Finally some nice weather! I assembled one of xmas presents which until now road the garage. As I was preparing to sit outside with my laptop and do homework I remembered my unassembled wooden friend, and made haste to the garage. 1/2 hour later I'm now in a far better deck sitting situation. Sylmar even likes it!

Furry cat

If I was a hick this would be fodder for days of conversation at the local five and dime. But I'm not, I just happened to have my my sidekick handy when kitten little decided to pick a fight with annie. They really throw down, and once annie was done, kitty picked a fight with my backpack. Otherwise nothing to report, back to work and school tomorrow which sucks after 6 days off to ramp up 100%.

Had shoulder surgery today and I'm doing just dandy. Waking up from surgery sucked (shakes, hungry, dry mouth, general groginess) but now I'm good. Few pics of the patient and inside my shoulder. One handed typing isn't fun either fyi.

I go under the knife tuesday for my shoulder and am off the rest of the week. Today I made my movie viewing selections for the week. Enron the smartest guys in the room, Mischief 3000, Being ron jeremy, Infamous times 50 cent, Survivor pearl islands (johnny fairplay!!!), Video groove vol 19-21 (agressive inline skating), Chairman of the board (carrottop!), Project greenlight seasons 1 & 2, The aristocrats, Zoolander, Korn live, Training day, Blow, Cannonball run 1 & 2, Thrashin, and City of god. I do not expect to get thru them all, but I've given myself plenty of options.

Few picks of the lunch room after yesterdays St. Patricks day bash.

Cats are fun, but they have to be in the middle of everything you do. Case in point, trying to place scrabble while cats parade across the table is difficult. Each and every cat jumped up and stepped on the scrabble board at least once during our 2 games. We each won 1 game.

The picture has nothing to do with the topic. I just wanted to post to my blog and wanted to attach some picture. I'm in class. Actually this picture tells a lot. First, the website up is the WA state board of accountancy, and what is showing is that I am approved to take the CPA exam. Shortly I should be getting my notice to schedule, which I will probably schedule for summer. Second, my teacher is in plaid. The reason is one time a student of his made a "Mark Hillier Action Figure" out of a Ken type of doll which looks just like my teacher. So on the last day of class he dresses just like the action figure and holds it up, its quite funny. I've had this teacher before so I know it's coming, but he hasn't broken that joke out yet. Tonight is the last night of classes for the quarter, then 2 weeks off. So the clown parade... what the hell is it with hirning people? I'm trying to fill 2 positions at work. I thought I'd have my pick of the litter when hirning. Not so. The one dude I had lined up for one job, his current company counter offered, so he decided not to come to us. Which sucks because he was the one and only strong candidate I had who would have also fit in. So I'm back to nothing for that. The other job... good lord. Brought in one temp lady, who ended up being 80 years old... I axed her after 4 hours. Call me crazy, but somehow I don't see the old woman who moves at a snails pace fitting in at the high tech company with all young people who get drunk on friday afternoons at work. So I bring in this other lady... relatively younger.. probably in her 50's. Weird as all frigging hell. She's canadian so that's a big part of it (ha ha ha). She does not shut up at all... I swear to god tomorrow I'm just going to stand there and not move, and see if she stops talking. So far you have to walk away from her to get out of a conversation. And it's not very stimulating conversation. Plus she managed to F-up the payroll this week, even though she had 2 weeks of training with the person she was replacing. So I'm all over getting her out of there asap. Best part is she think's shes temp-to-hire... which means we try them out for a month then hire them permanently if we like them. So that'll be a fun conversation, telling her we don't like her enough to keep her. The best part is now I have to find her replacement with this game plan in mind. Today I interviewed 2 more people. I think possibly someone snuck in "person much be over 60" in the job description. One of the 2 ladies today was older as well. Nice, normal... wouldn't fit in at all. The other was younger, but had zero personality. She might have just been nervous, but I was breaking out my best material and barely got a laugh out of her. Interviewing with me is like going to a stand up show where I make my wise cracks and ramble on, and inbetween I ask questions. Helps put the people at ease and get less canned answers out of them. She was a real stick in the mud though. Mainly I'm just sizing them up for personality and how intelligent they are with their responses to my questions. So none the less... I've yet to find someone who I'd actually really be excited about hiring. So for now, I'm stuck with the crazy canadian woman whose dad just died by falling off a porch and cracking his head open yet she came to work the next day anyways, talks very loudly, and excessively, and annoys the hell out of everyone more or less. Oh she's also really religous also listens to the christian music station on her computer as well. So hence, I've got a real parade of clowns. At least tomorrow is friday and the HR director already gave me the heads up she plans on getting tanked tomorrow afternoon (guess she had a bad week also), and I'm right there with her.

Okay, well 5 grand for the insurance company that is. I had a sleep study done last night since I have the odd occurance of sleep apnea (wake up not breathing...real fun). Anywhoo, as a precursor to my March shoulder surgery, they wanted a sleep study to get to the bottom of how serious or not my "condition" is. It's not, but they error on the side of caution since as fun as it would be for me to stop breathing mid surgery, it'd be more fun if I didn't die. So long story short, they'll use a breathing tube during surgery, and I got a nights stay in an ex-hotel turned sleep study center. They wired me up withabout 20 different electrodes, most on my head, I slept all night, they woke me up, I went home. The good doctor will call me to set an aapt. To go over the official results.

Just a continuation... and to clarify. Yes, we got up Saturday morning, said what the hell, lets go see if we can get ourselves to Vegas or LA for a day. Packed up a backpack each, drove to the airport. Had a few ticket agents snark at us like ummm yeah noooo we don't have any last minute tickets you losers. The Alaska woman though did look extensively at options, and said if we could get ourselves to Portland, it wouldn't be a problem. The United chap said what he would do, as a personal favor, is sell us tickets for Tuesday, but then put us on standby for the flight that afternoon, and he said we'd most likely get on the flight Saturday. Problem was it was about $260 each one way. Ouch. We opted instead to save the cash.

I should also mention I had an appointment Friday night to get my tattoo. I was looking forward to this as it was one hell of a week. Unfortunately, teh tattoo place called mid daty Friday... my artist had a death in the family, and a few mins later I was reschedule for mid-March. Ouch! Not a great end to the week.

So after our day tripping Saturday to the places mentioned, then building our cabinet, I had to work Sunday. Actually first, I had a MBA group meeting with a person from Starbucks International, who we were interviewing for a project. He was very well informed and gave us the nitty gritty on Starbucks' strategy approach to international expansion, which was interesting as I am a big Starbucks fan. Then I had to work. It went well. As much as working weekends (5th in a row!) sucks... it was good to feel finally like I was back on top of my work, as I spent the entire work catering to auditors who while somewhat friendly, are a major thorn in my side, and had me working until 8pm almost every evening, and I had to skip school the entire week. Plus with the lack of tattoo action Friday, I was right ticked. So I decided to act on a whim I had had for awhile, and get a 2nd pair of Oakleys, something less "showboaty" than my Silver framed/Fire lense ones I typically wear. As my brother Wes once said "I like a sunglass that compliments my face, not take it over". Fair enough. So i bought some black on black ones with polarized lenses. Very nice.