I don't even have a good excuse...

I am a very bad friend and correspondent... I feel like it's been years since I've spoken to any of you! and for that I am VERY sorry!

Elsie - Be strong, great opportunities come around every day and life's too short to be stuck at a job you hate! (You should find a job in SLC and move there so we can play!)

JeriLynn - I'm so sad I've missed seeing Liesel, she sounds adorable, so you'll have to post pictures somewhere or just email me...

Hollie - Congratulations on being firmly entrenched in your own home :D I'm so excited for you! And every night before I go to bed, I remember that I never called you back, but by then it's much to late to call you. I really don't hate you and I do want to talk to you!

Amelia - I think you will have an amazing time in Canada and reap all sorts of rewards, both spiritual and professional - Canada is one step closer to England :)

I have some news but nothing life changing... and a funny/strange story.

News first:
Lisa and I moved into our very own office about 3 weeks ago! It's very nice, with a wall of eastern-facing windows and two desks, and room for a couch! We're super happy to be out of the cubicles in the hallway and the best part is that we have a place to sit that isn't the floor or a desk chair! I took pictures so I could post them, but my computer seems to have hidden them from me at the moment and it's very late, so they'll have to wait until next time.

Now the funny/strange story:
Our documentation manager (the one in charge of customer facing documents, not technical stuff, so not in charge of me and Lisa) needed to hire a new person, so she did the whole interview thing and found a girl who seemed like a good fit and was well-versed in InDesign, so she offered her the position. I met her when she came in last Monday for her first day in the office.
By noon on Monday she was gone! They had to fire her, because it turns out that she lied on her resume about receiving a degree and faked a letter of recommendation from a professor (on BYU letterhead she forged)! She worked a grand total of 4 hours and my boss said they're even going to pay her for them. :(
To be hired, you need to provide three references, but company policy only requires that they check two in a time crunch, which this was. The two references that were checked both loved her, but apparently super late in the game - the first morning she was there - HR started turning up things that raised some red flags, so her manager called the third reference, the professor who had written such a glowing letter of recommendation. Basically this professor said "Don't hire her! She plagiarized and cheated her way through her classes (even though she didn't need to and has excellent InDesign and writing skills) so the university kicked her out one class shy of receiving her degree." When they asked about why this information was so different from the letter of recommendation from the same prof, they found out that he never wrote a letter and she had forged both the university letterhead and the prof's signature!
Then, HR discovered some things in her employment past that made them decide she might be "dangerous" so they've had our office locked up super tight the last 4 days! Lisa and I couldn't decide if dangerous meant they thought she would steal company secrets or charge into the office with guns blazing, so it's been a little tense. When I got to work on Thursday, there was a police car parked in the parking lot and I was super afraid of what I was going to find when I got to the sixth floor, but it turned out to just be overreacting on my part, because they weren't there for our office.
Today they unlocked our office so you can go in and out of the front door without using your key card, so apparently the danger from deranged former employees has passed.

I hope you enjoyed this tale of drama and intrigue in the office place, and I'll try to write more often in the future!

Love and miss you all,
Mandy