Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Meg Cabot, Overbite: A Bummer Book Review

overbiteYa'll. I am the most open-minded reader probably ever. I'll read anything, and probably like it. Except for The Poisonwood Bible. But seriously, it's really hard to find chick lit that I'm not going to be into. But this book was just. not. good. It was a legit waste of my time to read it. The writing was good, but the storyline was crappy. I'm even into the whole vampire stories, but this one just didn't do it for me.

I posted on one of the message boards I read that this book would be one I absolutely do NOT recommend, and at least one other person commented and agreed with me, so I'm not alone.

I'm sure there are people out there who are going to enjoy this book, but unfortunately I am not one of them. I'm going to go back to reading The Hunger Games (or re-reading I should say) and trying to make it to 50 books before the end of 2011. So close, yet so far away. 10 books to go. Think I can do it?

Monday, November 28, 2011

Next Year's Vacation

With 2011 winding down, I'm trying to fit in time to take all my remaining vacation days. We have an awesome vacation policy, but I haven't taken advantage of it much! I ended up with enough days remaining to take almost 2 full weeks off at the end of the year. I'm pretty stoked about it. As much as I love my job, I love it primarily because of the people, and all the people are also taking vacation, ergo my FOMO need not kick in.

I grabbed lunch with these 2 chicas on Black Friday, and we started tossing around ideas for a spring/summer vacation. One wants to go to Greece, another says beach vacations should be done in the winter, and my next desired travel destination is Southeast Asia - specifically, Thailand if I had to choose just one place. So we went round and round trying to figure out what we want to do, if we want to do a 'winter' vacation or a spring vacation, if we want to do international, if a cruise makes sense...there are so many things to think about. I have spent next to no time on the West Coast of the US, so if we go anywhere in the US, I think California would be my top choice. Is it realistic to say I want to start in northern California and make our way south and end up in San Diego? I've also (I can't believe I'm about to admit this) never been to New York City as an adult. I spent 1/2 day there on a school trip when I was 13, and that's it! So that's near the top of my list of places to see in the US. And Boston! Lucky for me, a friend was just staffed on a new assignment in Boston so I'm definitely planning to go visit - maybe for Memorial Day weekend with a couple extra days tacked on one side or the other?

And, for MLK weekend there are tentative plans to go skiing in Whistler. If that works out, I'd plan to spend at least 1 day in Seattle before venturing into Canada. We'll see what actually ends up happening, as the group I would go with is not exactly awesome at planning in advance. Different strokes...

So anyway, that leaves my travel list looking a little like this:

  • Thailand/Laos/Cambodia
  • San Fransisco/LA/San Diego
  • NYC
  • Seattle/Vancouver/Whistler
  • always, always, always Australia & New Zealand (but I'm saving that for my honeymoon)
  • Turks & Caicos
Where are you dreaming of traveling to?

Monday, November 21, 2011

Organizing your Outlook Inbox

Hello blogging fail, my name is Katie. It's nice to see you. Why haven't I posted lately? Probably because I spend all my time doing 1 of 5 things and therefore would blog about 1 of 5 things.

1. Playing tennis (undefeated and division champs in women's doubles!)
2. Laying on my couch watching countless episodes of Happy Endings, Gossip Girl, Grey's, Hart of Dixie or the latest Jodi Picoult book-turned-movie (great Saturday viewing right there)
3. Talking about how awesome my life is and how great my friends are (been there, done that)
4. Complaining about how no one will date me/I'm impossible to date (been there, done that also)
5. Working (7:30am in the office 6 Fridays in a row!)

Clearly I've already touched on all of those things. So instead, I'll launch into a post about my psychotic organizing tendencies, this time surrounding how to organize my email. Since I started my job in November 2010, I wasn't really sure how to organize for 2011, so I just made a 2011 folder and threw everything in that. Actually, I just made a 2010 folder and threw everything there. You have no idea how much it pains me now, in November 2011, to still be working out of a 2010 folder, but such is life.

Eventually as I got more comfortable with my job, my role, and the 'types' of emails I was going to be receiving and sending, I established a pretty good filing system. Our inboxes have a max limit on the internal server, so I have to continuously move them out of my inbox and into their separate folder.

Is this boring yet? Too bad. Now I'm working on how I'm going to do a better job organizing in 2012 (and how I can ensure that I don't receive an email in mid-November 2012 telling me my folder is now full and I need to break it up. UGH, the horror!)

So, I've decided that instead of dividing first by year and then by topic, I'm going to divide by topic and then by year. My job consists of 3 separate pieces, we'll call them A, B, and C, so I'm going to make 3 .pst folders for each topic, plus one called "Company Info" and one called "Katie" for personal stuff. All personal emails (for now) will get dropped into the Katie folder with no sub-folders. All company-related emails that don't actually pertain to my job but are still important will get dropped into the Company folder with no sub-folders.

I plan to make a 2012 sub-folder for A, B, and C. Then, depending on topic, I'll have sub-folders. It will look something like this:



So there you have it. Yes I greyed out all information that could be tied back to my actual job and company. Yes maybe I'm paranoid. SO WHAT.

So basically, this will (hopefully) minimize the need for folders every year. Although I'm not really sure it makes that big of a difference, I guess I'll try it this way for 2012 and see how it goes. 2013 will be the real test year, because I'll have to decide which way I like better. Maybe I'll keep 2 inboxes in 2013 so I can do it both ways. Told ya I was crazy. Wanna know what also throws a wrench in all of this?

iPhones with work email, that's what. So now my inbox is divided into the same A, B, and C and when those folders get too full then I move them to their respective places so that I can reference them while on my iPhone. I repeat: my life is hard.

Was this even mildly interesting? I taught my mom how to use her Google Reader last night, so maybe that will be my next "I'm Anal and Spend Way Too Much Time Organizing Shit" post.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

October Top 10


1. Shopping in Buenos Aires


2. Rainbows at Iguazu Falls
3. Scary Halloween Pub Crawl

4. GT Homecoming 2011 vs. Clemson (and a HUGE win!)

5. Battle of the Burgers
6. Wine night with my roommate
7. Dinner in Argentina overlooking Paraguay and Brazil
8. 2 hour phone calls with best friends

9. Living vicariously through others running marathons & 1/2 Ironmen (and being SO proud of them!)

Thursday, November 3, 2011

There's nothing like...

1. Traveling via airplane with me. Ask Rachel. Or anyone who knows me, really.
2. Getting an unexpected compliment.
3. Turning on the tv and finding it's just before the best part in a good movie.
4. Running into an old friend in an unexpected place and spending a lot more time than you thought you would catching up.
5. Falling asleep on your couch while watching Saturday afternoon football.
6. Waking up on Sunday morning without an alarm.
7. Hugging your best friend/mom/dog/pillow after being gone for a while. Even if a while is only 8 hours.
8. A text from a friend telling you that your ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend totally sucks. Even if you've way moved on and could really care less, hearing that doesn't get old.
9. Having a really crappy day turn out kind-of-sort-of-might-be-somewhat ok. So what if it's 4 months later?
10. Losing the first set in a tennis match terribly, only to come back and kick butt in the next 2.
11. Coming home to find that your roommate has done your least favorite chore.
12. Forgetting about an awesome show on your DVR for a few weeks.
12a. Spending a rainy Sunday catching up on said tv show.
What would you add to this list?