Month: May 2008

bookmark_borderWeekend in New York

Posted on by Christine Elias

I’m going to New York tomorrow for a little weekend vacation. I have my cell phone and my Nintendo DS so I should be fine in terms of technology withdrawal. (I’ve decided I need a iTouch too — but that’s another topic). No doubt, it’ll be fun but I’m always glad to get home after a holiday. I get homesick — not as bad as when my parents shipped me off to camp — but I miss my life and the people in it when I’m away.

I also miss all my bathroom products. I can’t possibly cart my entire medicine cabinet with me and it was quite a struggle to decide which haircare products I should bring — I use three regularly…and sometimes I use all three at once if my hair is in need of volume, hold and shaping all at the same time. I chose the shaping one, so I may have flat and flyaway hair for the duration of my big city adventure. Of course, I could always buy some stuff there but my suitcase is so small and I only saved a little room for a potential shoe purchase.

bookmark_borderfreedom

Posted on by Christine Elias

I was at a work event today chatting with a colleague from a different unit about retiring. She’s ready — after 2 kids and three grandkids she just wants some time to to herself to do things she enjoys. She wants to sew and putter in the garden — that type of thing.

I shared that I was ready too. I have not spent my adulthood raising kids so I don’t feel quite the same sense of anticipation for me time — me time is all the time at my house — but I think I could handle the guilt of retiring early.

I shared this with my loved one who vehemently does not agree that I should retire early (not that I could).

To wit:

“How hard is your job anyway? You talk on the phone, write emails and memos and chat with people you like all day.”

Yeah, that’s what we do in public relations. That’s just what I did all day today…all morning it was email after email and memo after memo — then, after a long lunch, I called a few friends on the phone to talk about my new shampoo. I capped the day off with a few visits to colleagues in their offices to chat about American Idol.

Okay, it’s true that I do enjoy my job and I probably would lose my mind at home — it would be very clean but I’d probably go stir crazy and start inhaling Javex after about a week. But for the record, I do more than send emails and write memos. In fact, today I faxed something and made a chart in Excel.