What I've been up to

Celebratory cake on 7/1/14.  We had fruit tart and brownies too!

So, I'm going to indulge in a totally non-sewing related post.

I'm a bit punchy.

My big work project, which started in earnest for me 21 months ago, went live on Tuesday.  I had seen the go live date of 7/1/14 for so long now written in so many ways for 21 months:
7/1
7/1/14
7/1/2014
July 1, 2014

and on Tuesday morning, when my eyes popped open at 4:30am, and I turned on my laptop and looked in the bottom right corner of my laptop screen, there it was.

7/1/2014

I am SO happy, SO excited, SO relieved.  There is still plenty left to do, but the heavy lifting is over, the analyze, design, develop, customization, spec writing, configuration, business process, testing, initial data cleanup, data conversion, data validation phases are all over.    I have been teaching folks on the new system, and there more training to be done and documentation to write. I will run some labs. There will be more data cleanup.  There will be better data checking.  There will be a phase 2.   I doubt that phase 2 will be as much work, as intense, as stressful, or as meeting filled as phase 1.  There was a week where I had reached my personal record of 21 meetings in 4 consecutive days.  Could it ever be that busy again?

I have been working 6 days a week for a while now.  I worked the last 18 days straight, some of them were 12 hour days.

I feel like I just graduated with a masters degree in PeopleSoft Grants.  Or like it was Christmas morning.

We had an amazing session with the university president on Wednesday morning.  I felt so proud to be on this project.   A project that I did not volunteer for.  A project that was not in my job description.   This project was one of the most difficult and stressful things I have ever done.  There is a school of thought that anything worth doing is hard work.  This was hard work.  It was worth doing.   I have learned and grown so much, been challenged in many ways.  And I'm so glad the project is released!

I'm taking these three days off, but afterward I look forward to reconnecting with you, my blog readers, doing some sewing again, and posting here actively again!!

Be well.