Bay Bridge is Shut-Down

Tuesday afternoon, during commute hours, a cable on the Bay Bridge snapped and damaged 3 vehicles. They had to close down the bridge, and it is still closed down. Over Labor Day weekend, the bridge was closed down for construction. They put in a temporary S-curve while they repair part of the eastern span for upgrades for earthquake resistance. The damage that just occurred Tuesday was on this new repair.

It is scary to think about a bridge not being engineered or constructed correctly. Approximately 270,000 vehicles cross this bridge everyday. As you can imagine, this has caused quite a fuss around here and a huge traffic disturbance. This has been all over the news and radio. All I can say is, I'm sure glad I don't have to commute into the city for work! They say the bridge might open back up this afternoon, but I don't think I'll be driving accross it anytime soon.

Pumpkin Party

This is my favorite time of year: the start of the holiday season all leading up to Christmas! I love getting into the spirit of the holidays, so I decided to host a little pumpkin carving party with a few friends. I even baked banana bread and cookies, and one of the other girls decided to bake apple pie. It was a fun day, and I really enjoy this time spent with good friends. I am very blessed to know all of these very sweet girls. Here are some pictures of my fun Sunday afternoon:
Marley's first encounter with a pumpkin. She's very curious and so fitting for this holiday. :)

Rachel and Sonia decided to carve theirs out on the balcany cuz it can be a messy job. They are both fellow volleyball players.

Marisol and Katie picking out their patterns. Marisol, as most of you know, is my roommate and co-worker. Katie is a fellow PG&E-er as well. I met her through Sonia, who works with her in the San Fransisco office. She's such a sweetheart, I liked her right away.

During the process, we ended up breaking all four of the carving knives that came in the kits from Target. Fortunately, there were no injuries incurred by the sharper knives!

My little creation! I can't take all the credit, I followed a pattern this year.

Giants game

So, this was a few weeks ago now, but I haven't gotten around to posting a blog in a while. Here are a couple pictures from my first pro baseball game. Go Giants!

I went with my roomate, Marisol. The Giants were playing the Dodgers and she's a Dodgers fan. She got heckled a little for wearing her Dodgers jacket, but her team won, so they couldn't give her too much crap.

.

.

.

Last weekend I played beach volleyball in Santa Cruz. When my friend sends me the pictures, I'll post another blog about that.

My 1 Year Anniversary at PG&E

Today is my 1 year anniversary with PG&E! I can't believe I've been out of college and working a consistent career for a year now! The time has flew by! I officially have all my benefits now. I had to wait 6 months to get paid holidays and floating holidays, and now that I've been here a year I get sick time and vacation as well. Also, I get a 3.75% raise. I can't forget that one! I really like my job and I feel so fortunate to have gotten it, especially since jobs are so hard to come by now in this economy.


I've made some progress here in a year. I feel so comfortable in what I do now, and others think so as well. My Lead at work has told me on a few occasions how well I'm doing and how much I really help out and he's glad to have me. It's so nice to hear things like that. Being so fresh out of college, sometimes I doubt my abilities. But it looks like OIT has prepared me well, because I've even been able to teach others a few things around here.


In just the short span of a year, it's still possible to move up in this company. As of last week, my Lead was offered a higher position as Land Agent, which means they are now looking for someone to fill the Lead Land Tech position. Since this is a union job, the way it works is that you put in your bid on a job you want and the person with most seniority gets it. This can be good or bad. My Lead encouraged me to put my bid in for the position. I was sceptical since I'm so new at this, but his confidence in me gave me some of my own. It is not very likely that I will get it, since there are 3 bidders above me. They'd all have to turn it down in order for me to get it. But just the fact that doors are opening and people have such high opinions of me really means a lot to me.


Coming up in October is the exam for Senior Land Technichian. I am scheduled to take it, and if I pass, I am promoted from Land Tech to Sr. Land Tech and it comes with another raise. Since I have my LSIT (Land Surveyor in Training), I was waived from taking the engineering portion of this exam in the Spring. This portion is going to be the management portion. I plan to study, but I feel pretty confident since the test will be about the kind of work that I've been doing all year. I can't believe how often we get pay raises here!!

Here are a few work pictures from last winter:

My Birthday in Las Vegas

Saturday was my 24th birthday, and to celebrate, me and 3 of my friends took a trip to Las Vegas. This was my first time in Vegas and I had a blast. I have some really great friends! We all had so much fun together and got along so well. I couldn't have asked for a better time. Here are some pictures from the trip:Here's a view from the plane

New York New York

As a surveyor, I had to get a picture of this!

Walking the strip

Eiffel tower

Paris

One of the pools at MGM Grand where we stayed

View from our hotel room

Great view of the strip. New York New York straight ahead.

We come in pairs ;)

View from one of the clubs

Me and Sonia

Somehow, we didn't have to pay any cover charges. Sonia was always able to get us into the clubs and we even scored this VIP table. It's great being a girl! :)

Fountain at our hotel. Look Marisol and I are the same height. ;)

Post Surgery

Today I started physical therapy and I got a new splint put on. I thought I'd put a picture up of my incision in case anyone wants to see it. It's about 4 inches long. I should get the stitches out on Wednesday. I realized when doing my exercises that I have very little range of motion. I could only bend my wrist down as far as 15 degrees and I can only touch my thumb to my index and middle fingers. I should get a lot of this movement back from doing the therapy, but the therapist said I probably won't have it 100% back for up to a year.

What's New

My surgery went well. My awesome parents came down to be there during the surgery and take care of me afterwards. Thanks Mom and Mark! It was really nice to have them here. I wasn't in too much pain, but I was taking my pain medication pretty religiously the first 5 days. I'm off it now and back at work this week and feeling pretty good. I go in to see the doctor again tomorrow and hopefully he will take the splint off my arm. It's even uglier than the cast I had on before. Then I believe he'll have me start physical therapy next week. Hopefully I'll be back playing volleyball by the fall. :)

On another note, I paid off my car this month! WOOHOO! I'm so excited about that. 4 years and 9 months ago I purchased a 2003 Ford Focus and it's finally all mine! What a great feeling. Now, of course, I want a new car, haha. But I'm going to put that off for a while. My car is just fine and I should take advantage of not having any car payment for a while.