I feel bad about not making journal updates. Some day I want my kids to be able to read my journals and follow some of my life. I personally like being able to read through my journals, its amazing how much I forget from just a year ago!

I am making this update from work. Mostly because my work is very boring in the morning…
I’m working at a place I’ll probably always refer to as MVP. Sometimes MVP Law, sometimes McAnany. The full name is McAnany, Van Cleave, & Phillips, P.A. It’s a law firm that started in 1901 in Kansas City. They have multiple locations. I work in the Roeland Park, KS location. My mom works in the KCK location. There is also a Springfield and St. Louis location. We practice law mostly in Missouri and Kansas but we also do law in Nebraska, Illinois and Oklahoma. www.mvplaw.com
I was hired here in February as a file clerk. Roeland Park has two different types of attorneys. One type is the attorneys who practice law in workers compensation claims the other attorneys practice in litigation. I don’t really understand litigation other than it involves complicated cases, or cases that are more likely to make the news. Cases were there is a car accident so someone sues someone about it. I’m not suppose to really talk about my cases because of client confidentiality issues. There are some cases I can at least tell you about like…

Shawn v. blunt
http://www.kscourts.org/cases-and-opinions/opinions/supct/2005/20050610/89773.htm
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2002/feb/12/s_role_in_fatal/
This case was especially in that the clients were TRYING to get public attention. They wanted everyone to know what had happened. They answered news reporter questions and asked our attorney to speak with the news stations to promote the case. But I can only talk about what the news has said. I can’t tell you about what is in the file or what we know beyond the case. The case is closed now. Actually that’s why I know anything about it. We had boxes full of information for the case and I was “dead filing” which meant I sorted through the boxes and threw away everything we don’t need to keep on record.
I am in charge of filing for the active cases. However, filing only keeps me busy for a couple hours in the afternoons. In the morning I’m suppose to sit at the front desk so that I can sign for packages that arrive. Well usually this means that I have nothing to do. Sometimes I can sort filing so that its ready for me in the afternoon but I don’t always have filing to sort. I have been given random jobs to do in the morning but random jobs only last for a couple days and then I’m finished with them. Which is why I have time now to post this update.
I also shred paper in the afternoon, which usually makes for long afternoons. I don’t mind it so much but it does make the afternoon drag. I’m down to one box left to shred though and then I really won’t have anything to do. Supposedly I’m suppose to be getting another position soon so that I’ll have more things to do.

For information not work related. Mom had surgery on her foot this week. She had planters fictitious in her left foot. Which meant it hurt really bad all the time. They decided to do surgery. So she is at home resting right now but she should be back in motion on Monday. Well, back in some motion.

I have class tonight. Its math class. I’m sort of bummed about my math class because I wanted to try and get all three math classes finished in one session, but I don’t think that is going to work out. I basically just took a whole week off from math because I couldn’t get the final finished in time last week and I can’t take it without my teacher being there L
On the plus side I found a website to print graphing paper from so when I ran out of paper last week I was able to print off new paper J

I’ve enjoyed my classes at DeVry. So far I haven’t taken very many but I’m making some progress. I really wanted to be taking 19 credits a semester but I don’t think I’m going to be able to manage that. Right now I’m taking two classes at all times (which usually adds up to 14 credits) and working full time. I don’t even always feel like working on school when I go home in the afternoon. Which is bad. I need to write a research paper for the English class I’m two weeks away from finishing. I have started the research paper. I think it is safe to say that the research for the paper is complete. I just need to type it. I meant to do it this week but unfortunately due to pending circumstances I was unable to finish my paper after work during the week. Sooo, I think I’m going to ask Dennis if I can go home on Saturday after class so that I can just focus on writing my research paper. Maybe if I just go home that afternoon and work on it I’ll get it done. If I get it done then Dennis and I can just goof off on Sunday (well unless he has homework). I’ve already posted to all the discussion boards that I need to (because since I haven’t had anything to do in the morning I’ve been posting to the discussion board in the morning during work). My homework this week for the class is the post three finished pages of my paper plus the references to an html file. Psh, eeeaassyyy. Next weeks homework is to submit the rough draft of the paper so that the other students in the class can give me some constructive criticism. The final for the class is the submitted paper itself. Which means that if I can get the paper typed up this weekend the only homework I should have from the class is corrections. That should be easy right? Then I might have enough time to dedicate to my math class to actually be able to get it done??? If it was like the last two classes then yes. Rumor has it that the class is actually harder which means I probably won’t be able to. But I could try! I might even be able to work on it some while I’m at work :o
No actually, I don’t think I could do that because I have to download all sorts of programs in order to be able to use mymathlab and I don’t think the IT department would appreciate it. Then again they might not care…we’ll see. I might be in a completely new position by then, wouldn’t that be fantastic?

Brooke brought me some filing to do this morning. She always asks if I can take care of the filing because usually she does her own filing but every once in awhile she gets really busy and asks me to do it. I don’t have a problem doing her filing at all. I’d do her filing every day if I thought she’d let me. She asked me if anyone ever called me “Charlie.” I laughed. I explained to her that Onikah started calling me Charlie quite awhile ago and now reserves it as her nick name. I guess Brooke and couple other people at work have been accidentally calling me Charlie when they’re talking about me. She said that usually it just slips when she isn’t really thinking about it. I thought it was funny. No one had ever called me Charlie before Onikah but the older I get the more people who seem to call me that by accident.

I kind of wish I was a secretary so that I could do dictation. I really like typing and I think I do pretty well at it. But I haven’t been given that job yet. Probably won’t either since in two years I’ll have my bachelors in the IT area and so they’ll probably move me in that direction. Between now and then I suppose its possibly that I might be assigned to help a secretary out every now and then. Not a really good job to have full time anyway I guess. If I really do have arthritis it’d make for some really bad days.

I miss my Dennis. Recently he’s been put on a sort of “30 day probation” at work. I guess a lot of guys have complained that Dennis is doing a bad job so Bill said Dennis has 30 days to consistently improve his work or else he’s fired. Which the first day seem to go well. Dennis said that he learned how to vacuum correctly. Which he discovered, he was vacuuming correctly but not correctly for stain. I guess depending on what they are spraying depends on how much dust is on the room and changes how you should vacuum. Bill taught him to do a detailed vacuuming but nobody ever told Dennis that you don’t always have to do a detailed vacuum job. :0
Dennis says he doesn’t think these 30 days will be bad. What we thinks will be a problem is when he starts working with other people. Because I guess everyone has their own way of doing things and when you don’t do things their way they get pretty frustrated. So Dennis will have to learn everyones individual way. I told him one thing to do may be to ask the guys to check your work. If they have him do it a different way to call Bill and say “so and so taught me to do it this way but now I’m being told to do it another way, which one is right?” My guess is Bill wants everything done in some kind of uniform matter. I don’t know if he’ll re-enforce that idea to the other workers though.

I haven’t been working a lot on wedding stuff because Dennis and I have been so focused on trying to find a house. My wedding isn’t going to be really complicated though. Really the only undecided thing thus far is exactly what kind of flowers will be there and exactly who will be in charge of taxing photos. I’ve just about decided that so long as I can make the stage look nice I don’t care too much about the rest of the wedding. There isn’t a lot else to be about the wedding though. We’ll be having cake and maybe muffins for the kids so we probably won’t even be setting up tables. Its just the family. I guess I still need to find shirts for the guys and brides maid dresses. I really just need to go look at patterns because I decided I want informal dresses for the brides maids and then Dennis and I will just pay for them. We still need to find a new tux shirt for Dennis’ tux…these are really little things though.
Ok list of things to be done for the wedding
Order/design/print invitations and send
Order dress
Pick out the flowers with Robin
Decide how the cake will look
Send in deposit for the church
Buy wedding bands
Find shirts/ties for groomsmen
Find tux shirt for Dennis
Confirm wedding cake with Katie
Order cameras?
Talk to salon about waxing
Schedule an appointment with the doctor regarding birth control
Talk to dad about the ceremony procedures
Schedule bridal party with Onikah??

List of things for honeymoon
Find and book hotel somewhere in or around St.Louis
Create a rough draft schedule of the weekend (though schedule is not permanent)
Find out about the rail system in St. Louis, how much money is needed?
CAMERA CAMERA CAMERA

I could do some of these things during the upcoming finals week. Maybe I can find some time to sit down with mom and schedule a time to go order the dress. I’d really like to put off ordering the dress because I’ve just gotten back into the habit of exercising on a regular basis and I expect to loose a significant amount of weight in between now and June. If really do loose weight I’d rather wait to order the dress because we were told that we can wait till July to order it to give it plenty of time. However, mom and I could go ahead and look at patterns and decided on a pattern for the bridal dresses.
Dennis and I think we found the rings we want but they’re at a jewelry store in St. Joe and we just haven’t made the trip up there yet. Maybe we will after I finish up my math class (I’ll have a little bit more time then…specially on Saturday’s).

The wedding dress is basically decided on we just have to order it.

I’m thinking that since we are having such a simple wedding with just cake that we should go ahead and invite extended family. The reason I shrunk it down to immediate family was because of the ‘dinner’ (well and per advice of David and Meghan). If its just family I think they’d understand us getting out of there as soon as the cake it cut.

I need to start making a list of songs that I want played at the wedding.

In addition to all this I think the church wants to have a great big wedding shower that they’re all invited too. I may end up asking my mom if she wants to plan this. I don’t know. We could just have a potluck dinner after church one Sunday after we get married and call it good??? I don’t really like those dinners though…maybe a Saturday? What would be do at the shower though really? I guess that’s where you play games and ask questions like “do you know what his first car was?”