Liebster award!

I was nominated for a totally random award by Kaitlin and I’m FINALLY getting around to replying to it! Kaitlin posted a link to an explanation of the Liebster Award, so I’m totally stealing her link. Thanks to Kaitlin for nominating me and now, my friendly readers, you get a list of 11 interesting facts about me, 11 answers to questions she asked me and then I’ll be giving the award to almost a dozen other bloggersI’ll be letting you tag yourselves!

1. In high school, I applied for jobs at McDonald’s and the local grocery store. I didn’t get either, nor did I even get an interview. My first job was after my freshman year of college and I worked at a clothing store in the mall. (The store and the mall are both closed.)

2. My job at the clothing store didn’t last long. By summer of my sophomore year, I worked through a temp agency and only worked office/clerical jobs. It led to an internship with Square D and eventually my major in Computer Science (because I loved what I was doing at Square D and I needed to declare a major my senior year of college.)

3. I once was invited to join a book club. The girls wouldn’t accept any of my book recommendations based on genre, so I ended up ditching the club after a couple of gatherings and starting a romantic comedy movie club. Same concept except we saw chick flicks. It was the best.

4. I have worked at Yankee Candle as a seasonal employee and part-time before I was married. I actually was working there to help pay for the wedding. I became kind of a candle expert. I love YC and still have cases of candles to be burned. In fact, over the holidays, my mom called to see what I may have in my “stock.” I had just the perfect scent for her (spiced orange) to replace the spiced pumpkin that she had just finished.

5. I’ve never broken a bone that required a cast. I’ve sprained my thumb, and I may have broken my toe while running to answer the phone in high school (when I was grounded from talking on the phone), but it wasn’t something that required a cast.

6. I’ve had braces three times. I still wear retainers. I do not want to pay for a fourth set. My second set was taken off too early and then the orthodontist sold his practice. Shady, shady man he was.

7. I started this blog post in September. I suck at completing surveys.

8. I don’t think I can be my own boss. When I was unemployed, I tried to see if I could make it happen “just in case.” I was more than elated when I realized someone really did want to hire me. Being my own boss just overwhelmed me so much.

9. I still don’t want to run a full marathon again. Ever. Every time I’ve run a marathon, I felt that way shortly after and within weeks or a few months, I was looking for my next full to register for. That has not happened in the past 10 months and I’m still fairly center that last March’s race was my last full marathon.

10. I have been an online producer/programmer for over 13 years. I still get stressed out when I change code. Especially if it’s WordPress. I have someone whose site I inherited and there were problems with the WP site. I was working on it on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day and it was the worst part of my vacation. So much stress. So much responsibility. I stress myself out too much sometimes.

11. When I was a child, my grandparents owned a farm (my grandma sold it just a few years ago.) We (me and my cousins) would often name some of the animals – after foods/condiments. Three goats were named Snap, Crackle and Pop. A pony named Sugar. Sheep named Salt and Pepper. Oh, and our playhouse was an old chicken coop (that had obviously been cleaned out.) We spent many, many hours playing in that chicken coop attached to the barn. It was perfect for kids to play in!

11 Questions from Kaitlin