Nap Much Needed
I had such a tiring, stressful, exciting, fun week that I had to take a nap this afternoon to recover. I never ever nap but I was falling asleep watching the Little League World Series so I just had to lie down. And I slept for FOUR hours!
Now I'm watching Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in HD on TNTHD. It's amazing! Oh, dear. Haldir just died at Helm's Deep. So sad.
Fifteen Years of Fun
Fifteen years ago Monday I arrived at San Francisco International Airport for the start of a volunteer year with an environmental non-profit organization. Eight months later my boss offered me a full-time job as Office Manager and Bookkeeper. Yesterday, my co-workers threw me surprise party celebrating those fifteen years of service. Yes, I am still working for the same organization but for a little bit more money than my volunteer stipend of $45/month!
I was told of a special all-staff meeting at 12:30pm on Thursday so suspected it might be something me-related but I couldn't be sure. Our ED's birthday is today so there was also a lot of furtive movement about the office related to surprising her with flowers and such. However, she was the one who had entered the meeting into our office calendaring system so I remained suspicious. However, I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it as I had the audit to contend with!
I arrived in the conference room and there were two pies sitting with a pile of plates as well as several bars of various flavors of chocolate. My boss came over beside me and announced that we were there to celebrate my fifteen years. I was a bit overcome and really can't remember what he said but I was presented with a heavy package wrapped in thick gold paper and bound with binder twine accompanied by a lovely, clever, entertaining note from our founder (who is leaving us after 25 years in December) which I attempted to read aloud through my tears.
The package contained three books: The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (what would happen to the earth without humans) and two baseball-related ones. I look forward to reading all of them. Our founder also presented me with some amazing note cards constructed with photos taken by her partner. They are truly beautiful and I can't imagine sending them off to anyone. I'll have to keep them for myself.
Our ED was celebrated with a bouquet of organic flowers, we sang Happy Birthday, then we passed around the strawberry-rhubarb and banana cream pies and chocolate with almonds and caramel as several of my long-time co-workers shared stories about me. It was very lovely; I just wished someone had remembered to provide tissues.
Audit Week
So this week has been Audit Week for me and I had been a little worried after our pre-audit meeting last Monday. It turns out it was for no good reason.
The fieldwork is done and it felt easier than last year. I think all the notes they took last year helped since they hardly bothered me at all. They were happily working up in the library for three days and only rarely ventured down to my office. And the senior auditor was here for barely half a day and spent about 5 minutes talking to me. Last year she called me after the fieldwork and had lots of suggestions for how we could be doing things better. I'm curious to hear what she says this year after reviewing the work the others did this week.
Each year I take lots of notes of what they ask for and I encourage them to let me know if they want me to be doing anything different in preparing my work papers. I think reviewing those notes from last year really helped me this time.
Too many women work on this floor.
One stall in the bathroom isn't enough.
Whenever I checked someone was in there.
My bladder is complaining.
So am I.
I sent my files over to the auditors today at 4pm and felt such a great sense of accomplishment that I decided to leave the office early.
On my way home I remembered some potential bad news that came up during the pre-audit meeting yesterday with the Audit Committee (me, my boss, his boss, the auditors, a Board member and an outside advisor/former Board member). The audit will have some different procedures this year. Instead of testing many areas lightly, they will test fewer areas more heavily.
I'm a bit aprehensive about it since I don't really know what to expect. I fear I will get into trouble for not being careful enough. My boss and I tend to let things slide a bit too much because we trust each other and the rest of the staff and don't always insist enough on proper approvals and documentation.
A big part of what the auditors will be looking for is proper internal controls. I think we've been improving in the area of having more people involved in approval processes and oversight but it might not be good enough and we might have to get written up for it. I sure hope not!
I was scanning my books through the self-checkout machine this morning when I heard the following phrase projected throughout the circulation desk area:
"Do you want to take this outside?"
"I get off at 5," mumbled the check-out clerk.
"You are always rude to me," continued the father, cradling his little girl whom he had plopped upon the counter.
"I get off at 5," repeated the clerk, glad he had a counter between himself and the irate dad.
"Who is the idiot who hired you? Who is the idiot who hired you? Who is the idiot who hired you?" (I swear, he said it three times!)
I had jury duty today and the nice thing is that I can check the courthouse website the evening before to see if I have to actually report the next morning. Lucky me, I didn't have to.
The bad thing is that there's an afternoon session as well so I had to wait until 11am to see if I'd have to go in. So I did a little work at home in the a.m. then checked the website at 10:50 and they already had updated the page to say no one was needed for the afternoon either. Lucky me again!
I showered and headed out for work. I checked the closest BART station for parking spots but there were none so I went my usual station figuring I could park in a nearby lot and walk in if there weren't any places in the BART lots. I checked a couple of the closest lots anyway just in case. And lucky me, there was a spot just waiting for me!
I made it to work before 1:30 and worked until about 7:30. I didn't check the BART schedule to see when the next train was and at that time of night I could be waiting 20 minutes if I just miss one. I got down to the platform and a train was sitting there waiting with the doors closed. A minute or so later, the doors opened again. Now if you think I'm going to tell you that was my train, you'd be wrong. But the next one, a couple minutes later, was. So it was the perfect end to my lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky day.
August is audit month at work. It's my big annual test to see if I'm doing my job properly. It's always a stressful time and I get on people's nerves by asking them for lots of papers.
This year my auditors requested that they do the fieldwork a week earlier than normal because they had another job the week of the 20th. I said okay even though I was already going to be a bit behind from doing production on the magazine. I knew I didn't have any other layout jobs after that so I could concentrate fully on prepping for the audit. This week has been crazy trying to get all the schedules done to send over to their office next week before they get here. I think I could've done it but today I got some good news.
The senior auditor told me that one of the two junior auditors who normally work on our audit is leaving their company and the other one is on vacation the week we had scheduled. So she wanted to push it back a week! I was so happy. I now have all next week to finish things up. Yea!
The elevator here at the office has been out for repairs since Wednesday. We've all had to climb the four or five flights of stairs to get to work. I was happy I planned ahead and brought lunch so I didn't have to go out in search of food.
The stairs are pretty awful though. The treads are made of concrete which is broken in a lot of places. So you're walking along and it feels like you might fall through at any moment. I know it's just lying on top of metal but still.
And the lighting in the stairs is haphazard. Some fixtures are really bright and others are non-existent. One morning I forgot to exchange my sunglasses for my regular ones and I was stumbling around in the dark. You'd think if the building managers force us to take the stairs, they would at least put in light bulbs!
A couple people have alerted me that they tried leaving very witty, insightful comments to my last post. However, it appears that because I left my reactions to Deathly Hallows as a really long comment, Blogger refuses to accept any more for that post.
So please respond here if you wish...
I finished HP and the Deathly Hallows at 3am this morning but I was too tired to post anything before grabbing some Zs. I was very happy with the book overall and you can read more details (and spoilers) in the comments...
With only a couple days until the release of the seventh and final installment in saga of our favorite wizard, Harry Potter, I'm actually getting quite nervous. Nervous to see what scrapes he and his pals will get up to, sure, but really it's his final fate that has me on edge. Would Jo be so bold as to leave us crying?
I hear there are all kinds of spoilers all over the internet which I'm trying very hard to resist so please no comments or emails with the latest rumor you've heard. I'd like to see what Jo has come up with for us with nothing to ruin it.
CAUTION: Spoiler Alert
I went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last week and it was great. I had purposefully kept my expectations low—since I had not been so happy with HP and the Goblet of Fire—but I didn't need to.
Number Twelve Grimmauld Place and the DA and Harry's detentions with Umbridge and the Hall of Prophecies were all like we had dropped into them out of the book. I especially liked the purring, meowing kitty plates mounted on the walls in Umbridge's office. The sound design made me want to look around the theater for all the kittens who had escaped from the pet store. (and to take one home, of course)
New additions Kreacher, the thestrals and Mrs. Figg were well done but the best has to be Luna Lovegood. I'm so glad she was given several scenes in the movie in which to shine. Lucius Malfoy was again a superb bad guy and this time he had sexy fighting robes and a new evil sidekick, Bellatrix Lestrange.
The only complaint I have is that I wished it could've been twice as long. So much that I loved in the book was sacrificed to tell the story within a reasonable time. Here are some of the things they had to omit:
Yes, that's right. Not trash can, trash car.
I was filling up my tank (10 gallons for $31) at the ARCO after work this evening when I noticed something sticking out of the driver's side back door. I tugged it out and it was a candy wrapper! Of a sort I would never eat. (soft centers? yuck) There was something else stuck further in so I unlocked the door, opened it, and another wrapper fell out.
Someone has been using my car as a trash receptacle and I don't like it. I guess it could be worse. At least it wasn't gum.
I was happily working along last night finishing up a few items before leaving for our brief one-day midweek holiday when I remembered I needed to get to my library before it closed at 8pm. I had two books on hold that I wanted to pick up to read today.
I hurried as much as I could all the way back home: from rushing through the July 4 holiday vacationers in the City, to pre-walking through the BART train so I was positioned for a quick departure from the station, to speeding along the surface roads and taking the highway, to just skimming the back end of a yellow light...
but I was 5 minutes too late. The lights were off and the sign read "Your Library Is Closed." I'm just glad the date by which I must pick them up or risk paying a fine is Saturday. I still have some time.
So far they've excavated a few rectangular blocks of pavement from the pink marked-off lanes. Then they replaced them and covered them with fresh black goo. The next day there were more pink lanes going almost the entire length of the street (it's not very long). I think a saw a machine that was slicing through the pavement along the lanes as I left one morning but I haven't seen any more signs of excavation. It's all very curious.
I almost ran over a guy in the middle of my street this morning when I left for work. Luckily he was wearing an orange reflective vest as he was surveying so I swerved to the right.
When I turned onto my street this evening I saw odd bright pink markings on the tarmac at regular intervals leading up to a lane a couple feet apart bordered by long pink stripes. Either someone was decorating or there's possibly going to be some road work delays in my future.
I was at the office later than normal last night and when I got to my car at the BART station I was shocked to see it was almost 9:00 because it was still so light out. Then I realized what day it was: the summer solstice.
I hope you enjoyed the longest day of the year!
So by now you must've noticed the addition to the top of my sidebar: the Countdowns from MuggleNet.
With just 27 days until the movie comes out, it's time to be planning our reading schedule to prepare. Or are you just going to watch the movies? I think I'll try re-reading everything. If I time it right, I can have books 1–5 read before the movie and then read HBP.
The Order of the Phoenix is one of my favorite books of the series but after my disappointment with the last movie, my hopes are not too high for this one. I'm looking forward to Luna appearing and Hermione being a mover and shaker behind the DA. Well, we'll just have to wait and see. (can't wait!!)
Can you believe it's only a little over a month until The Deathly Hallows is out? Have you ordered yours yet? Sorry, Sal, but I ordered mine from Amazon. (I'm a bit worried that they'll try to deliver it on that Saturday to the office. I may be sitting here at home for two days while the rest of the world is reading TDH! Perhaps I should consider staking out the office until the UPS guy arrives.)
Are you sad yet that the story is ending? Who do you think is going to die? I'm thinking it'll be Ron. I hope it's not Harry. I hope I can resist reading the end before I get to it. It'll be so hard. (can't wait!!)
So I figured out why I was so confused when I started reading For a Few Demons More. I was able to fly through the first books in the series as I was lounging around being sick this week. There were only a couple days when I didn't feel up to reading much. As I started the fourth book, A Fistful of Charms, it just didn't seem familiar. In fact, I had never read it at all! Well, I'm glad I gave up on FaFDM or I would've missed a fun romp over the Mackinac Bridge.
