Holiday Party For One

This time of year I do miss working in an office where celebrations, lunches, and holiday parties are the norm. Working at home I do get my lovely Christmas decorations to enjoy around the clock, hot chocolate whenever I want to make it and Christmas music without worrying about enjoying a neighbor, but this is a super social time of year and as a born entertainer it feels like time to party!

This is my last week of work before I head off on Christmas vacation, so I am rewarding myself for pushing through my "Holidayitis" with a Holiday Party for One on Friday! :) Christmas carols will play, hot cocoa will be served and I might even through a breakfast buffet together.

Telecommuters Unite and Party together! Maybe next year I'll make the rounds of work at home meet up groups and organize a meet and greet telecommuter party!

Crazy Days

Life as a telecommuter varies for me. Some days, when I don't have a super pressing deadline, I have to force myself to focus and work steadily on tasks that are more monotonous than fun. Fortunately there haven't been too many days like that lately.

What there has been are the typical snafus that accompany working from a home office (or a desk built into the kitchen like I do :)).

Yesterday there was a parade of repair men tromping through my house. The first one showed up right on time around 2, he was the cable guy, and being completely into what I was working on I showed him to my husband's wall mounted new plasma TV and left him to fix the broken input. It wasn't until 10 minutes later when a team of Best Buy repair men showed up that I realized the cable guy was there to fix my phones, not my husband's TV. There was a bit of embarrassment on my end and chuckles from the various testosterone infused experts in the house when I went up to shuffle them around. After all that neither party could fix what they came for and both rescheduled service calls for next week. So the saga continues!

Today I woke up sick as a dog, took the day off work and dosed myself with DayQuil. After sleeping for a few hours I woke up feeling better. Having already taken the day off I decided to get some personal business done and am now feeling quite accomplished for getting my Craigslist listings up, packages mailed, books sent off for www.paperbackswap.com, a few groceries (mostly OJ and Superfood juice by Odwalla) and a tiny bit of housecleaning done.

Realizing what all I accomplished from a day free of general work (sick or not I got a few things done that have been cluttering up my desk for sometime), I am now determined to take 1 day a month off to play "catch-up" for the house!

The Drama, Dreams, and Disgusts that come with Telecommuting

I've been telecommuting for almost two years now and still there are funky hang-ups and distractions that make life interesting. Recently my "eyes' in the office, the one co-worker who didn't shun me when I left to work remotely, became a telecommuter herself. Being the literary minded person she is (and a child of the 80s, like me) she wanted to commermorate her Telecommuting journey and share it with anyone looking for a laugh!

Thus Adventures in Telecommuting was born.

Mmmmm Turkey

I spent yesterday visiting family I don't get to see often enough. I had a great time playing with my cousins, and even though it upset mom, I REFUSED to particpate nicely in any picture taking. Mom managed to grab a few action shots and made the book here.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Hope you all had great Thanksgivings and you and your families are doing great!

Holiday Entertaining

Are you hosting Thanksgiving, or baking a dish to take along somewhere? You might even be wondering what the fuss over Turkey is all about! If you here reading this then the fuss is probably more about entertaining and less about the Turkey.

The Holidays are a wonderful time to gather friends and family near, show off your Hostess skills and visit. Unfortunately we typically picture this going smoothly, with a beautiful golden brown turkey, lots of laughter and clinking glasses, everyone mingling and visiting with some kind of background music playing. While some of us might get that vision in our post turkey nap, most of us will have a more "I Love Lucy" style Thanksgiving, with a lot of rushing around, flour flying and kids stealing cookies kind of day.

Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we count down to Turkey Day with some ideas on how to be prepared and above all RELAX and enjoy the day when it arrives.

Destination Weddings

My college roommate is getting married and of course I'm helping with the wedding. They were considering a possible destination wedding, and wanted to see if it would be in their budget to take themselves and about 30 people to Hawaii. I just finished tallying up the budget. Imagine my surprise when El Paso, Texas came out more expensive than Hawaii! Now granted they are looking at 30 people in Hawaii and about 150 in El Paso, but I still expected Hawaii to be leading the charge.

Just goes to show that you should never write off what you really want until you take a hard look at the numbers. :)

Open House Tomorrow

Whohoo, Open house tomorrow! Come on buyers! :)

We're excited about a new open house. We held the last one before the house was repainted, before we made some basic repairs, and before we moved out. I know the market is a little crazy but I am really hoping to see it sold by Christmas!