Still Alive!

It's been a while...The last week that I was at work, January 14-18, I trained my replacement. I think he was a bit overwhelmed with it all, especially with how busy we were during that week with all of our clients coming back from vacations. Sometime during that week Z mentioned something about showing him the new website I had sort of designed. When Z left, the guy asked me how he was supposed to have time to do everything. I tried to make him feel a bit better and told him that all of the things I was teaching him don't happen all in one day...He looked scared. But I've talked to him a few times since then, and he seems to be getting the hang of it. Even when I picked up my last paycheck Z was still mad at me. Oh well.

The week after that, January 21-25 I worked at my new place. Well, basically got a feel for things before I came down to Florida for training. I have 2 employees, both of who are considerably older than me. I hope they don't hold any resentment when I do come back and begin to implement some things for the better. There are a few things that the previous owner has requested that I change for the good of the business, mainly our point of sale system.

My brother came down to training with me. We left on Friday the 25th at around 5 pm. We drove to Ft. Worth (5 and a half hours) stayed the night and got up pretty early Saturday morning to drive as much as we could. ended up making it from Ft. Worth to Milton, Florida, just east of Pensacola. About a 12 hour drive. We got up relatively early, and drove on down to Bradenton/Sarasota Florida. That took us about 7 hours with minimal stops.

We're staying in a 2 bedroom/2 bathroom condo about 6 miles from Cortez Beach. Surprisingly the condo is considerably less expensive than a hotel, plus we get to make our own food instead of relying on finding a restaurant to eat at or picking up fast food everyday. It's nice and big as far as condos go... Most every evening when we get back from our training, we open up the patio doors and relax. The weather is absolutely perfect here. It's definitely going to be hard to go back in a couple of weeks.

We had training all last week. Our class is the largest class they've ever had. It's great to see all the diversity and everyone's backgrounds. I feel pretty comfortable in being able to call anybody who is in our class later on down the road for any advice I might need. Plus the people at corporate are completely awesome. We quickly made friends with everyone, and had a couple of them over to watch the Super Bowl last night, including a very excited native of New York. This coming Friday we're having a pizza and beer get together with our classmates.

Over the weekend, we spent most of our time at the beach. We visited Mote Aquarium and walked around the Siesta Fiesta down at Siesta Key. I think I could come over here every January/February. I now understand why we saw so many cars with Ontario, Quebec, New York, Michigan, Massachusetts...etc...license plates.

Today began week 2 of training. Should have tons of hands on to do. It's been a good experience so far, I'm glad I'm here.

I have pretty limited internet access. When I do get a chance to be on, I'm taking care of business emails. Hope everything is going okay for everyone!!

Posted by sweetdulce @ 9:51 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

Overheard....

Went to eat at the deli in Market Street today. A group of elderly ladies were sitting at the next table, they were on the topic of cell phones, and one of them opened hers up and took a photo of one of the other ladies, who appeared to have just had surgery or something done to her eye. (There was some gauze and surgical tape over her eye, and over that, was a black eye patch.) The lady who took the photo, was showing the other ladies how easy it was to take the photo, laughed and said, "Look, now I have a pirate on my phone!" They all laughed, and I nearly choked. heheh

Posted by sweetdulce @ 6:02 pm EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

Good News

Results of Jon's biopsy and CT-Scan show that the tumor has "died" - so 3 more treatments, and another check on it on the last treatment, and it should be done with until the next check in a couple of months after the last treatment. Then another check-up at 6 months, and then after that every year for the rest of his life. So I guess everything is good, so far. Definitely better, and no surgery, which is a huge plus. Went out to Kabuki to celebrate the death of the tumor and me officially resigning my position at work. It was good food as always.

Mom and Dad went down to south Texas for a funeral, on their way back they stopped to see my aunt. The doctor said that since she's had her surgery and after 10 more rounds of chemo that her chance of survival should be at 75% as opposed to 35% when it all started. So that's better too. Mom said that she's doing well, lost some weight, but is fine. She's working out of her house when she is unable to go in, good thing she's higher up on the chain, and has an opportunity to do that. I'd like to visit her within the next few months, probably in March sometime.

Bought the Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for my DS yesterday, but haven't had a chance to play it yet. I did play part of the Lego Star Wars: Complete Saga or whatever it's called. I need to get my GH3 back from my brother and sister, and I also need to play Halo 3 which I've borrowed from my brother. So many games, so little time

Posted by sweetdulce @ 12:41 pm EDT | Permalink | 6 Comments

I Hate Waiting.

Jon had his 4th treatment yesterday, a CT-Scan, and a biopsy done. Now just waiting on the results of the biopsy and CT-Scan. Ugh. I hate waiting. Treatments seem to be going well, he only feels blah for about a day and a half, which is good. So hopefully the little tumor thing on his pancreas is dead, and he won't have to have surgery to remove it and have even more treatments than scheduled. If all goes well, he should only have 3 treatments left.

In other news, I officially quit my job on Friday (HAPPY NEW YEAR!) and my official last day is the 18th. Needless to say, everyone around here was a tad pissed. Ah well. Luckily I have all the training files from 4 years ago when I first got this job, so I won't really have to come up with much more training information. Now they just need to find my replacement.

Dad talked to the lady that manages the business now. He said that she seemed really excited that we were buying it. She said that there's a lot of potential business that the present owner has passed up, and she's very optimistic about us taking it over. Thank goodness. I was really hoping she would be okay with everything, and not end up being disgruntled or something. Especially since she's been there for 15 years. So that part is looking like it will be good.

Christmas vacation was good. Extremely busy. On Christmas Eve, Dad treated me, Mom, and my sister to deluxe pedicures/manicures. Dad has done some work for the guy who owns the place, so he was hanging out with him when we got there. The guy also owns a liquor store and a construction business...Dad was telling him that he bought some Captain Morgan's Special Reserve at his store, and the guy told him to bring it in, by the time I arrived, there were maybe 3 or 4 shots left in the bottle. hahah so they were all feeling a little good. It was a fun time, Dad was thisclose to getting a pedicure, but opted to just sit in the massage chair next to me instead. I told him we should do that at least once a month.

The day before Christmas Eve, we had everyone from Jon's family come over for dinner, so the day before that we ran around like mad people in all the crowds trying to get last minute things. We made a pretty good team, Jon would drop me off at the front of the store, I'd run in, get what we needed, and come back out, and he'd pick me up. We did that at every store too. It was easier and much quicker that way. The dinner was good, everyone showed up except the 2nd oldest brother, he was "sleeping" and couldn't bother to come by. Oh well, given the dynamics of their family in present time, it was probably for the best. Less drama.

Hope everyone had wonderful holidays!

Posted by sweetdulce @ 11:40 pm EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

Random Update

Christmas shopping is done. As of last Sunday. Boy, was THAT fun. Really, it wasn't TOO bad since I accompanied my sister. Seems like it's better that way. I, of course, do most of all my shopping online, so I didn't buy too much. I'm still waiting on Dad's gift to arrive via Priority mail. I hope I get it tomorrow, or at least by Monday.

We're hosting Jon's family's dinner at the house, almost completely prepared for it, just some dusting and vacuuming and a tad more decorating to be done tonight and tomorrow. Unfortunately, I think the kitchen floor is going to have problems since it's supposed to rain/snow tonight. With 4 dogs, keeping the kitchen floor absolutely clean is quite the task. Especially when 3 of them see mud or puddles and just have to walk in it. Flash is the only one who's like, "ew! mud! ew! puddles! ew!" And that's exactly how it looks when he walks around in the backyard as well. If a basset hound can be caught tip-toeing, Flash is the one.

Saw I Am Legend last Friday. Something about the last parts of it kind of had me disappointed, but overall it was pretty good. Loved the German Shepard in it! Looking forward to PS I Love You, Alien vs Predator R, and Cloverfield Cloverfield better not suck either - J.J. Abrams, I'm looking at you sir.

Oh, and cancer sucks. Found out a couple of weeks ago that my favorite aunt has stage 3 colon cancer. She has a 35% chance of making it through. I hope she does, she's awesome, plus her oldest daughter is getting married this summer, and she has an adorable grandson from her youngest daughter who needs his grandma. *sigh*

Also found out that Jon has pancreatic cancer. They caught it extremely early, luckily, so they are hoping at least 7 treatments will zap it. I went with him to his second treatment yesterday, and they are going to do another CT-scan around the 4th treatment to see if the tumor is shrinking. If it is shrinking, then they will continue with treatment as is, if not, then they will have to do surgery. The doctors keep telling him how lucky he is that they caught it THIS early. And the only reason they caught it was because they noticed an abnormality while they were looking at the CT-scans from when he fell last New Years. One of those weird things where if he would have taken care of the fall as soon as it happened and that stupid bump never showed up, they wouldn't have done the CT-scans, and probably wouldn't have caught the tumor until it was too late, and it was spreading. So maybe not going to see the doctor as soon as that happened was a good thing. The doctor just confirmed that he indeed does have cancer two and a half weeks ago, so this is all kind of shocking/nerve wracking to say the least.

The corporation, Dulce Design is now coming into fruition. We should close on the business deal January 14th or 15th. So nervous! Next week I will have to turn in my letter of resignation to my bosses. I still need to find out when training is. I believe it begins the last week of January, which will work out perfectly. That'll give the people here almost an entire month to find a replacement.

Well, I'm really looking forward to the next 5 days. I'll be gone from work until Thursday. During that time, when I'm not cooking/baking/stuffing my face/hopefully playing some Xbox (please!), I'll need to come up with a letter. Yuck. Anyway, I hope everyone has a wonderful (and safe!) holiday.

Posted by sweetdulce @ 5:18 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments