My First Call

I just received my first call being the contact for the Land Department. There are only about 4 of us working today. Here's how it went:

Me: Land Department. This is Becky.
Caller: Hi, this is Jack, one of the estimators down on the 5th floor. Do you guys handle the land rights for Freemont at this office?
Me: Yes, we do.
Caller: Ok, great. I'm going to send a land request up to you.
Me: Ok.

I nailed it! Yesss! =)

I passed!!

Ok, remember that blog I wrote back in October about me taking my LSIT exam? Well I finally got my results in the mail yesterday and I passed! I'm so excited! I can now list this on my resume, I believe I get a raise at work, and it also exempts me from taking another test at my work. Right now my title is Land Technician. The next step up is a Senior Land Technician, and to achieve this position, you have to pass the Senior Land Tech exam which has two parts to it. There is the management portion offered in October and the engineering portion offered in April. However, you don't have to take the engineering portion if you are an LSIT (Land Surveyor in Training), which I now am!

On the topic of moving up at work, I have other news. Not as big, but good to me. My immediate supervisor is our Lead Land Tech. He receives all the jobs coming in and assigns them to us Land Techs. He gets a lot of emails and phone calls about land rights as well. His job is very stressful, but important. When he is out of the office he has to leave a contact name for people to get ahold of. My boss just recently asked if I would be comfortable with our Lead leaving my name as a contact. I of course accepted, because I would like to learn as much as I can and move up in the company. It really flattered me that they have this much confidence in me already. I haven't been contacted by any customers yet, but I'm ready.

I also have good news about my Mary Kay career as well. This actually happened a couple months ago, but I haven't mentioned it yet. I have my first active team member, Leslie Tibbits, which makes me a Senior Consultant. God is blessing me in my career success, and I feel motivated to achieve the best I can.

My Mary Kay Site

I got motivated today and just created my own personal Mary Kay website. Now my customers can order online, view discontinued products I have in stock, look up any other products, view special promotions I have going on, and even do a virtual makeover to see what makeup colors look good with your skin type.

Go ahead and check it out if you like. The web address is www.marykay.com/bjmarshall. I'll add a link to it on this page as soon as I figure out how. FYI: I offer free shipping!!

The Move

What a busy weekend and week it's been. Last Saturday was the big move for Marisol and me. I figured I'd have everything moved on Saturday and have Sunday to clean out my old apartment. As is the case with most things, it lasted a lot longer than expected. My sweet friend, Sonia, was able to come help me Saturday morning. We loaded up as much as we could in our little cars and took it over to the new place two car loads at a time. Marisol and her brother were coming later with the U-Haul after moving her stuff. Fortunately, the new apartment is only down the street from my old one, so it wasn't too bad to make multiple trips. However, by the end of it, Sonia and I were about dead from weakness. She had to leave in the afternoon. Marisol and her brother ended up getting there at about 5pm with the U-Haul where we unloaded her stuff and continued to load up my furniture.

To make a long story short, I had to keep my apartment an extra day and I finally finished Monday night after work. There were many times I wanted to stop and rest, but I had to keep going. I've never had such a long-lasting workout before! My whole body was sore, but you should see my biceps now!

The good news is, this weekend we have four days off, so we have lots of time to unpack everything. Marisol has been out in the field all week and I've been trying to do a little bit each day after work, but it's still a jungle. I'm really excited to get all settled in! The apartment is awesome! I'll post pictures once it's all put together.

"Solocation"

I've decided to take a vacation. Not right now, of course. As of August 11th, I will be able to start using my vacation days at work. My plan is to take a trip in September or October. I'm not sure exactly where I want to go yet, but I've been thinking Costa Rica. I want to go somewhere I can still have fun by myself, somewhere I can do a lot of activities and see amazing places. I've been doing some research, and Costa Rica seems beutiful and a great place for hiking, rafting, and other activities. And I might see monkeys;) Also, the flight is not that expensive because it's a lot closer than Australia or Europe... though those would be fun places too.

If you have any other ideas or suggestions of where I should take my "solocation," feel free to share. Or if you want to take a trip with me.......

Weekend of Fun

My life in the bay area is getting more fun the more I'm down here. (I'm still a little homesick for Oregon, though) I've been making more friends and last weekend was actually pretty busy having fun with them. Friday night I met up with "the girls" at Va De Vi, a fancy wine bar in Walnut Creek. Downtown Walnut Creek is a pretty cute little town. There are neat shops and restaurants, people are always out walking around, and it's lit up with Christmas lights and decorations right now. I think it's like a mini San Francisco (without all the "strange" and homeless people). Anyway, it was great having a girl's night out. I'd been needing something like that. I met up with Marisol, Sonia and Maureen (all ladies I work with). It was a fun night of delicious food, wine tasting and "girl talk."

Then on Saturday I went into San Francisco with Marisol and a couple of her friends from out of town (Robert and Kenny). We met up with another friend, Trihn, who lives in the city. We went to Union Square where it is beautifully lit up for Christmas! It's like Rockefeller Center of New York. There's an ice skating rink, a huge Christmas tree, and people all over enjoying it. We actually saw a couple get engaged when we were there. It was beautiful! First thing we did was have dinner at the Cheesecake Factory which is on the top floor of the six-story Macy's. Out on the veranda we had a great view of Union Square. Later we tried to go ice skating, however, they were all out of skates. So we ventured over to a popular pup (Lefty O'Doules). There was a live piano player singing popular songs and the place was packed. At one point a herd of Santa Clause's came tumbling in. Here are some pictures from the fun night. Isn't Macy's beautiful? =)

Patience

I have a little story of the adventure that was Today. First, here is some background info:

We are doing a gift exchange at work and I decided to get my person a wireless weather station. I found a cool one at REI that was within the budget, so after work on Friday I went to the REI in Concord to buy it. They were all out, but the salesman was able to look up the other stores and they had some in Berkeley, San Francisco, and Mountain View.


So, today I printed out directions to the Berkeley store and set out. It's about 25 miles from my place located on San Pablo Ave. The directions said to take the Gilman St exit, but I saw an exit for San Pablo and HWY 580 was starting to get backed up, so I took this exit. I was following the address numbers so I thought I was going to correct way. I ended up getting totally lost and found myself in Oakland somehow. After driving around in circles, I finally pulled over to look at my street atlas and find my way back to the freeway and follow my original directions. Here is the crazy route I ended up taking today.


I finally found REI and pulled into the parking lot, however there were no spaces available. I had to drive around a while and finally found someone pulling out a couple lots over, so I took it. Once I got inside, I went to the back of the very long line at the checkout becuase they had my item on hold. Once I reached the front, they told me I needed to go to customer service at the back for items on hold, so there I went. They grabbed the item, only it wasn't the weather station I put on hold. It was a compass. I ended up waiting about another 10 minutes while they looked to find my item.

As I was waiting there, I was reminded of the service at church last Sunday. It was about patience. During the service, I wasn't very impressed with it. I was hoping for him to talk more about God and read from the Bible. I believe he only referenced two quotes from the Bible. However, I realized that the way we act in society is important too. It reflects on our Christianity and the way we follow our Lord. I was surprisingly really patient with today's events. Reflecting on it, I could have been irritable and rude if I let those things bother me, but I wasn't. I hadn't thought much about these things. I guess that sermon must have got to me more than I thought. It also might have been that I was listening to Christmas music the whole time in my car. That always puts me in high spirits. =)


On my way home, I decided to reflect on all the positive things that happened today. So here they are:

1) I got to see some new places and got a better feel of the area around where I live.
2) I was able to buy the item I was looking for, and I was pretty happy with it.
3) REI was able to give me some moving boxes when I asked if they had any.
4) There's a tunnel (actually 3) between Walnut Creek and San Francisco. They open up the middle tunnel to whichever direction has busier traffic at the time. When I was heading west, the tunnel was open to the westbound traffic and when I was heading east, it was open to the eastbound. So I didn't have to hit very much traffic. (It gets backed up when the tunnel is closed)