Having to Work for a Living

My sister said to me the other day......."Dawn, Now you're a TGIFer like the rest of us." That couldn't be more true. I lay out my clothes every night and get up early, get dressed and go to work. No more working in my slippers and jammies. So sad...... Do I miss it? Not really. I worked from home (or from an airplane/hotel room) for 12 years and it wears on you. When you find yourself engaging the drycleaner in mindless conversation you know you are starved for human face to face contact. I was even finding myself slipping into a bit of a depression from that lack of facetime.

But on the bright side, I'm happy as a clam. Today I walked around downtown Los Angeles in my Ralph Lauren 3/4 sleeve shirt just looking like a little executive. With my 21st floor access card and parking pass in my pocket I felt like a million bucks. Every jobsite I go to is thrilled to see me. Everyone is so friendly. Today I got my hard hat and safety vest. I should take a picture of me wearing them and post it on the blog, eh. I'm doing challenging work, there is no end in site to the to do list, my new vehicle should be here next week, and I couldn't be happier. I'm almost too busy to blog!

I'll try to put some more interesting stuff up here soon. Sorry about all the boring shit but as you can imagine my life has been one big emotional roller coaster lately.

Some Nights Are Not Like All Other Nights....

Tonight is Passover, a traditionally Jewish holiday celebrated by having a Seder in one's home on the first and 2nd night. The reason I say traditionally Jewish is that nowadays many non-Jewish people attend Seders and some Churches are having them too. There are many traditions and specific moments to having a passover Seder. One is the asking of the four questions, normally by the youngest child able to recite them. One of the four questions is "Why is this night different from all other nights?" This is to highlight that this meal is different in many ways from other meals eaten throughout the year.

Well this year will be different at our house for sure. We normally have a large Seder sometimes as many as 22 people. We rent tables, chairs, napkins and tablecloths and Dena cooks for days. Usually by the time people start showing up we are so exhausted its all we can do to run the Seder. Tonight we will have only 8, oops, 7, one cancelled. Dena's parents aren't coming because of her dad's shoulder surgery so we decided to keep it small. It's 5:00p the night of the Seder and I actually have time to blog. Amazing. We're usually stressed out too. Not this year. It's kind of nice being all calm and relaxed. I love it!

The traditional passover meal consists of celery dipped in salt water to signify tears, maror a mixture of nuts and dried fruits to signify mortar, matzah (unleavened bread), four cups of wine (my favourite), beef brisket (I think the brisket is a family tradition), matzah ball soup, hard boiled egg (I think this one is for the circle of life), gefilte fish (yuck), horseradish, and some token vegetable. I LOVE seders. They have lots of yummy food and I just love the tradition.

Happy Pesach to all.

First Day on New Job

Well, I know it's Wednesday night but it's been a whirlwind couple days and I wanted to write about my new job. It's actually been quite exciting and a lot of fun but brain draining. It's basically like sticking a fire hose in my mouth and turning the water on full blast and trying to not dribble a drop. Impossible. Just a lot of information to take in but I'm getting there.

Most importantly the people seem quite nice and I look good in my new Brooks Brother "never iron" shirts. If you don't have these and need a couple nice shirts but don't want to pay for dry cleaning your wrinkled cheapie Gap shirts, then these are for you. They are nicely tailored and well made. I even received a couple compliments from some of the gals in the office on my pink one today. Yes people, I bought a pink solid shirt. My mother would be proud. On the way to the shopping mall I happened to be talking to her and she said, "don't buy all dark colors dear." Imagine that, pink looks damn good with black pants!

Oh, and guess what! It's all the sodas/water/beverages you can drink, for free, stocked fridge with yogurt and other things, fresh fruit delivery every week and lots of snacks too. I'm in heaven. I need to munch on something every couple hours to keep the brain power going so this is going to work out nicely. It's the little things! Well, gee, I guess there was more to tell than I thought, so I'll have to write more tomorrow.

This Blog and I

Have been through a lot. I've shared my thoughts and my life with all of you since 2004. Seems like a long time, eh. I've blogged about our bathroom remodel, the drunk plumber, my grandmother's passing, Hawaii, our road trip to Santa Fe, Antarctica and the list goes on and on. Every year I increase the number of posts year over year and frankly I find blogging to be somewhat therapeutic. Blogging after all is named after "web log" which in essence is a diary.

Today, my last day as an employee of Mitel ends one chapter in my life and begins another. While for reasons that should be obvious to you I did not blog about the interview and hiring process but I do plan on blogging about the new job. I've cleaned out Big Red. My Dodge Magnum company car. Do all of you know why it's called Big Red? Two friends of mine (gay fellows) upon first seeing my new car exclaimed that it looked like a Big Red Penis. Hence the nickname was born. Do I mind riding around in something that was called a big red penis, nah....to me, it's just Big Red.

So, on the kitchen floor sits a box filled with all the paraphernalia that is a necessity in Southern California for a vehicle. After all, we spend a lot of time in them around here. The saddest part is Yoda, sitting quietly on the kitchen counter looking out the window at Big Red. Yoda is my talisman of sorts, a gift from a good friend, that hangs on the rear view mirror. I know Yoda is sad to see Big Red go, but soon a new vehicle will be there and Yoda will be guiding it through the highways and byways on it's new adventures.

Gasoline Can't Reach 4 Dollars a Gallon

The look of shock on President George W. Bush's face when recently asked the question of when he thought gasoline prices would hit $ 4 a gallon was priceless. Since he hasn't bought gas for eight years how would he even know what the price of gas was? And how would he be able to comprehend how every nickel that gas rises affects peoples' ability to afford other staples, like food and rent. Even if he wasn't the dumbest president in history, politicians in general just cannot understand how diesel being $ 4.49 a gallon ripples across every aspect of regular people's lives. One of my recent favorite Bush moments is his shock on video at $ 4 a gallon, check out the video clip here.

These are pictures I took of just 3 gas stations during my drive around town the other day. What isn't in the picture is even worse, the price of diesel. The average price of diesel I see around town this week is about $ 4.49. Wow. That's a lot of money. When shopping for my new company car the salespeople I had the displeasure of speaking to said that they have people coming in with suburbans, Durangos, Range Rovers, etc and trading them in for Prius's, Corollas, etc. The cycle continues....where will it go next?

One of the hardest things I've ever done

I tossed and turned most of the night. I knew the day had arrived to do one of the hardest things I've ever done and do it for the first time, ever. It was with mixed feelings that I approached the phone this morning to make the phone call to my boss to give my two weeks notice. I like my boss. I like his boss. I like all the managers that I'm directly involved with at Mitel. It feels like we're a family. We've been through quite a bit together over the last decade. That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger and brings you closer. That's what has happened to the group of people left at Mitel, we've become a close knit group and my heart was very heavy.


I haven't been able to blog about any of the goings on regarding changing jobs until today. I am excited to be moving to a new growing company where I know I will make great contributions and continue to grow and learn. I'm thrilled to have a slew of new challenges ahead of me but I'm also sad to be leaving Mitel where we all kind of grew up together. We all learned VoIP from the ground up, lived through dozens of layoffs and years of hard times but sometimes opportunity knocks and you must answer. I decided to answer the door and I liked what was on the other side.


I hope that all my Mitel colleagues wish me well and know that I will miss each and every one of them.