So far this week I’ve split my time between my old and new projects at work.  Mornings have been spent with the old, and afternoons are spent with the new.  It’s actually a pretty nice divider for the day, especially since I’ve worked my mornings from home and then coming into the office for the afternoon.  As of now, I can’t really work from home on the new project, so this is a good way to do it for the next month or so.  After that point I’m supposed to be dedicating more time to the new project, so I’m not sure what I’ll be doing then.  I’m enjoying the new work so far, even though it’s mostly been meeting thus far.  I’m sure that will all start changing really soon though.

Today has been a hectic day!  If you didn’t already know, I’m in the process of moving to a new position with my company.  My current position is actually being outsourced, so I consider myself lucky to have found another opportunity so quickly.  I’m in a transition phase with my current position, and haven’t started moving into my new role yet.  The project lead for my new position was in town today and he scheduled a meeting to welcome myself and two others into the group.  The problem was that I had planned to work from home today.  I didn’t find out about the meeting until half hour into my work day, with only about an hour and half notice.  So I had to rush to get down to the office in time to attend the meeting.  My work from home days may be numbered, but I’m excited for my new opportunity!

My trip to Kansa City is just about over, in more ways than one. I finally got some KC BBQ for lunch today, which pretty much wrapped up the trip. A group of ten of us from work headed to the Summit Hickory Pit. I’ve been many times before and have always enjoyed the food. This time was no different, great lunch!

Now I’m waiting to board the plane to fly back. I’m really hoping to see the sun upon arrival. It’s been hiding the entire time I’ve been in town. And I’m told it’s been missing for an entire week. That’s rough!

I took an early flight this morning to Kansas City.  It is time for my sort of annual trip for work.  The last time I was here was back in July of 2008, so it’s been a little longer than a year.  The office itself hasn’t changed much.  We are in different groups than my last visit, so many people have moved offices and cubes, but the layout is nearly the same as it’s always been.  It’s nice to be able to catch up with some of the people in my group, some of whom I’m meeting in person for the first time.  And it’s also nice to catch up with all of those that I used to work with that are still around.  I’m hoping to see some other folks while I’m in town for the reminder of the week.  It looks like it will be a busy couple of days.

I had over four hours of meetings today at the office. I’m hoping that tomorrow I can settle back into my normal routine and hopefully get some real photos of our trip posted. Below are a few photos I took on the iPhone throughout the trip.

Cool mountains as seen from the plane.

Kim on the cold but awesome tour of Kenai Fjords National Park.

Tasting all of the brews at St. Elias Brewing Company.

Kim chilling at our campsite on the Homer Spit.

You’ll have to forgive me for the delayed updates these past couple of days. We’ve been playing some musical chairs in the office, with nearly half of the employees switching to new cubes. I’m actually really liking my new cube, but it’s been a bit hectic and noisy, making it hard to concentrate recently. My old cube was on a big thoroughfare for people getting to and from one of our break areas. So I was happy to move away from that into something that is a bit more private. Well as private as four foot cubicle walls can be. However there are a lot more people around now, so the background noise has picked up considerably. Another positive thing is that this new cube is closer to the windows, so I can now stand up and see the mountains as I feel necessary. And one of our IT guys dropped off a new 19″ wide screen monitor for me this morning, so things are definitely looking up. Now if the moving could just be finished and we could all go back to our hard working days.

What a day of work! I don’t think I’ve been this stressed in a long time. Hopefully that’s the end of it and tomorrow turns out to be back to the normal swing of things. It’s amazing the amount of work that we put in at times to prevent losing a client.

I was supposed to have jury duty this morning, however my number was not in the range of those picked to report. I’ve found that most people are relieved to hear this news, but I actually wanted to go and see what it’s all about. I’ve yet to report for jury duty in any city I’ve lived, even after receiving the notice at least twice. How can you argue against a day off from work, yet still getting paid?

Earlier this week was my official five year anniversary for my current job. The time has flown by! I was able to select a gift for my years of service from a website catalog and chose a globe. I figured I would use it more than some fancy pen. Now I just need to find a good spot for it in the home office. As far as work goes, things are continuing to improve after a recent shift of our organizational groupings. At first I was not very excited to be back to quality assurance testing full time, but I am slowly taking on more advanced testing tasks. Hopefully things continue to improve.

This day has really crawled by. What weird is that I’ve been swamped with work, so typically that makes the days fly by. But not today. I still have over an hour left, so hopefully the pace picks up a bit. Apologies for the boring post. I promise to add more pictures on Monday. Have a nice weekend.