It’s scary that I’m supposed to be a part of the tech-savy generation…

Dragging along all your old emotional baggage, insecurities and issues tend to add a bit of strain to a new relationship. Things that happened to you in the past can easily dictate your response to what is happening in the present. Shit that had nothing to do with the new person you’re with can wrap it’s hands around the new life you work to build and begin to choke it out. Problems like this have to be kept in check and in perspective.

I honestly have difficulty with this very thing, but I’m working on it. I don’t want to be gun-shy, I don’t want to have pre-concieved notions about how people are. But I do. I just wish there was a bellhop somewhere in my head that I could check my old baggage into and just never come back and get it. I guess the key is learning to carry it without it weighing you down in the here and now.

I feel more at peace in a place where I know I can find what I’m looking for and my eyes aren’t going bonkers trying to take in my surroundings. I know lots of people love “orgainzed chaos” and can function well in that kind of enviroment…but I can’t. This side of my personality is most apparent at my job. Among other things my position requires me to process large amounts of data and consolodate it into simple and easy to understand reports and graphs as well as accounts payable duties for the entire department.

I deal with A LOT of paper every day. It’s only apparent how much crap crosses my desk when I take a day off because I’ll come back and the inbox is overflowing (and scary)…I think this may be a tatic by my bosses to ensure I don’t take days off *chuckle* I have multiple stacking paper sorters on the desk that will hold all invoices from their reception into the office through the entire payment process (gotta love corporate red tape) to end point of filing away in a clean and organized file drawer that comes complete with a self created self-archiving system. Yep, I’m a nerd.

But before I took over my position the payables process was a wreck. The person that had the duty before me couldn’t keep up with the work load, things got lost or misplaced all the time, it was impossible to find anything and was just a completely frustrating job. When I took over the main goal was to whip things back into shape. I hate for my desk to have unnecessary papers on it and I only keep out what I’m working on at the moment. It makes it way easier for me to focus and remember what I’m doing.

My desk stays clean looking all the time because at the end of each day I take a couple minutes before closing time and straighten up my papers and put everything away. Every Friday at 10 til 5 o’clock I stop what I’m doing and dust my desk, make a quick sweep of any unnecessary papers and make sure my little cubie is completly clean for the week ahead. I don’t keep a giant cup full of a thousand pens and pencils on my desk, I have a small pen cup that holds one nice black pen, a red pen, one nice mechanical pencil, two highlighters and a sharpie. The bigger stuff is stashed in a side drawer and I only keep the bare minimum supplies at my desk to avoid crowding. These simple things make it nice to come into the office in the morning, I don’t feel as though I’m being bitchslapped by my work as soon as I walk in.

A lot of the people at work keep forty thousand pictures of their families on their shelves that get mixed in with outdated training manuals, stacks of papers, knick nacks, half dead plants and god knows what else. The space under their desk is filled with boxes of papers that could easily be stored somewhere else (like the huge row of open file cabinents they gave us). There’s a couple desks at work where I get truly clostrophobic sitting at due to the amount of shit and dust they have in their cube. My shelfs are simplified for functionality, I keep one plant, a decrotative candle our boss gave us for Christmas last year, one picture that means the world to me and only the most recent version of the training guide for my desk. The three binders I use daily on the shelf have matching lables and are kept clean looking. The only thing under the desk in my cube is a trash can.

It makes me wonder if my OCD has anything to do with why I love my job so much and managed to have great production times. The people around the office that bitch the most and hate their jobs the most are the ones that are drownding in clutter. Some people there swear by how their do their work but when it comes down to it their work is as sloppy as their workspace. I think at least your office should be kept well, no one else wants to see a wreck-desk during the day and you’ll be so much more productive in the long run. *steps off soap box*

I’ve been researching this dream trip of mine for quite a few years now, everytime I find a new website of something I want to see I have a special folder in my bookmarks call ‘The Sex and the City Trip’ that holds all the links. Last night while messing around online I found something that totally fits right into my trip itinerary which I didn’t even know existed. Walking Food Tours NYC, you actually pay someone to take you out into the city and they show you the best food spots the Big Apple has to offer!

I fell in love with this idea because well, I like love to eat and they have a Greenwich Village Food Tour that includes a stop for cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery made famous from Sex and the City! Can you say AWESOME!?!

Vacationing vicariously though a t.v. show may be a little nerdy but when the day finally comes that I’ll step off the plane and step into Manhattan I know it’s gonna be one helluva trip! I just did a little evaluation of all of the links I have saved and if I tried to do everything that has caught my eye my vacation there would have to be for 3 months *chuckle* A girl can dream though can’t she?

The position is in another department but if I could just get in I could care less where in the place I work because when the cards are on the table — it’s a great freakin’ place to work! Most people hate their jobs/companies/bosses/whatever but I’m that rare breed that loves what I do and who I work for. The place treats it’s employees like royalty and is damn good to it’s temp workers like me. I know at the end of the day no matter how stressed I am or frustrated with issues I still have a job that lots of people would kill for in this day and age so I thank God every. single. day.

If I don’t get it that really isn’t a huge deal, don’t get me wrong I’m hungry as hell for what’s being offered but I know that I’m great where I’m at too. But send on the good luck vibes dudes!

In other news, I finally got the letter from the Rodeo Parade Committee for our first meeting…and am STOKED! I volunteer as a grand-stand Marshall for our local Rodeo Parade and it’s a blast. I can hardly wait for the meeting…but they scheduled the damn thing on Valentine’s day…wft?

This weekend is going to be great, Saturday the new boyfriend and I have a BBQ to go to. And Sunday night we are going to see Heart in concert (the tickets were my xmas gift to the new boyfriend)!

C’mon everyone sing “You’d have me down on my knees Wouldn’t you, Barracuda?”

Ok….got that out of our system *chuckle* All in all things are going good…I have zero complaints about life right now in spite of the everyday problems Life is good!

New Toys:

Sexy Bookmarks :: “SexyBookmarks adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts.” Download this plugin from the WordPress site by clicking here.

I saw this in action and fell in love, it looks so facy and technical but is so easy to install and customize. This plugin is responsible for the nifty little “Share the love” buttons you see under each post. Very slick looking and extremely useful for blogs that have content that the author would like to have distributed to places like Digg, Facebook, Technorati and many many more!
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WP-Cumulus :: “Flash based Tag Cloud for WordPress.” Download this plugin from the WordPress site by clicking here.

This little plugin is just too freakin’ cool! If you look at my sidebar under “The Past” heading you’ll see this little guy in action. It creates a flash ‘cloud’ of your categories (and tags if you use those) that you can fully customize the design of to add to your blog. It’s neat to look at, super easy to install and edit and fully functional for use. I love it and have to admit I’ve sat here and just played with it non-stop since I installed it…I’m a nerd…I know.

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Oldies but Goodies:

Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam :: “Stop a lot of spambots from polluting your site by making visitors identify a random word displayed as an image before commenting. You can customize the pool of words to display.” Download this plugin from the WordPress site by clicking here.

Yaknow when you go to post a comment here and you have to type in some random dirty word or weird phrase to be able to post? This baby is how I do it! It’s so easy to use and works like a charm, my spam levels are so low it’s great and I love that I can use my own words instead of stupid defaults. Adds a little something extra to the experience I think
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Collapsible More Link :: “Allows you to click a link and instantly display the rest of your post instead of loading the ‘view more’ page.” Download this plugin from the creator’s site by clicking here.

Usually when I get on a rant around here the post ends up taking up a huge chunk of the front page, this little plugin gives you that handy “read more” link that helps you conserve space or even screw with your readers…like I did here. When this post hit the front page I simply had inserted the “more” link between the text and the picture at the bottom and it was a hit! Muhahaha!
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Text Link Ads :: “Text Link Ads Sell Ads on your Homepage or site wide. Join the Text Link Ads marketplace.” Download this plugin from the creator’s site by clicking here.

All of the text link advertising here at AIS is managed by Text Link Ads. I love this plugin because I just installed it and started to generate income via the sell of advertiser links, and everyone loves making money right? In fact most visitors never even see the links – you really have to look for them to find them on this site. I’ve also made a decent income from the referal of other bloggers as for every sign up that I send their way I get cash for it. So, if you do decide to give this plugin a try and sign your blog up to make some money with text ads please use my links from this site < / end shameless pandering of readers>

So, there you have it…the little list o’ Plugins that are running behind the scenes here at AIS. I hope they are useful to you on your blog. And if you have a plugin you love please tell me about it here in the comments so I can check it out Happy Saturday!

And I’m happy with it, I’ve lost count the number of times that guys have told me that the reason they find me attractive is because I don’t wear makeup. I always end up pointing out the mascara but the response is always the same – “Yeah, but you can’t even tell.” while they gesture to the lady across the bar who is made up with the same amount of makeup as Mimi was in Drew Carrey.

But I know that a lot of women both young and old spend countless dollars and tons of time applying makeup and creams and all manner of “gunk” to themselves in the name of looking ‘hot’ or even by their definition ‘normal’. I’ve recently become aquainted with a group of young ladies who fall into this category. They are all beautiful, have great skin and have the benefit of youthful vigor on their side, yet they wear so much makeup and hair stuff that even when I see them on a Tuesday afternoon they appear to be heading to a night club!

I had the chance to observe the bathrooms of one such of these ladies and all I gotta say is holy hell! There were more bottles and potions and just stuff around on the sinks and shelves than I’d ever seen. God knows what most of it was for but I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed at the site of it all. It made me grateful that I had managed to simplify my routine, still look great and could fit all of my “girl junk” into a small basket on my sink.

“Beauty” like that is expensive and I always marvel at the cost that ladies go to for them to get the latest and greatest. In hard economic times such as these I can only hope that if women are looking for extra ways to save cash that they take a look at all the money they have on their face and realize that underneath all that money is a beautiful face that most likely doesn’t need to be covered up as much as they think. A clean bright face and a smile goes a very long way, and I have the phone numbers from guys to prove it. It’s nice to not stress about putting all that on and then carrying around all the touchup junk necessary to take a madeup face out into public.

I challenge you ladies, take a hard look at your vanity, learn to love your face without all the “extra” and you’ll be suprised at how much better you’ll begin to feel, how much money you save and how many more compliments you’ll get on the natural look you have because that natural look is hard to find these days and is greatly appreciated no matter what your age

Things are plugging away as usual here, the new healthy eating plan I’ve put myself on seems to be working as 5lbs. has already melted away! It’s amazing what eating more salads and less fried foods can do. I’m only getting to the gym once a week but that’s 100% more times a week than I had been going so I’ll keep looking at it in that glass is half full sort of way for awhile

Finances are still troubled waters, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. That end is a long ways off yet so I’ll continue with my little plans and spending analysis as I have been. I would really like to get back to using my Quicken program to track spending and whatnot but that’s going to require a couple of days where I do nothing but focus on updating and getting the information straight. I did manage to get one loan paid off in December which was a huge relief because it frees up almost $130 a month to put towards other debts. I know that I can get this all fixed and be back on track in time, right now things are tight but it’s good because it forces me to take a hard look at where I put my money.

My simplification process is coming along swimmingly, I spent two whole days last weekend purging closets and rooms in my house making boxes of things to offload at an upcoming yard sale. I still have a few more rooms to go through and then I’ll execute what I’m calling the “Final Sweep” where I take a serious look at what’s left after the purge and rid myself of even more. The dreaded task of sorting through years of papers and files still looms ahead of me and I’ll be getting to that very soon. I already feel more in control of my home and posessions thanks to the clean out, it’s been a liberating experiance for me and that motivates me to continue on in the removal of excess “stuff”.

The cleaning of the figurative house (my life/relationships/emotions) has been a challenge as well. I’m being faced with some new lessons on perception of situations and am now facing head on all of my trust issues. Sounds kinda sissy but it’s what’s going on with me. Coming to terms with not being in control of certain things and just having to trust they will work out is a hard lesson. But I’m learning. I picked up a great book by Dale Carnagie that is comprised of excerpts from many of his books and it’s been a huge help. I’ll continue to re-read it until all of the principals sink in…I’m slow like that

And finally the online world for me is starting to show signs of life…the much neglected housekeeping behind the scenes both here and at my other blog Fire Safe House.com has been done. A visual re-vamping of this place is still on the drawing board as I feel that with my new life I need a new look…but that will be a ways off…right now I’m just proud that I’ve managed to log my ass in and post with a certain regulairity.

Life is good, progress is being made and I’m happier now that I think I’ve ever been. Things are looking up and I thank my lucky stars every night that the universe hasn’t given up on me yet

“What?”

“I have to give you a name, yaknow an online one. I don’t use real names on my blog and since you’ll probably be blog fodder for me at some point I have to find something to call you so the people that read my stuff know I’m talking about you. I can’t just call you “the new boyfriend” forever, it’s too long and not really catchy.”

“Um.”

“Seriously, you gotta help me out here…this is really important.”

“Ok, well my friends used to call me ‘Harold T’, would that work?”

“Uh, no, that’s not quite what I’m going for. See my ex was known as ‘The Hotness’ in my writings, it’s gotta be catchy yaknow.”

“Well what about ‘Ferrrari’ since I’m like so exotic and sporty? Or ‘Horse’ ha ha?”

“No, no that won’t work…you’re killin’ me here…this is serious bloggin’ business dude.”

“In college when I was playing baseball they used to call me ‘Kranker’ because of my hitting a lot of home runs…”

“That makes you sound like a drug addict. I can’t have you sounding like that…jesus…my mother reads this thing!”

“What about ‘Frank n’ Beans’?”

“Uh no, why don’t we just put this on the back burner…think about it some more and get back to me would you?”

“Ok. But I still think Frank n’ Beans is pretty funny…”

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So as you can see by the above conversation between the new boyfriend and I the jury is still out on naming naming him…but as soon as we can come up with something that doesn’t make him sound like a 90-year old drug addict, barnyard animal, or a cheap meal you eat because you’re broke before payday I’ll do an intro post so you all can meet him

But for now I want to find some great new bloggers to read and add to my collection of favorites…any suggestions?