Four point WHAT?!?

That would be a big O there, yah... 4.0.... lets hear it now, who's da bomb diggity?

I suppose it doesn't really count yet since I'm still in my first quarter, but I'm still pretty dang proud of it. School this time around is SOOOOO much easier. Work is tiring, but I always have enough energy and time for my school and school work. It does help that I like most of the people in my classes too. I've made friends with a few of the guys there, they are a hoot. Not many girls to make friends with, unfortunately, and the few there are have such a busy schedual that talking for them is something you do on the go and on the phone. Not my kind of scene. The guys far out number us women, and the ones I've made friends with are pretty awesome. They help me out as much as the teachers do.

Work hasn't been all that bad with school either. I go late Monday nights, till ten, and early Saturday mornings so I have to take off early from work each Saturday. The first time I had to leave early my belt manager took over my trucks. I was told the following Tuesday by all four of my drivers that this was an unacceptable alternative, so I have been teaching others to take over. This las Saturday I had a girl who had only been with us for three days thus far and I was hesitant to leave her there alone. My belt manager assured me he'd be there to help her out. This morning I was told to leave her on my trucks and to go load my old trucks since the guy who should have been on them couldn't make it in, so I did. As soon as the drivers got to the terminal I had all four of mine down around my old trucks telling me that I needed to throw a fit and demand to be back on their trucks. They were disgruntled with the load they came in to yesterday (Monday) and weren't blaming it on the new girl, but they certainly were not going to train the new girl through peak and if I wasn't going to say something they were going to throw fits with whomever they could corner long enough to do so.

I am loved!

Hahaha! It was nice to hear that they wanted me back so badly. I may be on the bottom of the totem pole, but you know what the bottom does, right? We are the support, the foundation, the life blood of the rest of the totem. With out us the whole thing would fall apart. I am very much valued, if not by management at least by the drivers. We make or break their days, and they in turn can make or break a managers career. I hold waaaay more power than anyone gives me credit for, and I know how to use it if I need to. Muahahahahahaha...

That's all for now, my general update for everyone out there wondering how things are going. One of these days I'll actually figure out the whole picture thing here and upload all of the pictures of Abby and Lance. Abby has gotten so big! Our upstairs neighbors puppy will dwarf her soon though, hahaha! Poor girl doesn't stand a chance against him. Any way, I need to take a nap before my head explodes. Enjoy!

College Bound

Well, not so much college bound as already IN college. I had my first class on Monday evening. See guys, I'm doing better with this updating thing! Only a couple days out from then. Any way. As disappointing as it may be to those of you who were really hoping for that restaurant and discounted food, I'm afraid I've decided to leave my cooking and writing where they are, as wonderful pass times to put me in my happy place. Instead I have given in to the part of me that I've tried for so long to deny and suppress. I'm in a computer tech program at ITT. My schedule is rather simple for this quarter and I must confess, it's so nice to be back in a class room with an idea of what I want to make myself into. This whole going back to school business is exciting for me. For the most part any way.

I know my family is excited for me, at least the majority of them. There's one defector though, one who seems bent on ruining the whole experience for me, and it's nothing new either. Dear ol dad is baffled at why on earth I would want to go back to school for. Talking to my oldest sister I think she had the right of it when she said he's never expected anything of me. I'm not sure what would hurt more though, having him expect too much of me and falling short, or my present situation where he never really expected me to do anything with my life. I was just.... one of the seven. He actually had the audacity to sit in the Financial Aid Administrators office and ask me why I was bothering with this. The FA guy was kind enough to pretend like he hadn't heard, but it was hard to ignore his next few comments about how easy college was for him and how I should just go to the community college for something more simple and then began to boast about Annabelly's full ride scholarship to BYU-I. I will never begrudge my baby sister anything, I am more than proud of her for being able to still pull out stellar academic achievements amidst a sea of family drama, but it stung a bit that my own dad thought it appropriate to point that out while I was in the process of getting my own life on track. It's times like those that I wish I had found a guy to get married to already, to rid myself of any kind of obligation to that man.

I refuse to let him dampen my spirit, however. My instructors are very kind, the head of my program is very excited to have me there and I have many others around me who are happy to see me moving forward and have already offered helping hands. Who needs him, right? Not I, said the happy box thrower from the corner.

I bid you all adieu and will try to continue with the updates.

Buffalo Wings?

Don't ask about the title. Had to put something, so... ta da!

Just a general update, to keep the readers (however few of you there are) happy. Not much is really going on in my neck of the woods right now. Having Sariah up from BYU-I is super cool though, I don't think she realizes just how much I love and have missed her. Both of my little sisters. It's so wierd, even at 21, to not wake up and have them in the same house with me or have them be there when I get home to talk to. It's incredibly lonely actually. How the heck do those only children do this? Yikes, I can only imagine. Aside from having one of my two favoritest sisters in the whole entire world up here for a week or two more, the only good news is that we recieved a pay raise at my job. Woo! What does that mean for me? Pretty much jack since it's strictly a part time job still. There are those in the business who have been trying to get me to apply for better postitions in the company, but I've thought about that a lot and decided that FedEx is not something I want to do for life. I've been looking into going back to school, either for some kind of english major or culinary arts. I haven't decided yet. I know I'm made for more than throwing boxes though.

That's about as exciting as my life has been lately. Yay. I'll keep y'all updated. Later g-money.

Cars and all that Jazz

Shows how much I know, hmm? Well, it was kind of one of the hoses on the car, but not quite waterpump related. What ended up happening was one of the hoses to my heater core had worn down so much that it had cracked. It was made of some kind of plastic though, so I'm not too entirely surprised that it happened. That and the heatercore itself wasn't sitting tight like it should have been, so that kinda helped the normal wear and tear. The boyfriend and I spent Saturday tearing it appart and trying to find the drain on my radiator. They don't make those engines easy to get apart :( We got all kinds of antifreeze all over us. It was delicious. It's fixed though, so... wee! As a celebration (and because we had planned to do this for her birthday anyway) we took the boyfriends mommy with us up to Silvermountain on Sunday to see The Nuge play. If it's a concert, I like it, add music I like and I'll have a freaking blast. Ted Nugent is a bit too political for some people, and very outspoken about it as well, and he was the same ol' Ted Nugent this time too, but I still enjoyed the concert very very much. A beautiful setting, we got to sit in the grass, ride the gondola up, all that nice stuff. I wouldn't have traded that for the world. The boyfriend and his mom are afraid of heights though, hehehe, so the gondola was interesting coming up and going down. Both times we got put into one with one or two other interesting people. The couple we were with on the way down had found a phone earlier and were trying to get ahold of someone on there to figure out who's phone it was. Too bad it was a CdA registerd Cricket phone, so instead they had me take a picture of them for her to see and then called someone on the recently called list to let him know where her phone could be picked up at. Made me giggle ferociously.

Oy- look at the time! More later folks! Ta ta!!

Puppy Problems

I heart my dogs, very very much, but sometimes I wish I could take a break from them for a little while. Abby, sweet little thing that she is, is quite attatched to me. She hates to be away from me, waits till I'm sitting down to lay down in her kennel to go to sleep at night and wraps herself around my feet at every turn. She's big enough to trip me now, but small enough to be just out of sight. George is kind of hard to miss, he just sits there, in the way, all the time. He's a big lump 'o' love, but very slow moving. And Abby looooves to be outside, but only if I'm out there with her, which is a problem. Even with George out there with her she barks and bays and generally causes a rucuss if I happen to go inside for a few minutes. Oh heavens no, if she can't see me, the world is ending. I've been reading up on how to break her of this, but so far nothing has worked. Any insights or suggestions are more than welcome. I would greatly appreciate anything. George has been having some issues lately so we have to take him back in to the vet to see what we can do about that. He's getting to be as bad as ME having to go to the doctor! We are a pair, George and I.

Aside from the dogs I've been having a wonderful time with my car. As busy a life as I seem to be leading at the moment, that car is invaluable to me. I got out of work this morning, getting ready to hop in my car and drive home when I realized at the same time three other people realized that there was some kind of fluid leaking and it was coming from my car. >.< Not what I need after waking up at three to get to work so I could work my buns off for practically nothing and having to go home and shower and get ready for everything else I have to get done today. Someone suggested that perhaps it was oil, and there was oil mixed in with it, but there had been another incident Monday with an oil spill with one of our drivers, so thank Heavens that wasn't my case. No, in my case it was antifreeze. My loverly car let it all out. Well, most of it any way. Now, I'm not stupid, I know my cars, I could see what the problem was, but the part about this whole thing that cracks me up is that the three women who work there, myself and a few of the QA ladies, were the only ones willing to get down to see if something was still leaking or not, check the oil, check the antifreeze, dig in and check tubes, all the while being watched by the MENdrivers and MEN managers who were asking what we thought it was. Anyone else see something wrong with this picture? Mmmkay, just making sure. So yeah, as far as I can tell it's either the water pump or one of my hoses, either way I didn't want to try to drive it home, so in the parking lot she sits, leaking antifreeze everywhere. I'm sure I'll hear all about it from the building manager tomorrow, wanting to know why I just left it there instead of taking it home, and from our splendid janitor who seems to think that any kind of mess in the parking lot is a smear upon his name and honor. It'll be great. At least I have some appreciative drivers now. Rather than catching crap everytime they show up it's a "hello Maranda!" or "my goodness, heavy day, hm?" and at the end "thank you Maranda, you did so well! Have a wonderful day!" Yeah, I like my drivers much better now. Not enough to want to stay for forever like they'd like, but I do like them. One of the ladies I used to load for actually stopped me today, asked how I was doing and expressed her deep regret at me being moved off of her trucks and then asked if I would ever be interested in driving for her. A big step up in the world for Maranda that would be, mmhm. We shall see where this all goes, but for now I'm off to do... whatever... I'll catch all you cool cats later.

It's Fixed!

I'm not usually one to bug and badger, but I do find it a bit rediculous that it took like ten upset phonecalls and three house visits for Comcast to finally figure out what the problem was with our internet. The last few calls weren't as pleasant as the first few, for them anyway. I got very insistant and.... welll, borderline pissy with them till they finally listened to what I was saying and the guy who came out listened to everything I was telling him was going wrong. To you, last Comcast guy, I am sorry I was upset.

Anywhoo... So there haven't been any other near-misses with cars lately, nothing too terribly exciting going on here except that my sweet little Abby puppy is getting soooo big! She many not be human, but she's the next best thing to a baby I made. I absolutely love her. When we brought her home she was small enough to fit in the crook of my arm and now it makes me grunt when she jumps in my lap! I still love the little white tip on the end of her tail though, it only grows with her, never gets smaller. It's so freaking cute! She has a great time with my old doogie George. He's losing weight too. For those of you who don't know and actually happen upon this, George is the dog we had as a family dog for a very long time when we all finally left home. He stayed with dad for a while after we all left, but when he started gaining weight, losing hair and really just not being the dog we all knew and loved, I took him home with me instead. We still need to do a few tests to see what we can do about his hair loss, but he is losing weight finally. Instead of a torpedo on legs he's got a little bit of definition in his body. It took him a while to get used to Abby's rambunctious nature, but they get along so well now. It's absolutely adorable to watch them play together and then lay down flat on the floor, exhausted. One of these days I'll get a picture of the two of them sitting next to eachother. George likes to lick the top of her head some times. Cracks me up!

Hm, so I guess there is one more thing going on in the life of Me. I'm looking for a different job finally.

For those who are interested in why, you know how to reach me.

Until next time my sweets.

Grrargh!

Apparently no one has actually found their way to this new blog yet, which is OK, but I will say this one brief thing and then I must go.

Comcast SUCKS.

This is all. You may be on your way.