I'm Melting!!!

This past week has been a blur. Business has been slower than preferred, but I will say it is a bit of a nice break. Things have been pretty crazy since the day I got here so a quieter week was very welcome.

Last week I was on call for the first time ever. I would love to say it was uneventful and boring, but I'd be lying. There were "misunderstandings" that resulted in one of our customers "hating" us and somehow I was in the middle. I was mostly a casualty of war, but it was still frustrating and I still get mad about it any time any one brings it up. Most people don't but there is this one fellow who does. I would like to say he tries to be ornery but he just doesn't pull it off very well. My grandfather is much better at it, which is probably also why I seem to handle this fellow pretty well compared to others. I've had a life time of practice.

I spoke to the poor on call guy today, he was lucky enough to be running around all night and didn't get home until 7am this morning. He then has to work all day but hopefully he will get tomorrow night off. The way they do on call around here is interesting. Sometimes people alternate, such as one guy does it Monday and Tuesday, the other guy handles Wednesday and Thursday, the other one Friday, both on Saturday, then the last one on Sunday. That seems pretty complicated to me. The other way that people will do it is that one person handles the phone calls the other person drives. This only seems semi fair, but I don't think any one person should have to do all the driving. These rigs can get pretty spread out and you can easily travel an hour and a half in one direction for a single rig. I know it is part of the business, but I think trying to keeps peoples continual subjection to such trips should be kept to a minimum. It makes it a little less painful if people trade off.

The upside to all of this hard work is the wonderful weather. Yesterday the thermometer across the street on the bank like building read 101 degrees. Thats not counting the humidity. The radio has been saying that the heat index has been up around 114 degrees which is insane. Blond haired people who freckle and sweat a lot are not made for this climate. That translate to "I hate it." The upside, people pay good money to sit in saunas...all I have to do is walk into the warehouse. It's almost like a day at the spa....almost. Today there appears to be a bit of breeze out and the humidity doesn't seem to be so bad. I thought I would go lay out for a bit and see if I can get some color. I never last long, which is probably for the better since there is nothing worse than dealing with a sunburn. I better take lots of water with me!!

I hope everyone is doing well, and I will keep working to get better about my blogging. I do enjoy it and I have missed it.

My Last Day

Today was my last day in the Beverwijk office. The upside was that I won a7 Euros in a bet on what the score of the Netherlands – Slovakia game would be, so that little stack of coins met. Other than that, it was so sad!! I can’t believe 6 months have flown by so quickly. I am not ready to leave. It will be wonderful seeing my friends and family, but I am really going to miss the beautiful landscapes and water. I won’t miss fearing my life from bicycle riders. I cleaned out my cabinets and belongings last night and took anything with value to the office to give to whoever wanted it. It was a mini yard sale. I also borrowed the scale so that I could weigh my bags and make sure I’m not overweight. Nothing is worse than dealing with that at the airport while everyone is staring at you and you’re holding up the line! I will hopefully have all my bags mostly 100% finished by this evening so tomorrow I can enjoy seeing the last 2 sites that are on my to-do list in Haarlem. I need to go to the Corrie Ten Boom house and the Frans Hals museum. It will be a wonderful last day out on the town. At 6pm tomorrow I have my final walk through with the apartment owns and real estate agent then bright and early at 7:30 Thursday morning my ride will be here to shuttle me to the airport. I will not cry……

Never a Dull Moment

After Doris and the girls leave, I have about a day's recovery period as I head to the airport Sunday evening to pick up another coworker, Carean, who is flying in from Scotland. Karla is flying out on Monday, June 7^th, and I am supposed to be taking her to the airport first thing Monday morning but one of her other friends said she would take her and since it would save me a bit of stress, I took her up on the offer. I did meet the girls for dinner at Wilma and Albert's and took Karla some of the belongings that got left here by the group. I still managed to forget a few things, so I still have stuff I need to take back for Karla.

With Carean and Javan here, I have done a TON of eating out these last few weeks. After a week of work and no major hang ups, we spend the weekend touring Amsterdam and seeing the Van Gogh museum. I never knew how many different styles he painted and how where he lived affected what he painted. During his time in The Netherlands and Antwerp, things were a lot darker and more traditional. Once he moved to France, it was like someone turned on the lights to his paintings as they became more colorful. He had such a dramatic life filled with so many different events. After the museum, we headed over to the Hard Rock Café for drinks and appetizers in preparation for the big game. USA v. England was coming on later in the evening and we were not going to miss out on that action.

After taking a break for food, Javan and I were exhausted so we decided to use public transportation to get back to the train station and get back to Haarlem before the start of the game. We went to the Whiskey bar in Javan's hotel to catch the game. They had it on the big screen, and we didn't win but didn't lose either and that is what is important.

On Sunday, we were both lazy and decided to take an easy day with nothing planned. We did get out and do a brief little tour of Haarlem, but nothing too exciting. We were preparing for a busy week at work and game planning how we were going to tackle any issues that came up after we turned on the new systems. My last few weeks here are winding down quickly and are full of work. I am glad to be keeping busy and being able to help out and hopefully make these transitions a bit easier, but it is sad because the time is flying by.

Tomorrow morning I fly out to Norway for a few days to help Javan train the new location and prepare for any issues that might come up. On Friday I fly back here and get to spend the weekend packing and spending the weekend with my host parents from Germany. So, as of now, 11 days and counting….

Job Decision

I will finish blogging about London and my travels soon, I promise! I have had visitors coming and going for 2 weeks now and things are finally starting to calm down. After several days of intense stress, but luckily no tears, I have made my final job decision. I will be starting work July 12 in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was one of the hardest decisions I have made in my life and I know it is the best for my career, but my heart remains in Colorado. One day I'll get back there, I have faith.

Update

Due to the fact that I am way behind schedule in my blogging, many of the future posts will consist of main highlights. I will still do my best to relay the story and show pictures, but I am going to have to cut down on the details.

I found out that I will for sure be moving back to America at the end of June. I will be working in US Operations, which is similar to my time in Colorado. I still do not yet know for sure where I will be going but the options on the table are: Louisiana; Rifle, Colorado; Odessa, Texas; North Dakota; California (possibly). I am waiting to talk to managers to find out where the greatest need is and then I'll be headed that way after a short visit home. At least I'll be in one location for awhile and can plan a bit!

"We are a large busines......"

I can see ash clouds! I’ve never seen ash clouds from a volcano before! There is still a chance it could be pollution, but we ruled out rain. I’m going with ash clouds because that makes all of the happenings a bit more exciting. I’m just so thankful I am not flying this weekend….or this past week. It would be miserable trying to deal with all of the delays/cancellations and the numerous other unhappy travelers.

Today is a pink day for me. The guys start singing the pink panther theme song whenever I walk by. I am wearing my fuzzy pink jacket, my new pink scarf (a birthday present from Doris), and my pink watch (a birthday present from Mom). The color just makes me so happy it is hard to give up. I’m also sure it brightens everyone’s day that has to look at me. How could pink not do that? It is just a happy color. I wanted to prove that it is a happy color so I looked up the meaning of pink. Bright pinks can encourage action and confidence and it has been used in prisons to decrease erratic behavior. In Japan, pink has a masculine association because of the pink blooming cherry trees representing the young Japanese warriors who have fallen in battle. Pink also encourages friendliness and discourages ill-will. Overall, I think pink is a fantastic color and I’ll slowly convince everyone here that I am right. If you want to read the entire profile of pink, or any other color, click HERE.

The warehouse guy introduced me to the typical Dutch candies for kids (according to him, anyways). They are little white mice and snails. The mice are made of this stretchy sweet stuff that I really like the texture of. The snails are made of the same, but have a gummy “shell” on their back. The snails are cute because they even have the little snail eyes/lumps on their heads like real snails! I don’t know why they made the mice white; I think they should have chosen a polar bear or something. I’m not a fan of mice ever; even as candy they’re less appetizing just because of their shape.

I received my ISO 9000 book in the mail today. I figured I better get read up on the latest ISO 9001:2008 standards that they want to implement here. It’s a nice 730 pages and very much like a text book but with a pretty pearl on the front. I guess that helps make the book a little less painful . It is a neat initiative that goes along with Total Quality Management. It is similar to 6 Sigma and other TQM systems. Companies who have these certifications are supposed to be able to better serve their customers due to their highly systemized operations and the clarity they are in place. I’m sure you get out of it what you put into it, like most things, so hopefully we can do it right and it will be very beneficial!

This past week I have been cooking for myself and I haven’t keeled over dead yet. I figure that is a good thing. I saw tuna steaks at our local grocer and I LOVE tuna steaks so I thought I would buy one and see how I did. I really like my tuna steaks rare (as tuna should be served) but I don’t know how much I trust grocery stores and myself to handle and serve raw fish. I seared it on both sides, well a little longer than the traditional searing but it was still raw in the middle. It was quite tasty too! I read that tuna pairs well with Asian spices so I dipped it in our sweet chili sauce that we have here and I was very happy with the outcome! I will definitely have to do it again next time I find tuna at the grocery store.

There was just a forward sent around the office of a copy of an actual quote from a vendor to another office. In the fine print it states “We are a large business and not a minority or woman owned business.” This company is based in San Francisco. We are all getting a laugh that a company actually put this on their quote. They, too, are ISO certified. I hope we don’t end up with things like that in our fine print after this process!

Just Another Day

Today has been quite uneventful. I have been pretty busy at work, which is nice and there doesn’t seem to be anything too catastrophic going on anywhere nearby or in the news. Kelly continues to blog about her fun trip to Germany and I continue to be jealous when I read about it.

Jillian’s workout kicked my butt yesterday. It was very tiring, and I am sore today - my calves mostly. I’m sure Kelly had fun watching me work out in our “dining room” area. I’m pretty sure I asked her to put me out of my misery a few times. Oh well, no pain no gain, right?

Tomorrow I plan on heading down to Rotterdam to visit Erik, Mark’s real Dutch brother. I guess we’ll be hitting the town tomorrow evening and hopefully I’ll be able to con him out of a tour on Saturday. Kelly has 2 friends arriving on Saturday as well. I guess they/we will tour Haarlem on Saturday then we were thinking about trying to go to Den Haage (The Hague) on Sunday. Kelly and I haven’t been either so it will hopefully be a good adventure. They have a jam packed schedule for the week they are here. I would too if I was in their shoes! I’m glad we can help facilitate people’s tour of the continent  Kelly’s mom will be here next Monday as well. I can’t wait to meet her. I’ve obviously heard so much about her and she seems like a really neat person. It will also be glad to have a mother figure around. Mine is a bit harder to pin down.

I guess we’re getting a new floor in the office building. I’m not exactly sure how all this works, but apparently, we’re sinking. So they are going to jack up the building and put stuff underneath to stabilize the floor and make it all level again. We also get new carpet. The downside to this, all of the furniture has to be moved off the 1st floor. That is a lot of equipment. They are going through bookshelves and cleaning out cabinets in what I’m guessing is an effort to make them light and get rid of old stuff. In New Mexico the ground is so hard, it generally doesn’t move. Apparently, since Holland used to be underwater, the ground still shifts and sinks. Lucky country.

I am also starting to make friends. I answer the phone when our co-workers are out. It generally rings about 45 seconds after they step out of the office. People are slowly getting more and more used to having an American answer, and even asking me questions about how I am still liking my time here and job. I get excited about any friends that I can find! Baby steps.