This Week

Lots of different things happened this week :) The first thing is that I started working for a new team at eBay. Instead of being part of the Quality Team like I have been for the past 2.5 years, I am now part of the Training Team - more specifically under the Products and Initiatives Manager. I am now a full time Instructional Designer! This is exciting for me because on the Quality Team I was technically the Instructional Designer and Communication Lead - but for the first two months of the job I was actually more of the communications person and I rarely had time for any Instructional Design. Now, under my new boss (who has tons of experience in ID) I can focus solely on what I earned my degree in! The team is small right now - only 3 people - and there are tons of projects but in a way I probably won't be as stressed as I have been for over the past year while I was working on the Quality Team - this is a good thing!

On the other side of the coin, I don't work with the Quality Team anymore! This part of the transition was the hardest. I had the best boss I've ever had anywhere and I had the best team mates too! I actually got a little depressed this week after working away from them for a few days (I sit in a completely different building now too). So the adjustment is hard but I'm trying to make it a point to continue staying in touch with them and remain friends but going out to lunch with them whenever I have the chance.

So some other news - on the family front - we sent Taylor off to Job Corps this week! I think this will be so great for him because he needed something to help along with school and to help give him a focus. From what I hear he likes it so far. Here are some pictures from the family dinner we had for him Monday night before he left on Tuesday.

 

This week Ramin also got more into our saltwater tank again and we visited an event called FragStock that is specifically targeted for corals and reef aquariums. Our tank isn't set up for that yet but he wanted to go and check out what information he could find. We didn't anticipate that there would be some amazing deals on fish too! We ended up buying 4 new saltwater fish for the tank for $40! If you know anything about saltwater fish, you will know that that is a screamin deal :) We got 1 Clownfish (True Perc), 1 Sixline Wrass and 2 Firefish.

Ramin spent a good few hours that night cleaning up the tank while the fish stayed in their bags acclimating to the new water. The tank was actually pretty gross because Ramin hadn't spent much time over the last few years actually keeping up with it because of his travel schedule. But now that he has a different job and doesn't have to travel as much, he wants to get into his tank more and build it up.  Here he is cleaning things up.

And here are the fish in their bags getting used to the water...

It's always hard to capture good pictures of the fish while they are in the tank but here is a shot...

We already had the bigger Clownfish and the Royal Gramma (purple fish) and we are so happy because the new Clown is getting along so well with the larger Clown, he even had access to the precious anenome!  The other 2 Firefish are usually in hiding but they come out every so often. They came out this afternoon during feeding time. And the Wrasse is beautiful with cool green and blue colors...but he is elusive sometimes too. If I get pictures of them sometime I will. They've been in the tank for a few days now and everyone seems to be doing good.

One final note - I only have 3 weeks of school left!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I still have tons to do for my final project but I can definitely see light at the end of the tunnel now!  I have received my graduation invitations and will be sending those out this week sometime I hope. I'm so excited to finally be done!