Loosing My Marbles

This last week the project I've been working on at work finally launched, it's been a year, and lots of work, and I'm still not quite done with 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. conference calls (it's not so bad, you can do them in your P.J., and it's nice to have a few hours of work under your belt before you even get into the office). It's always scary when a large project launches, because well as project manager if something does work, the buck kind of stops with you. This one was rather complicated, because not only did we have systems changes to make sure were coordinated, but we had to hire a brand new department, and conduct training for a new brand. I don't want to talk a lot about work specifics in my blog, but this particular brand has some interesting challenges. Including as part of their training making sure everyone attending training not only gets a "treat" but their favorite treat, and beverage. That means instead of running to Costco, and picking up a couple boxes of various snacks, my duty was to put together little boxes with what each individual person loves. Did I mention that I couldn't ask them outright for their preferences, that I had to be all sneaky about it, so I wouldn't give this away? So I made up a questionaire to "get to know people", apparently most people are team Jacob, except the guys that wouldn't answer because they would loose their "man card" if they have a preference. Did I mention that a surprising number of people at my office list their favorite president as Taft? Taft? Seriously, I was expecting Lincoln, Kennedy, either of the Roosevelts, Washington, Jefferson, and it's Utah, so I figured Reagan would be up there. But Taft? I found that random, interesting but random.

Back to my point, has anyone ever had to find the personal snack, and beverage favorites for around 50 people? It takes more time than one would think and people have some weird favorites, I didn't even know they had tabasco flavored cheese snacks that apparently are only available at certain hispanic markets. So yeah, it's been a few wild and crazy weeks. With little sleep last week, I decided to bring all the new team cupcakes, I wasn't sleeping anyway, might as well be busy. Cupcakes were a bigger hit than personalized treats, I should have thought of that first. So not only did I watch the launch of one of my bigger career projects, but I made over 100 cupcakes last week (also had a bake sale for CMN or Children's Miracle Network and Primary Children's Hospital).

Project launched very smoothly, so I'm not going to get fired, at least not this month, and busy week at work, led to busy weekend. Rob came in to visit Jake for the weekend. Jake really gets excited to see his dad, and it's great that he can come visit every so often. It looks like Rob plans to stay in Washington long term so hopefully he will be able to come visit every few months, and we can go visit up there and see Grandma as well. I picked up some Galaxy marble maze deal figuring Rob and Jake could spend some time together building it, the box said "8 and up" um yeah, it took them the entire weekend. fI one has an 8 year old that could build this thing they should just skip elementary school and go right to being an engineer. The thing won as one of the best toys for 2010, I figured it only won because either it taught parents and children how to deal well with extreme frustration, or because if the average 8 year old worked on this alone, it would take them until they were 16 to finish it, which would make it that longest lasting toy in the house. Anyway, it's done, and it's pretty cool, so anyone feel free to come on over and watch some marbles go through a maze, if that's your thing (come at night, it glows in the dark).

Sunday we caught "The Dew Tour" which ironically enough Jake was over the first 10 minutes (apparently getting $7 tickets on Groupon doesn't give one the best seats), but I thought was great. Shaun White was amazing, I loved watching him snowboard in the Olympics, but the guy can seriously skateboard as well, he won the competition, and brought the crowd to their feet. I tend to like sports that I can catch onto really quickly, I have no idea what an actual 320 or 720 means as far as tricks go, but I could tell the cool tricks and that it wasn't so good when they fell of their skateboards. I'm just hoping Jake doesn't decide he really likes Shaun White's hair, which would really challenge my "hair is an easily changeable and flexible form of self expression, as long as it's not against school rules, it's good with me", I think I need to see if there is a "no Shaun White hair" rule in the school handbook.

We didn't stay for the BMX racing because Jake was done trying to watch people do tricks from the nosebleed section of Energy Solutions Arena. So we headed over to Gateway for some fountain fun.

It was a very busy week, and I'm glad it's over and we can have some down time, I don't do well with a lot of excitement, I'm crazy enough to give myself enough internal excitement, that I try to keep external excitment to a minimum so I can achieve a good balance. I like things to be nice and mellow, I'm a chiller not a thriller. I generally takes Jake a few days to get back to normal after dad visits, he misses him, and obviously divorce is never easy on kids, and there are always lots of questions and feelings to work through after each visit. It's good, I'm happy Jake feels like he can tell me all the things that are in his head, but there are lots of hard questions to answer that just keep getting harder as he gets older. It's hard to learn that life is hard and isn't very fair at 7, but it's a lesson that has to be learned, and the important part is knowing as Dr. Phil says that you always have a soft place to fall, I hope I'm always that for Jake.

In the mean time, I wonder how to get in touch with Shaun White so he can cut a few inches off his hair?