gen x great american pastime

took my reps out for a night of spirits and skeeball the evening before i gave my notice that i was leaving. i felt like a clod all night, knowing what message i was going to deliver the next morning. we had a bunch of laughs and pooled our tickets for some silly office toys. a fitting end to this chapter of my story.

8 random things

I was tagged by Neverending Growth for this meme. I'm probably the last person in blogland to play.

The directions...
Each player posts eight random facts/habits about him/herself and then tags eight other bloggers to participate. In turn, the folks who are tagged write a post listing their own eight facts/habits, along with these rules, and then tag eight more people . . . and so on.

So, here are my random things.
1. I start most mornings with a Sugar-Free Red Bull in the car on the way to work. Don't fuss. It gets me through the morning.
2. I hate the word irregardless, and chose to disregard it on most occasions.
3. Almost every tooth in my head is crowned. I can thank poor enamel and some fluke with when they put flouride in the water in West Tennessee for that.
4. I have two tattoos.
5. I have an uncanny ability to remember random facts, like what I wore on the first day of school in second grade or the first time I ate mashed potatoes.
6. On a dare, last week I paged myself on the intercom at work, using my regular voice. I was chosen for this deed because of my 'distinctive voice' (read Southern drawl).
7. Scrabble and Scattegories are my favorite board games.
8. Yesterday I planted hosta in my backyard (Denver) that came from my childhood home in West Tennessee.

Feel free to jump in here if you haven't played yet.

coming soon: change

after almost seventeen years of working for the same company, i turned in my two-week notice on friday. lots of thought, number-crunching, and prayer went into my decision to accept a job with a competitor. while i don't expect my new opportunity to be a cake walk, i am hopeful that it will feel less like working in a sweat shop and that the time i can devote to the things i am passionate about will increase. (that's a nice way of saying i hope that 60 hour weeks will become the exception and not the norm.)

while i have complete peace about my decision and know that it is the right thing to do, i have been a bit fidgety about it over the weekend.

here's to hoping that the grass is greener, and that i'm getting a little bit of my life back.

mac visions

i'm really wanting to make the switch from a PC/laptop to a MacBook. any of you out there with strong opinions on one over the other? make your case here.

tunes and tomes

Listening:
Jonny Lang, Turn Around
Bruce Springsteen and The Sessions Band, Live in Dublin
Beth Nielsen Chapman, Hymns

Reading:
Portico
Ruminate Magazine
They Like Jesus But Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations, Dan Kimball

new favorite

The Brick Testament