Give Me Five #5 - My job

The topic for this week is, "Give Me Five things you like and/or dislike about your job."

This is a hard one for me right now because there is a lot of uncertainty at my job and whether any of us in the department will still be employed after June. Rumors abound and nobody knows yet what will happen. It makes for a very difficult workplace at times.

Given that, here are my 5 likes and/or dislikes about my particular job:

1. I like what I do. It seems like I either end up with a job where I don't enjoy what I'm doing as much but like the people and environment that I'm working in, or just the opposite. Right now I like the actual work, but it's been hard getting to know anyone well or really feeling like I fit into the department. Of course, I'm not employed by the department that I work in, which makes it difficult to begin with.
   
   
2. Having said that I like what I do - I don't like that there's no oversight or central management of GIS where I work. We're all pretty much on our own, which is ok in some ways, but we don't really have the clout or authority to dig up more of our own work to do. The way that GIS services are managed isn't very logical or practical in terms of making things work well overall. A lot of things have been at a standstill for the past couple of years and we're pretty much just maintaining the status quo.
   
   
3. Working for a contractor isn't the most secure of positions. Also, we're immediately set apart from all of the other staff since we have different benefits and policies. There's a lot of resentment at our not being city staff since they have better pay and benefits for doing pretty much the same amount of work. And knowing that we could all lose our jobs in a few months - that doesn't help morale either. I've worked there for 17 months now and I'd say that my company has lost on average about an employee a month since I started. The turnover rate is horrible - mostly because they don't pay very well for the field, and because they don't make any effort to retain quality people.
   
   
4. I do like working with many of the people and departments that I've had the opportunity to do projects for. I enjoy some of these quite a lot, and wish that those departments could be convinced to create (or share) a GIS position. I'd be first in line to apply for it, if they did.
   
   
5. I like my work area and desk space that I have right now. Having a semi-private office with a wall of windows has improved my outlook and I feel much more motivated and comfortable. I do wish that there were more options for flexible work schedules and/or possibilities to work from home. But, my boss is much more flexible and understanding than others that I've had in the past though and I'm very thankful for that. Case in point - I'm home today with a toddler who threw up in the middle of the night and I can 'enjoy' the sick day without feeling incredibly guilty for having called in.
   

So what are your 5 likes and/or dislikes about your job? Head on over to Becca's Buzz to share yours and check out more!

Give Me Five #4 - Goals or hopes for 2008

The topic for this week is, "Give Me Five hopes or goals you have for the new year!"

We aren't supposed to list 'Resolutions', but goals or hopes. I like this idea better since I have a horrible track record at keeping resolutions anyway.

Here are my five wishes, hopes and goals for 2008, not in any particular order:

1. Schoolwork. I thought of this one while driving into work this morning, since the girls are back at school today. I have a really hard time sitting down with them and doing any school work that doesn't need to go back the next day. Abby brings home words to learn, plus spelling words and I usually completely forget about them. Hannah brings home nursery rhymes with questions we're supposed to answer about how many words in each line, which line is shortest/longest, etc. And out of all of them that she's come home with since school started, how many have I sat down and done with her? One. I mean it's not like she absolutely needs the help - the child is starting to read on her own already. But I feel like she is (and I am) missing out by not sitting down and going through it anyway, and it'll help promote better homework skills later on. So I'm determined to remember to do this every night.
   
   
2. Finances. I hope - really, really hope - that 2008 is the year that we will finally, after 4 years and a bankruptcy, get caught up financially to where we're paying everything on time. And once we're caught up, my goal is not to let things ever get so behind again.
   
   
3. Health. I know I've said this before, and I've been absolutely horrible about doing anything to change it, but I really need to get my weight and my health under control. We need to start eating better as a family, and I need to find a way to be more active as well.
   
   
4. Potty. I hope very much to have Becca potty trained this year. She'll be 2 in a couple of weeks, so it's not an unrealistic goal, and she's definitely interested - she sits and goes on the potty pretty much at every diaper change. So we just need to keep her excited about it until she has the bodily control to stay dry when she's not wearing a diaper. After 7 total years, we may actually be looking at the end of diapers!
   
   
5. Stress. This goes along with #3 a bit, but I'd really like to find a way to either lower my stress or learn to handle it better. What that will entail, I have no idea at this point, but I'm going to try to work on it.

So what are your 5 hopes or goals for the New Year? Head on over to Becca's Buzz to share yours and check out more!

Give Me Five Monday #3 - Christmas/Holiday cards

The topic for this week is, "Give Me Five things about Christmas/Holiday cards: buying them, getting them ready, sending them, receiving them, displaying them, tips for recycling them, getting/sending 'family newsletters', traditions, pictures, etc."

Christmas cards are one of my most and least favorite parts of the Christmas season. I love getting them, and I love the feeling of satisfaction I get after I've dropped all of ours off at the post office to go out. However, the process of getting them out - probably causes me more stress than almost any other part of the holidays. So here are my five things about Christmas cards!

1. I have multiple categories of different types of people who get different types of cards. For example, I send Hanukah cards to my dad's family since they're Jewish and it just wouldn't make sense to send Christmas cards to them, but I don't want to exclude them either. I send Christmas cards to everyone else. Some people get our annual holiday letter (usually those people we're not in regular contact with during the year), and some don't (obviously those people who we see or talk to often enough that they don't need the update). Just about everybody gets pictures, but some may get 'originals' versus the color photocopies that we make. Several years ago I created an Access database (yes, I am a geek!) to keep track of it all so I didn't go nuts just figuring what gets sent to whom.
   
   
2. I usually buy my cards on sale - as cheaply as possible, but only pick designs that I truly like. It's not uncommon for me to send out several designs if I can't find enough in one style for everyone. I think I usually send out somewhere around 75 cards total.
   
   
3. This year, we had our holiday pictures taken late, so they won't be ready until Thursday. I'm hoping to have everything else done before then, so I can just slip the pictures or copies into the envelopes, seal them and be good to go. We'll see if I get the time to do the rest before then. I need to buy more cards (including the Hanukah ones), hand-write a message and sign our names in each one, make, print and put on our address labels and return address labels, finish writing, proofreading and print the holiday letter, and buy and stick stamps on each envelope. Yikes.
   
   
4. I always display all of the cards that we receive - it's another form of holiday decoration in our house. When I was growing up, we had a certain portion of wall where we taped all of the cards up and I've adapted that in many of the apartments and such that I've lived in. In our previous house, we had an archway between the living and dining rooms and that's where I hung all of the cards that we received. I loved how festive it helped make the house look and feel. In our current house, it's been more of a challenge to find a good place to display our cards. I usually hang them off of the top of our slider in the kitchen and last year also was able to use the memo board that I put up in the living room as a solution for greeting cards as well. I do still miss having an archway though.
   
   
5. After Christmas is over, I sort through the cards as I'm taking them down. I keep the ones with designs that I really like and throw the rest away. I have vague ideas of fun holiday crafts that I could do with the ones that I keep, but unfortunately so far they just sit in piles in my craft cupboard. If I ever get caught up with my scrapbooking, I'd like to maybe incorporate some of them in with my holiday scrapbook pages.

Here's my memo board all full of cards last year:

And the ones I hung off of the slider. If people included photos of their families or kids, I stuck the picture right on the glass, so we could enjoy seeing all of them. The reason the pictures, and the snowman window clings, are all up so high was to keep small fingers and kitty paws from being able to reach them...

So what are your 5 likes or dislikes about Christmas/Holiday cards? Head on over to Becca's Buzz to share yours and check out more!

Give Me Five Monday #2 - Christmas trees

The topic for this week is, "Give Me Five things you like and/or dislike about Christmas trees (putting them up or fond memories, favorite ornaments or tree toppers, etc.)".

Well, we just put ours up and decorated it yesterday, and the likes (and dislikes) are fairly fresh in my mind. So here are my five!

1. Probably my biggest dislike about Christmas trees is the whole process of putting on the lights. This is something that Ron and I have fought about every year that we've been together and had a tree. Not about what kind of lights or anything like that, mind you. No, we fight because I like to have the lights pushed back into the tree branches so they peek out and you don't see the wires. Kind of adding some mystery to it... Ron's way of putting the lights on has usually involved just winding the wires around the tree because he wants to get it done quickly. So every year, he puts the lights on and then gets annoyed with me when I start moving them around or asking him to be more careful. He stomps off and I proceed to completely re-do the lights myself - correctly. ;) But I do have to say that he did an awesome job this year and there was no fighting, no stomping and no re-doing! So much for my argument for getting a pre-lit tree... :)
   
   
2. Another thing I dislike about Christmas trees is the tendency for them to shed needles all over the floor. And I have to say that in my experience, both real and artificial trees are guilty of this one. The number of artificial pine needles that currently need to get vacuumed from my living room floor would testify to that as well. I remember one year in my college apartment when we got a real tree (a very small one!) and the poor thing completely dried up before we took it down. i think it lost 95% of its needles in the doorway as I tried to squeeze it through and it took me hours to pick up all of the darn things out of the carpet.
   
   
3. So ok, enough with the negative! Because there are many more things that I like about Christmas trees than dislike. Really! I love to sit in the living room with only the tree lights on and watch them twinkle and glow through the branches and see the ornaments sparkle. It's just so peaceful and beautiful.
   
   
4. I love seeing my kids' excitement for everything involving the Christmas tree. Putting it up, decorating it, re-decorating it with all of the ornaments that either fall or are knocked off by Becca or the cats... It's so exciting to know that we're making memories that will last them a lifetime, just as my memories of my childhood Christmas trees are still with me today.
   
   
5. I love all of our ornaments. I collect Christmas ornaments so most of ours have a story behind them. There's the ones that I bought on our honeymoon. The ones I've bought on other trips we've taken. The ones that people have given to us as gifts. The ones we've bought for the girls. And one box of very special ones - ornaments that I treasure and don't even always put out on the tree for fear of something happening to them. The shiny glass balls, bells and stars from the Christmases of my youth. And from my mom's youth as well - since the same ones adorned her family's Christmas trees back when she was a child. And someday I hope to pass them down to my girls as well.
   

So what are your 5 likes or dislikes about Christmas trees? Head on over to Becca's Buzz to share yours and check out more!

Give Me Five Monday #1 - Birthday

Becca from Becca's Buzz has started a new meme! I'm coming into it a few weeks late, but I thought it was something fun to do for Mondays, and hey - I love her blog (not to mention her name, LOL!). So this is how it works:

"Each week, I will put out a random topic from my list of topics and you share 5 answers of your choice on the given topic and link back here! You can add photos, links or stories or just a simple list of your own of 5 things that relate to the topic as it pertains to you and your life experiences. It doesn't have to be in any order of importance unless otherwise specified."

So the topic for this week is, "Give Me Five things you like and/or dislike about your birthday". Well, I just had my birthday a couple of weeks ago, so here's what I liked or disliked about this particular one, plus a few other things I thought of as well.

1. I love, love, love getting presents! Especially when they're picked out just for me by my 3 little girls, or when they're a complete surprise...
   
   
2. Speaking of surprises though, I absolutely cannot stand surprise parties. Actually I'm not big on birthday parties for myself in general. I hate being the center of attention - it was something I really struggled with at my wedding and baby showers too. I've had one surprise birthday party in my life - Ron and a friend/former co-worker threw it for me while Ron and I were still engaged. It was a complete surprise and I'm still not sure if I've forgiven them for it (ok, just kidding there. It was 8 years ago...).
   
   So to recap - surprises that come in little boxes with bows on them - yes. Surprises that involve people jumping out and shouting 'surprise' at me - no. :)
   
   
3. I love having little girls say and sing 'Happy Birthday' to me. Especially when they're toddlers who wander around the house muttering, "Hap Birdy Mommy" over and over again. Nope, can't get enough of that!
   
   
4. I love all of the freebies that you can get on your birthday. I just need to find more of them. :)
   
   
5. I'm starting to be a little wary of birthdays lately, especially since I'm now on the 'far' side of 30 and headed ever closer to that big 4-0. I just don't feel anywhere close to old enough to be nearly 40!

So what are your 5 likes or dislikes about birthdays? Head on over to Becca's Buzz to share yours and check out more!