A New Venture

When I wrote item five on my 101 Goals in 1001 Days list - get a freelance job - this wasn't what I had in mind at all, but I think this is going to be much more fun.

In January, I signed up as an independent consultant for Thirty-One. Thirty-One is a company offering wonderful purses, accessories and products that help organize your life. The company takes it's name from Proverbs 31 that describes the virtuous woman. Our company mission is to "Celebrate, Encourage and Reward" women. What is not great about that!

I attended my first home party in October and just fell in love with the products. I hosted a party at my house in November and started thinking to myself that I could do this. I figured that if nothing else ever happened with it, I would get $300 worth of merchandise for the $99 enrollment fee, but I hope that it takes off. I like that I can make it as much or as little as I like.

I had my official kick off party on Sunday and it was a great success. Now I am looking forward to having my first few parties and seeing what I can do with it. My sister (wave hi, Sara) is hosting a party in Athens in a few weeks, if you'd like to see what Thirty-One is all about. If you'd like to host a party or know more about the products or the company, just ask me or you can visit my website by clicking the Thirty-One logo on the right.

A photo that makes you angry...

It's not that this photo makes me mad. It's more that it sums up my current feelings toward Verizon Business. I have been having nothing but grief in dealing with Verizon since the early part of December.

That is when I first notified Verizon that our office was moving. Apparently, I had to be prescient and notify Verizon two months before I knew where I was moving in order to have our VoIP and internet service moved to our new office. The relationship has gone down hill from there.

We moved our office on January 24th and we have been without phones or internet service ever since. We do have internet, because we went ahead and set up another system. Our office is 99% web-based - we can't operate with internet.

It took me until the day before our move for me to make Verizon understand that we had Cisco equipment that runs our phone system still screwed to the wall in our office. Even then, it took them until February 4th to arrange for a Cisco partner to come and uninstall it and reinstall it in our new office. Bear in mind that we no longer had access to our old office on Feb. 4 and had to beg building management to let us in long enough to get it. And while it's in our new office, we still don't have phone because it's not connection to the internet.

Today a Verizon tech came and pulled the T1 line up to our office and installed the jack, but we still don't have phones or internet, because no one has installed the router, which has been in my office since Verizon shipped it to me on January 13th.

Needless to say, Verizon is currently the source of everything that makes me angry.

No Water

I got to the office this morning to discover that the water main in front of our building broke at 5:45 a.m. This means that there is no air conditioning and, more importantly, no working restrooms. It will take them at least 8 hours from the time they start fixing the main to have the water restored and they haven't started yet, because they are waiting on the other utility companies to come mark the lines. We made an executive decision to send everyone home to do whatever work they can today. I figure for most people that means little to no work, but a pretty relaxed day.

New Cards

It's a little hard to read because I took the picture with my phone, but I got my new business cards today. They have both my new name and my not-quite-as-new title on them. I can't wait to use them once I get back to work. So far, this is the first thing that has made me smile this week.

Children's Inaugural Ball

I know I promised you all some photos of our event on Sunday, but I swear to you from the moment I set foot inside the door, I didn't leave the coat check room until it was all over. The Boy did get to walk around a little bit before he joined me what had to be the world most crowded coat closet. Other people did take pictures, though and here are some links to good coverage of our Children's Inaugural Ball. We'll have some photos on the Every Child Matters website soon, too.

Washingtonian Capital Comment Blog

NJ.com

Education Week

Inauguration Madness

In case you have been living under a rock, this is Inauguration Weekend. Otherwise known as, "Don't even try to leave Northern Virginia" Weekend. The DOT/Secret Service/Lord knows who else has closed every single bridge from Northern Virginia into the District. This means that anyone who is attending any of the festivities, or God forbid, has to go to work, has to take public transportation.

This would be all well and good, except for the fact that our office is sponsoring the first ever Children's Inaugural Ball at the Washington Historical Society tomorrow afternoon. This event is the only thing that is kid-friendly all weekend. It is also free. It also filled up one day after we started taking RSVPs and has a waiting list of over 1200.

Sadly, it is also going on at the same time as the giant concert at the Lincoln Memorial. All of the staff are thinking about sneaking out the back door and going to hear Bono.

Our party is going to be great and I'll post pictures this weekend after it's over.

Don't forget that I will be on Jeopardy! on Tuesday; someone tape it for me in case it's preempted here for more inauguration coverage.

Big Work News

So, here is the big news from the office. My immediate boss is leaving for 'greener pastures' at the Environmental Defense Fund. His last day is tomorrow. Since I already had the majority of the finance related things that he formerly dealt with, I am getting the remaining few - mostly long range planning and budgeting - and the board stuff, legal stuff, risk management stuff and some of the development stuff.

I am also getting a new title, Director of Finance and Administration, and a nice raise to go with it. Everybody say "Congratulations."

Missing Papers

This morning I finally figured out what has been happening to our paper. The dumb cow who works the security desk has been throwing them away. I'll back up...

Last week, my boss asked me to renew our subscription to Roll Call, which is Congress's newspaper. I checked on it and we already had a subscription, good until December. So I called the paper, said we weren't getting ours and they delivered copies of the last three days. This morning, on my way in it occurred to me that I hadn't seen any issues since then, so I looked around the lobby for them and they weren't there. I casually said to the desk cow that I would have to call and complain again. This is when she said that she has been THROWING THEM AWAY!!

Apparently, an employee who left in January had been getting them and didn't tell anyone else to pick it up when he quit. So, they had been piling up in the lobby and she just took it upon herself to chuck them. I guess she couldn't be bothered to come up one floor and say "Hey, you know you have a pile of papers in the lobby?", or stop one of us when we come in. Too much work.

Rocky Mountain High

Wow, I've been a bad blogger in April. I am blaming work. We were eyeball deep in putting on a conference in Denver last week and it made all of us way too crazy. The conference actually came together great. We had a good turnout (airline trouble notwithstanding) and everyone who attended seemed enthusiastic and like they were getting a lot out of it. Sadly, we didn't get to see any of the town, but I did get to look at 'real mountains' on Friday morning before we left (the only day it was clear enough to see them).

However, after working 12+ hour days for three days, I was really glad to get home on Friday night. Especially since it snowed in Denver on Wednesday night until about noon on Thursday. And I missed my sweetie while I was gone.

Bad Wednesday

So, in terms of preferred ways to spend 'hump day", talking to the police would be very low on my list.

Overnight, some entered our office and stole two laptops and an LCD projector. This is the second robbery on our floor in a week. The group that we rent our space from had laptops taken sometime over the weekend. They notified the building management, who assured them that they would alert the tenants and security, neither of which they did. The door wasn't forced, so someone has a working key card, which is kind of scary.

Fortunately, I lock my computer in the desk when I leave at night, but one of the stolen ones we ordered just a month ago.

Hopefully, this is the bottom point for the day.