Pizza Makes it Official

Thanks to a BBQ chicken pizza and a cup of diet coke, I've now been officially welcomed to the staff of Dressage Today Magazine. Who knew pizza had such power? I sure didn't.

Today, the editors of the magazine decided to take me out to lunch to officially welcome me to the staff of the magazine. It was a total surprise and I thought it was very thoughtful—and very delicious. There are some restaurants in the business complex where we have our office and we had lunch at one of them and I ordered a relatively delicious BBQ chicken pizza that was deceptively labeled as a "small" pizza, even though it was definitely big enough for two very full meals. The managing editor came up to me this morning after I got in (I will shortly tell you all about my once again eventful morning) and asked me if it would be okay if the editors took me out to lunch. I was thinking, well sure it's okay for you to take me out and feed me free food. She then asked it 12:30 was an okay time, and I'm thinking, what else would I have going on? You guys are the ones who dictate my schedule and give me assignments... So yes, a little bizarre, but still very nice of them to check with my busy schedule. I assured her that I could put my mailing address labeling aside long enough for them to feed me. We talked about horses pretty much the whole time—the other people in the restaurant must have thought we were crazy as we were 4 fully-grown women out to lunch talking about horses. I thought it was great. They gave me some networking tips about how to get a job in equine journalism after graduation, which I thought was great but I was also thinking yeah, it would just be super nice if you hired me in a few months... so we will see how that works out.

The rest of the day I spent mastering the mail machine, writing more articles, writing addresses on labels for our comp issues, and glorying in the fact that I am no longer the newby. That's right—there is a new intern with Practical Horseman who just started this week, which means that I'm officially not the newest person in the office! I felt so special, so seasoned, so knowledgeable. It was pretty awesome. And on top of all those things, I felt loved because I got fed pizza. All in all, it turned out to be a pretty good day, which is a miracle because this is how my day started:

Actually, in the grand tradition of Wednesday posts, I'm going to continue with my timeline, starting with Tuesday night.

Tuesday

3:50 p.m. - Get Emma off the school bus.

4:00-4:50 Feed Emma snack, put in more time for work (I'm working from home for my job that I have out in Utah).

4:50 Drive to Eli's baseball game at the high school.

5:00-5:50 Watch Eli's game.

6:00 Pick up pizza from dinner on way home from game.

6:15 Arrive at home with pizza.

6:15-6:30 Eat dinner

6:30-6:38 Change for Eli's concert.

6:40 Leave for Eli's concert

6:50 Arrive at Eli's concert. Realize I left the camera at home that I need to record the concert because mom and dad are out of town.

6:55 Drive home to get camera.

7:15 Arrive back at school for concert.

7:30-9:15 Eli's concert.

9:30 Arrive at home, get Emma ready for bed, clean up kitchen, do laundry.

10:15 Put Emma to bed

10:30 Pack for DC.

11:15 Write out instructions for babysitter (mom and dad are gone all week so I had to leave instructions and driving directions for the babysitter for the rest of the week).

11:40 p.m. Crawl into bed/Sleepies.

Wednesday

5:00 a.m. Alarm goes off. Hit Snooze button.

5:05 a.m. Alarm goes off again. Accidentally turn alarm off.

5:35 a.m. Wake up in a panic realizing I turned off alarm

5:40-6:40 Frantically get ready, shower, put bags in car.

6:40 Phone rings, dad is calling.

6:43 Get in car to leave. My clutch feels weird and my car keeps getting stuck when I try to shift. Drive off in car anyway hoping that if I ignore the problem, it will got away and my car will magically make it all the way to DC.

6:55 Realization that my car really is not driving right. Mild panic and struggle getting car to work at all. Decide to take car home and drive minivan to DC.

7:05 Arrive at home, move bags/GPS to minivan. Wake up Emma for school. Get in minivan and drive off again.

7:13 Realize that I forgot my EasyPass. Turn around to go back home AGAIN.

7:20 Arrive at home again. Grab EasyPass out of my car, get back in minivan and drive off.

7:30 Fill up on gas. $59 to not even fill the tank all the way! Mild heart attack.

7:45 Call dad again, he tells me that there was an EasyPass in the car the whole time. Urge to scream and punch.

7:45-10:15 Took new route to the office and it is MAGICAL. It takes me only 3 hours start to finish and there is virtually NO TRAFFIC! Even during rush hour! Finally something is going right.

10:15 a.m. Arrive at office and get right to work.

So yes, that was my morning. I might have screamed and/or complained loudly to myself in the van the SECOND time I had to turn around and go home, and I was a bit disappointed to finally be leaving about an hour and 15 min later than I'd hoped, but everything turned out okay. And there was an added perk to taking the minivan: it has satellite radio, which means that when I was driving through the middle of nowhere, I still got great music and I didn't have to hunt through channels when I entered a new state! Horray!

I've now had dinner and I'm very tired, so I think I might be totally irresponsible and play Angry Birds and watch some Harry Potter and then go to bed at like 9ish. It's going to be a good night. And the beauty of tomorrow is that I don't have a three-hour drive. Yessss.