Okay, the weekend started out with a bang – my friend Rita and I went to see Tyrone Wells at the Troubadore in West Hollywood. In case you don’t know Tyrone Wells, you should check him out! He used to lead worship at University Praise and is an amazing singer/songwriter! Check out his site here.

So the concert was GREAT and I decided to spend the night at Rita’s since she lives closer to West Hollywood than I do. When I woke up in the morning, the skies were already filled with smoke from the Sylmar fire. I took off early to get out before it got ugly, plus had plans to go sports fishing in the ocean with my boys! So we headed towards Orange County, grateful to not have to deal with the fires for the day.

However, driving in we soon saw fires off the 91 freeway. When I drove to Edgar’s house, it didn’t seem too close and we all headed towards Newport Beach (including Edgar and his neighbor, Andy and Andy’s daughters – who are good friends with my sons). We headed to the beach, glad to get away from the smoke and blah related to the fires near Orange County. We got settled on the boat, started heading out to sea, and then we saw the smoke spreading before our very eyes off the coast. It soon appeared to be a bigger fire than we anticipated.

Soon Andy, who is a Placentia Police Officer, began receiving calls. They were doing voluntary evacuations in Edgar’s neighborhood and the police department was making sure Andy’s motorcycle and weapons were safe. As we were in the middle of the ocean, he could not access either. But this also raised other flags – were Edgar’s parents safe? Gracie was with them, too! What the heck was going on!

Let me tell you, it was a LONG fishing trip and feeling helpless! Poor Edgar was on the phone so much and I was trying to make things “calm” for the boys and for Andy’s kids. I think we made that happen, but it was another thing all together dealing with the fires that were awaiting us!

The Brea fires were very close to my house, the Anaheim Hills and Yorba Linda fires were very close to Edgar’s house. I soon realized I could get to mine without tons of problems, but Edgar’s area was closed to anyone. I took the boys home and Edgar, with Andy, tried to see if they could get in using Andy’s police position.

Bottom line – it was CRAZY and I don’t really want to relive it here…..but basically everyone is okay and no property was lost.  It was tough going, the smoke SUCKS, and it was tense for some time.  Things are settling down although it’s STILL very smokey here (as of Monday night).  The boys’ school was closed today so it was weird……

So anyway, we are safe and sound.

Background: Received a statement from a vendor that had a zero current bill and a past due amount. As I had been instructed, I gave the bill to the person training me. She gave it back with a note saying: “call them we don’t get invoice” (copied word for word)

I went to the vendor’s site to get online statements and realized this issue had been going on for two months. As the original bill was for a lease, I sent an email to the person training me just to keep her informed and to get her feedback. I don’t know, thought maybe she had disputed it or something……here is how it went down:

Here I am with my friend Cathy back this summer, front row just left of center at the Bon Jovi concert in Madison Square Garden in New York!

This is going to be a short post because I need to get ready for work.

The day after the election, I know some people are disappointed that Obama won.  Some are celebrating and holding onto hope and looking forward to January 20th.  Even with that aside, I am rejoicing in the fact that we are given the right to let our voices be heard through the voting process.  I rejoice that a record number of people utilized this right yesterday, many of whom dealt with yucky weather, long lines, machines that were not working, etc.  Yet they persevered so that their voice, through voting, could be heard.  I LOVE THAT!

I love this country, for the democracy that is afforded to us through the voting process, and for the citizens who acted on that right!  GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Thanks to everyone who replied – you really saved me!

RESULTS for my field work:

Here are the questions I asked:

Do you donate blood? (Yes/No)
If so, how often? (<1x a year, 1x a year, >1x a year)
If not, why? (It hurts/I don’t like needles/Blood freaks me out/No Reason)
Are you aware of the requirements for donating to babies? (Yes/No)
If you knew, would that change your mind regarding donating? (Yes/No)

I asked 30 people these questions, of which 6 were male and 24 were female, the majority of whom were 36 years or older.

67% of respondents answered they do NOT donate blood. The reason was 80% “Other”, and all of those respondents elaborated that there were health reasons that caused them to not be able to donate. The other 20% of the respondents who answered no equally stated that they do not like needles or that it hurt too much.

Of those who DO donate blood, 40% donate <1 time a year, 40% donate once a year, and 20% donate multiple times a year.

80% of the respondents had no clue that there were special requirements for donating to babies, let alone what those requirements are.

I confirmed this information – most of the population has CMV, a common viral pathogen found in all population groups. Nearly all CMV infected people are asymtomatic. It causes few problems for healthy individuals. But in newborns and immunocompromised individuals, it may produce a variety of disease processes. To donate to these groups, you must not carry this virus……and only about 15% of the population does not carry it.

Since the majority of the respondents could not donate due to health reasons, knowing the requirements didn’t make a difference in their desire or ability to donate blood. Therefore, 67% said knowing would not make a different. 20% said this information would change their mind, including some individuals who currently donate – they shared they would be willing to donate more often if they knew their blood was being used to help babies. However, at this point I realized that, even knowing this information, they have a high likelihood of being CMV Positive, so their blood would not be given to babies.

This field work was interesting, in that is quantified many of the things I have felt existed for some time. Hearing specifics and analyzing them was very interesting. I also realized most women, at least in my case, were more willing to respond to me, let alone answer my questions. I also found that my questions could have been much more valuable in nature – I am not sure asking the questions about the babies gleaned as much information as I had hoped. I am not sure the data I collected helped me to suggest what changes could be made to encourage people to donate as most who do not, can’t.

Okay peeps, you might remember I am in a Statistics class in my MBA program!  And, well, Gina waited a bit too long to begin asking people me survey questions and, thus far, my sample is kind of small.  So if you could PLEASE answer the following questions asap, that would totally help me out!

Do you give blood?    Yes    No
If so, how often?    < 1x a year    1 time a year    > 1x a year
If not, why?    It hurts    I don’t like needles    Blood freaks me out    No reason
Are you aware of the requirements for donating to babies?    Yes    No
If you knew, would that change your mind regarding donating?    Yes    No

Demographic Information
Gender    Male    Female
Age    <20    21-35    36-49    >49

Please email your responses to gmdimples33@yahoo.com.

Thanks so much!  Some of you may receive an email from me so sorry if this is duplicated!

Gina

So I haven’t updated this blog for a few days – sorry!  Let me try to get you up-to-date:

• Sea World was FUN!  It was a bit of a cold day at first so we stayed dry…..but then it warmed up and we got silly……so silly we thought we could sit up close at the dolphin show.  I mean really, how much splashing can they do?????  Yeah, we were wrong……especially since they use their tails specifically to splash the crowd and yeah…..a dolphin was right in front of us!  We had great fun though!
• The new job ROCKS!  It is surreal because it has been 10 years since I’ve worked there so things are foggy and “new”, but at the same time I remember enough that it is freaky to be back (in a good way).  I found some documents I had created or worked on…..yeah, weird.  On my first day I was given my old ruler….LOL!  I am kind of anal about rules; they have to be metal with cork.  It had my name on it – and what appears to be Kirstie’s writing for my last name and she was little.  It was cool.
• School is going well.  The new job has made doing homework MUCH better as the commute is way better.  I ALMOST like statistics, but not quite.
• Shoulder still sucks but I am trying to ignore it.

Okay, hope that helps my 2.78 readers out!

Okay, I didn’t want to mention anything sooner, but you HAVE heard that I don’t really like the job that I received at Gretchen Fox.  The drive alone is enough to turn me into Queen Cranky!  But there are real issues with the way they do business – like they want to dock salary peeps if they leave early or lied to me as they don’t offer benefits.

ANYWAY, going back during the summer, I had contacted a company I had worked for 10 years ago.  At the time they no longer needed to fill the Accounting/Office Manager position so I said thanks and let me know.

Well, last Friday, after ending another HORRIBLE week at work, but reminding myself that I am very fortunate to even have a job with this economy, I checked my email.  Bam, there was an email from Corey, a partner from the firm.  He was seeing if I was still interested because things had changed.  It was late, but I replied to his email stating I was still in the market!  Well, he and I met yesterday (Tuesday) and we got each other up to speed on the last 10 years – both professionally and personally.  He was excited to bring me back, but wanted to make sure his partner, Son, was cool as well.  He promised to call me today.

Today was LONG as I waited for his call.  After 4pm I thought maybe he had lost my number and called, but he was unavailable.  He finally called me at about 5:20 and asked, “Why were you calling again?”  I called him a butthead, but to the point I start Monday!  I am SO excited and here is why:

• This job is in Tustin – aka CLOSE TO HOME.  No more 70 mile one way commute!
• This job pays WAY better
• Many of the procedures that were in place when I was the Accounting Supervisor are still in place
• This is a fair company that follows the rules and is fair in compensation and really offers bennies!

There are more things, but that is the gist of it.  Kenny is SOOOOO excited ’cause he was tired of me getting home at 7:30 or later.  And he misses me in the morning, too.  He just plain misses me.  Kirstie is thrilled too because it’s been almost impossible to see each other!

So WOOHOO!  Special thanks to Kenny and Teddi who did extra prayer duty for me!

To check out where I will be working, click here.