Weekend ! What Weekend ?
After a grueling and frustrating week at work – I came home and collapsed … no movie, no going out, nothing – just chit chat with Decy. Got up on Saturday – was working by 9am and didn’t quit until 630pm. Got up on Sunday – was working by 9am and didn’t quit until 630pm. Didn’t complete half the work I needed to do … and was frustrated about that.
About 75% of the people in our department (of 50) will either be in training or out of town at meetings this week. I have much to do … their absence could be a blessing. Or, the work might all shift to me. Don’t know yet. Just know that the next 3 days (M-W) will be the worst.
I have one guy (an expat) at work that is becoming incredibly frustrating. He seems to think that I am his personal “controls advisor”. Everytime he does something that is in a gray area, he tries to get me to say “its ok”. On Friday I spent over an hour arguing over the appropriateness of buying a $20 jump drive and putting it on an expense account. What really upsets me is he keeps changing the reason for wanting to know … 1st its because the guy buying the item is pushy, 2nd its because he wants to train his Admin Assistant, 3rd its because his boss is a hard nose. This guy has lost all credibility with me now …. this is not his first time at doing this to me.
On a much more positive note, it is very clear that Christmas is coming to the Morgan house. The tree is up (but not yet decorated), Christmas music is in the air, Decy is actively shopping. We are going to have some (not all) of Decy’s family over for the traditional Christmas dinner. We will hold it on December 19th. We expect there to be about 50 people here. Decy will prepare all the food – should be a great time.
On the 20th we will head to Bandung (about 3 hours away by car) and stay a couple of days there. Bandung is near a sleeping (snoring) volcano) and the weather is quite cool (68-75 degrees). Then we will travel a few more hours to the other side of the island (going across the width, not length of Java island) and stay a couple of days there. We will return to Jakarta on the 24th and enjoy Christmas Eve and Christmas at the house. Lots of stuff stays open Christmas Day – so we will probably go out and doing something on the 25th.
Chris and Paul arrive on Saturday, Dec-15 and leave 28-Dec. They are bringing their girl friends Stacy and Courtney (in respective order of “pairing”). We have never met Courtney and Stacy has never been out of the USA. It will be an exciting (albiet probably stressful) time … with lots of “firsts”. We are all looking forward to the time together.
2008 will be a challenging year and I’m not sure how the travel / vacations will work. Josh graduates in early May – and Chely / Thasya are still in school. All going well, Chely will need to go to the USA in August to start college – but Thasya will already be in school. January 1, 2009 we install a new SAP Accounting system and its “all hands on deck” thru much of the year. We have a vacation “black out” from 1-Dec through Jan 2009; thus, attending Chris’s graduation appears to be an impossibility.
Gotta run … ciao ciao
