So, what do you do?

What do you do when you know you should be thankful that you have a job, and that's all your employer reminds you of (all the time), but all you can think about is the day you can quit?

Is that wrong?

I took the wrong job offer last summer. I have known that for several months, but things just keep getting worse here. My personality doesn't fit in with their culture(i.e. I'm not little miss nice girl 24/7, imagine that!). I am damn good at what I do, but because a few people don't like me, it's gone on my review, and that's all they seem to be focusing on.

AUGH!!!!!!

Can someone say "subjectivity?" Whatever happened to objective, performance-based reviews? I mean, I know I am FAR from perfect (eons away, in fact), but it's still incredibly frustrating to have people's personal opinions of me, and not much else, show up in my review.

I am in a very awkward position here. I am deeply grateful that I am gainfully employed, but is it also okay for me to be deeply frustrated? I wish I could give my job to someone who would love it as much as I loved my last job, and I wish I could get a great one in return, but I know none of that can be the case right now, so I am trying to suck it up. It sucks a lot. I hate the recession!

I hate that I feel selfish for disliking my job, but I know someone else would be happy with it. I just wish I had another source of revenue coming in, because I would leave tomorrow if I could and give someone else the chance to flourish.

Ugh. I hate being a grown-up.

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A Storm is Brewing in South Carolina...

It is about 6:30 on Election Night, and I couldn't help but notice how foreboding the sky was on my drive home. It was pitch black heading West on I-85 tonight, and to the South, the sky had been posessed by pure evil. Dark clouds were making very creepy swirling patterns in the sky, and the wind had picked up by the time I left work. I couldn't help but shiver when I walked out into it alone.

Maybe it was the winds of change. God, I hope this is a good sign.

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2 Weeks Notice

So, for those of you who haven't heard, I have officially put in my two weeks notice. My last day working for the Credit Union here will be the 29th of August, and it is coming up fast.

I received an email today from the HR director. She wished me well, and would I please complete an exit interview? I got this as I was waiting on someone's credit to be pulled, and I almost collapsed into tears when I read it. It's a good thing I didn't- the person in front of me would have feared their credit was bad enough to make me cry!

I knew it was going to be excruciatingly difficult for me to leave this company, but I don't think I really grasped the depth of how attached I had become to everyone here. I keep saying that there really isn't anything keeping me here, but I have a bad feeling I was lying to everyone, including myself, about it.

We, as a couple, are lucky. Smitty has friends who have been far more than accommodating, and we could never thank them enough for all they have done. But, what about me? I have married into this set of friends, but the only thing I have going for me up there is the fact that I have a great job offer, and I think that finally sunk in tonight, and I became deeply saddened. I am leaving everything behind, and, tonight, the gravity of that statement made it hard to look forward to the future.

Things always look better in the morning. On that note, Goodnight.

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State Farm sucks!!!!!

*sigh*
Now, don't get me wrong. I've had my car insurance with them since I was 16, so I've been with them for a decade now. And then they pull this...

Today we got a letter stating that the insurance policy we just took out in May will be cancelled effective August 17th. The reason? "Insufficient Underwriting Information."

Whaaaaaa???? I am mad. I think I had a minor nervous breakdown. And then we got a quote from USAA which came in $200, or 35% cheaper per year.

So maybe it was a blessing in disguise? Either way, at least we will have insurance.

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Let them eat cake...

I'm in the process of waiting on a cake to come out of the oven. I am making burnt sugar cake for the first time ever, and let me tell you, melting the sugar did not go well the first time. I should have taken a picture just to amuse the masses.

However! The second time I was successful! We shall see how everyone likes it tomorrow. I know I will enjoy every last crumb of it.

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Great Reading

So, my friend Anne posted this on her blog, so I had to share with Smitty, and now I'm sharing with all of you.

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your own blog.

See the full list after the jump. Enjoy!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling*
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Have fun with it!!!

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The house has been painted!

Huzzah!!!
We now have a less offensive guest bedroom (now 2 shades of green), and a much nicer "Ripe Wheat" colored living room. The exterior is also apparently 2 coats of paint prettier, though we haven't seen it yet. There will be pictures soon, thanks to Bob.
There are also supposed to be no more holes in the floor! Yay!!! Do not worry, pictures will be posted soon. I'm DYING to see it myself.
Now, if only we could get a plumber out there that wasn't going to cost our firstborn child...

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