sunflowery's Diaryland Diary

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Welcome to Minne-so-cold!

OK, I headed your and my doctor's advice and I have an appointment for a mammogram scheduled for January 6th at 7:30am. I am NOT looking forward to it.

It is sooooooo cold this morning! When I left our apartment, it was -5 and the high today is supposed to be all the way up to -2! Whoot! But, we did get to see a phenomenon you only get to see in cold weather areas...the Sun Dog! It is when the air is so cold that ice crystals are produced and you see a rainbow around the sun. Today's sun dog was big and bright and beautiful but only appeared on one side of the sun. It was lovely, but I don't think it was worth all this cold weather.

It is so cold that my car does not get warmed up and defrosted by the time I get to work. I only work 4 miles away and it takes, maybe 5 minutes to get into work. I even parked my car outside Caribou this morning and left it running while I ordered and it STILL was not warm by the time I got to work.

There was a guy in Caribou this morning only wearing a sweater. I don't care if you go from heated garage to heated garage...if that guy had had an accident or car trouble and didn't have a coat with him, he would be screwed. In weather like this, you can freeze in 10 minutes! Brrr!

Yesterday my boss did something I wish she had done when I was still on the phone team. One of the many reasons I moved from phones to data was that I felt like I was doing the majority of the work. Not only was I doing my assigned servicing duties, I was also doing all the mail and all the agent copies...things that everyone was supposed to do as they had time, but no one was doing and it just piled up until I gave in and did it. Not only that, but I felt as though I was taking the majority of the calls because the other people on the call team wear doing their assigned servicing with their "busy" buttons on, instead of with their "ready" buttons on like they are supposed to do. Anyway, after I switched positions, it became painfully obvious almost immediately that I had been doing the bulk of the work because it began to pile up. And pile up. And pile up. And several people with their "busy" buttons on were not taking calls and our calls holding stats were going through the roof. People...it's been less than a week since I switched and my boss called a meeting with the phone team. But what really got her was that one of the phone team members, the one I call Prima Donna, emailed her and told her she must reassign mail and agent copies to someone else since my duties had changed. My boss was livid that Prima Donna would email her about this as it was supposed to be well known that these were things that should be done by everyone on the team. So, the smackdown was applied and everyone was told to get their butts in gear and get the work done. Prima Donna was not happy and pouted all day, but that did not stop her from perusing the QVC website throughout the day and ignoring the towering stack of mail available for her to work on. At least my boss knows I do my work. I come in for 40 hours and they get my 40 hours (and then some this week). Not so with many of my co-workers. One of whom I can see reading the CNN website right now. Hey buddy! There is mail to be done!

Tonight we are going to see Bob's dad. He lives in Alabama and we haven't seen him since our wedding. I'm not sure who he's staying with or how long he's here, but tonight it our only chance to see him, so see him we will. Bob is looking forward to it and I am hoping it is a nice reunion.

We get to see my parents this Christmas season after all which is a nice surprise. They are driving out to visit my Grandma this weekend so we will be driving down to see them on Sunday. I can't wait as I really miss them this year.

Is there anyone you won't be seeing this Christmas that you wish you could see? Leave a comment.

*************************************** A Year Ago Today: December 23, 2003: Holiday Attitudes and a Husband in Pain

Yesterday was so frustrating at work. I know it�s the holiday season, but that doesn�t give everyone license to be rude. My time is just as important as yours and I don�t appreciate being talked to as if I were just some slug on the road. I can�t count how many times I answered the phones to hear \"I need a rate!\" Ummm, OK. Is it too hard to say, \"Hi, this is Jon from ID and I need a rate, please.\"? Sheesh.I even had one banker call and ask if we could send a form to a customer. I said, sure you can, why not? and she asked if she should just call the insurance company and have them send one out. I told her she should have the form she needs right there in her training kit and she hung up on me! She wanted me to do her servicing work for her and when I wouldn�t pick up on her hint, she got mad and hung up. I had another banker call and get some bad news about a customer's request for a withdrawal from his annuity and 30 seconds later, the customer was on the phone yelling at me. The thing is, we are a back office support for bankers only and not a customer service hotline for customers. Our number is not to be given out, but rather than pass along the news and deal directly with her customer, she just gave him our phone number and had him call us to chew us out. I can only hope today goes better. Thankfully Wednesday will probably be a short day and I have Thursday and Friday off.

Sweet Baboo is not doing well. He has been feeling ill and has been having sweats and headaches and he thinks the pain patch is the cause of those symptoms. He is in pain now because he took the patches off. He has an appointment on Wednesday to see another doctor in the hopes of having some kind of prescription for pain that works. He is angry at his doctor for making him wait out the weekend before talking to him about pain alternatives. He had been on vicodin, which worked really really well, but the doctor was concerned about the number of pills he took a day to keep the pain at bay, so she started switching his prescriptions and now his pain is back and he is tired and frustrated and somewhat angry. I am hoping he calls his MD doctor and talks to the nurse there about other options and suggestions. I gave him the number, so I hope he gives them a call. They should know what to do to help minimize his pain. His quality of life goes up when his pain goes down.

I got a package from a dear friend of mine! What a nice surprise. She sent me a sweet sunflower wind chime and a really cool picture off of a box of oranges. Who knew fruit box art was so amazing?? Love it! Thanks Jennifer! A thank you is going off to you in the mail very soon.

Our cat Daisy was so funny last night. She was playful and skittish and so silly. She acts like a puppy more than a cat. She chews, she chases her tail, and she runs around checking out noises and smells. Last night she was running around and jumping on things, including Sweet Baboo. At one point, she jumped on him and was going to launch herself off his leg in order to jump on his bed, but her foot must have slipped because rather than land soundly on SB's bed, she crashed her stomach right into the side of it. It was like a cartoon when the coyote crashes into the side of the mountain. It was exactly like that, except our poor, sweet little kitty got the wind knocked out of her. She�s OK now, she just ended up settling down a little sooner than she might have before.

10:30 a.m. - Thursday, Dec. 23, 2004
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