Friday, May 30, 2008

I've got bragging rights!!!

Today I'm going to brag about myself. It's not something I do real often, but this is really great news. Back in early March, one of the members of one of my Paralegal Yahoo Groups sent a message looking for members to complete a questionnaire for a chance to be profiled in one of the issues of a new paralegal magazine, KNOW. I thought what the hell. It can't hurt to volunteer. So I sent her an email back telling her I would fill out the questionnaire. Well no sooner than I received the questions, all hell broke loose here at work and I was swamped. I finally got around to filling out the questions a couple of weeks later and sent them back to her hoping I hadn't missed the deadline. Whew, I hadn't. She even told me that she liked my perspective and she would forward my questionnaire to her editors. I hadn't heard anything since.

Fast forward to yesterday when I got an email from her telling me that I will be the magazine's paralegal profile for the SECOND issue of KNOW!! How exciting is that!!!!!! It's a bi-monthly magazine and the first issue debuts in June so the second issue will be in August. However, now I have the task of finding a picture to send to her to be put with the article. I never actually thought I would be chosen, let alone be put in the 2nd issue. This may not be a big deal to some, but I'm pretty dang excited about it.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

My Updated Desktop

I finally got around to updating the pictures on my desktop. Here's what my desktop on my competer at work now looks like.

I'm going to change the underlying background but it may take a while to find a good fit and it took long enough to find the right pictures, resize them and arrange them.
And here's a cute video of Ethan.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

WOOHOO!!!!!

The Pointer Sisters describe it best with their hit song "I'm so Excited." I'm finally getting my all-time favorite show back!! WOOHOO!! Our local po-dunk cable company is finally getting SoapNet. Those that know me best know exactly what show I'm talking about. And it's not a daytime soap. I should have my show back by the end of summer. WOOHOO!! And to top off that good news, I just found out that they are doing a spinoff of the show coming this fall. WOOHOO!! Can you tell I'm a little excited?

Ok, now that I can breathe again, Ethan had his 18 month checkup yesterday. Everything went well. He's weighing 25lbs, 3ozs and is 31" tall. He's developing normally. Except his speech. He is babbling a lot more and talks in his own language, but the doctor said he should be able to say at least 6 words by now. Soooo, here's the plan. He has a regular well checkup in 6 months. But, if he doesn't know at least 6 words (besides mama and dada) within 3 months, I have to take him back and we'll move on to speech therapy. The reason she is giving him 3 more months is because he has improved in the last three months and he still may improve more. So we're gonna try some of the suggestions from doctor to encourage him to talk more and see where we're at in 3 months. That's all I have for now.

UPDATE: So I was able to dwindle my Yahoo Group list down to just 16 groups and thus reducing my daily emails to about 200 - 300 per day and about 600 on the weekends. It's much better.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

It's time to cut back

Well after muddling through almost 700 email messages last Monday and almost 1000 yesterday and the 4 to 5 hundred I receive daily, I've decided it's time to cut back. At this very moment, I belong to 34 yahoo groups and have all 34 yahoo groups set to daily email. So why not just switch to digest mode? Because if I don't have time to read the daily emails then I definitely won't have time to read the daily digests. So I'm cutting back. I haven't quite decided which groups to remove myself from yet. That will take some serious thinking. While I ponder this seemingly impossible task, here's an interesting bit of information I came across last week about your personality and your birth order.

BIRTH ORDER

ONLY-BORNS

Positives: Only-borns are the mega-movers of the world. They are task-orientated; tend to be extremely well organized, highly conscientious and dependable. They are keen on facts, ideas and details and feel extremely comfortable with responsibility.

Negatives: The negative characteristics of only-borns can be tough to handle. They are often unforgiving, very demanding, hate to admit they're wrong and usually don't accept criticism well. To others, they seem very sensitive and indeed, their feelings are easily hurt.

FIRST-BORNS (This is me!!)

Positives: They are natural leaders (um no) and often high achievers (yes). The majority of politicians, spokespersons and managing directors are first-borns. They frequently live with a sense of entitlement and even superiority (hmmmm). They often come in two flavors: compliant nurturers/caregivers or aggressive movers and shakers. Both are in control (definitely); they just use different methods. As a rule, first-borns are picky (no comment), precise people - they pay attention to detail - tend to be punctual, organized, and competent (all 3 definitely apply to me). They want to see things done right the first time. They don't like surprises. (Well that almost fits me to a T).

Negatives: They are often moody (no comment) and occasionally lack sensitivity (hmmm). They can be intimidating, particularly by pushing people too hard or refusing to take no for an answer. Sometimes they can be a bit 'know-it-all', and often they are poor at delegating - largely because they don't trust other people as much as they trust themselves. They also tend to be bossy, perfectionists (ummm, yes) and overly-conscientious.

MIDDLE-BORNS

Positives: The classic middle-born is very relational, tends to be a people-pleaser and usually hates confrontation. Their basic need is to keep life smooth and their motto might be 'peace at any price'. They are usually very calm, will roll with the punches and are amiable, down-to-earth and great listeners. They are skilled at seeing both sides of a problem and eager to make everybody happy. That makes them good mediators and negotiators.

Negatives: They tend to be less driven than first-borns, but are much more eager to be liked - or at least be happy with them. They have a difficult time setting boundaries. They can drift into becoming 'co-dependent' as they try to please everybody. They are not good at making decisions that will offend others. They also tend to blame themselves when others fail.

LAST-BORNS

Positives: Last-borns are the world's cheerleaders. You have strong people skills and love to entertain and talk to others. You make friends easily and immediately make others feel at home. You're an extrovert, energized by the presence of other people and you're probably not afraid to take risks.

Negatives: Last-borns tend to get bored quickly. They have a strong fear of rejection and a short attention span. When the fun stops, they've had enough and want to check out. To some extent they're self-centered. They may harbor unrealistic expectations of finding a relationship that is always fun - and of course, such relationships simply do not last.