I'm Baaaack!

Man, look at how long it has been! A lot has changed since my last posting in March 2011. Let me catch you up.

Austin is now 8 and will be going into 3rd grade in August.

Nick and I have been married for almost 11 years.

Oh yeah, Sophie is now here! Sophie Elizabeth was born in May 2012 and is a sassy, hilarious, sweet 3 year old addition to our family. Things wouldn't be the same without her!

I'll add some pictures to a future posting, just so you can see how awesome and adorable the Millers have gotten!

I'm still working at Heartland Community College as an Academic Advisor. I've been here almost nine years, which kind of blows my mind! I do love my job, my supervisor, and my coworkers and am very happy with the job.

Nick has switched careers and is now the Branch Manager at Airgas in Bloomington. Airgas is a company that provides gasses, welding supplies, etc. for its customers. He started there a few years ago working in their fill plant and was basically asked to move up to sales and then up to be the branch manager! I'm so proud of my kick ass hubby!

(Side note: it is really overwhelming to try to sum up the last 4 years in a blog post! Man!)

I got my gall bladder taken out back in June 2011, is that interesting? Maybe not!

Also an addition to the family -- my nephew Max. My sister Erin and her husband Danny already had Eleanor, as you may recall, and she is now a gorgeous and fun 5 year old who will be starting kindergarten this fall. They added Max Evans Moyer to the family in May 2013. He completes the Evans' girls' kid bunch and really rounds out the whole two girls, two boys grandkid group nicely for my mom!

We have had a lot of ups and downs in the past four years. I'm happy and proud to say we're all still here, making it through, sometimes day by day! But the fact is that we're here, we have more people on our team since 2011, and I think we're a great group! Welcome back, blog readers!

Welcome to Heartland

Hmmmm....think I'll go to college today. I'm sure waiting until 1 week before classes begin isn't too late...

No time to post!

I am here, I want to post, but we're so busy! This is the last day of regular "non-late" enrollment for our spring semester, so you can imagine the business we're doing out here today! Hopefully I'll be able to get some new stories posted soon!

Way. More. Tired.

Well, Heartland and my son conspired to make yesterday's tiredness seem like a cake walk! Austin woke up at 11:45 p.m. crying last night and just was inconsolable for about a half an hour! Luckily, Nick came home from his bowling league soon after the crying began and was instrumental in helping calm the boy down. We still don't know what happened or what was upsetting him! We decided to let him sleep with us, but that's always a challenge. I typically don't sleep very soundly when Austin is in bed with me or both of us because I'm always subconsciously "monitoring" him to make sure he's not falling off the bed (we've been there...twice!) or something. It took Austin a long while to settle into a comfy place on the bed, apparently, so I'm going to guess that we all got to sleep around 1 a.m.-ish or so. That's pretty dang late, even for me! Then, to keep the fun rolling, Austin decided it would be fun to wake up at 5:30 a.m. and continue on his upset jag from the previous night! Buddy!! What is the deal? From 5:30 until we left for daycare around 7:30 a.m., he oscillated between happy and terribly sad/distressed. The only thing that seemed to consistently cheer him up was playing with the "Moov", a.k.a. the Smooth, which is what we call the lotion. He really liked it and wanted to rub handfuls of it into my sheets. Awesome, but not really the activity I wanted to partake in this morning!

I dropped him off at daycare and he was pretty crabby, but I know he's in good hands over there. I'm really, REALLY hoping that the change of scenery helped and that he's back to his normal happy-go-lucky self tonight! I'll even settle for quietly crabby, as long as we can all get some sleep!

I say that Heartland also is in this conspiracy to make me even more tired because we had an orientation today and it was hell. Pure and simple hell. We are down one advisor (because someone chooses to take vacation time to go to HEALING SCHOOL during one of the busiest times of the semester -- thanks for that!), and Lindsay is still feeling like death warmed over, so really we're down 1.5 advisors. Plus, they haven't yet hired another half-time replacement for Jenn, so TECHNICALLY, we're down 2 full advisors right now. The students weren't the worst I've seen at all, but there were just so many of them and they kept coming. We probably saw all 37ish of them in a short 2 hour period, in addition to the students who just came in and weren't a part of the orientation. All of this makes for a VERY LONG DAY, and I get to teach the Zumba class tonight! I had fun doing it on Monday night, but I'm just not feeling it tonight with all the tiredness. I hope it goes well!

Sorry for the whiny, complaint-filled post, but this is my day! Hopefully I will be able to post more cheerful things tomorrow (maybe I'm following Erin's rough day pattern?)...

So. Very. Tired.

As I'm writing this, there are people waiting in our waiting area to be seen by one of the advisors here at Heartland Community College. Which, basically, for the last week has been me and Cecilia. Okay, okay, Gayle is here now and The Farbs has been here all day, but it feels like just me and Cecilia.

It's suddenly become a madhouse around here today, and it was a lot of the time last week. Everyone is in the mad rush to register for the spring semester...hey, students, we started this enrollment period on OCTOBER 7!! Next time, plan ahead! Lindsay, who is the third of our group, has been out with the barfs since last week! She did attempt to come in today, and we love her for that, but we want her to feel better! I told her this morning, though, that it just goes to show how much work she does around here because we definitely feel the difference without her!

I would make this post longer, but I don't have time!

The latest

Well, it's Monday again. I really don't mind Mondays, because I love my job! I also love coming back to a place where my friends work and where I can get some good adult conversations! Not that Austin isn't stimulating (or Nick, for that matter, but he's usually asleep!), but sometimes, I need to not be looking after anyone for a while.

It's quiet around here today. Many people are either out or coming in late. Luckily, we're in the slow time of the semester, so we haven't been inundated with students in the last couple of weeks, which is nice!

Currently, there is a lot of weather-related talk going on outside my office. There is a lady who works in our suite who seems to be OBSESSED with all things weather! Don't even get her started during the wintertime, either, because when snow is on the horizon, EACH PERSON who comes through the doors gets asked something like, "How's it looking out there? Is it coming down yet?" It's like being in the audience of some sort of weather game show or infomercial or something! Anyway, with all the rain from Ike this weekend, you KNOW there was lots of discussion!

I'm still sick! Blech! I'm going to guess sinus infection, maybe, because I do have more sinus pressure and snottiness (sorry, I know). I'm starting to develop more of a cough, although it's not completely all the time still. Last night was rough. I didn't fall asleep until 2 a.m. and then was up almost every half hour on the hour coughing and blowing my nose! I may resort to either stronger OTC meds or a trip to the doc-in-the-box to try to weasel and antibiotic out of them. We'll see how today goes.

That's it for now. I might post more later, but maybe not. Not a ton of new info from this weekend...just hanging out! Oh, we did buy a new living room set for our new house, which was exciting, so yay for that!

Hey, maybe I'll go to college today!

Wow. It's Sunday already! Sorry I haven't posted on my blog since freaking Wednesday, but it's been INSANE at my job this last week! As you know if you know me well enough to read this blog, I work at Heartland Community College. School starts a week from tomorrow, as in August 18. Today is officially the last day of open enrollment, meaning you can enroll without having to pay a late fee...I mean...SERVICE fee. (Don't say "late fee"!!!! That's taboo around the ol' HCC!). Anyway, you can imagine that a lot of these people don't know how to register for classes online or don't have access yet since they're new students, so for them, Friday was really their last day to get their classes. Last week was also the last three orientation sessions for new, full time students, so we had a lot going on!

It was seriously nuts around the office. I mean, people waiting for 30-60 minutes to see an advisor only to be told, hey guess what? All the classes you want to take are totally full! Bummer! Also, we decided that Friday was obviously "Bring your parent to Heartland" day, as we had many, MANY overbearing, all up in the business parents with our students on Friday. This happens a lot, but Friday was really a banner day for these helicopter parents. It's not that we don't appreciate a supportive family for our students, but for the love of God, Mom/Dad...little Johnny is now 20 years old. Please let him come to school and make some decisions on his own!!! This is not your educational career!

All in all, the week went okay. Students got seen, classes were chosen, and enrollment ensued. We have many appointments to see next week for the really late enrollees, but since the SERVICE fee will be enacted for people without appointments, we're hoping to see less of those people!

Whew!

What is on your shirt?

This is what I've heard multiple times today. Let me explain.

You see, I haven't put away all my clean laundry, which means I have a huge basket of super wrinkly clothes in my room. I usually don't care about wearing things that are wrinkled because I'm kind of a slob like that, I guess. Today, though, I went for the folded clothes and pulled out this blue short sleeved shirt. This will work, I think, because it's still hot out, it's clean, and it fits fine. I then realize that this is a MATERNITY shirt that I just haven't let go of. And yet I wear it anyway because, you know what? Sometimes I just want to wear a shirt that is a little more freaking forgiving so I don't spend all day feeling like I have to pull the shirt out of my back fat!

Back to the shirt. I put it on with some nice black goucho pants and sandals and I'm thinking, "Okay, not too bad! We'll just not say that it's a maternity shirt, because then I'll REALLY feel fat!" I even straightened my hair today so that I wasn't just wearing it pulled back. It's an attempt to look nice! I go to work, chat with my coworkers, and then Cecilia notices my back and says, "What's all over your shirt?"

It's WHITE PAINT!! Yes. I wore this shirt while painting something in my home and now I have dried up white paint all over the back of my left shoulder. That looks awesome! She thought it might have been deoderant (as did someone else in the lunch room), but thought that I surely wouldn't have smeared my deoderant all over my back like that!

I thought about going home to change my shirt. But I didn't. Because you know what? I don't want to drive home, thus losing my good parking space, and tear through the wrinkly, back-fat-adhering to shirts to try to find another one while, most likely, working up a sweat in the process! So I'm wearing a paint-covered shirt.

Hey, maybe I can convince people that it's a shirt I designed myself...

Everybody's Workin' ON the Weekend!

Well, so maybe just me. And my brother-in-law Danny. I'm copying Erin's latest blog entry, kind of (read it here). We're having a Saturday orientation session for students wanting to get started at Heartland full time this fall. You've got to love working on Saturday!

I just got some good news from our realtor Mike! He called to ask me if he can show our house tomorrow at 11 a.m. to the same guy who looked at it and liked it last Tuesday! Apparently, this guy is bringing his parents this time to check it out! He wants to look at all the houses on the street, but one has "expired" (which I think means they haven't renewed the contract with their realtor?), so he can't see that one. The other two on our street he will be viewing again. Mike said that this guy liked the layout of our house the best, as well as our fenced in backyard (he has a dog). The other houses on our street are about 300 square ft bigger overall, but one is really in poor condition, apparently. The other one is supposed to be really nice (updates, new flooring, etc.), but it doesn't have a fenced in yard, and it's about $7000 more than our place. I'm hoping that we've found our buyer!

I guess I know what the rest of today holds for me, then! Some cleaning and house prep for tomorrow! Keep your fingers crossed!

Today's my Friday!

You've got to love short weeks at work! Today is technically Thursday, but it's officially my Friday! I've taken tomorrow off of work with two of my friends, Lindsay and Cecilia, because it's Cecilia's 30th birthday tomorrow! Happy birthday...this bitch is 30! (That's kind of our theme for her birthday -- we're cool!)

I think we're going to enjoy a lovely day filled with going out to breakfast (and lunch...and maybe dinner!), shopping, and a very special viewing of R. Kelly's Hip Hopera "Trapped in the Closet", parts 1-22. In case you're not familiar with this musical creation, let me briefly explain it. Basically, R. (as his close friends call him) has created a 22-part video detailing the events of a day where he was trapped in a closet. There was some adultery involved, there's drama with bisexuality, and a midget eventually shows up. You really owe it to yourself to experience all 22 parts, but here's part 1, just to give you a taste of the creative genius...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnmWVFmZ8ik