HayZeus the Helper

I'd love to say that my excuse for not posting anything lately is that I'm so busy, but when you consider that I've been off work for over a month you know I'd be lying. It's amazing what kind of things you find to fill your day when you have all day to essentially do nothing. My time management skills are non-existent when I have this much time on my hands.

One productive thing that I have been doing is getting myself organized and prepared to do the paramedical examining that I got hired to do. I'm working for a company called Great Lakes Paramedical. Essentially, when someone wants to take out a life or health insurance policy, most companies require the person to go through a paramedical examination - they give a urine and blood sample, have their vitals taken, and are asked questions about their health history. So that's what I'll be doing. I visit "proposed insured" persons in their homes or office, draw blood, collect urine, take their vitals, go over their health history, and sometimes do an EKG. It's a nice little "side gig" (as my Dad calls it) since I'll be part time at Biolife (if I ever get to start). Not exactly intellectually challenging, but it's actually pretty good money. Examiners in bigger areas make upwards of $50,000 a year.

In preparation for this little "business," I've spent a lot of time getting our second bedroom set up as an office. We bought a printer/scanner/fax/copier that I've been using constantly to print off the forms I need for the exams I do, print off wedding stuff like out guest list (which is a whole other headache), or to scan some photos we have laying around in boxes. Soon I'm hoping to get a file cabinet, because the box I'm using for my files now isn't going to cut it for much longer.

During the time I've been spending in our "office" I've had a very loyal companion/helper. HayZeus, it turns out, is a top notch printer monitor and is learning how to type. Unfortunately, he frequently falls asleep on the job.

He and I have had a lot of time to bond lately. We chat (I meow at him, he meows back), and he does everything he can to drive me insane. He always likes to be where I am, which is nice most of the time, but its really hard to type with him lying on my hands and impossible to write stuff down when he's sitting on my paper and has knocked every single pen off the table. His love for pens and pencils is flat out unhealthy.

Other than all that office-type stuff I've been working on some wedding planning. We applied to use St. Paul's Episcopal Church for the ceremony and I've picked out bridesmaid dresses and invitation paper. Our main focus right now is the guest list. We are planning for no more than 200 people at the reception, and since about 25% of those you invite don't come (on average) we don't want to invite more than 275 people. So Joe and I made our preliminary list and then went through and slimmed it down. The problem is everytime we take people off, someone reminds us of someone important we forgot or requests that additional people be added. It's a headache and I'll be happy when we've got it all done.

My sister in law says I'm way too organized with this wedding stuff but I just can't see how thats a bad thing. I mean I get it, September 29th is a ways away, but I don't want to be scrambling in July or August. When my brother Joe got married I hand made all of the invitations in a period of two weeks because they didn't figure out who was marrying them/where the ceremony was/at what time until 8-10 weeks before the wedding. I don't want to deal with that. By the end of March I want those details taken care of so I can get my invites printed and labeled. Maybe I'm a little anal retentive or OCD about this stuff, but oh well! Plus, it gives me something to do while Joe's at work.

Joe's sister, Crystal, sent me a recipe for lamb stew on Friday and I think I'm going to make it today. Instead of lamb, though, I'm going to use venison that we got from Joe's Dad. I'm anxious to see how it turns out. :)