one present to finish sewing!
Speaking of which, maybe I'll get to it and do some sewing tonight? Hmm, we'll see-- in the meantime, with whatever you're doing, have a great night!
Monday, December 9, 2002Happy Birthday Sally!!
Our Little Girl has been with us for one year TODAY. On the day that we got her, she was very confused. She ran under the table and moved to under the Christmas tree-- she couldn't understand what it meant for people to want to pet her or talk to her or SPOIL her!! She came to us from a rescue who had had an 80 year old woman and her mother surrender her to them. We soon figured out that she was lying under things because she was used to protecting her extremities from things like wheelchairs rolling over her!
When she first came to us, I remember Brian putting her on the sofa and Sally looking up at me trying to figure out what I wanted-- she didn't understand what petting or cuddling with her meant or how it felt. Now Sally's learned how to "scoogy" across the sofa until she is RIGHT next to me and is cuddling with me. She didn't know what it was like to be petted-- she soon figured out that she liked belly scratches given by her "Daddy"! Then came the other lessons: How to play, How to give kisses, How to be loved.
Sally has lit up our life and given us much joy-- along with the joy comes the responsibility of having another being to take care of, but the expense is worth it when you see the big brown eyes looking up to say "Thanks" and "I Love You, Mommy and Daddy".
Those big brown eyes can speak volumes, ya know? ;>)
Back In The Saddle
Or at least, back in the office today. I missed being near my co-workers. It was good to see them and talk with them and laugh with them.
I had a busy day contract-wise because I had to design a new document combining the terms and conditions of several to cover the situation that we're having with one particular customer. This customer has had some legal problems with us in the past so this is a high visibility situation-- it should be interesting to see how it comes out. As much as I can, I'll keep you posted but, the "Black-Out Period" starts this Friday so I may be limited.
For Tonight . . .
We've got laundry started although it won't get finished tonight. I wanted to write this post and I've got some stuff to put up on my sister's website, too, so I wanted to limit how much was done tonight.
Tomorrow night, Brian and I have to address our Christmas cards and get those sent out-- should be tons-o-fun. By the way, no, I still don't have all of the presents wrapped up for shipment-- I think its going to be a FedEx Christmas this year!
*****
Much to do and little time to do it in so have a great evening!
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