The Life and Times of Alann

No matter how old i get I still think Back to the Future is still one of the best movies ever. Throughout this week i have been making my through the trilligy and even though i now notice some of the cinematic tricks they use for the special effects, i could watch the movie over and over.

I know. I know. A post, What?! well don't get too excited i just came in here to dust off the spiderwebs, so leave a message and I'll call you back. Hopefully next semester i will only be doing 9 credit hours instead of 15 and can find some time to breath.

So for about a month now I have been going to work and not getting paid. Due to some internal problems and the economy the consulting firm i work for as dried up on project work that i can do. However they have said "if" i decide to come into the office (which is not required since I'm still an intern) and "if" something pops up that i can work on, then i am more than welcome to do it and get paid. So far i get an average of 10 hours of work a week this way and most of it is one time only and then i never see the project again. This makes it hard to really want to work. Because not only do i tend to sit around trying to do home work while being interrupted with work question i can't charge for but i never get to continue to work on something so i don't really learn anything or remember what i worked on last time if someone has a question on it. While i am semi tempted to leave, i don't know what my graduate work load is going to be and this setup maybe the best thing for me in the upcoming year. So until i find out my school work load i have to keep telling myself it is worth coming in to the office and not staying home playing computer games. Hopefully something good will workout for the fall.

So i was the person in our family who originally started to blog. I told Becca about it and she was skeptical about starting her own, but she has really taken off and done well with it. Which i am glad for, because i find it amazingly fun to taunt her on her own blog site by leaving comments that I know she will read and respond to. Also she has used it to inform me of what is for dinner that night so i no longer have to ask her, which I'm sure she finds just as nice as i do. She also has joined me on an online game called travian, which without her to talk to about would not be nearly as fun. (If anyone wants to join us on the game let me or Becca know and we will send an invitation) I don't know how many other couples are out there that share in the virtual experience, but i for one am glad that Becca enjoys it. It gives us the opportunity to stay more connected when we are apart because we can always look for each other at these different websites and with trillian (if i would remember to turn it on). So go read Becca's latest blog and see if you can catch the humor behind the comments!

So i don't have much to say for this blog. I just feel bad that i have not been able to keep up with it as much as i would have liked. The most interesting thing that has happened to me is that i burned my thumb, forefinger and middle finger on the grill on the 3rd. No, not while grilling something tasty. I had to burn a bunch of the wood we had in the back yard because it was collecting bugs so i was burning it in the grill. As most of you know tanner loves to chew sticks so i put 5 of them to the side and after the majority of them had been burned i put his sticks on the grill racks to be smoked and heated to kill any bugs living in them. However after a couple minutes they caught on fire ( surprise surprise) and instead of just throwing water on them i tried to lift the half closed lid and burned myself on the hot metal handle. The burns aren't painful or serious, but they are big and they make it hard to hold a pencil and write. Other than that i have school work and homework to do most of the time and it keeps me pretty busy

Like the title says, i have not forgotten about my blog or the fact that people would like to see it updated occasionally. I just happen to have some summer classes going on right now. That means while i'll get the same amount of credit for doing less i also have to do more in a smaller amount of time. So once again time is not my own. However on the brighter side some of my classes end in a week or two so i can spend more time at home with the family and less time at school. Atlest till the second round of classes starts in mid July.

So i have been told at work that for this week chandler (my boss) has not been able to keep up with his work load and part of his work load is doing a review of the two papers i am writing. So until he catches up with his work would i please stay home and refrain from coming into work. Ahh... sure?. I could use the break to catch up on my homework because i hurt my neck last week and was unable to do any reading, homework or attending of classes, so having the time off could help me get back on track. However we also don't have a lot of money coming in right now and every hour at work counts. So it is a toss up about how i feel about this situation.

I actually still do come into work, but i sit in a different office at the end of the hall and i just do homework and occasionally talk to anyone who comes to my door. Its kinds odd feeling, being here but not working. I also don't know how productive it really is, because while i know i got a lot done i don't know if i could have gotten more done if i had been left alone at home and been able to relax better when i needed it. My neck still hurts and laying down really helps it rest for a bit and then i can go back to what i was doing. But at the office there is no place to lay down and rest. so i have to try to work through the pain or stop and do a little massage until it is manageable. So i may be doing better than at home or i may be doing worse, i don't know. But i need to get back to homework,so c-ya

So yeah! i graduated and now it is time to enjoy a nice well deserved summer break right? Wrong. I must be crazy because i have completely flipped my plans for future schooling and have decided to become a gunipig for a new Masters program. The Masters of Real Estate Development (MRED) was looking for a few good men (no more than 15) to enroll in the new program and be the new poster children. The catch is that there is not internal system setup for class enrollment, you have to take summer classes to stay on track, it is borrowing teachers so all classes are non negotiable, it is super plus full time requirement and there is no one who knows even a majority of the answers the students have. Oh also there is no financial aid and it is recommended you work no more than 10 a week, so pretty much you need to live off loans.

Why take this mad dive into a tumultuous program? 3 reasons

1. Higher pay grade than previous masters
2. Sooner graduation date (assuming survival)
3. More job opertunities available

So that is the update on my life and now i need to get back to reading my other 150pgs for tomorrow. Everyone enjoy your summer a little extra for me,becouse i may too busy to enjoy mine.

Lately I have had a touch of the flu, no not the swine flu. Though i guess it could have been, i don't know enough about it to make that call. All i know is Sunday i didn't feel good and i skipped work and school Monday and Tuesday but now i feel much better. I still get a little more tired than usual around the end of the day but other than that i am good.

Yesterday was my last day of class. Now i just have a report to turn in and some projects to finish up and then i will be done with my school work. Then its on to graduation and summer vacation!!!!!!!!!! Also so big news is that i got my acceptance letter from the Master Planning program at the U and they have offered my a part time research assistant scholarship. This means that i get a $2500 lump payment for the semester and 1/2 off my tuition. Now the question is can we scrape together the money to live here while i go to school?

That will be the question for the week. How much will we need and where will we get it from? Then after that i will have to pick out my classes and plan out how long it will take me to graduate and in what sub field to i want to study in. I think i want to go into community development and design which means i will be getting a masters certificate in Real estate development. But who knows and that is a later topic to worry about. Other than that things are good.

Becca has this picture on her blog and it makes me laugh every time i see it. It is so true about her and Jersey. Oh course what also makes me laugh is the fact that if it were a picture with a second window frame in it, like a cartoon, with me and the cat and I was saying the same thing then Jersey would be saying "Yes daddy" and getting down. It is so funny how differently the cat treats the two of us. She does actually like Becca, but they are on more of a friendship/play level where me and Jerseys are more on a pack leader and subordinate level. So when she is batting at Becca she is purring at me and very rarely does she try to pick a fight with me. In fact, that is what the dogs are for, Especially tanner. He is the one who she likes to pick on the most. Well I need to go, I am a little farther behind on school work than i would like.

I know that i have been doing a school count down, but it just hit me know that i only have 2 weeks left and i am way behind in my school work! I actually have never been this far behind before, mostly it is due to the independant study class that i took. I took 2 weeks off and now i have 4 weeks of work to do on top of my other finals work. I'm sure i will make all the deadlines and get good grades on it, but it will take alot of time out of my day and add a few gray hairs to my head. So ya going back to school work now.

Today at work i was talking to a fellow planning lab intern (Jon) about whether or not our boss Chandler was coming in today or if he was out of town. In order to solve the dilemma Jon decided to get onto the net calender and look up Chandler's work calender to see if it said anything about where he was. One of the options with this calender is that you can schedule a meeting with someone and write notes/letters to them at the same time. The problem with this is that there is now way to make individual letters private. So if your calender is seen by someone so are all the comments on it as well.

In his calender was a letter to the HR person who works with him on the planning lab system/organization. In this letter he makes some very bold statements about people that are not necessarily the kinds of things they want you to know about. At one point he makes mention of an individual who is labeled by their mentoring partner as incompetent, and while some of us in the lab knew there were problems between these people it still would not be the best for this individual to see the comment about them.

There are also comments about who is rising stars in the company and who beat the odds and did better on their own than anyone would have guessed, once again comments that may cause some strife between colleagues. While i found many of the comments to be interesting regardless if i agreed with them or not, i found the ones that were presumably about me, because of thier context, to be very intriguing. I am not mentioned as a good or a bad but rather an unknown. Not in the context of my quality of work, but as in my position in the company and if i will continue on in the planning lab.

It has been no secret between me or anyone in the company that while i enjoy working for them and doing the work they give me, they have yet to produce a project or introduce to me a project area that really lights my fire. While the other two planning lab people have found niches in the company and have expressed desire to go full time after graduation, i have never tried to get more than an intern position there and don't actively go out and hunt for projects to work on. I am not worried about being let go nor am i offended at the comments that are made about me, i just think that maybe i am being compared too much to the others in the planning lab and not enough on how i am doing on a personal level of achievement and interest.

Since i have started I have become more interested in the work that I do and have always said that if a project area can be found that i like, i have no reservations about joining the WSA team. The problem is that we are only exposed to what projects come down the pipeline to our office for what the "real" employees are interested in doing. The company does way more services than just the things that come into the office, but because of the way the company is setup and they way the planning lab fits into it we never see anymore than what is usually sent to the office. If i were to go to another office i would see more of a different kind of workload, but this planning lab is centered in this office and there is no way to shuffle work from one to another easily.

The company has recently lost its President and Jon and I are hoping that the new leader will take the planning lab idea to the next step and make it a corporate idea so that it is more flexible in the opportunities it can offer the interns/employees in training (as it is really seen as). I really don't have a point to this story, i just thought that the situation would make a good story to read so i typed it out for fun.

In school related news i am trying to get into the masters program and am thinking of getting a masters certificate in real estate finances to accompany my degree in planning. I am doing this with the idea of either working for a land development company, someday starting my own company or being able to round out my education on the built environment so if i join another consulting firm or government planning department i can have a better idea on how the market will drive the future development of the specific area i work in, this way i can make more relevant recommendations for policies and procedures.

As for the family, we are all getting over our colds and everyone is happy. Becca had a job interview as a part time at home seamstress which we will see how it goes and we are continuing our mini biggest loser challenge to lose weight. As soon as we find out about grad school we will let everyone know, but for now i need to go.

This will be a brief blog since i need to be doing home work, but i couldn't pass up the opportunity to tell this quick story. I was walking from the office building i work at to the train station to get to the campus for class. It was really sunny and bright and i started to feel really hot in my lightweight hoodie because of how warm the sun was. But i couldn't take it off because even though it was warm outside and making me hot, it was still some how snowing at the same time.

There was just enough high altitude cloud cover for it to be snowing while the weather was warm and the sun was shining. It was so weird. I personally think that beats other freak weather conditions like when it is sunny and raining at the same time or when it is sprinkling w/ no clouds in the sky. Because the snow should have turned to rain by the time it hit ground, but no it stayed snow till it melted on the warm sidewalk. In other news i bought my cap and tassle for graduation today, so now i have to send out invites to the ceremony. Actually I guess i better first find out the date huh. I think it is may 8th but it could be the 9th, I'll let everyone know once i find out.

So i finally did some work on my blog page and made it a little more mine. After deleting those pesky dead ad spots on the HTML i think this blog template may workout. so I'll keep it for a bit and see how it goes. This post is going to be real small becuae i already spent an hour and ahalf fixing up the blog page, which has left me kinda computer drained. So i think for now i will just say that we are doing fine, we still don't know what is going to happen to us, but we have enough money in the bank for 2 month of house payments and if approved will have 6 more months from unemployment. We will try to keep everyone updated on what is going on and what we finally decide to do.

So as many of you know we are coming to an end of an era of our lives. I am going to be done with my bachelors, Becca wants to stay at home and we now have a baby to take care of. We also have some big decisions to deal with, should i continue in school and get a masters here, somewhere else. Should i try to get a job in this recession. If we stay here should Becca stay home or go back to work, what about Claire? Can we afford to have Becca stay home or pay someone to watch the baby? These are all questions that i have posted about before and that we have been grappling with for a while now.

Its just that now the baby is here and Becca's maternity leave is running out and while i have submitted 6-8 resumes from as far back as early February i have yet to hear back from any of them and time is simply running out for us. It seems like everyday i try and come up with a new way to attack this problem and while i have not given up it is getting overwhelming. For a while we thought we had come up with a fix because a lady in our congregation was willing to watch Claire a couple days out of the week. Then last night she called and said it wasn't worth it to her and if they needed the extra money she would just have her husband get a second part time job. Thanks a lot, there went that little beam of sunshine.

The job i have here is nice and i like my co-workers, its just not the field i want to get into. Doing traffic analysis for the rest of my life is not what i would call exciting. And technically i am an intern-part time employee mix with no benefits, lower pay and a 32 hour cap and i don't think they hire full time people with less than a masters degree. So even if i did want to stay at this company i couldn't without going to more school or taking less pay and part time till i had enough experiance to just kinda fall into a position and that doesn't help us out at all.

I really like working outside and managing and my current boss says that i am really good at doing regional level policy analysis, so i guess if i could find something that fit into all those categories i would be the happiest with my long run job. I think if i could do anything i would want to move back to Columbia get a full or 35+ hour part time job doing some kind of environmental planning where i was in the office 75% of the time and out in the field the rest of the time and then at the same time get my masters from Mizzou in either arch studies, environmental engineering, or some kind of design or environmental degree. For the most part this post is just an outlet for some of my thoughts, just to get them out of there and on to "paper". I wonder if that is how writers feel about writing. Like they just can't get these ideas out of their heads until they write them down and then after that they feel a sense of relief.

Aw well, things aren't really bad and something will work out it's just the waiting that kills me. But i guess if i can't find a job we can always go live with my parents.

So, as the title says i am tired, way more tired than i think i should be. Becca is the one that gets up with Claire at night and has to deal with her all day, but i am so tired that i am practically falling asleep at work and school. I usually only wake up once during the night and it is only when Claire is crying at her loudest, but it seems like that one time is enough to throw off the quality of my sleep for the rest of the night. I don't only think that it is Claire though. This semester has turned out to be more stressful and demanding than i thought it would be. I only have a 3 real classes and 2 easy classes, but the 3 real classes are so much more intense than i thought they would be initially. I was really hoping that after all the hustle and bustle i did for my first semesters i would be able to have a nice relaxing last one. But it seems that if i want some down time i will just have to take the summer off this year instead of doing classes like i did last summer.

I guess that is the only other news i have right now is that unless i find some miracle job somewhere i most likely will be going through the masters program here and staying in utah for another year or two. Well unfortunately my laptop is ready to die so i need to stop here, but on the whole life is good and i have started to reconnect with some more of my friends from Il, which is exciting

Last Wednesday we had what is called an inversion, if you don't know what that is it is when all the cold air in the valley gets stuck underneath the warmer air higher up in the atmosphere. So any air pollutants that get stuck in the air stay there. It got so bad last week that you could not see the mountains and the sky was this yellow orangish color. Apparently i am fairly sensitive to the air quality around me, we have always lived in more rural type settings so i have never really had too much experience with smog and such...... Hold on Nikki just threw up. OK I'm back. So where was i, oh yes the yellow air. So, lately Becca has started to snore in her sleep (not her fault) which not only keeps me up, but wakes me up too, so my level of sleep right now is pretty low.

Then the in version rolls in and my sinuses start running like there is no tomorrow and it feels like someone is pouring Tabasco sauce down the back of my throat. Then at night everything backs up and i have to wake up to cough my airways clear so i can breath again. Well after a couple of nights like this i finally get a real cold, which funny enough is actually better than the inversion because there is less mucus and more breathing, but more coughing. Which leads to my next part the inversion has started to clear and I'm on day 3 of being sick (so far its 1.5 weeks total of the whole thing) and i start to cough so hard that i end up moving 2 of my lower ribs on my right side.

At first they just hurt like if you strained you back and pulled something, so i thought nothing of them. But then the next day i had a meeting i had to go to for school and somehow on the walk over to the building i moved them again and even worse. So for the entire half hour meeting i am sweating up a storm because of the pain I'm in and i seriously thought i would have to ask these complete strangers who i just met to call an ambulance for me. But the meeting ended and i was able to make it back down the stairs to the main hall. The problem now is that i have to get back to my office and get home with my backpack which contains everything valuable and personal in my life. By this point the pain is excruciating. Imagine that you have been hit in the back of the ribs with a baseball bat and have one of the deep, black/blue, swollen bruises now and every time you take a step or try to breath someone takes the rounded handle side of a broom and pushes on that bruise.

To get to my office i have to walk about 3 city blocks get on a train take it to the down town station and then walk another 6 blocks to get to my car and i have to do it all with out being able to take more than a 1/4 of a light breath. So i go over to the men's bathroom get in one of the stalls and take my belt off. Then i put it under my shirt and tighten it down to the smallest hole over my ribcage so that i have something to help me support my self and allow me to breath. I put my shirt down put on my coat and backpack and walked out of the building and started to walk to the train station. I got to the end of the parking lot and had to bend over so i could gasp for air. I had to do this about 2 more times while walking down this back walkway to get to the station. The whole time hoping that i wouldn't pass out in this no mans land from lack of air or pain and get mugged.

But i finally made it to the train where i got on and sat down using the backrest to support my ribs so i could breath. By now i have decided that there is no way i am going back to work and that i really need to see the chiropractor today, right now, instead of tomorrow at our normal time. I also don't know if i can make the even longer walk to my office to get my car and drive there myself. So i called up Becca to get the cell phone number to the doctors and told her between ragged gasps that she might have to meet me at the south train station and take me because i can't breath and don't know if i can walk to my car. So after just talking to Becca right now, she said that she wasn't concerned about me after i got off the phone with her, which i didn't know.

But either way i called my boss and let him know what was happening and he was like o.k, like i had just told him i landed on the moon and was having tea with little purple penguins. Then i called the doctors and set up an appointment for 5 which is his last time available. Then i look at my watch and realize that if i go to the south station i will never make it on time and i have to walk to my car and drive there to make it. So i undid the belt because it was making me sick and got off at the downtown stop and with my hand holding my ribs in place started to walk the 6 blocks to my car. By now the spams have lessened and i can take a 1/2 a light breath and the broom isn't jabbing me as hard. I made it to my car and raced over to the doctors and got there at 4:57 and sat down on a chair as best i could so i could breath.

A few minutes later Dr Dave (our secondary primary doctor) comes by and looks at me and are you OK? I tell him what is going on and he says that he will get a room ready and bring me back in a minute. After i get in there he tries to have me lay on my back which doesn't work because every time i try i spasm. Then we try the front where after a couple of tries we finally have some success. So he adjusts what he can and then tries to move my ribs to no avail. He then puts my on some electro-therapy and says that the muscles are too swollen to move with out first putting me on some suppressants and says all i can do is go home and put some ice on it to help the swelling to go down.

So what adjusting he could do helped me to be able to breath at about 1/2 a normal breath and the spasms have stopped except for when i breath too deeply. So i go home let the dogs out set the couch cushions up to give me some support and got my icepack out and sat down and started my ice down rotation for the night. Finally Becca comes home and we talk about our day and she tortures me by making me laugh which causes me pain, evil woman ;) and i continue to do ice therapy. Around bed time i told her i would have to sleep propped up on the couch so i could breath and could she please take the dogs with her into the bedroom for the night, which she did. Then i went and took some cough depressants and pain killers and luckily went to sleep. And surprisingly only woke up once when i felt light headed from being propped up for so long, so i moved the pillows and went back to sleep.

Then this morning we went back to the chiropractor where he was able to move the ribs back into place. Now i can breath 7/8 normal and only spasm when i try to breath deep enough to cough, which is not often or when Becca makes me laugh, evil woman :) That about wraps up may adventure for the week and I'm hoping next week won't be nearly as exciting.

Since the last time that I blogged we have done some work on Claire's room. We finally have all the insulation put up and glued in place and we have all the drywall up and ready to be taped. We were able to save 2 pieces of insulation and one piece of drywall so we could return them. Which is good because we forgot to buy a couple things last time we were at Lowe's, so now we have money to buy the rest of what we need. This project has been the fastest and easiest one that we have done so far and if things continue to go the way they are we will be painting sometime this or next Saturday night. I have been testing the room to see how well it retains heat now that we have done the major part of the construction and while it does not get overly warmer than the rest of the house it now is the same temperature as the rest of the house instead of being a good 8 degrees colder. We ended yesterday's project work by going to papa Murphy's and getting some pizza and watching an 80's movie called Ice Pirates.

Then i took a hot bath to try and relax a shoulder muscle that had been bothering me all day and Becca played the wii she borrowed from work (i think she's addicted to it), then we went to bed. All in all it was a very productive and pleasant day. I'm thinking that tonight I will try to get some of the mudding done in the room so we can be a little ahead for when Saturday comes, because we usually have lots of errands to do and I don't think this Saturday will be any different. So maybe if I can get a little more work done tonight we can get things done this weekend and not have anymore projects waiting to get done.