Audible

My shoes must be very secretive.

Two different times today, I have walked past some girls who looked down and whispered, "OMG I LOVE HER SHOES."

I'm not sure why they're whispering, but these shoes are the pinnacle of my thrift store finds:

ahmahgashewz.

Fall is for napping and celebrating Halloween.

Removed,

TWS

Entrepreneur

I've thought about opening a pawn shop.
Or being a loan shark.
Then I could loan money and charge ridiculous interest rates, beating the stocks, bonds, banks, and CDs.

Your concern: "But Allie- you'd be making loans to people with terrible credit. You wouldn't get your money back!"

 Come on, you know how I have great skills in making collection calls:

"Hello, this is Allie from Loanz and Sharks, Inc. where the loans are fun and the sharks just want to cuddle. I was just giving you a call to remind you of the outstanding balance on your account..."

And I'd buy all the empty billboards on I-16 and plaster my face all over them.
I could amortize my face over its useful and economic life.

If you didn't get the memo on Facebook, I added some new posts on my sewing blog.

Here's a preview:













I have yet to meet a person who says tomato like "tom-ah-to",
TWS

Ulysses S. Grant

I am SO excited about Christmas!
I can't really put my finger on what exactly makes this year so exciting for me.

One of my favorite Christmas break times was a couple years ago when I was just getting into sewing. It included going to Hancock Fabrics in Warner Robins, spending all afternoon sewing with Mum, checking the fire every so often, hugging the cuddly kittens, drinking hot tea, and then wearing my creation to the Christmas cantata.
GOOD TIMES.

Another one of my favorite Christmas break times was last year when Mike drove up for a couple days. Among other things, he gave me a 3-dimensional picture frame with pictures of us and our memorable times. And then when he had to leave, he was like, "You'll have your phone on you, right?" And I was like, "Yeah?"
So about 15 minutes down the road, he calls and tells me to look behind the pictures in the frame.
Behind each one he had so cleverly hidden an index card, and on each card he wrote about the time in each picture and basically the story of how we came to be us! It was complete with inside jokes (which made me do this insane laugh-cry thing when I read it), and it was just so awesome.
GOOD TIMES.

Christmas is always awesome.

Today I had to give a pep talk to one of the classes for which I am the teaching assistant.

Oh, yes. Because public speaking is my forte.

It went well, though. I just felt like I couldn't really relate to the students because I haven't taken project management before.
The funny part was that I actually enrolled in the graduate section of PM in the spring as one of my electives. After the first day, I decided the class was going to be way too involved and hard, and so I called my advisor to switch me over to beautiful economics.
And so now I T.A. for the class I was too scared to take.

That's a true story. Served with a delicious side of irony.

I've started acting like an auditor.
And it's weird.
I've started double-checking and documenting everything.
I pretty much sign and date every piece of paper I touch.
I wear blazers now...

(well, I guess I was kind of doing that before, too)

It's proved to be very useful so far, but sometimes I hate when I do it because I feel I'm being someone else.
It's the whole manager-auditor conflict. Agency theory.
Except I'm the same person, so I'm not even independent.
You guys have no idea what I'm talking about.
Sometimes I annoy myself with all this auditor stuff.
Now is one of those times.

And while we're being annoying, let's have a vanity moment.
This is a moment where we write a list of stuff we REALLY like about ourselves that we would normally keep to ourselves, but we're so impressed with ourselves that we just have to write about it.
Ready?
OK!

~Le Vanity Moment~
1. My legs look awesome.
2. Sometimes I give myself goosebumps when I sing.
3. I'm really organized!
3. My hair is SO PRETTY.

Ok.
We're done.

Everybody dance now,
TWS

Blog

If there is one thing I overthink, it's writing thank-you letters.

Was never good at balance beams,
TWS

Ratio

Here is a true story going far back into my childhood.

Oh, yes. This is a Little Allie Story.

I, like most children, would suck my thumb periodically, especially when I didn't have anything to say which was most of the time. One year my J Grandparents came to visit, and I was talking to Grandpa J in the porch. He was like, "Why are you sucking your thumb?"
And I was like, "'Cause it tastes good!"
He was like, "Really? What's it taste like?"
And being the little imaginative kid that I was, I thought of my favorite flavor at the time and said, "Grape!"
And he laughed.

At the time, I didn't understand what was so funny, but now I realize that there is no way that my thumb could've tasted like grape. I was just making up stuff/excuses/reasons so I could keep sucking on it.

Ah, me.

Sometimes my cat takes the shape of a tired, old sack of barley.

 = 

I mean, he looks like he's just given up on life.

But isn't Subway delicious?

The one caviat is a global recession,
TWS

Hand Soap

Today, I decided to investigate the difference between using/utilitzing the word "use" versus the word "utilize".
My research indicates that you sound like a prick if you say "utilize".
The more you know...

In other news, have you ever been to a career fair that wasn't awkward?
Me neither.

But because we cannot always count on dreams coming true, I must attend.
According to my flow chart, life is going even better than expected. This career fair is merely the next step toward living happily ever after.
Besides, the bills aren't going to pay themselves.
(But wouldn't it be awesome if they did?)

A new fad in the restaurant industry has come to annoy me:
Servers that don't write anything down.
Now maybe I'm just a fan of documentation because I personally use it so extensively or because of generally accepted auditing standards, but I just don't see the benefit of servers abandoning their reliable ways and just relying on their memory.

Maybe they're trying to impress me.
But I am not impressed.

First of all, it makes me nervous:

Server: And what will you have?
Me: I'll have the single hamburger with onions, tomatoes, cheese, lettuce, with ketchup, and could I also have a salad with ranch dressing on the side?

HOW are they going to remember all of that? Especially if they're having an off-day? It's not like I pointed to a list and said, "everything but".

And here's a true story: Steak & Shake lists ketchup as a condiment on their menu that you can put on your burger, but then they don't put it on your burger because they just assume that you can use the bottle on the table- which will almost always appear empty, so you'll have to go switch it out at someone else's table like I did.

Secondly, they disguise their failure by overcompensating in customer service.

So she comes back to the table:
Server: You wanted ranch dressing, right?
Me: Yes, on the side.
Server: And you said you didn't want pickles, right?
Me, in thought: I didn't say I didn't want pickles, but I didn't list them, so obviously that would mean I would not like them on my burger, and you would've known that if you had actually written it down and done a decent waitress's job instead of just verbally verifying everything thinking that I'm going to be SO impressed with your stupendous memory and give you a huge tip.
Me, in reality: No pickles.

And this wasn't the first time she "double-checked" either.

OH. And another thing that bugs me about restaurants: when the bring the check out with your food.
It's like saying, "Here. Leave whenever you're ready. Since I'm giving you the power to pay right now, I have no more reason to ever attend to your table in the future."
And then, of course, I need A-1 sauce.
And it's like 18 minutes before they even waddle over to my side of the restaurant again.

My tip-flipper idea is becoming ever so needed in the restaurant industry today.

Small potatoes,
TWS

Results

Here is a true story about the irony of my life:

I woke up sick on Tuesday.
This is one of the only times I've been sick in 2012 (aside from the whole appendix removal situation).
So I leave work early on Tuesday.
I'm about to take a nap, and a recruiter from my dream job and schedules a phone interview with me for Thursday.

My voice leaves me Wednesday.

And then, today, I attempt to recover the lost voice through singing much Imogen Heap during commute.

I rock said interview, albeit sounding like John Mayer going through puberty.

(you know: grungy, raspy, squeaky, sickly, etc)

In case you didn't catch the irony: the ONE TIME I get SICK like allllll year happens to fall in the same week where I am interview by PHONE for my DREAM JOB.

And it really sucked when I got really passionate about certain subjects because then I sounded as crazy as this giraffe looks.

BUT- I got the technical question about inventory valuation right (which is apparently a rare thing)!

So we'll see how it goes.

Let's hope for a dream job.

Cherry picking in the river,
TWS