I am in the middle of an absolutely fantastic day. Why? Well…
1) The weather. Weather has the ability to affect my mood more than almost anything else, and today it is GORGEOUS outside. It is sunny, 70 degrees, Carolina blue sky, little bit of a breeze. As far as weather goes, today is my perfect day.
2) Love. Matt and Stephanie got engaged!! (Yes, as previously mentioned.) He proposed over the weekend while skiing in Colorado with Becca, Gavin, and Jen. He actually proposed in front of Becca, which is very amusing, and then poor Stephanie, who was caught totally off-guard and was shaking, had to ski down a mountain! That’s Matt for you. But I am so excited for them. The wedding will be this fall or next spring in Kansas City (they’re both from there), and as I said to Matt, “I’ve always wanted to go to Kansas City!…well, not really, but I’ll make an exception for this.”
3) Fun software. For the rest of the week, I’m taking a class on how to use Flash MX (the software used to make a lot of the cool animations, movies, and interfaces on the web). I am so excited, as it’s something I’ve been wanting to learn for a while. I tried teaching myself, but lost patience, and for the past year have been trying to get into the work-sponsored training class under slightly sketchy reasoning. I am the webmaster for our group, so that’s how I justify taking the class, even though our website doesn’t really need Flash per say… Anyway, I finally got in the class, on my 4th or 5th attempt! This morning I animated a bouncing ball, a flower growing out of the ground, and a red circle turning into a purple reindeer. Yes. By the end of the week, I plan on having little cartoons of everyone in our group.
4) Graphic design. My version of our division logo was passed around to the branch chiefs and group leads at the staff meeting this morning, and as one group lead related to me: “Very cool, and you got a lot of compliments like ‘ahhh, this is much better than the other ones’, etc.” Woohoo! People like my logo! The current version (there may still be a few tweaks) is here for those interested. I didn’t come up with all the elements that needed to be included, but I did the layout and did all the graphics work. Parts of it are a bit fuzzy, but I’m gonna try to clean it up in the next few days.
5) Pampering. With any luck, Jo and I are going for pedicures tonight after work. Pedicures have become one of my most favorite things in the world. And again I apologize to Becca for ever making fun of her for getting them.
If my afternoon continues to go as swimmingly as the morning has, I will be a happy, happy girl.
