New Job, New Year, New Hampshire?

So, I've described a day in the life of Jennifer. In December. Since life is an iterative process, January is different for me.


My mother decided to be a snowbird. Nice for her and Chuck, my step-dad, and for Mona, the 500# Beagle (okay, okay....50# Beagle). Not so nice for Nike. To begin with, I'm sure a vacation in the sun in Mesa would have worked out okay for him. But he wasn't invited. Secondly, he can't be left home alone all day while I'm at work with no one to look after him. This is the dog that lit the gas burners on our stove top at one point in his life - how does one explain that one's dog burned down one's mother's house?


So I'm staying in Snohomish with Rob (boyfriend) and his son Nick for the month of January. The commute is basically a repeat of the ferry commute, only substitute "Sounder Train from Everett" for "ferry" and my hike to the Wells Fargo building now skips the viaduct guy and includes the Union Gospel Mission folks on Second Avenue between Chinatown and the International District, Pioneer Square, and Belltown. Interesting to watch the 'hood change as one walks north from the train station. Also, there's no mud in the Park n Ride lot in Everett.

For those associated with Olympic, I love my new job! I'm awfully sorry. It is not without dysfunctionality, don't get me wrong. Perspective shows me that there are some things that Olympic does really well. Olympic folks should appreciate that. You know the business inside out. Not everyone else does. And the ability to get things accomplished. My job is very process documentation oriented. The Business Analysts in my group all get different projects, so I don't work a whole lot with Chaille, even though we are in the same department. I'm implementing enrollment and group administration for our new contract with Clear Choice health plans in Oregon/Montana. My job is to develop and document all the workflow processes. But Adaptis has never done enrollment for a client before, so I'm getting sucked in all over the project. And that's okay. It's fascintating, and sometimes frustrating, to experience real project management at work. I am grateful to Mark, Scott and Steve at Olympic for their work creating the project management framework - without it I'd be lost in this environment.


And, I get to go to lunch in the International District. Chinese? Pakistani? Thai? Had wonderful home-made barleygreen Chinese noodles in my squid, chicken, and shrimp Chow Mein at lunch today.


On a lighter note, I had a choice at one point in my life to take riding lessons, or to learn to ski. I picked the horse thing. Duh. I had a pony when I was nine! Consequently, I've never been out to play in the snow. Really. I put a car in the ditch in it, but I've never really made a snow angel or gone sledding except once in Denver when I was about 12. Therefore, without fanfare, pictures of Jenn pre-tubing at Snoqualmie Pass over New Years. Go figure. Never knew being cold was actually fun!


Next week - one of my original compositions. That's going to be hard to do....I don't have that much self confidence, but I promised Charlene...keep scrolling down to see the new pictures at the bottom of the blog...