Hi readers! I’m sure many of you have been wondering where I’ve disappeared to. I had been meaning to post a few things over the past week but got distracted with other things. I’m going to try to get back into the swing of things, but things on here may have to get put on hold for a bit. I promise it will be worth it though.

Here’s my week:

It’s a bit blurry, and you’ll see not much was checked off. I did get things done though, just not that stuff!

My air purifier and Allegra have been working miracles on my allergies.

I finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy which I have to admit was pretty enjoyable.  I also finished a silly book, Nadia Knows Best, that I checked out from the library’s ebook site. I guess it would have been better had I lived in Europe as I had to pay attention to every day cultural references. I did understand a few though one of which was the mention of a Filofax!

My school assignments were pushed back a week, so I got another week to relax!

We had some meetings at work. Nothing too interesting.

Saturday morning, I went to my wonderful friend’s new house. It’s just gorgeous and I’m so happy for her! The plan was to help her paint. While her mom painted the kitchen AND dining room, we managed to paint one tiny hallway only to decide the color (or lack of color) wasn’t working. The white was just overpowering and made you feel really uncomfortable. At least now it’s a good color to paint over… I spent the majority of the day at her house, but when I got home, I was still in painting mode so I broke out the ceiling paint and an edger and painted the edges of my ceiling. Mr. Chase also tried helping by learning to climb a ladder with the help of some cat treats. He spent the rest of the night climbing up and down just for the heck of it.

Sunday turned out to be an exhausting one. I woke up with the intention of just painting a second coat on the edges of my ceiling since bits of pink from the walls had been coming through. That took about 10 minutes thanks to my handy dandy edge tool. Then I decided to paint around my ceiling fan and light fixtures… My hallway light fell off in my hands and wouldn’t go back up. I couldn’t let it go because it was hanging from the wires but I was also the only one in the house… so I stood there stupidly holding it, hoping that my mother or someone else would have heard me calling for help over the stereo. Eventually someone came, but we couldn’t get the light back up, so I ran down, switched off the breaker (which cut power to my whole room), shoved the cat tower under the light, painted around it, and waited for the paint to dry. I was stuck in my room (the cat tower blocking my door) with no power, so I asked for a paint tray and roller and started working on painting my ceiling. I’d say I got around 2/3 of the way done my bedroom before I realized the floor was incredibly comfortable and didn’t want to move anymore.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my week. Stay tuned for the very late March Ipsy/Birchbox review and the proper introduction to my bedroom project complete with sort of before pictures.

I really enjoyed the weather this past week. Overall it was a great week, and I’m happy to say I can feel the chaos subsiding a bit.

Here’s my week:

Monday started off a bit rocky. My alarm went off. I hopped in the shower as usual, immediately realized I didn’t submit my discussion post the night before, and had to accept that I actually forgot to submit an assignment for the first time in YEARS. I continued getting ready as usual, checked my email quickly from my phone and glanced at the time – 6:20 a.m. – I was up an hour early because my clock set itself forward for the old Daylight Savings Time. I momentarily had an “Are you kidding me?!” moment, but decided to not let it get me down. I hadn’t written my “My Week” post for the previous week so I had a chance to do that. I also, ironically, forgot to set my alarm early the night before to give me time to stop at our Parking Services office at the far end of campus to pick up my new GATED parking pass. It’s utterly fantastic to be able to park in a garage right behind my building. Getting to work early meant I also had time to stop at the Starbucks on campus – my treat for seeing the positives in being woken up early rather than being frustrated. Over all it was an incredibly great day. Even my training demo went well. {I still don’t like doing them, and I still get tongue-tied out of nervousness, but they aren’t nearly as bad as they used to be.}

Tuesday through Wednesday were fairly quiet days. More gorgeous weather that meant dressing like it’s 30 degrees out wouldn’t work. I quickly realized that my closet is seriously lacking in clothes for warm weather, but I made do with what I had. I even figured I’d swap my usual boots out for a cute pair of flats to give my feet a break. Sadly my feet didn’t enjoy that too much and after two days of acquiring blisters, I swapped my flats out for some wedges. Apparently my feet prefer heels. I also managed to have a wonderful dinner with a really good friend on Wednesday.

Thursday I felt absolutely scatterbrained. So much so, I actually locked my keys in my office on my way to lunch. Thankfully there was a spare key upstairs, but I felt pretty silly. Since then, I’ve been mindful about where my keys are, at one point even clipping them to my belt loop. My coworker joked that his mother does the same thing to keep from losing things.

Friday was a bit rainy, but I actually enjoyed it. I wore my polka-dot rain boots into work and brought shoes to change into because it was raining so hard. I don’t know what it is about rain boots but they make my day. I feel like a little kid wanting to stomp in all the puddles around campus, but as a “professional” employee, I refrain.

I’ve been trying to stick to my “routine” as closely as possible this week. Making sure to work out each evening, spend time catching up on chores, etc. It’s a work in progress but I notice myself thinking “Okay, what should I be doing now?” more often rather than just doing nothing, and working out puts me in such a better mood.

I didn’t do so well in terms of not shopping this week. I purchased a new alarm clock so I’m not caught waking up an hour late when it decides to fall back an hour. Chase got some new Cat Dancer toys which are his favorite. I ordered some more Coletos from Jet Pens, makeup odds and ends from Drugstore.com (I had coupons and cash back offers). I ordered a Leatherman Style CS (a pink limited edition one that’s no longer available) so that I could leave my other one at work. I also revamped my wardrobe with a bunch of clothes from Forever21, Alloy, and Charlotte Russe. Overall I spent entirely way too much, but not too much, that I can’t pay off the balance on my credit card entirely by next week, and I did need new clothes.

Here’s to another week! Thanks for reading!

So funny story this morning… I use one of those “smart “clocks that automatically adjusts for Daylight Savings Time, except mine’s old so it’s programmed to the old day light savings time. Turns out today would have been the day that clocks went forward according to the old. My alarm went off. I got ready as usual, picked up my phone midway through getting ready to check my email, and noticed it was like 6:20… Thankfully it sprung forward rather than me being an hour late. I guess it’s finally time to order that new alarm clock. Anyway, here I am up WAY too early, but it worked out well because I can write this post which I did not write yesterday as planned and also head to get my new parking pass for the gated garage right behind the building I work in! No more 10 minute walks in heels! YAY! I also managed to stop by the Starbucks on campus too.

Here’s my week:

So first off, if you’ve been following along with my weekly posts, you’ll notice a change – Cotton Cream inserts. I’m liking them so far but I may be the only one who wishes these were on white paper. I like everything being the same color and daily and monthly pages don’t come in Cotton Cream. The super observant might also spy some new Coleto pens which I will dish all the details on in Friday’s post.

If there was ever a week that I just failed miserably at everything, this would be it. I just wasn’t with it. I was distracted and falling apart.

Monday I woke up not feeling well at all. I emailed everyone at work and said I wouldn’t be in. In a way, it worked out well, because apparently I had a meeting mis-scheduled on my calendar that I’d have never known about until I walked all the way across campus and realized no one was there.

Tuesday and Wednesday went fairly smoothly. No surprises really.

Thursday I woke up and my eyes were insanely puffy, but I convinced myself to make the best of it and go to work, because I had a meeting with my boss. I have never been able to drive with glasses, so I put my contacts in and hoped for the best. Puffy eyes and contacts don’t mix. All day, my eyes were wrinkling my contacts as I blinked. Adding stress to the day, I had to lead another Box demo on campus. This time it was without the guys who normally lead the whole process so it was sort of up to me to make sure it went smoothly.

Friday was pretty much unbearable. When I woke up, my eyes were even worse than the day before. They weren’t only puffy, but they had started peeling and they stung. Nothing worse than dry, scaly, stinging eyes, so in an effort to not put my contacts in, I decided to see if I could work from home because I . Thankfully my boss agreed. It’s really amazing how much work you can get done when you are cut off from distractions. I have my own office at work, but the “walls” are glass above desk height. They also don’t go up to the ceiling so even if I shut my door, people can still easily ask me things through the glass. There is really no privacy whatsoever so working from home let me work fairly uninterrupted on cleaning up some of our online support documentation.

The weather over the weekend was absolutely gorgeous. I spent the majority of it outside or out and about. My car enjoyed a nice, well-deserved bath too. Unfortunately good weather is distracting to me, and I woke up this morning realizing I forgot to turn in my assignment Sunday night. The class doesn’t accept late work, so I just have to move on and take the missing grade. Hopefully I have better luck this week.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my week.

Happy Monday readers! I absolutely love these My Week posts. They are starting to take on a mind of their own and serve as a weekly review for me which is incredibly helpful. Lined paper means we are at the end of another month. How time flies! Also, Happy April Fool’s Day! I wish I had a bit of a prank here, but I’m not one for April Fool’s Day pranks mainly because I’m usually the one falling for them.

Here’s my week:

A quick confession, my mind has been a bit frazzled lately. I wish that my week were more interesting, but I honestly haven’t used my Filofax much. That of course is probably why I was losing my mind though. In any event, I’m scrapping the usual bulleted synopsis format for this week because I can’t seem to boil down my week that way for this past week.

My life has been in a bit of limbo lately. On one hand, I feel like I’m in a really cool situation where I literally get to start my life over the right way and pick out who I really want to be in it, but all of that is utterly overwhelming too. I have so many cool ideas, and I really need to start using my planner to get everything straight rather than just building up in my head, but stupidly, when I get overwhelmed, I tend to avoid my planner.

This week was a meeting week. I had a meeting to discuss a solution to a problem we’ve been having with some forms provided by another department on Tuesday. Sadly the one person we really needed at the meeting didn’t show up. On the bright side, I got to have a nice walk across campus, and we did explain the situation to at least some people that found it informative. My meeting on Wednesday had been rescheduled about 3 times before it actually turned into a phone call. That phone call sparked the sharing of some research I’d accumulated to hopefully revamp our department’s website into a useful support hub for our campus which I’m pretty excited to have actually helped with even though it wasn’t. Thursday I had a meeting with another student supervisor in our department to discuss how they are recruiting and training students. It was incredibly helpful. I used to be one of the students I now manage so in some ways it helps me relate and be a voice for them, but I’m also fairly new to this whole supervising thing, so I’m always welcome to insightful information on how to manage them as well.

My graduate work is going so-so. I managed to get all the reading and housekeeping tasks done, but the big project we are working on is a 4-week project. I know I shouldn’t procrastinate. I should be doing a little at a time, but a 4 week project is a procrastinator’s nightmare.

The arrival of my Kindle of course didn’t help with my procrastination. I guess there are worse things I could have done than read, but I wish I hadn’t used it as an excuse to put off everything I should have done, making me feel worse. I actually upped my 2013 reading goal because I finished three books this week and am now incredibly ahead of schedule:

• Pretty Neat: The Buttoned-Up Way to Get Organized and Let Go of Perfection by Alicia Rockmore and Sarah Welch –  I didn’t care for this book. Pretty Neat was actually a misnomer because it really was more about how “organized” people tend to find ways to cut corners rather than having everything nicely organized.
• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer – I really wish I hadn’t seen the Twilight movies before reading this. I had heard the books were better than the movies and I wanted to give the books a chance. I just felt like my distaste for the cast of the movies really spoiled this book. I won’t be reading the others.
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – I really enjoyed this book. It kept me on my toes. Like a lot of people, I have to say I HATED the ending. When I finished it, I sat there for a minute thinking, “That’s it? Really?!” After thinking about it though, I really do think it was a fitting ending. The more I read the book, the more I realized how absurdly messed up both of them were, so the ending was only fitting. My Kindle has now been borrowed by my mom while she reads it before I return the copy to the library.

One thing I did do that has somewhat lessened my stress level was putting together some sort of routine for my life. I added yet another calendar to my Google Calendar called Routine. I’ve tried this before, and it drove me crazy, but this time I’ve accepted it not as a formal schedule with deadlines, but sort of an ideal guideline to keep me on track and get things done. In that routine, I’ve blocked out some time each night to workout and do daily chore-type things. I’ve also blocked out about 4 hours on the weekends for this blog. I’m hoping that I can knock out my weekly posts during that time rather than haphazardly writing them during the week. One of these days I’ll do a “day in the life” post to show you what my boring days are like.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my week. Until next week…

Another Monday means another Filofax Week post. Today’s off to a not so great start though. I woke up to a lovely snow covered yard, but no notification of any delay or closing of my University which I found a bit perplexing. We don’t typically get a lot of snow in Maryland, so a couple of inches by 6:30AM is usually cause for at least a delay. I got ready, put on my snow boots and made the 1o minute trek through unplowed parking lots and sidewalks to my office, plugged in my laptop at 8:27ish, and what should pop up on my screen but a notification from our emergency system saying that campus would be closing at 8:30. I immediately packed everything back up and walked back. On the bright side, I was able to stop by McDonalds on the way home and pick up breakfast.

{Sidenote: I’ve been considering showing my daily pages instead of my weekly pages because that’s where the bulk of the “action” happens, but to be honest, this week wasn’t all that interesting. In fact my weekly page didn’t have anything at all written on it until last night when I filled it in. My daily pages were totally blank. Why? It was Spring Break and I had nothing that HAD to be done or that I HAD to keep track of.}

Here’s my week:

And for a quick recap of what happened {in case you aren’t at all interested in reading about my life}:

• I didn’t do so hot on the photo challenge {big surprise there} BUT I did devote Saturday and Sunday to playing catch up. I didn’t get ALL of them, but I caught up on most of them.
• It was Spring Break at my university/work.
• We did a bit of Spring cleaning in the garage and other areas of the house.
• I was on a bit of a reading kick.
• Sticking to my workouts has been amazing.

And for the longer version {for those of you who like to read or are just nosy :)}:

I work at a university so Spring Break is still definitely something I look forward to every year. As an employee, I typically only get off for three days, whereas students get the whole week off. Most employees still take off the other two days. I don’t really mind working them though because the campus is pretty dead. The break was well needed. Even better was that I had a break from my class as well. I found myself really feeling like a stereotypical blogger. I could really get used to the life of waking up, having a cup of coffee, and writing.

Now that I’m heading the recruitment in our office, you’ll have likely noticed the big orange sticky flag up on my week page. My university has a campus-wide job website that’s available for members of the community to post both on campus and off campus jobs. I decided to start my office’s recruitment for the upcoming Fall semester early so our online listing went live on Thursday. I’ve already gotten 8 or 9 resumes and the listing will be up until mid-June so this looks quite promising so far.

Little by little, we’ve been getting rid of stuff in our house. I’m not normally one to keep things around. I operate on the philosophy that if I want or need something bad enough, I will find a home for it. Otherwise, it doesn’t need to stay in the house. Other people in my family don’t always operate on that principle, and over the years, the clutter just piles up. I’m happy to say over the past few months though, the local dump/recycling facility has been getting some pretty sizable donations from our household, and for the first time in the 12 years we’ve lived here, we actually have room for both the cars in the main garage and the tractor in the other building. {We live on a couple of acres, so yes we have a tractor. I’m aware that it’s not a normal thing for most people to have, but it’s a necessity here.}

One thing I’ve learned since graduating from college is that I actually really do enjoy reading. I hated reading in school. In fact, it was the #1 thing I procrastinated on,  but when you aren’t required to read things, reading can actually be enjoyable. One of my goals for 2013 is to read 20 books. At the time I figured that was doable but still challenging. At this rate, I think I may need to reevaluate my goal though. Last week I finished books #8 and #9 which puts me 5 books ahead of schedule according to Goodreads. To reward myself I ordered a Kindle Paperwhite. I already have an iPad which I love, but with warmer weather coming, I know I’ll be spending more time outside, and iPads and sun don’t get along so well. I’ll post a review about it once I get to use it. It should be here tomorrow, and I can’t wait. {If any of you are keeping track of my budget focus for March, I actually did save up for this…}

My last big revelation… my workouts are working! I know that’s a silly thing to realize, but since I’m not working out to lose weight, I can’t progress in terms of pounds lost. I don’t have any real quantitative way of tracking my progress, so it’s kind of just me figuring it has to be beneficial in some way up until now. I’m actually starting to see more definition in my arms and legs though so that’s pretty cool because I’ve never actually worked out enough to see any noticeable differences.

Anyway that was my week. I’m going to get back to enjoying my snow day. Until next week…