Rants and Raves

First my rants:

• What is wrong with people?! I cannot believe that Melinda Doolittle was dismissed from American Idol. She is astonishingly talented, accurate and consistent with each of her songs and presentations, she had great stage presence - often being the only one who facially and bodily sang her song - and she titillated my ears with her ever-so-flexible range and pleasing sounds. It's my hope that she is offered a contract and will blow everyone else out of the water when it comes to sales and longevity. I like Jordin and Blake, but I can't see them as a lasting icon in the music world. Plus, I cannot see myself purchasing either of their future CDs. Melinda's music, however, will be on my IPod the moment it's available on ITunes. Mr. Right says that I need to let this go now...

Thus ends my rant.

(See? That wasn't so bad, now was it? Not anything earth-shattering or life-changing, but I just had to get that off my chest... well what there is of it.)

Now my raves:

• I loved this book on my Spring Reading Challenge List: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. It's a brilliant book concerning the importance and power of love written in such a way that children and adults will enjoy reading it, although the intended audience are children in 3rd to 6th grade. After reading it, I could see why it was named one of the Top 50 Books in 2006 by Amazon. The writing was superb, the characters were memorable and the illustrations were beautifully rendered. This book would make an excellent gift.
• I reread Jane Eyre recently. I absolutely forgot how much I love that book. You should read it again if it's been a while, and if you haven't ever read it, I highly suggest you find out what you are missing. And after you read the book, I recommend the Jane Eyre DVD as a terrific, faithful onscreen production of the book. (My girl asked to watch it over and over again, it was that clean and that good.)

• It seems that my reputation is preceeding me... at least in the business world. I have a fellow assistant with whom I talk every so often and who reads my blog more often than we talk. It seems that I've encouraged her to take my IT route in attempting to get things done because she usually waits forever to get a response from IT. Here is her submission that she left right before leaving work last night:

Submit: Searching in the dark or the epic of trying to find server drives & save files

Problem Description: Taking inspiration from the fabulous Ms. Shalee for which her IT requests are famous (or is it infamous?), I figure that everyone can use some humor in their day and nothing is funnier than going to either my personal file drive or the shared network file drive to open a file and get the searching icon of the flashlight. Now I know I'm off in the dark but this adding insult to injury. Geez... When finally being able to get to the correct drive which can take up to 30 seconds and opening a file (that I can go get a cup of coffee for), I have no problem working. When it comes to the saving portion of the show, well, let's say, I can visit certain facilities with no problem & still be back in time to witness the file being saved to the folder I'm working from. Now I'm all for a leisurely work pace being able to nap while waiting for files to open & save I'm sure will get me fired. So any light besides the flashlight you can shed on the situation is GREATLY APPRECIATED. Thank you! :)

I opened my Outlook this morning to read this message from her:

That has to be the fastest turn time ever for IT response! I was called this morning. I spoke with Dave and he was chuckling and said, “How in the world do you know Shalee?” rock on sista! I bow before you.

It's the little things I tell you, the little things that make me smile. Go make someone smile today. They probably need it after last night's American Idol...