Mr. Tate Goes to College

So my grandfather is in the hospital right now (nothing life threatening, don't worry) so we have had to figure out what to do with my Uncle Brian during the day. Brian has Down's Syndrome and hangs out with my grandfather all day every day, so figuring out the logistics of having someone with him has been complicated.

So today after my Operations Management test (Tyson if you're reading this one...your test killed me today!:) ) I drove to my mom's office and picked up Brian to come to class with me. Brian had his bag of goodies with magazines, DVD player, and walkman, sat down on the front row, and didn't pull out a single item the whole class! He just sat there listening to our stats professor talk about z-scores and the like. He did fall asleep for a little bit, but overall actually listened and looked at my computer screen! Then we hung out in a team room and Brian watched Grease while I worked and then we went to another meeting.

After subjecting an unwilling party to statistics, I was certain Brian would never want to go anywhere with me again! But apparently tonight at dinner, he told everyone about how he went to college today, showed them how I type on my computer, and told them all about how the professor (Dr. Dielman) talked to him and said "Hi Brian!" Overall, it was a pretty good day for Brian in college.

Here is Brian hanging out in a team room in between class and meetings.

Weird Food

If you haven't eaten with me in a while, you may not remember that I am a plain food eater. My ordering typically goes like this:

"I'll have a Cheeseburger plain and dry."
"Could I get the enchiladas with no onions?"
"Chicken quesadillas with just chicken and cheese"
"Victoria's Filet with steamed broccoli, please."
and on Taco Tuesday at Rosa's, "Taco special with no tomatos."

I don't like anything that is too spicy, too hot, involves onions or peppers (unless you can't tell they're there, which I usually can), or tomatos.

So now onto my life right now...I am constantly with people who eat weird food. These are the kinds of calls I get now:

"Hey! We're going to go eat Greek food tonight!"
"Wanna go to Bombay Palace for some Indian food?"
"I'm having a goat roast next weekend..."
"Let's go to Pho Bella for dinner." (me) "Whats Pho Bella?" (them) "Vietnamese Food."

And the call last night: "We're going to go eat Egyptian food tonight." (me) "Okay, now you're just making up food types." (them) "No, seriously. Its a restaurant called King Tuts"

So I am now being forced to venture out of my "plain and dry"/"chicken and cheese" world and into the world of Chicken Shwarma, goat thighs, Shrimp Tandoori, and Nhan. Now is the part where I'm supposed to say that trying new things has expanded my horizons and I actually like stepping outside of my food box...but I can't. My stomach has never hated me more.

My name is Emily, and I click stuff too!

I am definitely not as good as Ryan at this whole game, but I've been collecting some links over the past few months that I keep meaning to send to Ryan, so I thought I'd just make a one-time attempt at this clicking stuff.

- Apparently my date is Friday, July 14, 2062. I'll be sure to mark it on my Outlook.

- For some reason, I really enjoy this game.

- I've always thought it was common sense not to take advice from The Simpsons. Apparently not.

- This is fun to play around with! "Emily" and "Maggie" are almost exact opposites of each other.

- And speaking of Maggie....this should make her very happy! Mighty Casey is back again!

- Ever wondered what celebrity you look like? This site can tell you! Apparently I look like Jennifer Connelly....I wish!

Hope you enjoyed my clickings as much as Ryans. I'll let him stick to finding fun stuff from now on. :)

A song my Mom used to sing and I have been singing to myself lately

Be patient
Be patient
Don't be in such a hurry

For when you
Aren't patient
You only start to worry

Remember
Remember
That God is patient too

And think of all the times
That others have to wait for you.

For Ashley Nichols

Ashley, if you happen to read blogs while you're overseas and are sitting around in Budapest freezing, wishing you were in warm, sunny Texas...you're not missing much.

Here is Frog Fountain this weekend:

A Real Example

Last week I posted about hearing half of the story and how the news is the worst at it. Well tonight, I'm watching a show (on Tivo of course) and hear this exact phrase:

"You wouldn't give poison to a child would you? Maybe you already have! Next..."

Are you kidding me???? How do you leave that one hanging out there?

For Trey

Duck Hunt

Game Code 4 your page

And now.....the rest of the story.....

My dad and I used to listed to Paul Harvey every day on WBAP 820 as he would pick me up from gymnastics. He would always tell the first half of an interesting story and then stop. Then he would say "and now.....the rest of the story." The rest of the story would basically tell you how the interesting 1st half was actually someone really famous, and would end with a comment like "And that young man....was Winston Churchill." I always appreciated Paul Harvey because he always told you the rest of the story.

And now....the rest of MY story.....

The reason I was thinking about this today is because I hate only knowing half of the story. I hate it when someone starts to tell you something and then you get interrupted and don't get to hear the other half of the statement. It drives me nuts because I spend the rest of the day trying to fill in the blanks...the rest of the story, if you will. The news is the worst at this. They always have commercials saying "There is one thing that everyone has in their kitchens that will kill you if you don't throw it out now. Find out what it is....tonight at 10." And me, being the Tivo queen, doesn't see this until the next day, so now I've just got this thing hanging out there unanswered without even the possibility of seeing the news!

So today, I was in a room with 2 people before a meeting. They were having a discussion about an issue that they didn't know has a big impact on me. Right when they got to the meat of the information that they had, the guy running the meeting walked in and got us started, so I never got to hear the ending! And they don't know that it affects me, so I can't just ask them what they were saying...and now I'm freaking out. It could turn out to be nothing, but it could impact me in a very big way, and I have no opportunity to hear "the rest of the story!" I'm going crazy!

And that young man....was John Lennon. (sorry, I couldn't resist!)

Happy Bloggiversery!!!

While most people are celebrating a happy day with their loved ones, I'll be celebrating a different type of holiday....my bloggiversery. Thats right, folks. I have been blogging for 1 year today. 111 posts (including todays)...more comments than that....all in all its been a pretty good year. I'll have to take my laptop to dinner tonight to celebrate.

Okay, enough of that. A lot of you from Altamesa know Tyson Browning. He is a professor in the MBA program as well and I am in his Operations Management (OM) class. Well today he said that he was talking to his wife (Meredith) about making candy hearts with Operations themed messages, but decided against it because they might be a bit risque. So my friends and I took it upon ourselves to email back and forth for the rest of the class time making up OM themed candy heart messages. Here are some of them.....and yes, we are huge nerds.

• Be My Bottleneck
• You Increase My Output
• My utility is rising
• You maximize my flow rate.
• Process This
• Baby, I wanna "six sigma" you up.
• U Decrease the Variation of My Normal Distribution
• You control my processes.
• Wanna buffer my zone?
• You complete my sample
• The Variation in my Heartbeat is Assignable to U
• You Project My Band
• You’re just my sample size.

Happy Operations Management Day!

P.S. - We did pay attention too. I am a master multi-tasker; I can make up funny comments while learning all about p-charts, R charts, and x-bar charts. That's my official disclaimer so no one goes and tells Tyson that we don't pay attention in his class. :)

Stress = Mess

Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am a naturally messy person. Its always been a long-running joke, as evidenced by Ryan's Gift List this past Christmas. I don't know why I'm messy - I really hate it! I really like it when things are clean and organized, but for some reason I just can't keep it together.

As I've gotten older, I've begun to realize that the messiness of my apartment/room is directly related to the amount of stress I'm under. When I am not busy, not stressed out, I have the time and energy to consciously keep things clean. I can get my papers under control (70% of my mess) and keep my clothes washed and off the floor (20% of my mess) and generally clean things. For example, over Christmas break, my apartment was spotless. However, when I am extremely busy, the pendulum swings exactly the opposite way. I just put things wherever they'll fit and if I have a free hour or so, the last thing that I want to do is clean - I'm going to take that time to try to relax. Its not gross mess though - no food is involved. I'm only messy with non-perishables. My kitchen tends to stay clean.

My roommates used to know how stressed I was by how messy my room was...it is actually a fairly accurate gauge. This was a big adjustment for Nichole (AKA Mrs. Clean) and caused a little tension at first because she didn't recognize the correlation between stress and mess and didn't realize that the last thing I needed when I was stressed was for someone to remind me that my room was messy, but after a while she learned to let it go for about a week til things calmed down and I'd eventually get my life and mess under control. So today I have been in my apartment for more than one hour straight (which hasn't happened in quite some time) and as I am looking around, I am realizing something. These past couple of weeks have been the most stressful weeks I've ever had in my life. Use your imagination.

The Challenge

It has been pointed out by more than one person that the guy in the middle on the Nextel commercial looks exactly like our good friend, Stephen McBroom.



So Stephen...you have no excuse now not to learn this dance. You said you hadn't seen the commercial recently enough - well now you can watch it over and over again on my little blog. Challenge extended.

I'm Bored

I had class today. Then I had Graduate Assistant work to do. Then I stayed on campus for a bit and finished some work that I needed done for a meeting I have at 5pm. That was done at 4:00. So I checked my email (none, cause I've checked it pretty consistently all day), looked at myspace, read the 1 or 2 blogs that I haven't checked yet today. Now its 4:09. I am out of worthless things to look at on the internet, its too close to the meeting for me to be able to go home, I forgot to bring my Operations Management stuff to work on, and I have literally nothing to do for the next 45 minutes. Any suggestions?

Emily vs. Sabre - Round 3

Well, I didn't get the Sabre Travel Network job that I had the interviews for last week, but they asked me to interview for another position with Sabre Airline Solutions. So I'm rockin the business suit again today to endure Round 3 of my quest to work for Sabre. And this morning I got to listen to the CEO of Travelocity (another Sabre division) talk about the company's strategy and the Travelocity turnaround, so now I'm really pumped! Unfortunately, I had some extenuating circumstances after the speech, so I didn't get to take my picture with the Roaming Gnome like most other people did, but it still inspired to me to do well today in my interview! Wish me luck!

Grizzly Man is Coming!!

In case you haven't seen it...Grizzly Man is premiering on Television tomorrow on the Discovery Channel. It is quite possibly the funniest thing you will ever seen and made even more hilarious by the fact that there are people out there who actually take it seriously and think it is sooo insightful and touching. It is about a crazy man who went to go live with bears every summer for years until he finally got eaten by one. He always took his camera with him and he seriously thought these bears were his friends and that he was protecting them. But yet, when he would get close to the bears, there was no sign of friendship in their eyes and they never "accepted him as one of their own" like the monkeys did with Jane Goodall. He was just nuts. So you have to watch it and think about the fact that there is a whole group of people who think this guy was a misunderstood genius and actually gave this documentary an award. It is seriously reminiscent of a "Best in Show" or "Waiting for Guffman" mockumentary, but it is real.

THE Interview

Remember this post? Well take away the 2-way mirrors and add 1 interviewer and you have my interview today! Hardest interview I've ever had in my life!!

It actually went rather well...I think...you couldn't really tell because both interviewers kept this little smirk on their faces the whole time like they had a huge secret. They were throwing questions at me left and right, would interrupt me and challenge what I had just said (even though a few times I KNOW it was just to try to get me to back down from an answer that I knew was right), and asked so many questions I can't even remember any of them. It feels like when you drive somewhere, get to your destination, and then are freaked out cause you can't remember the trip you just took.

I talked to the other 3 people that got callbacks and we all basically feel the same way - no one feels particularly good, but no one feels bad about it either. I guess we are all on level playing fields and just have to wait! The good thing is, all of the other people are awesome candidates too, so if i don't get it, I won't be feeling like the job went to someone that I was better than. I guess I'll have to post an update on this in a couple of weeks when we find out who gets it! Thanks for the thoughts and prayers!

Prayer of a Godly Woman...

If you read my last post, I had 3 interviews today. 1st one went really well with RadioShack. 1st Sabre interview was all case based (ex. You have a $100,000 marketing budget for a B2B product. Ads are already bought for TV, Radio, Industry magazines, trade shows, and sales staff training. What do you do with the extra $100,000?).

Then comes the 2nd Sabre interview. We were a bit ahead of schedule, so I was in there a little before 2pm. The first couple of questions, I was stumbling over myself a little bit, thinking in my head how mad I was at myself because I had such a great 1st interview and I was totally blowing this one! Then, all of a sudden, words just started coming out of my mouth. Phrases I never thought I would have the guts to say, totally putting myself out there and just saying that I really want this job and I know I'd be the best at it. The interviewer's face changed significantly at that point, and I could tell I had just won him over. I got a call about 30 minutes later letting me know that I made it to the 2nd round interviews tomorrow!!

Then I check my blog and find this comment:
karen b said...
1:49 pm : prayers going up for emily from my house

Thinking back at the interview....that was right at - or at least VERY close to - when my interview totally turned around for the better. So thank you Karen!! I owe my 2nd interview to you (and God, I guess...)! :)

So now for the 2nd request for prayers...the 2nd round is a set of panel interviews (AKA Emily vs. 6-8 Sabre executives). Anyone who's been through those knows that they are really intimidating and difficult because you have questions coming at you from every direction. The interviews are tomorrow morning, not sure exactly what time, but I think starting around 9:30am and going through lunch time. So if all of you out there think about it, pray for me....I'm going for at least one prayer per interviewer! :)