Hamilton Happenings

After 4 semesters of school, and another month of intense studying - Melissa passed her Nursing Exam. She is now a registered nurse! Congrats! It's only logical that a RN lives with me full-time. I wouldn't say that I'm a clumbsy person - but the scabs & scars on me would probably tell a different story, which Melissa would definitely agree with. The other day she said "Whenever I'm around you I feel like I'm about to get hit in the face." And then followed it up with "Maybe you shouldn't be working from home anymore." I've been working from home doing sales since the new year. It's challenging! Well the job isn't challenging itself - any monkey could do it. But just working from home & constantly being distracted. Melissa doesn't distract me, I find things to distract the both of us! Exhibit A : I have a small slinky on my desk. I like to hold an end in each hand and see how close I can get to hitting things -...

I've currently leveled up to Diamond status with Progressive (car insurance provider). It sounds a lot more prestigious than what it is. It just means that I've been insured with them for 5 years or more. The next level is Emerald (10 years) and then Crown (20 years). Each loyalty level gets you a little extra privilege but it's really not too impressive... We just recently decided to participate in Progressive's Snapshot discount program. It's a little device that looks like some lame happy-meal toy that you plug into your car's computer under the dash. The idea is that it takes a "snapshot" of your driving habits over 6 months. If they find that you're a safe driver, then you get an additional discount. Supposedly even if you're a bad driver it will not increase your premiums. It primarily monitors speed, braking habits, and times of day that you drive. Certain hours of the day are at higher risk for accidents (before dawn & rush hour)...

One of my current jobs is working at OpenBook. I've been there for a little over 2 years. Recently they've been shaking things up at the company and let go everyone in the Sales department - except for me. There are a lot of allegations as for the real reason they did this, but those aren't really my concern. The COO and I have talked numerous times and he has stated that he would like to create a position for me within the company. Other department leaders have said that I could have nearly any position I wanted within the company. It's been pretty gratifying knowing that your company recognizes your value. But others have also been noticing. Just last week, I received 2 calls out of the blue from people interested in recruiting me to work for them. One of the positions I wasn't interested in, but the other one wouldn't be too different than a lot of my tasks at OpenBook - just a different industry & about twice the compensation. After telling OpenBook a...

So Melissa and I have spent some extra time at the hospital this last week. We discovered that Melissa had something extra growing inside of her -> not twins, but rather her right kidney. Guess they actually call it  hydronephrosis.   Basically it means that something is blocking her ureter and the kidney has swollen a bit. It's actually a pretty painful process. The liquid that is now inside of the kidney (future urine) is blocked and can't come out. Kidney stones is one of the first suspected culprits. After a few ultrasounds the blame was passed onto the uterus. The baby is already turning out to be a pain in its mom's side! So that means that the uterus is sitting on the ureter or in some way blocking the flow of it. One of the few options available is to have a stent put in. I imagine it as a straw with a curled hook on the end. Or to put it in language for guys - it's like a fishing hook barb. Once the hook gets in the fish (or your finger), you don't w...

For the last 2.5 years one of the jobs I've had is managing a small outbound call-center in Rexburg (we only call hotels...so no animosity please.) At it's largest point - we had 5 employees on the team, but that didn't mean there wasn't a lot of turnover. I've cycled through nearly 20 employees in that time. It can be kind of draining. You sometimes get people that quit after just a day or two, even though they were having success. Work ethic seems to be rapidly declining among many generations (including preceding generations I've noticed.) But at least manners haven't gone completely out the windows - at least not with one young man that was starting his second day of work. He left me a note before he quit: Dear Justin:   I truly appreciate the job opportunity, but I must sincerely apologize for not being honest with you or myself. I took this job because my girlfriend forced me to. I do not have the time or the ability to manage the stress of all th...

It's not too often that a mistake costs tens of thousands of dollars. But the most recent noteworthy news involves such a case. Elevated dump truck bed hits traffic signals, power lines . A dump truck driver didn't realize he had the bed of his truck still raised as he drove down a busy street for 1.5 miles! "...He just thought there was lightning behind him as he drove along the road." Not sure how often I've seen lightning in a snow storm, but I probably would've stopped to watch it! " ...The driver was not intoxicated." Well that's too bad - at least he would've had an excuse then. How does he explain this to people? A teenage gal that I knew got in an accident shortly after she getting her license. She described her accident to people as "I just blacked out for a second and started hitting things. I couldn't stop."  I wonder what it would've been like to be sitting at one of the intersections as ...

Well the snow was a bit of a surprise to wake up to this morning. So that means that I was able to shovel snow for the first time this fall/winter. Now that we live in an apartment complex (4plex) it's quite different. The only thing to really shovel are the stairs. Shoveling a driveway is a lot more fun than stairs. There are some sidewalks that I could shovel though. I'll probably end up doing that. With the snow comes a different type of driving. I enjoy driving in the snow usually. Was able to test out our Jeep to see how well the AWD works. One thing that I tend to do is drive with my tires hitting as much of the slush between lanes as I can. I figure I can handle it more than others - especially the small sedans that are low to the ground. So I drive through it so they don't have to. And of course it splashes everywhere - which turns me into a laughing fool. I'm always curious what others think when I do that (or when I'm laughing because of it.) I loo...