Aaaaaand I'm Back

Driving driving driiiiiving... it's what I do... haha. After breakfast with Rob this morning and a few errands, we said our goodbyes again [not nearly as difficult or emotional as last weekend] and I hit the road for a 5-hour trip back to Ohio. Is it weird that I'm no longer phased by long road trips?

 

things along the way... that made me smile..
... and with ohio plates, of all things.. haha

I told Becky I'd have an ETA of 9:30pm. I walked in the door at 9:29pm. I'm not typically good at predicting times, which just goes to fortify the idea that I'm going to get quickly acclimated to 5+ hour road trips.

To end the weekend: we played around with a Mirrors app on my phone. Not an awful time at all. Pretty funny, actually. Here's us, if we were even more special than we already are most days. ;)


ohhh yeah. hahaha

Welp, it's nearly midnight and even though I slept like a rock this weekend and feel energized from it, I'm still tired and I've gotta get back to work in the morning. I've got another list of housing in front of me and will be pursuing that tomorrow, too.

Make it a great week, blogbots!

xo | cmd

REO Speedwagon | Styx | Ted Nugent

breakfast with ali...
i already miss her... always ♥ her!!!! 

I made it to Illinois in one piece yesterday, with some time to spare. I know this is no longer my home, but since I've only been back in Cincinnati for a week now, after two solid years of being gone, it really did feel like home when I drove in yesterday. Call me crazy, I know.

Anyway, first thing on the agenda today was breakfast at The Egg & I with Ali. She'd never been, I hadn't been in a while, we both wanted breakfast, and the wait wasn't that long at all. Sooooo, yeah. Everybody wins!

We followed breakfast with some light retail therapy, and spent that time catching up on all things of the last week: work, social lives, deep-seeded things, and of course, laughing. There was much laughing done in the first few hours of my day, and reminded me how grateful I should be [& am] to have a friend like her. Love you, Ali!

Oh, and speaking of Ali, she's got a blog, too. She updated it in the past day or so, to include a few others and myself, individually. I cried a little reading it. I'm blessed with incredible friends, even states away. :)

Back in Granite, Rob came back from work and we started out our weekend hang-out with a nap. You call that a waste of time spent together, we call it.... catching up right where we should be with Saturday tradition ;). Haha. Just kidding; we're not lazy, but it's been one heck of a week for both of us, and we wanted to be of the right energy for the evening.

yeahhhhhh buddy...

... And when that came around, Rob's mom & stepdad came by the house and we all piled into the truck for the short jaunt over to STL. It's concert season! This was my first of the season, originally a Valentines Day present from his mom & stepdad to us. It was a blast (:

As is usually the case, we'll go with pictures instead of me trying to tell you how much fun it was.....

beautiful day out! 

rob & his pretty madre!

we had... a blast (: (: 

[[ I've got the full set from the evening on fb... go find them there if you really want to :) .. ]]

...... and yes, this is lightly backdated. I was certainly in no condition to sit down and start blogging when we got back to the house. It was a great time, though, and deeeeefinitely worth the trip out. Thanks again to Rob's amazing parents for the tickets and for showing us a great time!

love. you.

First run of concerts for the season? Success (:

xo | cmd

TGIF.

TGIF.

Yeah, I know... cliche title for a Friday post.... but ya know what? I can't remember the last time I was this thankful for a Friday to roll around. It's been something of an.... eventful week, more or less.

I got dressed in real grown-up clothes this morning and chuckled at the fact that I've been so used to business casual Monday through Thursday, and having casual Fridays. This week, because we've been in the final threads of set-up here, we were casual all week, and now dressing up on Friday. (*whew) It's not really that funny, but it's a nice change.

Oh, and I thought I'd stop by Kroger on the way in and snag some cute little orchids to brighten up our desk spaces. I found a purple one for Elisa, even. :) On top of that, all of my pictures are now hanging or sitting in their respective places, so I feel like I'm home. Here we go, Express.....

brighten up the day :)

love seeing these beautiful faces ..  family & friends - every day!

Anywho, D&N [I'm not quite used to it yet; I just typed and deleted M&D... : / ...] were kind enough to grant me an early leave today at 3pm to start my trip back to St. Louis for the weekend. I need to get the e-check done on my car, and Rob's mom got us tickets to an REO Speedwagon/Ted Nugent/Styx concert this weekend. Two reasons I'd say are justifiable enough to get me back there for a couple of days :).

That's not to discount the rest of the day though. Friday was anything but slow; yesterday we'd scheduled our first round of interviews for today, and we didn't stumble too much through the flow of things. Luckily for both Elisa and I, we were trained by some of the same people, so we came together already having a very similar process. Oh, the small victories!

So yeah. We've all survived the first week of managed chaos here at the brand spankin' new Express office of Central Cincinnati, not to be confused with Cincinnati North or East ;). I'm excited to really start digging into everything next week and find our paths of flow and function.

For now, I'm outta here. I aced the five-hour drive back to Illinois, have successfully been fed AND got to see Alicia (: (: ... and now I've got a boyfriend to see (:

hey, alicia!! (: 

Happy weekend!

xo | cmd

Dumpster Diving In Northside!

Thursday!
I've given light detail of how this first week has gone at work. Today was another day of firsts for this office - we scheduled our very FIRST round of interviews for this office! [[I realize that sounds super nerdy, but whatever.. it's the small things!]]

first round for tomorrow! (:

I made a run out to Milford after work. I decided I wanted to get some pictures framed and displayed on my new desk, so my first order of real business was to get that done. I didn't take into account that printing off pictures I'd already Instagram'd would need to be printed as squares [why that didn't occur to me before, who knows...], but when it was all said and done, I was determined to make it work, and I think it turned out pretty good.

love him. love it.

Becky and I did dinner at Habaneros, which was delicious... I do love local places (: [[[try the bbq chicken quesadilla!!!]]]

yummmmmm (: 

Lastly, and this was probably my favorite part of the entire day...
Dumpster Diving... In Northside... With Becky.
It doesn't get much better than that. Technically, I guess we weren't really diving, as there really wasn't any of that involved - it was more like us spotting a crate filled with random trash propped atop a row of trash cans outside an apartment. We took full advantage of it, braved the smell of garbage just long enough to transfer all of it into another trash can and make a dash for it with a new crate. It's a nice one, too, and in tact, which is rare whenever you're scavenging. We celebrate the small things. (:

one man's trash?.....
..... is probably going to end up outside our door. haha.. 

Haha. Yeah, it's posted outside my temporary abode right now, and that's probably where it's going to stay until the stale banana smell dissipates from it and Becky can recycle it into some sort of useful something-or-other.

It's late.... my words are starting to default to sound effects. *Yawn.

Tomorrow's FRIDAY!! [[yesssssss]]

xo | cmd

Boyfriend & His Boat

I tried out some new coffee at the Kroger by my work today before heading in. I used my fancy Kroger plus card that I now have [for like, the third or fourth time for how many times I've had, lost, re-acquired, etc. one of these things]. It wasn't bad!

in my best fake snob accent, "oooooh, i'm sooooo cincinnati now... "

Work consisted of more boxes, moving of the file cabinets, and a few hours on the phone with our corporate tech support to get each of us set up correctly on our network. SUCCESS.

I checked out another potential apartment in Eastgate afterwards, too. Pass. *sigh.

Feeling a little frustrated, I made my way back to Becky's, where she, Mike, Jason and myself met up and carpooled to Ichiban over in Mt. Lookout for some happy hour sushi.

sushi. never a bad choice (: 

We just got back to Becky's, and frankly, I'm ready to call it a night. This has been one heck of a week.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Rob finally got his boat!!! This has been such a process for him, so I was pretty excited when he shot me over the picture to prove it. (: Way to go, babe.

boat & truck? ... exciiiiiited!

*Sigh. Two more days & I'll be IL-bound again. :) :) :)
But for now... sleep!

xo | cmd

House Flop :(

Welp, that didn't work out the way I had envisioned it. That's okay, though. There are worse things.

Today was day #2 in the new office; we're still heavy on the unpacking of boxes and trying to nail down the configuration of all the office furniture, filing cabinets and equipment. My computer's not yet attached the network yet, so there wasn't much we could do other than park ourselves in the conference room amidst the boxes and stacks of paperwork and build the booklets and packets that we use on a daily basis. At least we were productive!

I was scheduled to meet up with the landlord of the potential property I've been considering. I wasn't quite sure what to expect as I took probably the longest way possible out to the place [thanks, GPS, an hour+ later...]. I'm sad to say that as beautiful as the landscape outside was, I just don't think the overall setting is going to prove conducive to what I need. Bless this man's hear though, for being such a sweet soul and taking the extra step to try and help me.

it'll be a great place for someone.. just not us :(

So that was a minor bust. Like I said, there are worse things, though.

AND, there are better things! Liiiiiike, amazing friends who console your defeated self and will eat pizza with you to cure any remaining blues.

That's about all I've got to report today. I'm sick of being in the car. Haha.

xo | cmd

New Office, Here. We. GO!

Today was day one in the brand new office space that will I'll call home for the next [hopefully] several years!

They advised me to be there between 8am and 9am, not necessarily right at 8am since I'd had somewhat of a long weekend. I was grateful for the extra half hour or so, and was excited when I got there to find things in their final stages.

Oh, and it's casual WEEK, this week, since we're not officially open until the 20th and this week will be spent digging into boxes and doing all things set-up. I'm not complaining. The only pitfall was that we couldn't really get too much accomplished until the boxes arrived, and that didn't happen until late afternoon. That being said, they cut us loose to go take care of anything we needed to do, which for me was perfectly timed to get everything done.

1 || BMV = driver's license with my correct last name! [The Dren is back, ya'll... you've been warned... haha.. jk.]
2 || Bank = change over acct information and order new card.
3 || Stop by post office and change mailing address information.
4 || Visit storage unit.
4.5 || Visit old Express office and say hi!
5 || Visit a potential place to live [... and pass on it...]

*whew. I got back to the office close to 2:30, where I spent the rest of the day with Elisa, the FOC, sorting through boxes and making sure the packing lists were accurate. They put up our sign today, too! No longer are we just the old Adecco space; we are NOW.. Express!


... express yourself.... today!

Back at Becky's, Mike came by and they put dinner together for TJ and me [thank you!!]. It was delicious, and so nice to have "real" food after a few days of being on the go constantly and eating like it too.


fish!

So uhh, yeah? That's really all I've got for day one. I'm so excited about this new office and everything that comes with it - our FOC is a fully-trained gal from another local office here, and the owners are as sweet as can be. It's going to be an interesting week all together, but I'll take it. Here's to a new direction!

xo | cmd