A whirlwind week

I'm working on a big project at work, even bringing stuff home to work on, something I normally don't do. It's coming along well, just taking a lot of time. Real excited about it. As part of this project I've had to do a lot of work on Excel, most of my previous experience w/ Lotus 123. So far I'm finding Excel easier to work with. I especially like the ability to set up multiple pages. Before I had my entire spreadsheet on one huge page, made it really time consuming to move from one part of the sheet to another.

What's the project you may ask? No big secret, just it's a bit technical and I figure people probably not that interested in all the details. However, if ya'll are interested in hearing more let me know and I'll gladly do a post on it.

Shifting gears . . .

Seems most of my life I've known lots of people, but this hasn't translated into making much in the way of friends who like to do things w/ me. Ironically I made more friends in my three years of going down to Battle Creek every weekend than I've made in a lifetime in Lansing. At one time I figured I'd move to Battle Creek, but that didn't work out, so I've tried to recenter my life back here in Lansing. At work I've met a bunch of people I like, but everyone so busy, nothing has developed beyond chatting w/ folks in the hallway and such. That is until this week.

Alban and Peter work on the 5th floor of the building I work in. I do a lot of work in this set of labs, so I bump into them a lot. Last week while chatting w/ Alban about the recent vote in France on the EU constitution, he mentioned that he, Peter and Stephan eat lunch together everyday. Really!! I asked if I could join them and he said sure. So this past week I joined them on Tue, Wed. and Thurs. What fun!! Thankfully the meals at the Owen cafeteria are reasonably priced and they don't mind you supplementing the main course w/ your own food in tow, which helps keep the price even more reasonable.

Over time I've come to realize I get excited when I'm invited to do something w/ a group and tend to talk too much. I'm trying really hard to monitor myself and make sure I'm not dominating things. As near as I can tell, they are enjoying my company as much as I'm enjoying theirs, so I think I'm doing OK.