Not Fair!

It's simply not fair at all. Why am I sick NOW??? Four days before Christmas and I can barely drag myself out of bed. I suppose the good thing is that hopefully I will be mostly over it by the weekend, but it still sucks. Another good thing is that we have no engineer bosses at work for the rest of the week, and one of the other bosses took one look at me and said "Why are you here?" Because I have a stupid meeting at 9am, that's why. "So you're going home at 9:30 right?" That sounds like a very good idea. I think I'll skip out on tomorrow too. Sigh... I hate being sick..... At least I can play Katamari now. Yes, that's right! Nathan and I bought a Playstation2 with the gift card we got from my work for our wedding. Yea for Katamari!

Sniffles and snorts, Sheila

Fixed! ... mostly

Okay, now Amazon is sending out the items that they have ready (still missing one) and have removed any shipping charges from my order. Whew! So it's only Vanessa who might be missing a present on Christmas Eve. Sorry Ness! I'll mail it up to you if it doesn't come in time.

I can stop panicking now...

Why, oh why

Why is my Amazon order now not going to make it in time for Christmas? I ordered everything on November 18th. They sent me an email TODAY that one item was delayed 4 to 6 weeks, but that the rest should arrive before Christmas. I went in and deleted the delayed item, and now the rest of my shipment won't arrive until AFTER Christmas! How does that work! I upgraded my shipping to the fastest possible, but it's still not for sure. I hope it works out though, otherwise I'm kind of screwed for a lot of presents. Grumble, grumble....

Questions for the universe

Why do people on the bus in the morning have to be so darn chipper and loud? There are these 3 women on my bus that giggle and talk really loud for the entire ride. It's very irritating. I mean, I'm a morning person, but they're so bad that it even gets to me.

Why do authors take such a long time to come out with the next book in their series? Some are really good and churn one out about every year, which is reasonable to me. Others take 3, 4 or 5 years between books and then I'm so lost I have to read the entire series over again. Not that that's especially bad.... I mean, if they're going to take that long, don't write a series!!

Why do I really, REALLY want to play Katamari?

Why do people insist that Christmas is first and foremost a "religious" holiday, while at the same time going all out with super expensive presents from Santa? This makes no sense to me....

Why do interior designers put sinks where it is absolutely impossible for me to drain them? Why do they get all huffy when I tell them it won't work?

Is it holiday time yet?

Good To Be Home

Ahhh.... Good old Canada. I can feel the serenity now....

Well, I got back into town early this morning (4:30am) and promptly passed out until 1pm this afternoon. I was completely unaware of anything going on around me. Nathan showering, Nathan leaving, phone calls, I missed it all.

So the Vegas business trip was good. The conference was awesome, despite some small hiccups. Tuesday I was completely overwhelmed by the 7500 other people, courses that weren't the best (but I knew that would be the case before hand), a headache, bitchy people, couldn't find the shuttle bus, etc. that I just sat down in my hotel room and had a good cry.

The Venetian Shops area.... Nice ceiling

The rest of the week was really good though. I had some really good seminars that gave me a lot of good ideas about how to organize the CAD stuff at ESA and I picked up some good tricks for all of the other drafters in the office. I think it was definitely worth the money, though I would much prefer to be a the hotel where the conference is taking place next time. The shuttle bus was convenient, but it was still one more thing to worry about.
I met a lot of neat people and will keep in touch with some of them I'm sure. Some were completely arrogant and rude, and others were really great. I suppose you get all kinds.
I feel completely naked without my name tag now. I feel like I should be checking my schedule or something...

The Strip

As for Vegas itself, I have NEVER EVER been to such a commercial place. The entire place is centred around getting you to spend money. All of the hotels that I was in, you had to go through the casino to get anywhere. Back to the lobby, the elevators, the conference centre, the shops, it didn't matter. Somehow you had to go through the middle of the casino to get there. I'm not entirely sure HOW they accomplish it, but there it is. Slot machines in the airport, sensored minibar items (if you pick it up, you bought it), shops full of junk, and so on. At the beginning of the week, it was all very impressive, but by the end I was sick of the commercialism, the noisy gambling machines, the guys trying to hand out stripper ads on the streets, the priests who were definitely not priests trying to collect money for the "poor", the guys with their sandwich boards spouting off about the end of the world and redemption... It was a bit too much for me, I'll admit. I like nice little Canada, calm little Calgary. I guess I'm a "country" girl at heart. =D

My hotel, Mandalay Bay.

Very swank... Felt I should dress up to use the bathroom