Back.. Again..

Never seem to make it back here very often these days.

Getting ready to enjoy a trip to the Kansas City Zoo tomorrow.

Started looking at some of the animals there

and found some curious ones..

Of course, our favorite is Nakita the Polar Bear..

But there are some cute animals that I

don't remember seeing before..

This one is a Tree Kangaroo..

And this is a "Black-Foot Cat"...

Kinda looks like...

A normal cat?

Definitely not something you

would expect to see at the Zoo..

Right?

This should be fun minus all of the walking..

Our zoo is spread out over a large area

and although I've walked the entire zoo before,

I'm not as excited as I once was.  Lol.

There are some animals that I'm like..

Yup.  Seen 'em!

Don't reallllly need to see them again.

I'll hang back with the slower people and take our

time moseying around the front to middle

zoo area..   : )..

Besides!  Most of my favorites are closer

to the front!  Toss in my penguins

that are right next to the Polar Bears and

I'm good!

Spread out for sure!!

And that little spot in between the two big pictures?

It's got a good sized concrete bridge that is over what has

to be about a 50' gulley.  It freaks me out to walk across it..

I am NOT a fan of heights!  ACK!!!

And that swinging bridge? 

I'm ok if I'm on it by myself.

Which is hardly ever..

Yikes!!!

I think I will skip that area.

Been there and done that several times!

I'm good skipping the Gorillas!

: )..

Alrighty..

Catch ya later..

Gotta make some Rotel,

Taquitos and Pizza Rolls for our

Kansas City Chiefs party at work today!

Go Chiefs!!



Whew!

Short work week after my four day weekend and

Christmas, but lemme tell ya!

We've been making up for lost time!

Yikes.  Normally I do about 35-40 evaluated

calls in a day, today I did 82 after

working an extra 4 hours.

However, the people at Halls must have

known that I could use a little encouragement.

: )..

This is what they had to say..

 

 

Right on time, Halls!

Right on time!

 

We have one more day to go, and still have so many more

calls and operators to evaluate, but by gosh!

I'm going in for another 12 hour shift and

we will make it!  I know we can!

When push comes to shove, and our noses

are on the grindstone, we make it, and

we make it look easy!

Woot!

Go Team KC QA!

No!  Really!  Go!

Do those evals!

Misty Harvest..

Soo, after soo many days and weeks and months of drought conditions, this morning's grape harvest at the Fence Stile Vineyard in Excelsior Springs started out a little misty.  I stopped and grabbed a couple 88 cent rain ponchos on my way to meet my co-worker, who also braved the rainy start.  We were harvesting the Vidal Blanc grapes this time.  There were twelve full, lush, vibrant rows, and less than 30 people who volunteered to help.  Amazingly, twelve rows later, we gathered over 9,000 pounds of grapes, and filled eleven full crates of fruit.  It was too rainy and muddy for them to run the crusher this time, so they popped the corks on their newest wine, "Sejour", which means, "Visit".  It was pretty delish.  These were the first bottles of the new addition, they hadn't opened any before.

 

All in all, despite the mist, it was another great, therapeutic harvest.  Here are some of the pics..  : )..

 Genea pickin some of the taller grape clusters..

 We had some long, lush grapes this time..

 Some of our pickin group volunteers..

 I'm betting those grapes are going

to make one heck of a delishus wine!

Enjoying a little sweet Missouri Vignole

at the end of a long morning..

Hmm..  Missouri wines don't

taste like asphalt to me..  Of course,

then again, I don't remember ever tasting

asphalt before..  Even Missouri hicks know

better than to lick the asphalt..  Wine snobs

can keep away from alllll of our Missouri

wines.  We'll be more than glad to drink it all.

Ha!  Yummy!



: )..

 

Thank you for not making me dance like

the others when I forgot my badge..  : )..

Ouch! Ow! Ouch! Ow!

Went to a fish fry this afternoon, and had some delicious food, including some red fish from Louisiana.  Yummy!  : )..  However, as the day went on, I started to get a little bit of a headache.  It started off small, and was only noticible at times.  I should have gone ahead and grabbed some meds, but I kept putting it off, hoping that it would go away on it's own.

By the time we left?  Oooh my gosh.  : (..  Ouch!  Ow!  Ouch!  Ow! 

The entire drive home was rough. 

I took some of my Tension Headache meds, hoping it was just a tension headache.

Still no relief.

 Oooh, my poor, aching head.

I tried a Sudafed, hoping maybe it was a sinus headache.

Still no relief.

 Laid down, hoping that the meds would kick in and the pain would stop.

Still no relief.

 Thought about grabbing my ice pack and using it, but

settled for a couple Aleve pills instead.

Finally!  Whew!

Relief!

I still don't know what kind of

headache that was, but it was rough!

It had a little stabbing pain from time to time.

: (..  Luckily, that's the first time I've had one like that.

Whew.  Still had a great time at the fish fry though!

Yummy food!  : )..

Red fish, Crappie fish,

Catfish.  Jalepeno hushpuppies.

Deelishus!

I asked my friend who invited us,

do I have to catch my own fish to fry?  Lol.

Ha!  Just kidding.  I told her I would be there,

giving people a poor, starving puppy look, while

other's were eating their fish.  All I ever catch is the

junk and weeds off the bottom of the pond.  : )..

Thankfully, lol, lucky for me!

The fish were already caught,

prepared and cooked by the time

we got there.  Ha!  : )..

So we were all like this instead..

Woot!

Whew.

Time to rest again.

Workin it at work yesterday..

Whew..  Soo, our backs are once again, against the wall when it comes to finishing five rounds of evaluations on almost 800 floor operators.  There are nine of us in the Quality Assurance Department, but this month has been cahrazy.  We've had one person out sick for a few days, and then at least four of us going through our National training meetings at a time.  That doesn't bode well for getting things done.  We finally made it to the H's on our third round yesterday evening around six o'clock.

I started in the Co's, though, so that is quite an accomplishment to get all the way to the H's by the time that I left.  Whew!  I put in 63 evaluations yesterday by myself.  One other person put in 53, and then the rest of the QA's were from our evening shift workers.  But!  We were up to the H's.  And after having any overtime cut out since February of this year, we were granted 20-30 hours this month so that we might be able to hit our fifth round of evals by the 29th.  If I look at it, and the fact that we made it to the H's, I think we can do it if we can buckle down and keep people focused, but if I look at it, and the fact that we still have over 1600 evaluations left to do, and I'm only putting in 60 each day?  I'm not quite so sure if it's going to happen.  We have four people going through the training this week, and then two more are going to be assisting training next week.

I felt like I was putting so many evals in and movin soo fast, that I set off a fire alarm.  Lol.  Around 5pm-ish, we had a quick siren go off.  Tomato, Toe-mah-toe.  Potato, Poe-tah-toe.  I like my theory better than knowing that it was actually a Burglar Alarm.  Lol.  Somebody set our alarm system wrong and set the burglar alarms on the doors where everyone comes in.  Lo and behold, when someone came in the doors?  Lol.  It went off.  I still like thinkin it was me, back there setting the programs on fiyah.  And I was kinda hoping it was a fire alarm and that our firefighters would be back out there, visiting us again.  Ha!  : )..

Alrighty.  Gotta go put in some overtime.  Whew.  I'm expecting to hit close to 80 evals today.  I can do it!  Maybe.  Should be crazy.

Donated Dining Room Set

One of my QA co-workers just bought a newer glass dining room table and asked if we would be interested in their oak set. Sure! One pickup and Car load later, we have a new addition to our house. It is a bit bigger than our current table while the center board is in, but smaller when it's out. I think it will work out really well when we get it in place and our current one out. The top needs a little TLC, it's got a few water rings on it, but it's still a great looking table. I'll take better pics in the morning. The legs have a few puppy autographs too, but, lol, so does our old one. Dutch already has ideas on sprucing it up. Guess its his turn to be crafty. Doesn't sound like he's going to give me a chance to work with it. Lol. Whateva. Anyway. I'm going to try and add a link to the picture via an app called Picup on my iPhone. Not sure how it will turn out. Here it goes. Yay it worked, finally. : )..

Whew. Another successful partay..

Dang.  Whew.  Done.  Really done.  Well.  Kinda done.  Still have one guest who I'm giving a ride home to, so technically, I guess that means the party is still going.  The band packed up and left, although there was a technical party foul called by Dutch, the band was missing their banjo picker because he had another previously scheduled event going on.  Soo, technically, the band said that they still owed Dutch an actual show.  Lol.  Well, it probably won't matter once the liquor wears off.  : )..  The band travels, not only with their name, Famous Seamus and the Travelbongs, but some Apple Pie Moonshine.  Soo, you can tell, the party foul came with some discrepency that is apparently stilllll being discussed.  (eyeroll)

I'll post pics later.  Finally time to take the last partier home.  Whew.

Memorial Day Weekend..

Going to a bbq this afternoon at a co-workers house, looking forward to a nice, relaxing afternoon.

Made some black bean and corn salsa to take along.  It's super EZ and super good.  : )..

 2 cans lightly drained black beans..

 2 cans corn, drained..

 2 cans rotel, lightly drained..

 One onion, chopped well..

 Cilantro to taste, I love the smell of cilantro, I think Milo does too.  : )..  Lol.

 A little Chili Powder to taste..

 Palmful of salt..

The juice of one lime..

Rachel Ray says to microwave the lime

for 10 seconds and it will squeeze easier..

Stir together, and serve with chips..

We chose these two this time..

Alrighty, on to the bbq!

: )..

Fun with co-workers

House is being rentovated.
----
Fire Springler.
----
Holulo. (Julio)
----
Tomaro the relitir will have new tenits.
----
People walking up and down the street, one has a pet bull.
----
Please call even if the alarm does not go off.

QA Wheel of Jeopardy.. Lol.

Soo, after getting our sixth round of evaluations finished for this fiscal month, we get to have three full days of fun in our QA department.  Usually, that means catching up on computer modules or our process and procedure changes.  This time?  It's totally different.  I missed our weekly calibration meeting when I went to pick Emmy and Milo up from the groomers on Tuesday.  I came back yesterday to find a flurry of activity, a spinning wheel, a Jeopardy game tacked to our wall, and a bunch of food prizes.  I guess we were productive during my time off. 

One person in our group suggested hosting a game where we could promote the QA department and have the floor reps answer questions about our quality assurance criteria for food prizes and the ultimate grand prize of a dress down day for the winning manager's team.  Normally our center is kind of lenient and lets us wear jeans and tshirt, but dress down days, our ops can wear sweatpants and hats and it doesn't happen often. Our manager and Center Director ran with it, and within one day, we have put together a whopping amount of questions and answers and are going to spend the next two days running the game.  Wow!  This is the first time QA has ever done anything like this since I have been at ADT.  I'm sure that the floor reps are going to love it. 

It's kind of a mish mash of Wheel of Fortune since we have that super addicting spinning wheel (the last time they used it, I'm telling you, I needed a "spintervention"!  Lol!), and Jeopardy question amounts to spin for.  Each operator can only spin and answer a question one time.  If they get the answer right, they get a prize and their team gets their points.  If they answer wrong, they get a sucker instead and their team loses points.  Some of those questions are tough, so we will see who is on their game.  Lol.  It's definitely going to be a great way to spend the next couple days!

Speaking of games.  Ha!  You should check this one out.  It will mess with your mind unless you already know how it works or are able to find out.  It's called, "Regifting Robin".  It amazed us until, as I said, we finally found out how it did it.  : )..  Still pretty cool, and once I saw that it was math related, I started getting a little fuzzy on the details. 
Anyway, click Here for the game.

If you are stumped and amazed and have been driven crazy trying to figure out how it works,

highlight the following information

starting right below this:

This is how it is done..

No matter what 2 numbers you choose, when you subtract the two

numbers, it will always end up being a multiple of the number 9.

Each time you play, the answers for the number 9 multiples

(9,18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72 and 81) will always have the same answer

in the square.  Each time you play, the numbers will show a different

"regift" so it appears that it is literally figuring out which one you are thinking of.

Until right before my "Until".  Ha, hidden words, cool.  Right?

Regifting Robin is pretty slick if you ask me!  : )..  Hope you had some fun with it!

Alrighty!  Off to have some fun of my own!  Woot!

(three more days until Fergus!)

Po'Girl - Take the Long Way

This is still my favorite song right now. Woke up thinking about it.

It is sooo sweet. Havin a little late morning, going into work about an

hour late today.

The Aubrey Daniels training yesterday was good, lol, pizza from the

cafeteria, but it was pretty darn good, so that's ok. : ).. My group that

I ended up with (they split our training class into groups of five ppl),

consists of my previous manager that I worked with when I was still

a Training Assistant, one of the floor managers that I helped to train,

one of our Team Leads who has been an awesome supporter of all things

Jan when Jan has been stressed by her work duties (thanks, Beth! You

rock!), and another floor manager that I haven't had the chance to

work with before. This should be a great group.

We are the "Seeds of Synergy". It will be an ongoing group that will

attempt to collaborate with others to improve the moral of our

co-workers. Great concept, great idea and guaranteed to get great

results. We have "homework" which consists of finding one person

to apply our training skills and watch it work. This should be fun!

I have an idea of who I am going to choose! : ).. Looking forward to

getting this rollin! Woot! Alrighty, ready to get this day started!

(And ha!  I beat YouTube.  I shared and embedded my song this time.)

Meeting fun.. Yay! : )..

One more early, early, eaaarly day to go.  Whew.  I can make it!  Yay!  I get to do an "early in / early out" today.  Probably doing the second phase of the QA Rollout training this morning, yesterday's went really well.  Today's presentation is the fun one where they get to hear the actual calls we have saved.  Some are kind of funny and "shocking", such as the one where one of our operator's (I work at ADT, btw) called a jewelry store and had someone answer the phone.  When she asked for the password, the male said, "Yeah, well, I'm robbin the joint and it's ok because I'll be gone by the time the police get here."  Nice.  And yup, that was a real call.  Kind of lets our training class know not to be surprised and stymied if something like that should ever happen to them on a call.

However, yay, after having two of my QA co-workers go through the Aubrey Daniel's training that I was super dreading yesterday, I have found out a couple great, great, great things!  There is NO role play!  Yay!!!  Joy of joys!!  No role play!  They said it was sooo chock full of other information that there was literally, no time for role plays and that they really enjoyed the training presentation.  Without role plays?  I am alll for it.  It is supposed to be pushing us into a more customer experience, teaching, mentoring philosophy instead of a check list type program where we monitor whether our operators said everything that they had to say.  We've been trying to get this done for a while now, but yay, we are finally several steps closer to it.  Another thing?  Yay!  We have salad from the cafeteria, including their salad dressing, but!  The catered in lunch?  Was pizza from an outside source yesterday.  Yay!  Not that our cafeteria is bad, mind you, eh, they have some really good meals at times (like the Philly on Texas Toast, yum!), but it's kind of "Had that, been there" kind of a dealio.

So.  My day should go sooo much better, including the fact that I will get to leave shortly after the training is over instead of my usual 6:30pm.  Yay!  : )..  I actually got a fairly good amount of sleep last night, so that's a good thing!  Awesome.  Previous training programs and a severe lack of sleep for me have never been good.  Lol.  I'll leave it at that.  Alrighty!  Finally.  Let's get this day started!  Woot!

I am ready for the day!

Woot!

(Yesterday = "Oh, you have money coming back..

Ugh..  But I guess you knew that already."

Yup.  I knew that.  They don't come after you if

they owe you.  April 15th doesn't scare me.")

The difference between men and women.. Lol..

Soo, while I had a healthy respect for the power of that cold or whatever you would call it, I made it through it with minimal complaints and the medications that I was given, plus a few cough drops and Aleve.  I still wake up with a sore throat and still cough on occasion, but I'm past the worst of it.  I wasn't cranky, I wasn't short with people.  Lol.  I was even cracking jokes for the fact that I had no voice on the day that I went in to work.  I still functioned by getting up, cleaning out the fridge, getting the trash out.  I still got up with the puppies and let them out and in and out and in and back out and back in and out..  Lol.  They loved having me at home for two extra days.

However, dh came down with the exact same thing.  Totally different story.  Lol.  He's sick!  He doesn't want me asking him questions about how he's feeling!  He's sick!  He slept all day yesterday and well into this morning.  Knowing that the zpak and the codeine cough syrup never stopped my sore throat, I also got one of the Cloraseptic Max sore throat sprays.  Did he use it?  I highly doubt it.  I told him it was there.  He knows it's there because I told him about it a hundred times.  Lol.  He's sick!  Men.  I still functioned.  He's sick!  Hopefully, he will have the same results with the meds as I did.  I was feeling so much better the second day and have been feeling better by the minute.  He's sick!  Dang it!  Lol.

Update on our American Heart Challenge..  Hmm..  I'm thinking they must have been going by how much red each team had, or the fact that the other groups also included signs and symptoms..  Something happened.  The Training Department won, followed by our Home Health Department and then the first shift Team Carlos group.  Dang!  What?  Did we come in last?  There was only one other group besides us.  Lol.  : )..  I never found out.  I still think our "pod" looked great and that at least this was all for a great cause.  Here's a picture of our QA group, I wish they would have shown more of our pod decoration.  We decorated our manager's "office" instead of an actual pod.  I'm not in the pic because they took it yesterday.  Lol.  Here it is..

The streamers that are hanging above everyone?  They are connected

to more of those big red mylar balloons.  : )..

We had a lotta red stuff..

Oh well..  It's all good..

Great job Team QA!

Getting a little better...

Whew.  Finally.  Starting to come back out of this sore throat / cough that has been terrible.  It's not your average little, ooh my throat is sore type of deal.  It's like strep throat sore without it actually being strep throat.  It hurt to breathe, talk, sit still, lay down, eat, drink, cough, etc.  Now, it only hurts when I talk, cough, eat or drink.  That's a definite improvement though!  Whatever this was, not only got me down, but my dh is coming down with it and actually agreed to let me have the doctor call in a script for him as well, and I think Emmy had a little touch of it yesterday as well. 

I have a script for antibiotics and some cherry flavored Codeine Cough syrup (yay for Walgreens and their awesome pharmacist who suggested that!) and another day off from work.  That makes two vacation days and we aren't even two months into the year.  Whew.  Hopefully, this will be gone by Monday.

It also made me reschedule my winner, winner, chicken dinner winery dinner winner dinner that was supposed to be tomorrow afternoon.  I know that William from Fence Stiles had health issues late last year, plus I didn't want to take the chance that I would still be contagious and pass it along to others (sorry to all my co-workers yesterday, lol).  We will reschedule it for later.

I made it through seven hours of work yesterday, including a little time to help decorate for our American Heart Association challenge.  All of the other groups that participated did a great job with their pods, but I still think that ours stands a pretty good chance of winning.  : )..  I did manage to make this yesterday to include in our pod..

Plus, I stopped by WalMart and picked up some healthy snacks.  I got apples, fat free popcorn, sugar free jello, granola bars and some sugar free punch packets.  We are giving the snacks to the team that had the best QA average, which turned out to be our Custom Home Services (the celebrity / rich / well to do division) and Home Health (the I've fallen and I can't get up) group.

Not sure when we will know which pod won, but, we stand a pretty good chance.  : )..

Alrighty.  I am going to take a break for a minute and try to get me something to drink.

Later!

Monday Morning Training.. Yay..

Long day ahead, starting with two hours of Diversity Training for my group home job.  I'm hoping that it covers the fact that different cultures have different beliefs in treatment and disclosing information as opposed to how we should treat each other.  And, I am hoping that two hours is too short of a presentation time to include role plays.  Ugh.  I'd rather have my foot repeatedly slammed in a door.  Lol.  We are adults.  We can understand a concept without having to, "act it out".

Unfortunately, even though this training session may pass without it, I know that within a week, I am scheduled for a five hour training session through ADT that will not only be chock full of role plays, but homework (whut?!) and projects for an on-going, monthly group session for our new Aubrey Daniels way of life.  Yay.  Joy of joys.  Role play.  Homework.  Projects.  And it's only Monday.  : (.. 

However!!  It's also one day closer to my Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner Winery Dinner at Fence Stiles Winery in Excelsior Springs.  : )..  That food sounds sooo good.  The wine is great!  I can't wait.  And, we are scheduled to have near record high temps today!  It's possible that we might hit 70 degrees.  Can you say spring fever?  Lol.  Although..  Today and tomorrow are both supposed to be great, it's supposed to turn this weekend and we have a possibility of snow.  Sigh.  Really?  January is going out like a lamb and February is going to be a lion.  I'm going to do my best to enjoy the next few days!  : ).. 

I discovered that the link to my friend's blog was messed up, I think it tried to put the link on two lines.  She's done a great job and has added more to it as well.  If ya'll wanna check it out, click HERE.

Alrighty.  I better run.  Yay.  Training.  Yay.  And after that?  A full evening shift at ADT.  : )..  Awesome.

Kahunas! : )..

Yummy!  I love Kahunas.  : )..  DH found them at a local diner and we've been making them at home ever since.  I love a good breakfast sandwich, and this one is delicious.  Usually, if I am cooking, I try to avoid anything that takes too long.  I have enough other things to do, I don't feel like taking extra time cooking when I know that I am the one who also gets to clean.  Yay.  Thankfully, we have a dishwasher that isn't me.  Ha. 

I decided that our Kahunas sounded really good and that, despite the fact that I still had the same amount of stuff to do, that everything else could wait.  I'm glad that I did because they were yummy!  Here are the steps..

 Brown some breakfast sausage..

 Chop and sautee some onions..

Cook an egg with a broken yolk..

Layer the sausage, a slice of cheese,

the egg and onions.. 

Put your other slice of bread on and

grill both sides..

Open the sandwich, add shredded

lettuce and a little bit of mayo.

DH loves adding hot sauce.

I'm a wuss.  I stop with the lettuce and

mayo..  Lol.  : )..

Enjoy!

---

Found out yesterday, one of my friends

has started her own blog..

She's doing a great job!

Click here to check it out.  : )..

Welcome to the blogging world

Jeanie!  : )..

French Dip Sandwiches.. : )..

I put a beef roast in the slow cooker yesterday morning before I left for work.  Had a leisurely day at work, upgrading Microsoft updates on our computers, working on our Most Missed qa criteria and working on a pod decoration for our American Heart Association challenge that is coming up this next weekend.  Lemme tell ya, it's going to be great, we have a seriously talented newbie who has gone above and beyond when it comes to the challenge.  : )..  It already looks great, I'm sure it will only get better!  Our group is soooo going to win.  I will make sure to post pics when they take and post them.

Came home yesterday evening and walked into a yummy smelling kitchen.  The beef roast was soo tender, it fell apart everytime that I tried to pull it out of the crockpot.  It was super easy to shred with forks.  Here are the pictures and steps..  Of course, it was super, duper ez.  It turned out really well though!

 Beef roast..

 2 cans Beef Consomme.. 

 Low heat, 8-10 hours..

 Makes the beef roast nice and tender..

Shreds so easy because it's falling apart..

 Toasted, cheesy Hoagie buns..

(I still need to buy new baking sheets..)

Plated along with the au jus sauce

and some Martha Stewart

Italian French Fries..

Click here for the recipe..

I think this would have been great

with my ez pz sweet potato fries as well.

Super easy, super good!