And your commute shall increase, 7 fold

What the message sign on 45 just north of 610 normally says when I drive past it on the way to work~

"Travel Time to Beltway 8, 8 min at 5:55"

What it said this morning~

"Travel Time to Beltway 8, 57 min at 5:55"

Fear not, I still made the trip in my normal 7.5 minutes, but I did have a little mini heart attack when I saw the sign :)

Interesting side note~ When asked during my interview yesterday why I was leaving, I was telling this guy about a new manager who had taken over and how it had just gotten really bad, and guess what? He says "I think I know who you are talking about." "Really?" I say. He says "Yeah, if I'm right then he used to work for me. Is his name _____?" to which I astoundedly (I think I made up that word) said "Yeah, that's him!". The guy interviewing me smiled and said "I definitely understand why you are leaving then." Wow, it always amazes me how people get such strong reputations in my industry.

Anyhoo, quick update~ I have an offer from the company I interviewed with Wednesday (an offer I am VERY VERY happy with :) and the interview yesterday went very well also. I have one more informal interview with a third firm next wednesday so I will keep you apprised of anything that happens with that!

A thought from Gary Larson

+1

Make that 3 interviews :) The third is a lunch meeting next week (day to be determined within the hour) Oh, and it's with the company I'm the most excited about!

Interview Today

It feels like the first day of school or something, I have so much nervous energy! If you think about it, throw a word up to the big guy for me around 4 today and tomorrow :)

Um, let's see.... a post..... what could I post about? How about our new sunday school class?! The people have spoken and the class has been named Veritas, Latin for "truth". I am sooooo excited about this class and the people in it. We had our first social event this past sunday and it was so incredibly fun and I can't wait to get to know everyone better!

Update

I turned in my letter of resignation 10 minutes ago. It feels good :) Thanks for praying everyone.

A Myriad

Update: I sent in some resumes online Sunday night and as of yesterday at noon had 2 interviews set up for this week. I visited our other office and it was really nice (aka, my decision just got harder :P). I went to small group and after telling them the story, the consensus was "And, WHY would you want to consider being at the same company?!!". And this morning I still don't know what to do. I will likely decide this afternoon, so look in for tomorrow's installment :) Thank you so much for all of the prayer! It means more to me than I can express. And now, because it has absolutely nothing to do with work, I've been tagged :)



1. What were you doing 10 years ago?September 1997 ... I was in high school, so in September I was playing volleyball and going to school... no time for anything else :)



2. What were you doing 5 years ago?September 2002 ... I was in my sophomore year in college, finally had learned how to study. Going to lots of football and volleyball games. Getting my first small group to lead as part of Doulos.



3. What were you doing 1 year ago?September 2006 ... I was engaged and planning the wedding. By September I had most of it done, but I do remember extensive ribbon hunting being done for the favors and programs.... Nate hates ribbon now :)



4. What did you do yesterday? Visited the 290 office, felt A LOT of anxiety over the decision, went to bible study, watched an episode of Alias :)



5. Snacks I enjoy ... YOGURT!!!! Fruit, Funyuns (although I have cut them out of my diet), Chex Mix, Mike and Ike Tangy Twisters, homemade "ice cream" sandwiches (thanks Laura!), carrots



6. Things I would do with $100 million dollars ... as Tabaitha said, tithe first :) Then buy a house in the Memorial area and furnish it with Crate and Barrel and Pottery Barn goods, set up college funds for any future children, save a good chunk and let it earn interest, open up my own invitation store, give more to missions, Spend more time with my family, Pay Leslie to quit her job and just hang out with me :)



7. Locations I would run to ... If you can get me to run anywhere then I'll be impressed :P (sorry Dad) Seriously though, Colorado or Canada in the summer....love it



8. Bad habits I have ... I worry too much and over-analyze.... I also forget about laundry and leave it in the washer for days on end :P



9. Things I like to do:- ride roller coasters, travel, spend time with family, shop at Ann Taylor Loft and Crate and Barrel, read, take pictures, scrapbook, watch old family movies, fondue, hang with my college roomies (anytime, anyplace girls :), eat good food, eat more good food, go for walks



10. Biggest joy of the moment: Christ's provision


I hereby tag Emkay, Steph, Beth, Jen, and Jen :)

All Ye Faithful

Anybody who is checking my blog on a Saturday and is familiar with it will be surprised by this weekend post. It is the result of an urgent prayer request that I have. If you are reading this anytime before Tuesday, please pray for my work decision coming up. I called my manager's manager yesterday after work and told him that I can't work with my manager anymore and that he should expect that there is a good possibility of me turning in my two weeks notice this monday. He totally understood as my manager has alienated almost every person in the office and they were worried about me leaving for him.

Anyhoo, my manager's manager called me back last night and they offered me a transfer to our other Houston office effective next week if I stay. Now I don't know what to do. Our other houston office is lacking in some things like personality and I am not sure that I won't end up getting pulled back into doing work with my current manager. I am praying about it, but I would love to know that some of my readers are also praying for this decision. I figure the more people are lifting it up, the better. At this point my decision is between taking the new office position or just quitting and looking for a position elsewhere. I do have several leads on jobs at different companies, so I'm up for anything :) I appreciate your prayers while I make one of the biggest professional decisions of my life so far. Pray that I will feel God's guidance and truly be able to discern which direction he would have me go. Thanks guys :)

Deprive and Thrive

This is my first step to becoming a more healthy eater.... deprive and thrive. I'm not talking anorexia here, I'm talking about the fact that for the first time in my life, I am stopping to think about my food choices before I throw them down. Yesterday, for instance, the vending machine at work was calling my name and I resisted. I also thought very seriously on about 10 different occasions about eating one of the fun size candy bars in my desk.... but I resisted. I finally understand why, when we were kids, my mom didn't really want us to buy her candy. I thought she didn't like it, when it reality she just didn't want to end up eating it all. The highlight of my work experience yesterday? My Dannon all Naturals peach yogurt. MMMMMMMM, I need to buy me some more of those. Oh, and carrots.. I've been craving them and they are harmless so they'd make good snacks.

Now this is just phase I. Phase II involves being more careful at dinner time..... I'm not sure I'm going to like phase II. I have a strange feeling that Phase II may require me to give up Chuy's (THE HORROR!!!) and I'm not sure I'm ready for that. For now though I have managed to reign my snacks in as well as my evening desserts and while I haven't seen a weight difference, I feel better and have more energy. Anyhoo, just thought I'd share.... I need to go buy more yogurt :)

I am so tired right now that my bones hurt. Unfortunately for my blog, the fatigue has made coherent thought somewhat of an impossibility right now. For the sake of upholding my very high quality standards for blogging (HA!) I am going to pass on blogging today. (It is also partially because it hurts my fingers to type, and my brain even more to think)

Career Fair

One of my favorite things to do in my job is to go recruit. The first year I was here, I got to go back to the A&M career fair and recruit for our company and I had so much fun! It was weird that year, because a lot of my friends were still in school and came by the table. Anyhoo, tomorrow and Wednesday I will be in the booming metropolis of College Station, Texas and hence, will be unable to post.

You know one of the weirdest things about me going again this year? I don't really like my job situation that much right now. Any of you who have talked to me recently know that my job is wearing on me to the extreme. Another funny thing? The people here know I'm tired of it, they know I don't like where things have gone and yet they are sending me to talk to future employees. I'm going to do my best to find them qualified employees, but I already feel like I will end up being untruthful in my role as company cheerleader. I do believe in the company, just not my office. It should be interesting :P

Confession

I don't like Beth Moore. (GASP!) Although I should more accurately say that I don't like the Beth Moore effect and hence I refuse to go to her studies. On Tuesday, Nate and I went to go walking at the church as we often do, but today was different..... it was the first day of Beth Moore's study on Esther. We walked over there at 5pm (1.5 hours before it started) and not only were there already hundreds of women there, at least 100 of them were standing/sitting in front of the two main entrances just waiting for them to open. Ummmm, ok.... no thanks. Here is the thing about Beth Moore, I'm sure she is a wonderful teacher... I'm not disputing that... but people have begun to worship her as they do God. To quote from 1 Corinthians,

"What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Cephas"; still another, "I follow Christ.""

I think the modern day Southern Baptist version would read~

"What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow John Piper"; another, "I follow Beth Moore"; still another, "I follow Christ.""

I know there are plenty of strong christian women that listen to Beth without turning to a form of idol worship, but there is also a large contingency of women that treat their time with her as their church and her as their pastor or maybe even their prophetess. While I am glad these women are in church, they needed to be worshipping the Lord and not Beth! To Beth's credit, she has no desire for that type of worship and is simply using what God has gifted her with, but the effect drives me up the wall. I'm not saying she should go away (I don't think she should) I'm just saying that you aren't going to see me there.

Ugh

Somebody took my parking spot today. I mean out of thin air! They've never taken it before, I've never seen the car before on our level or any other and they got here sometime before 6 just to nab my space. It shouldn't bother me so much (seeing as how we aren't actually assigned spaces :) but one of the perks of getting here so early is being able to park in the same space every day. So anyway, I had to take red Jeep lady's spot and she took mondo big SUV's spot and now we'll all be off today. If the blue Ford SUV is still there tomorrow morning, I'm gonna bust some heads :P

The Service Mission

Ok, I'm gonna give you guys the low down on the New York trip although knowing myself it will likely be pretty short and sweet since a storyteller, I am not. So here we go :)

Our main ministry on the trip was to a small church plant over on Staten Island which is where we were for the most part. It's called Crossroads Church and it was started by the Pastor, Ray, who grew up Catholic on Staten Island. He converted during college and decided to head back to Staten Island and the heavily Catholic community there. Believe it or not, Staten Island is the least evangelized of all 5 of the New York Burroughs. Anyhoo, the first couple of days that we were there we had the pleasure of painting the outside of one of the schools. Some of us were disappointed not to be doing evangelism but guess what, God is bigger than our plans. We got more attention from the community for painting a school than we might have going door to door. We had some of the school kids that wanted to help us and we got to talk to them..... we had custodians, and maintenance guys, and parents coming up to us the whole time and asking us who we were and what our story was. It was awesome!

For the rest of the week we pretty much did whatever Pastor Ray needed from us whether it was handing out fliers for the church, Nate set up their wireless network, prayer walking, advertising and facilitating outreach events at the College of Staten Island, or handing out water to morning commuters with a note from the church while others evangelized on the boardwalk. We spent an hour or so in prayer with the church and for the church one morning, the main request being that they no longer had a facility at which to meet for Sunday services. That afternoon, the custodian of the school we were painting offered up the school year round to them (and it had beautiful auditorium and classroom facilities). The school was pretty far from the neighborhood where the church originated, but they are going to use that facility for a church plant in December of this year. 2 days after that, a school in their neighborhood offered them the same, year round, commitment and now they have a location! It was so amazing to see God answer prayer so quickly and perfectly.

Anyways, we had a great time with our group (they are so fun!) and it was an altogether great trip!

BUSY

Still no time to post about New York.... but I will soon, I promise!! Until that time, here is a little something to tide you over...

See more at http://abbyjoy.shutterfly.com/action/

I'm home!!

No time to post today, just wanted to let ya'll know that I am home and all posting will return to normal this week....I don't want to be at my job today... BLAH!