Computer Down!

About two weeks ago my laptop at home decided to crash on me.  This is the second time since May it has done this.  The first time it crashed, I was able to revive my laptop by taking the CD that came with my computer when I bought and re-install the operating system.  Unfortunately, I lost all my pictures (including my Europe pictures, which were by far the most heartbreaking), but at least my computer was still working.  This second time, I can't get my computer to start up enough to even use the disc to reset my computer again.  Sad.  RIP computer.  I would love to go out and get a new computer (I have my eyes on getting an Apple desktop computer), but for now I'll just have to save up our money and wait. 

I finally stopped procrastinating and went to the social security office to get my name changed.  That part was a lot easier than I thought, and the wait was relatively minimal compared to what I expected it to be.  The hard part is going to be getting my name changed on all the little things:  credit cards, insurance cards, doctor's records, work email, driver's license (I loathe going to the DMV), etc.  Guys don't realize how easy they have it on this end! 

I went last week for training in Dallas for my job.  Usually I find training to be pretty boring, the instructors to be uninteresting (and honestly not that excited to be there) and I tend to catch myself doing the head bob during the middle of the day.  I was pleasantly surprised by this training. I was engaged pretty much the entire time, I felt like the training material was relevant and informative, and the instructor was amazing!!  She's an accounting professor for the University of Texas -San Antonio.  She knew her stuff! (and she did such an awesome job of presenting the information, giving lots of relevant examples)  She has renewed my interest in one day possible becoming a college professor.  Let's just say there's more time than not that I wonder if I'm doing something that really captures my interest, if I'm doing something that I really want to be doing for the rest of my life.  I know that most of the time I find the concepts of accounting interesting, but to be in the practice of it is so much different.  I enjoy people interaction so much, which is why I sometimes feel the pull towards becoming a professor and teaching.  This isn't something I would do right now, but definitely something I plan to keep on my radar for the next few years.

I've also lately been spending a lot of time thinking about finding something (a hobby) that I find fun and am passionate about.  Anyone who knows my husband or has met him can easily tell you his passions.  These are things I knew about him within a week.  Let's just say that I have always been envious of the fact (and admire) that he knows exactly what he's passionate about and doesn't care what everyone else thinks.  On top of this, I stumbled on a friend of a friends' blog post regarding people's passions.  In her post she described that during an interview, she was asked what it was that she was passionate about.  She went on to describe that everyone should be passionate about something and should be self aware enough to know what that is.  I kind of sat and thought for a minute, I have no idea what I'm passionate about!  I enjoy a lot of things:  cooking, spending time with friends and family, playing softball; but I don't know if I would say I was passionate about any of these things.  So I had a good talk with my closest friend to get some guidance on the topic of passions.  If anyone knows about having a passion, it's her.  She's known since college, high school, as long as I've known her what she's passionate about.  She's even currently turning her life upside down right now to chase her passion.  It makes me so proud of her that she's taking those courageous steps.  She's been a good sounding board on this topic.  I don't know if I'm that much closer to an answer of what I could be passionate about, but I have been able to find a direction I feel like in getting closer to an idea.

Whoo.  Long post!  I finally got our wedding pics back from our photographer so I will post some next time!

Customer Service?

I just have to take a second to vent.

I am starting to be of the belief that the old days of quality customer service are quickly going by the wayside.  Let me explain.

When I decided to leave my old job in May, unfortunately I had to change my cell phone plan from my company's plan to a plan in my name (a.k.a. I now had to pay for my blackberry!).  When I first transferred my plan into my name, I asked the customer service rep to please add a text messaging plan so I wouldn't get charged per text message.

Fast forward one month.  I go in to pay my cell phone bill at the local Verizon store, and find out that the text messaging plan still had not been added.  I asked the store rep to please add the text plan to my overall plan so I didn't get charged per message. 

At this point we're about two weeks before the wedding.  Let's just say I didn't make the best effort to follow-up to make sure text messaging was added to my plan.  About a week after we return from the honeymoon, I find out text messaging is still not added to my plan.  At this point, I now have two bills outstanding with a ridiculous amount of extra charges for my text messages.

Over the course of the next month (right up until today), it took me two more calls to customer service to get a text messaging plan added to my overall plan (that's right, it took 4 tries just to get text messaging).  It took me three failed attempts to get a customer service supervisor on the phone (the first two times I gave up after waiting on hold for 45 minutes each time).  I actually had one customer service rep ask me if I knew how to pay my bill (I politely explained that I knew how to pay my bill while also asking if she knew how to do her job).  I let her know I'd be happy to pay my bill, as soon as they could get it right.

In all of these attempts to get my billing issue corrected with Verizon, I never once dealt with a customer service representative that was polite, sympathetic, and even wanted to do their job correctly.  By the time I got to the last rep today, I was completely at my wits end.  I understand that you don't go to school with aspirations of dealing with cranky people complaining about how you screwed up their bill; but it's still their job and you should work to do your job well.  There is a lady I work with who's job it is to keep the common areas and restrooms clean, and she is the happiest, most polite, fun person to talk to.  She has fun doing her job and she does it well.

Needless to say, I was ready to cancel my service with Verizon.  Never have I experienced such horrific customer service.  Finally, FINALLY tonight I was able to talk to two individuals who were able to help me figure out how to get my bill corrected, pay the correct balance, and do it without a bad attitude, snide remark or a response involving, "I'm sorry, my system won't let me do that."  Big thank you to the guy who stayed on the phone with me for an hour and 15 minutes tonight to make sure I could get the correct credits to my account.  He totally made my night, and maybe restored a little faith in customer service reps, just a little.

Mr. and Mrs.!

So apparently I wasn't as good about keeping up on blogging as I originally intended.  But I'm still motivated, so I'm going to try, try again.

So as you can imagine, a lot has happened since my last blog post.  Probably the biggest (and most important), Kyle and I got married!!!  We made it!  After a year and a half of planning, waiting, worrying, stressing and planning some more, we finally had our chance to enjoy our BIG day. 

Honestly, it could not have gone any better than we planned.  We even managed to survive the ridiculous heat (and freaking hot trolley).

And, we had the best wedding party ever! 

We could not have had a better group of people surrounding us on the day of our wedding helping us to celebrate and supporting us the entire way! 

I tell you, if I learned anything through the process of planning a wedding is that people will surprise you, some in a good way and some in the not so good way.  Something about weddings makes people crazy, and in turn can turn the bride and groom crazy!  Let's just say this is the ONLY wedding I will ever be planning, for multiple reasons :).

Of course, there are four people that we owe the most two for our fantastic wedding day:

Cute McGuire parents!

Mom and Dad getting down!

We owe so much to our parents.  We owe them for shaping us into who we are today, for giving us all the love and support in the world we could ever ask for (and sometimes didn't know we needed).  We owe them for making our big day possible, in every way.  Kyle and I love you guys so much!

Of course, our wedding was the best party!  Everyone we've talked to said they had such a good time, which is all that we could ask for. 

Oh Skins.... He was the party animal!

If a picture was ever worth a thousand words, this is it...

I can't wait to post the pics from the photographer :).

I can blog, right?

I have to admit, I'm a bit of a blog stalker. Publicly I would admit that I probalby check a few random blogs once a week to keep up with people that I know (or once knew). Secretly, one of my favorite time wasters about every other day is to read through blogs of several people I know, and even those people that I dont. A bit of an obsession, but mostly because I wish I had the creativity to come up with some of the witty blog posts that other do.

So, in my own attempt of creativity, and maybe even a little bit of therapy, I've decided to take a crack at this whole blogging thing. I plan to use this blog to talk about not only things going on in my life, but things going on in our family life and maybe just general topics.

So much has been going on in our lives lately. The big one (of course) is we're getting married in T-minus 51 days. Seriously? I still have 157 things on my to-do list before we can get married. It can't be 51 days away! Not like we haven't had the time, we've only been engaged for a year and a half, but being the procrastinator that I am, I feel like there's still so much to do, and I constantly have a feeling like I'm forgetting something. The wedding nightmares are starting to intensify and become more frequent. All ladies that have gotten amrried before me know exactly what I'm talking about. Let's hope there's a few nights of uninterrupted sleep between now and the wedding!

I finally found a new job!!! I could put more explanation points to prove how excited I am about this, but I think you probably get the picture. I have been looking for a new job since Thanksgiving and am so excited at the new opportunity in front of me. I have learned a lot from my time at PwC, but it's just time for me to move on to something new (and for the sake of our relationship, time for me to find a more life-friendly job). I'll be working as a Senior Staff Accountant at Kansas City Southern in their External Financial Reporting group. Freaking excited! Hello life outside of work! I am definitely looking forward to not being expected to work evenings, work weekends, think about work when I'm not working, dream about work (have nightmares about work) and constantly worry about work. I start my new job on May 24th, and couldn't be more excited.

Our children, our dogs, keep us busy! Duke is currently in what we call his "winter depression." Without being able to go out and fetch birds (his favorite pasttime) he kind of mopes around the house, begging to be petted. Not that he goes without. Please, he's the world's biggest lapdog. He gets to sleep with us almost every night. We're spoiled. Daisy keeps growing like a weed! She's almost as tall as Duke (and pretty freaking cute). I'm glad I won the battle and got a puppy. She's at least finally crate trained, and with the warmer weather we can leave her in the outside kennel all day and not have to come home at lunch anymore. She's our "sock monster." Daisy's favorite activity is to find as many of Kyle's socks as possible and carry them around the house, depositing them in random places. Lucky for him she doesn't chew them....yet.

As if planning a wedding, changing jobs, and taking care of two crazy dogs isn't enough; we thought we'd take on remodeling the bathroom as well. **Pause for reaction** Yea, we should have known better. But we don't. Lucky for us Kyle's brother, dad and uncle came to town to help us tackle our project. We could not have done it without them! Our bathroom was functioning before, but that was about it. Now, our bathroom is pretty :). Like, amazing pretty. I'm so pumped about the finished product. I'll post pictures soon.

Whew, good first post. Stay tuned, I am hoping to make this a regular activity!