ninsianna.com

Llama Haiku:
If I ever get
a tall llama for a pet
I will name him lloyd

Llama Song

I saw Llamas on my way to work today. I used the power of GoogleMaps Satellite option and found the llamas for you to see.
LLamas!

I’m exhausted. I think that’ll pretty much be the standard for the next few days. For those of who have heard some of the drama that I’ve been dealing with, with the girl who volunteered to help w/ my wedding, and for those who haven’t, here’s where it all started and I hope has ended. But I dounbt it

My email that initiated it - mind you I’d been waiting on these envelopes for a week:
2/14
Can you please just do the envelopes for the xxx and xxx. I’ll be seeing the others Saturday, and I’ll just take theirs to them. It’s my mom and my aunt, so their not so worried about the formalities. I really want to get the other two in the mail tomorrow.
*********
Her email that really caught me off guard.
2/15
Sorry, I got your email late last night. I think we need to have a little talk. I read this right before bed and was up feeling like crap for hours. First of all, I mentioned the importance of having ALL the invitations to me at once, because I told you that I had things coming up this week, so I would be slow in returning them to you. Now that I’m running a little late with them (as I had said I would) I have the sense that you are DEMANDING them to be handed to you tomorrow. I’m recognizing a pattern that I’m starting to feel really uncomfortable with.

When I mentioned that I would help you guys out (for free) I had so much motivation to help and so much pride in being able to give you ideas and provide my services to a couple who were paying for their wedding out of their own pocket, and a couple whom I thought was deserving of my help. I have realized that either a) you don’t know how much time I’ve put into helping you or b) you think I owe you something?? I’m really confused because I feel like I’ve really done a lot for you and I’ve gotten no feedback. I actually had to ask Tracy if she liked the calligraphed envelopes that I spent almost 4 hours on. She said, “Oh yeah, I do” and that was the end of it. It really upset me to think I spent all that time of my weekend (on Super Bowl Sunday) to just have it shrugged off on Monday.

Here’s the part I’m starting to get upset with: I have not heard “Thank You” ONE TIME. I feel like you EXPECT me to do this stuff for you, like you EXPECT me to give up my Valentine’s lunch with my husband (which I did) and part of my night with him too (which I probably would have had I checked email in time, considering the tone of your email, i.e. “Would you JUST DO IT?”). I’m a very non-confrontational person and often consider myself a doormat. Well, thank GOD for email, because it’s giving me the strength to say things to you that I wish I could say in person.

I’m going to give a run-down of my time I’ve spent, just so you can realize how much work I’ve done for you with no gratitude, and understand how it can be so wearing on a person.

Drove to Grand Prairie – to park and Ruthe Jackson – 2 hours + gas, about 50 miles round trip – No “Thank you” but I was still in the “fun stage”

Met in Southlake – 2 hours, + 15 miles + lunch – No “Thank you,” except I think Eric might have said something

Invitations – 6-8 hours design + print manipulation + revisions – DEFINITELY no “Thank you”

Calligraphy – 4 hours + missing Super Bowl Sunday or giving up half a Saturday – Thankless again, plus had to ask for feedback

Valentine’s Day meeting – lost 1 hour of work ($20) + 20 miles + gas + lunch + missing lunch with my husband + potentially missing nice night - Nada + nasty email

I want this email to be the catalysts for discussion so that we can reach an understanding and I can move on to serve you with joy and happiness, which is where I started. I really like you both and I feel in my heart that you’re grateful people, but my impression lately is quite the opposite. I know I’ve taken a little longer on things, but I’m a perfectionist and like to do things right the first time. I have a lot going on, both at work, home and organizing the new business. Plus, you have to remember that you’re receiving all these items as a favor and should not complain if things are running a little behind. It’s the PMP’s Triple Constraint: Time, Cost, and Quality. You’re giving up Cost for Time… You have to compromise somewhere.

I hope you can understand how I feel and at this point, I just want things to change between us so that I can be excited to help again. I do not hold grudges and as soon as we discuss this and I start feeling “the love,” the matter is considered closed in my book, and we can have a great wedding with no ill feelings in our hearts (specifically mine). <- In other words, I don't mean to imply that you have ill feelings…
**********
My response, after she came to me last Tuesday - less tahn 2 wks before the wedding. Admitedly I did not talk to her about the issues before, becaue I’ve had a lot of sh*t to deal with. But neither did she come to me.

Based on [your previous email] I inferred that your involvment in the wedding was causing you too much distress, so I didn’t want to ask any more of you. By the time you came to me last week, I had already arranged to have everything taken care of, leveraging the help of friends and family.

Thank you for your offers of assistance and for the help you were able to provide.

*******

And the email I read at 12:30 am last night, before I tried to go to bed, followed by my response

My “involvement” in your wedding did not cause my distress at all – I feel like you’ve missed the entire point I thought I’d made in my previous correspondence. The disrespectful manner in which I was treated is what caused me to take a step back and ask myself why I was allowing someone to treat me so rudely. You have to understand how I was feeling, how each little event left me puzzled (“Did I do something wrong? Why didn’t they even say thanks?”) and how each little event compounded several times to lead me to believe that I wasn’t proving myself “worthy” - I was truly upset about the ingratitude I was shown. Put yourself in my shoes! Pretend: You’re a semi-professional web designer. You offer to do a Star Trek fan website for an acquaintance that you plan on spending 30 hours on, to further your portfolio. You drive to meet him for lunch (on your dime) and spend over an hour with him. He gives you the parameters, his wants, and you head back. You start receiving some additional requests; you’re having fun, it’s going well. You’re going on vacation in a week and tell him “Hey, I need your updates for this week, I won’t be able to work on it while I’m gone…” You get back from vacation and the surly notes start: “I need this done NOW!” You’re not thanked when you make the additions. It’s your husband’s birthday the following week and instead of meeting him, you are guilted to another face-to-face meeting (again on your dime) and lose an hour of work plus drive 20 miles round trip just to spend 40 minutes discussing an inane detail that probably could have been settled in an email. You’re not thanked. You then spend another 8 straight hours in front of the computer working with a technology you’re not really familiar with just to prove to him that you ARE worth something. He has no idea the work you’ve put in. Why do you bother? You keep asking yourself why you’re doing this!?? When you’ve completed the website, he says, “Took you long enough… Can you redo all the graphics?” At that point, the pot had been boiling too long with the lid on - and it’s about to overflow.

Can you possibly understand my mindset? We’re talking about a positive situation that so quickly deteriorated due to a lack of basic social grace, common courtesy, and human respect! I can’t believe things like this still occur in our current politically correct, “open-minded,” anything-goes society… This situation proves to me that perhaps human existence really does need a dose of the traditional afore-mentioned values of social grace, courtesy and respect to get through everyday life. Without those values of yesteryear, we’re all just phonies, touting cultural awareness and open-mindedness, while outwardly displaying contempt for those less “intelligent” than us… I know, I think about things WAY too much, and perhaps I’m overly sensitive to how society is changing as a whole, and how personal value differences affect our personal interactions, but this is me…

I HATE confrontation; I HATE talking about this, even in an email! When I offered help in the beginning, I had no idea it would turn out like this, and I’m sorry that it has. I’m sorry if there was a misunderstanding regarding my help on the day of your wedding; at the bottom of my email I clearly stated that I wanted to discuss it and move on (meaning, follow through with the wedding day help). The conversation didn’t happen because I’m such a chicken and you had asked that we talk about it after your finals. We then had Vegas; I thought we were okay after that… I guess not.

I had 100% fully intended to keep my word and help you out on Saturday. If you don’t need my help anymore, I have to live with that. I’m sorry that your families now have responsibilities on a day they should fully be enjoying.

Looking back, I’ve actually learned many lessons, and more about myself than I could have during 1,000 uneventful weddings. And looking forward, I realize you HAVE helped me with my portfolio: how I will structure future expectations and boundaries (to include many dimensions I had not formerly considered) is now firmly established in my mind.

With all this being said, I wish you and Eric the best; whether you’re married indoors or outdoors; rain or shine. May God bless you with health and happiness for many years to come.
**********

I do not have the time, inclination, or sanity to deal with this right now. There is no way for me to respond to this without attacking you. We have to work together in other capacities, something you may want to keep in mind. I have tried my best to remain civil and friendly at work, and to forget the disappointments I have been left with. I have never accused you of the many times in which you have left me hanging, because as you like to keep reminding me in your emails, I am not paying you.

My mother has to take a test tomorrow in order to continue doing the job she’s been doing for the past 5+ years. If she passes she will get the official promotion she deserves. If she doesnt’ she has to train someone else to do the job, who will probably be less qualified and will certainly have less experience doing what really needs to be done.

The real issue is that they’re going to test her over applications she hardley uses. She has to pass an expert level Word, Excel, and Access test. None of these does she use regularly at expert level. I’m sure she has average knowledge of Word and Excel, but she was telling me that she hardly interfaces with Access, and only for records between 97 and 99, and they’re phasing it out completely.

She is seriously stressed out over it. Add that to her normal everyday stress, and mother of the bride issues, and her bronchial infection - she’s having a rough week. And to top it all off, the reason she’s up for this promotion is because her boss transferred departments. At one point there were 3 of them in the dept. One quit about a month ago, and now her boss is gone, leaving just her. So she’s working with a couple of temps that she essentially has to babysit.

Tomorrow when she takes her test it’ll go something like this:
Arrive work, open office
Take 2 hour test
Break/check on office
1 hour test
Lunch/check on office
3 hour test
Return to office and await results.

Getting this promotion is something she really needs and deserves. The real concern is that if she does not get this job, she’ll be miserable. So basically get promotion = good; not get promotion = +++++bad. Getting the promotion is more about avoiding the bad repurcutions than anything. I’m not sure if she could handle it psychologically if she didn’t. Her boss that just transferred was terribly incompetent, and my mom was always having to do her bosses job on top of her own, and correcting the things her boss messed up. Seems that most people knew it, and everyone really wants her to get this position, it’s just an issue of the beaurocracy of it.
There are pros and cons to working for the governmetn (city in this case) and she’s currently facing down one of the major cons. Having the skills for the actual job, but not quite having the the skill requirements which are outdated and irrelevant.

If you stumbled on this page earlier this morning you may have seen something that looked like this:

If you’re here looking for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, I’m sorry, but the INS no longer exists. It is now the USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services)

For the most part we had a pretty good weekend. Cleaned the house and took it easy Friday - did some more cleaning before poker night on Saturday. Then I came in 3rd in the poker tourny, Phlome came in first, so we all went out after the poker party.

Sunday Phlome and I blew our wad at Lowes, and got most of what we need for our soon to be garden.
What are we hoping to expect in the next coming months?
Strawberries
tomatoes (2 kinds)
bell peppers
chili peppers
mint
basil
watermelon
cantaloup
Mesclun Lettuce

Then we got a call from Phlome’s mom, letting us know that the hotel where we have blocked off rooms for our out of town guests is telling people we have no rooms available, and that we only had 2 in the block and they’re already taken by my cousin.
I’d already been through this with them once a few weeks ago, when I was told I had to book all of my rooms by February 28th - which is just plain dumb. The contract I signed says cancel by 2/28, and all rooms must be booked by 3/17, or the rooms will be released.
After getting very stern with Wayne on the phone, who informed me there was nothing he could do, and I would have to wait til Monday to speak with a manager, Phlome and I drove to the hotel ourselves, and made Wayne call the manager. Turns out their system releases all reservations if there is no activity for 2 weeks. Then wtf is the point of booking in advance if they’re just going to drop it!? We made reservations 2 months in advance to ensure we would have rooms. And guess what. They had the rooms available! They lied to us and our guests saying there were no rooms available, even booking one of our guest in a much more expensive room because of the lack of availablity.
The manager was able to tell Wayne what he needed to be told in order to get our rooms. So now, we do have available rooms, in case you were wondering.
But I think I’m probably through with AmeriSuites now. If it weren’t going to be so difficult to contact all of our guests to tell them of the change, I would have cancelled altogether and gone with the HoJo near the rehearsal dinner restaurant.

Ok - sorry I got a little carried away with my rant there. It’s so terribly frustrating. I’ve been trying my best to make things as simple as possible so I won’t stress out over this wedding, but so often I feel like I’m doing a lot of it on my own. Phlome has helped out tons, and there’s no way I could have made it this far without him, but still, I feel like most of it falls on my shoulders.
My bridal party and family are all out of town, my wedding consultant failed me miserably, and I just feel lost most of the time, like I still dont’ have a grasp on what needs to be done. I’m constantly making lists and rechecking them, making new ones, comparing them to theknot and other websites, running through them in my head, but I alwasy feel like I’m forgetting something.
I think my failed weddng consultant is the biggest disappointment. I really just want somebody who “knows” whats going on. In the end it all falls on me. I’m the only one who knows what I want, and the only one who can ensure it will happen. I just feel an impending disappointment drawing near.

arg - ok seriously done.

You are the Justice card. Justice preserves the

harmony of the world. Working with opposite

forces, Justice does not seek to criticize or

condemn but rather to accept. The idea behind

the card justice is that opposite forces are

complementary; you could not have good

without evil or light without darkness.

Justice’s position is to make sure that if a

thing is out of balance, the weight of its

energy is realigned with its opposite force.

This card is also a card of humour, for it is

in pointing out contrary positions that

humour is often found. The attitude that is

found in the humourous person, being able to

shift perspective and flow with an instinct,

is important in the maintenance of good

balance. Image from The Blue Moon Tarot Deck.

http://www.themysticeye.com/pics/bluemoon.htm

Which Tarot Card Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I really do have more to do than just blog about my frustrations, but it’s all I have the energy for today. I’m still putting the blame on Vegas though. I think Vegas is allowed at least a weeks worth of blame.

The following rant may not make sense to everyone, and the irony of it is that despite the topic of the rant I have trouble putting my thoughts into the proper words, therefore making the conveyance of the point even more difficult.

I am not an English or Lit major. Nor did I take a journalism class, or ever aspire to a career in any of the above. The closest I ever got was some technical writing. I still would not be opposed to doiogn som work in that field. But that’s really not the point here. I only took enough English to graduate - including 2 semesters in college at TU. I think I learned more in those 2 classes than most of my high school education, but I also know that my high school education was necessary as a base for me to build on in order to be prepared for that year of College English/Lit. One of my greatest pet peeves is when a person criticizes another person’s writing based solely on the “proper” way they were taught to write in HS. Repeating the same word or phrase is often criticized in HS, because teachers want to encourage students to expand their vocabulary. However, when writing something for persuasive or entertainment purposes, repetition can serve its purpose. For an excellent example of this, see MLK Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech. Another criticism is the use of slang. Unless you’re writing a scientific or analytic paper, slang and contractions are perfectly acceptable within the right context. There’s something called artistic license. And I ascribe to it. If everything we read always followed every single “proper” rule our HS teachers taught us, we’d have a whole lot of boring stuff to read. Instead most of us dress up our writing with a little improper slang, and phrasing, and even through in a contraction here and there to lighten things up.
And thank gawd for that!

(BTW, if you’re wondering what set me off, it’s a review on Pajiba for Aquamarine, in which a commenter criticized the reviews writing technique. Needless to say she got lambasted by the other readers/commenters.)

I posted this as a comment on a friends blog, and realized it’s something I should probably share with eveyone:

I’m feeling so out of the loop with everyone lately, and I don’t really have the energy to find the loop, much less wedge myself back in it. 24 more days. After that 3 more weeks until we return from the honeymoon. Then, I’ll try and re-enter the loop. Until then, I’ll just be loopy.

Ok just some randomeness because it’s been too long sense I’ve blogged.
My excuse is laziness.

1) Barley likes to chew on corners. Any corners. The last couple of days we have had the windows in our room open because it’s nice outside, but too warm upstairs in our house. The dogs love this. Especially Barley. Unfortunatly my hope-chest sits right next to the windows, and when Barley got bored (ie, not enough going on outside) he decided to gnaw on the corner of my hope-chest. He has also chewed on the corners of our hottub, the corners of the steps to our deck, and the corner of one of the laundry baskets.

2) Vegas is exhausting and expensive. That’s pretty much the extent of my impression of Vegas. Though I think it deserves another chance. Waking up at 4:30 Vegas time each day, and staying up til midnight or later Wed. Thurs and Fri, made for a somewhat cranky Ninsi on the weekend.
But I did make it on the VooDoo Lounge website. Scroll down a bit, and there’s me with my co-workers (4th one down).

3) Given the opportunity to get out of the backyard, both dogs will take you up on it. But they won’t go too far. According to the neighbors both dogs were out most of the weekend. But when we got to the house around 4 (and discovered they were gone) I walked to the end of the block and saw Luna. I called her, and she came bounding towards me. Barley was right behind her coming around the corner of one of the houses. Luna was so excited she jumped up high enough for Barley to run under her, and for her to practically land on top of him. She probably got a good 3 - 3.5 feet off the ground. I think they spent most of the weekend with the white Samoyed that hangs out in the neighborhood. He’s really a sweet dog, and I wouldn’t mind at all if Barley and Luna made friends with him.

4) UPDATED for Phlome - Lately we’ve been noticing a lot of trash in our backyard. I’ve been kinda blaming it on the contstruction guys next door - but that house is built now. So then I thought maybe the crazy wind was blowing stuff into our backyard. But then there was the PVC pipe - well another chew toy for Barley. But when we got hoem from the weekend, there was A LOT. So I started throwing the cans of beans over the fence to where the construction workers were working. Then I started picking up the trash. A lot of mail. Hmmm, maybe barley got into the recycle bin while we were gone? No, because neither of us goes by Manuel Carlos. And you know what Mr. Carlos, we also don’t live at your address!!!! But the broken coke glass is what really pissed me off. Who the hell throws broken glass into someone elses backyard!? Maybe someone who doesn’t like dogs. Maybe someone who owns a rabbit, which they don’t keep caged, and runs around in our front yard. Maybe someone who called Animal Control on our dogs when they didn’t do a damn thing wrong!?!?!? I think maybe it’s about time for a rabbit dinner. So we threw their broken glass back into their back yard, and gathered up all their mail and trash (except for the empty cans of beans which were already thrown over the fence) and put it back on their front porch. If we see it again, we’re going to call the city and have them cited for littering. Our other neighber suggested we do this, letting us know that it’s a $300 fine.

Ok - that’s about all I’ve got.