You read my mind...

SuperChickAimee

I'm kinda over blogging. I mean how many posts can I write about dieting and my cats?

Ahhh Aimee you hold insight to my soul. It's been basically a month since my last blog update and that's probably because I feel like I blog about the same stuff over and over again. (just so we're clear-I'd read about dieting and cats all day everyday)

Life's been busy but great. Work has been nuts because we've been converting Guaranty Bank to Compass. We acquired them last fall. We took a fairly technologically advanced bank and stuck them back on teller sharp machines and introduced them to Navigator and CNET-our ancient systems. It took three weeks to do this :) So far so good, and only a few handful of customers have come in unhappy to close their accounts.

Shawn is selling his house (or attempting to in the current market). I've been helping a lot with cleaning, organizing, and decorating to make it look less "lived-in" and more model home-esque. Hopefully it sells soon. With the First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit, it's in the price range for a lot of new homebuyers.

Now this picture is just here because I think it's funny. Shawn's doing The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo with Bailey.

The original "piece of art"

And that's all I have to share! Wait-one last thing. Frosting NOT made from scratch sucks. Nothing beats the real stuff!

Later Gator!

Tornainbow-my silver lining

What, you may ask, is a "Tornainbow". It's clearly a mix between a tornado and a rainbow, and that describes my life pretty well as of late :)

TORNADO I've been crazy busy at work lately. We had an entire week where our systems and printers weren't working. Instead of having 4 printers to share between 12 of us, we were all frantically trying to print off the same printer. UGH! Then on top of that I posted some furniture on Craigslist in an attempt to sell them and that turned out to be a lot more work than I had anticipated. So many people were interested, but no one seemed to grasp that I wasn't going to "hold it" for them, and that I didn't want them to just come by and look at it. I wanted them to TAKE IT AWAY!! I finally ended up with a really nice lady who came and got a sofa, and a really cool guy and his college age son that came and got a bed. I'm $350 closer to my car fund, and much less stressed.

RAINBOW A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to meet two Regional Execs for my bank. My branch made it to the Pinnacle Club for 2009, and we were visited by our District Retail Exec Cheryl, and two Regional Execs-Scott and Jeff. They wanted to sit down with each of us and get to know us, see our methods, get our feedback, and congratulate us on a job well done. After they sat down with us, they went to my managers and told them they were going to submit me (and other employees) for promotions and raises. It got approved through back office and HR yesterday!!! My new title/position is Senior Financial Sales Advisor (from Financial Sales Associate-big change, lol), and I'll be getting an 8% raise :) I also got approved for and started the process to get my Group 1 license, which has been a goal of mine for over 2 years. It's a high-paced program and I'm nervous about studying and taking a test, but once I'm done it should mean another promotion/raise. Work still causes me a crazy amount of stress, but I feel very blessed to have a management team who was willing to go to bat for me. Money doesn't buy happiness, but Salary/Benefits sure make a difference in the workplace!

I haven't found time to blog about my recent trip to Utah, so I finally just uploaded all my pictures on facebook. THEN my laptop crashed. Shawn's coworker said he'd be willing to fix it and look at my pc too, so after about a week I finally had working computer access again. I like blogging with pictures better than just uploading them because my blog is my journal. So it's coming I promise!

Until next time-may you all be blessed with "Tornainbows" in life :)

Vacation Post

...is going to have to be postponed for a while. My computer is dead (has been since October) and my laptop has a funky virus on it. Shawns been helping me run anti virus stuff, but it was pretty gnarly so a coworker of his is going to reformat the HD to clear everything out. So I'll be without a computer for a while, and won't be able to upload any pictures. Sad panda :(

But I'm home in mostly one piece and had a pretty great time. More new later!

Yay!

My hard work this last week paid off with a -2lbs at the scale tonight. It feels good to finally have made it over the 20 lb hump. Now it's time to keep it off plus more! I'm definitely going to be tracking again every meal. This weeks meeting focus was on implementing more filling foods. I'm early enough into my weight loss journey that I still eat a lot of the same things every day to make it easier on me. I liked the suggestion one member gave tonight that she makes one new recipe a week with different filling foods. I think I can handle that!

I'm bummed because my WW friend Janna has started having a difficult time coming to the Monday night meetings. Her job is making her stay later every day, which is making it really hard to get there on time. She showed up towards the end and weighed in with an impressive 3.2lbs lost! You go girl!! I hope work lets up so we can keep our weekly dates :)

"Tracking Really Works"

Last Monday in our WW meeting, I was happy that I was DOWN overall from before Thanksgiving through the New Year. I think I've gained weight every holiday season since i was 3 years old, seriously! I did really well at Thanksgiving, but as the holiday season progressed I got worse about my tracking and better about my binge eating. Not the way to have great success! 2 lbs lost is better than 2 (or more) lbs gained, but I did myself a disservice by not working as hard as I could. I'm down 18.4 since I started the end of July, and I beat myself up that I could have lost much more.

This week, I accepted the challenge to track-every day. "Studies have found that people can underestimate how much they eat by up to 1,000 calories a day!" That wasn't me this week! I planned ahead, I wrote down everything I ate (including unplanned fast food and m&m's). It was difficult, but mostly because I wasn't in the habit of keeping my journal close to me. I hope the scale reflects my hard work tomorrow, but even if it doesn't give me a big number I'm proud that I stuck to plan.

Work comes early, so I'd better get to bed. We have a day of District/Regional Execs tomorrow, so heaven knows I'll need my brain to be functioning in brown nose mode. Goodnight :)