by jltitus on June 25, 2009
Well, it’s finally ready. I’ve been working on this blog for a few months trying to get it “just right” and ready for the world to see. I’m pretty proud of this blog. So why did I make a new blog you ask? Well, I’ve been blogging, or not blogging, for a while and had several separate blogs; one for recipes, one for my personal life, and one for my professional life. After much consideration I thought that it was time to make life easier on myself and reduce the number for blogs and give people one place to go and find me. So I melded all those blogs together, to this one. So you’ll see I have recipes, family stuff, work stuff, random thoughts, and more. What’s nice too is that I’ve been working on categorizing all my posts to fall in one of a few categories:
- All about us (Eric, myself, the dogs, and cat)
- Celebrations (holidays, special days, etc.)
- Geek life (work life, social media, techie things,etc.)
- People we love (people in our lives, some family, some friends)
- Places we go (adventures near and far)
- Recipes (our recipes)
- Things we do (activities we do… like wine touring)
I thought long and hard about the name for this blog too. I wanted to name is something catchy or that people would remember but in the end I decided to, “keep it simple silly” and was able to get my twitter user name. So…. welcome to http://www.jltitus.com
I hope to get more consistent about my posting and hope not to bore the few that read this blog.
Tagged as:
organization
by jltitus on February 26, 2007
I’ve been meaning to write this blog post since last Friday but in typical fashion I’m busy as ever which is a good thing. Let me just start by saying, I LOVE MY JOB… well, JOBS.
Thursday and Friday last week I got the opportunity to go to our downtown offices in the Montgomery Building (used to be the old Montgomery Wards building). Going there was sort of surreal because the place is so huge. It’s like 9 stories high but the thing is, it just feels so massive, maybe because there’s nothing big around it. I walked into the main part of the building and looked for an easy way to get to the 6th floor to meet up with the person I was supposed. Of course I took the elevator, couldn’t find the stairs, but I got sort of freaked on the elevator as it’s glass and you can see out in the middle of the building where the seating for the cafeteria, etc is and me with my love of heights didn’t like that so much so i just stood facing the door hoping it would go fast enough so I didn’t have to think about where I was. Thursday I spent time with our Fulfillment Services branch of the organization and then on Friday I spent with the “traditional” side of the house.
It doesn’t seem like there’s that much that makes the two groups different but there it. FS (Fulfillment Services) do not have anything to do with customer service. If there’s any issue with a change or anything they kick it back to the agent. Traditional on the other hand is all about customer service and going the extra mile. What’s different too is that FS ticketing agents have to be able to use 4 different databases as not all airlines, etc use the same database where as those that are traditional just use one database. Traditional have customers from only one company. What do I mean? Well agents are aligned to a company so they only get calls for a particular company rather than from any company like FS.
Spending time at the offices was very interesting and enlightening. I don’t think I’ll ever book a ticket somewhere unless I’m sure about the whole trip because from the back end making the changes is quite intensive. I also got the opportunity to be double jacked in and listened to both the agent and the customers call and got the opportunity to help in a few instances. It was so cool and fun but I’m glad I’m not in customer service. One of the many times I was listening this customer wanted the agent to find him a hotel in Federal Way that had a kitchen and was available for 2 weeks. I think the agent and I spent about 15 minutes to find him one only for the guy to tell us that that was the hotel he was in and he didn’t like it. OK, so the agent and I look and find another one after another 15 minutes and were ready to book the guy only to find out that they guy was going to go check out the hotel and would call back if he wanted us to book it. Argh!!! I don’t know how the agents do it.
I was really glad I got to opportunity to go there for a few days because it gave me a great perspective of the employees and their needs when it comes to training. I also got to meet one of the guys in my group too which wasn’t too bad.
Tagged as:
BCD travel,
organization
by jltitus on November 17, 2006
I am looking for a blank monthly calendar about 11×17, or just big enough to put on a door (you know the kind with the squares and you just add the month/days) made of a magnetic sheet that I can put on my steel door. I would like the surface to be white board so I can write on it. Basically, I have a steel door and want to put a calendar on it without ruining the door.
Anyone out there that has any ideas would be great!
Tagged as:
home,
organization
by jltitus on August 12, 2006
I had my interview yesterday and I felt really, really great about it! I walked out of the interview feeling like I really nailed it and blew them away with a few things. I think the only thing that could not be as strong as maybe they’re looking at is my Flash and Captivate examples. It was hard to give them examples because everything I’ve done is confidential to the outside worlds so I had to make some simulations and things. SO who knows, now, it’s the waiting game. I’m hoping I’ll know by Labor Day.
I’m home alone this weekend and I honestly don’t mind. Eric’s in Bend, Oregon golfing with his friends in the annual golfing tournament. It was so funny when he left he was making comments like, “we might win this year because the team that usually beats us won’t be there”. Gotta love that logic! The one thing though that sucks when Eric is gone is that I can’t sleep,I didn’t get to sleep until 2 am today. Not good, I don’t do well without sleep. Last night I just went to our favorite place, Taco Del Mar for dinner, came home and watched a little TV.
Oh, I got my scrapbook pages organized too. A while ago I bought Stacy Julian’s The Big Picture and I really liked her idea on how she organizes her scrapbooks and what makes it so easy for her to not feel pressure to get more pages done. She doesn’t scrap in chronological order. It made me think about all the pictures I have that I haven’t used in pages, you know those ones that were too small, too big, etc. I made some cool dividers for my photo box and started sorting. It was pretty eye opening to see how many pictures I have of people or events. So my plan going forward is that I’ll print out pictures to do a page and if I don’t have the right size, I’ll keep the picture and file it in the box. What’s going to be cool too is that I plan on using the pictures in the box for other scrapbooking, like doing a whole page on Eric and having a bunch of different pictures of him. Sort of exciting.
The other thing I got out of book that I’m choosing to implement right now is how she organizes her albums. I’ve got three albums now but instead of by year I’ve done them in three categories; one for people (all about Us), one for our trips (places we GO) and another for the holiday celebrations, weddings and things (family CELEBRATIONS). What’s cool too is that I found tabs and use those for each of the different topics and since the albums are 3-ring binders, I can add pages anywhere. The super cool things too is that the ton of page protectors I have fit in the album so I didn’t have to spend money on that. Oh and the other very cool thins is that the albums are only $20 rather than the post bound I have that are from $35-45. so I’ll be saving money 
Tagged as:
daily_life,
job,
organization,
scrapbooking
by jltitus on February 14, 2006
I’ve been a member of a bulletin board group that focus on journals and journal writing. Originally I joined to get ideas for scrapbooking but now I’m looking at it a little differently. Today’s thought was about YOU. meaning your surroundings. The challenge today, take pictures of things around you and write about what it means to you and describes who you are…. Here goes..
Here’s some pictures I took today…
These are pictures of our pantry and more specifically, all my baking stuff. You’ll notice that everything is in a nice air-tight container and labeled. What you can’t see is on top of each one is another label indicating when the item went in the container. Yeah, to some that mean seem crazy and uber organized but I think that’s me. I love organization. I think organization is great. If things are organized they’re easy to find. It’s easy to see what you have and what you don’t. It prevents me from collecting a mountain of junk because I’ve got a good idea of what I have and what Id really use. I know being organized is really hard for some people but to me, it’s a relaxing thing. I remember visiting my friend Cyndee one time ad we were sitting on her bed talking. I couldn’t help but look in her walk in closet and notice how much of a disarray it was. She noticed I was looking at it and being the great friend she was we worked at getting the closet organized so she could find things. I love it and to some I guess it may seem like an OCD but to me when things are organized the area is usually clean as well. There’s nothing better than cleanliness and organization. I mean think about it. You’re looking for a book and you’re in a library. If they didn’t have it organized and categorized, you’d be there forever. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack. I know some people think it’s nuts, Eric did when we first started dating. It’s actually sort of funny because my organization used to drive Eric nuts because he’s such a free thinker and very organic and I’m not. I’m procedural, task oriented and organized. Now, after 4 years of being together Eric has become more organized while I’ve toned down a bit too. I actually showed Eric the pantry and I think his comment was something like, “That’s scary!” I’ve tried “flying by the seat of my pants” and I just can’t do it. I mean if I don’t keep things together and everything then things don’t get done. Pretty soon you’re staring at a dirty house, can’t find anything and really don’t know where to start. I can’t even imagine that. I would go nuts. I so appreciate that’s not the case for Eric and I.
After looking at the pantry I came upstairs and looked at the difference between Eric’s desk and mine. You’ll notice that his has stuff all over it, everything from mail, CDs, pens and other paraphernalia. Then you look at my desk. Pretty clean with a little clutter but clean for the most part. Interesting to look at as an observation as I really think it shows our personality and a little about us both.
Eric’s Desk
Jona’s Desk
Tagged as:
home,
organization
