Halloween 2007

I have a lot of fun decorating at work for the different holidays, and have converted a few follwers to help. You can say that there are times I do get carried away! This year Halloween was extra fun as I was able to find pressed wood 3-dimensional coffin that I laid up against the wall and made a mini cemetary scene.

I had a bag of bones laid out with a few tomb stones and a couple of rats for good measure. I set it up and it started to take on a life of its own. Every night when I came in to work, it would be rearranged a little or something added to it. It was fun to see what would happen next. Example, Rebecca on my team added a broken key board under the bony hands, and a headset over the skull.

Since we work on the USPS (Post Office) website answering questions and complaints, I put spider webbing down the row on both sides of the aisle, with a touch of a few spiders. I also hung some ghouls from the ceiling, especially my favorite, a Pirate ghoul that looked like it was floating down at you.

We had the Vice President of the Post Office and a few other VIPs coming in to visit and it was suggested we wait until they left to decorate. The other Supervisor for email, April, decided to go ahead and decorate her area, so I figured I would go ahead and decorate as well. Nedra and Jayann almost died when they came in the next morning, but loved what we had done, especially my little grave yard. The visitors were really tickled with the decorations and very impressed with my graveyard as well, and thought it was pretty cool that we decorated.

Since I sat by the one door, it was pretty fun to hear the agents laugh or make comments about the coffin and the decorations. It makes me feel good that they appreciate it and enjoy the little bit of fun that we bring into the work place. I love it as it makes it more fun to come to work, and brings some happiness. But I got to tell you, working the midnight shift, it would sometimes get a little freaky to have that coffin right by my desk!

Witch Stew. Our team aisle, "The Insane Asylum" or USPS Website.

This is the Training Room, with the new trainees trying to get out. They have been in there for almost three weeks!

This is our new Supervisor who was just too overwhelmed trying to learn everything quickly.

I love decorating our work area for the holidays, especially Halloween and Christmas.

I sometimes will go a little crazy with the decorations. At work we can only plug in Christmas lights in the outside wall plugs. I really wanted to put a couple arches of garland with lights for our row, but I had to figure out a way to get them plugged into the wall. It took me about ten minutes but I worked it out.

Since my desk was at the end of the row and close to one of the entrance doors, I put up my 4 ft. fiber optic Christmas tree next to the wall near my desk. We got approval to get a special kind of tape and taped over the cord from the wall outlet over to my tree. I also had a fireplace I made against the cubicle wall of my desk near the tree.

I connected a long line of garland wrapped in white Christmas lights that went down the middle of the cubicles, and also connected with a long strand of garland wrapped in white lights that I ran around the pole near my desk, and draped across the aisle and back down the pole on the other side of the aisle. At the other end I did the same thing with the garland wrapping around the pole with lights and draped across the aisle and down the pole on the other side, and connected with garland and lights running down the middle of the cubicles on that side.

I hung red, green, and gold bulbs from the garland on each end. It was really something to see, and made everyone on the floor thrilled to see a decorated area. I had also made little stockings of red, white, and green card stock and had little designs on them with the name of the team members going across the top mantle of my fireplace.

We also had some musical Christmas toys near the fireplace and on the filing cabinets near us. Many of the agents liked to either make my reindeer in a rocking chair sing "Grama got run over by a reindeer" or push the buttom of Karen's snow man playing a piano and singing songs as they walked out the door. It just made the floor feel more festive and made it more fun to be at work.

To make it more fun, Kay, from Stamps, surprised us and left one of the beautiful sleds that she makes and sells against the one side of our fireplace because we always decorate our area so nicely. It was like Santa had come and left a present!

Scott's new hobby since his Strokes ~ collecting!

I have decided to add this to the Blog because sometimes when I tell of some of Scott's antics since his strokes, people don't realize how bad it can actually get with certain things, such as having to have stacks of his laptops at his feet by his recliner, like 4 of the 6 that he has.... and CDs of programs he thinks he is loading on his lap tops, again by his recliner, but the worse is his obsession of collecting items.... He has this bad habit now of collecting pop cans and plastic G2 drink bottles at the side of his bed. He goes through so many sodas (diet) and drinks a day that it is hard to keep up with him. His medicines make his mouth and throat dry, so I can understand that, but what I can't understand is his need to keep a large pile of the cans and plastic bottles on the floor on his side of the bed! It blows me away! I try to go in and collect them up to throw away but when I think of it, he is sleeping. I don't dare get them for fear he will wake up. I live for the times he sleeps, so I can take a deep breath and either get some work done, or just relax for a few minutes.

My supervisor at work, Clint, is collecting metal items and pop cans to recycle as a way to get money for his Masters program. This has prompted me to collect the cans more often, .... That and the fact that every time Scott got in or out of bed he would end up kicking some cans and make a racket! This would wake me up and startle me and it would be hard to get right back to sleep! In order to give people a real visualization of some of his quirks, I took a picture of his latest collection before turning the cans over to Clint to recycle. I took a bucket up with me to empty some of the half full cans, and had to empty the bucket twice, ... another problem with the cans, the knocked over soda! And of course you will never guess who had to clean the spills up! I ended up with a large lawn trash bag of cans, a large garbage bag of plastic bottles, and a tall garbage can full of plastic bottles! And now ... What you have all waited for to see.... Drumroll Please!!!!!!

Scott's crazy Quirks since his Strokes

Scott's new hobby is collecting....... mostly collecting empty or partially empty soda cans or bottles of G2 drink.

We celebrated Pyper's birthday on April 26th, Saturday. Pyper and Grandma Great share their birthday, April 27. Pyper turned 5 years old. Great Grandma and Grandpa Sykes were there as well as Jon, Bri, Kaleb, Kaitlyn, Kaisa, Gage, Joey, Grandma Faulring, and of course Spencer, Renee and Jordan.

We had pizza and then watched Pyper open her gifts. After opening the gifts we had cake and ice cream. It was a short and sweet party

This is a picture of Pyper and Great Grandpa Sykes behind her.

Kaleb playing a game of duckies.
Grama Great ~ Great Grandma Sykes
Bri watching Kaleb
Jon just chilling