07/20/2017
Hello world! Usually the first day of my period is the worst day of the month, but today was pretty good considering. My manager has doubled as my career coach for the past 6 months and I'm really grateful he invests so much time in me every week. His birthday was this week and I drove the team to buy him a birthday cake and surprised him at the end of a team lunch with 40 or so people! He was really touched and thanked me later, and organizing it made me happy too.
I'm starting to realize my X factor is communicating and doing people stuff. My presentation from last month went well and I've made good progress on my next main task. I'm easily overwhelmed by information especially since I've been oncall for the past two weeks so I'm depending on my team to help handle some of it because in the end we all have the same goals. I'm learning to be more comfortable taking their help. I'm transitioning to the attitude that my not being able to handle oncall duties and make progress on my own tasks is not a reflection of me being a bad coder.
Chicago was amazing! I had a ton of fun catching up with two friends from undergrad and seeing the city. I stayed with my friend right in downtown, about two blocks from the Field Museum. And I hung out with them Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday and did touristy stuff the rest of the days. It worked out really well.
The next weekend a different undergrad friend visited and stayed with me. I took her to see the redwoods, San Jose downtown, and the beach. And she took the Caltrain to San Francisco while I was at work on Monday. Friends are the best.
Last weekend and the next few weekends I'm busy deep cleaning in my car and apartment in preparation for my family staying with me for the first two weeks of August. My living room is completely empty (it's better than a week ago when the room was being used as storage). I have two weeks until I host a get-together of 10 people to make it look like a normal living room. Yep, I have my work cut out for me. I'm planning to buy a sofa bed and a couple folding chairs.
Those checks from my old 401k are in a giant pile of paperwork I need to sort through...so yeah. In brighter news, I got the first proceeds of my company's ESPP! That's why the amount of money in my stocks category jumped by 10K. I sold the stock immediately (well, a couple days later) and now I need to invest the cash in some index funds. I only have domestic equities right now so I'll look up some good international ex-US funds.
Last and most crucial, my boyfriend's parents flew here last week. Tomorrow, I'm meeting them for the first time. This relationship is at a point of no return. Wish me luck! |