I don't brag about myself very much but I just have to spout off a little about our successful event at work last Friday. We had nearly 80 prizes to give away and if it hadn't been for me, we wouldn't have had nearly as many prizes. Everyone kept saying it was our best year ever for prizes. But they didn't acknowledge the main reason. Me. Yes, little ol' me. I felt like The Little Red Hen. Well, I guess I didn't do EVERYTHING, but it would at least be nice to have been given some credit for the hard work I put into the event.

I designed a Microsoft Access database several years ago for this event. It keeps track of solicitors, donations, allows easy merging for thank you letters and contains reports needed throughout the event. I created the database for one of my coworkers when she took over the solicitation part of the event. She was given the job because the person who handled it prior to that retired. Well, then the woman who retired came back the next year and she didn't want to use the database. She chose to keep it on her home computer, within Microsoft Works. MS Works is a nifty program but it doesn't talk to Microsoft Office products. Since my database was designed to spit out reports needed the evening of the event, I continued to add the donation information even though the database wasn't being used.

This year, both of the women were unable to handle this project. In spite of the fact that I am supposed to be concentrating all my time on a different project, I took this one on. I am not sure what would have happened, had I not. I took four different lists they had been using, combined them and sent out letters of solicitation to all of them. I got back a lot of bad addresses, simply because the database hasn't been maintained properly for some time. But this time, when letters came back with bad addresses, I either corrected the bad addresses, or deleted the company to an archive table. Next year we'll have an up-to-date, comprehensive list for the event.

I mentioned to my boss that my hard work paid off, but she didn't acknowledge that it was related directly to me. She mentioned perhaps it was the economy and the businesses were trying to drum up more business for themselves. Well, I guess that could have been the deal. I really think it was my attention to detail and determination that netted us so many good prizes this year.

Yay for me.

Oh, I'm not totally perfect. When it was almost time to start drawing names I remembered that two donations had not made their way out of my desk drawer! When I got back to my desk, it was actually three donations! I hurriedly added them to the list. Whew! I would have felt horrible if I'd found those later on. Especially since two of the gifts were substantial donations from my boss' daughter and son-in-law! Ack!

My feet were hurting so bad when I got home at 11:00pm I pulled out the foot bath thingy that we have, it's supposed to aerate the water. Well, the aeration part is no longer working. But the hot epsom salts water felt very good.

Oh… I caved and wrote a check for $20 worth of raffle tickets. Of the 36 tickets in the raffle with my name on it, one was pulled. I won… an autographed photograph of a baseball player. I do not get into sports at all, but my boss LOVES this team. I asked her if she wanted it, because I was going to put it back into the pile of prizes. She was thrilled to have it. So I figure I bought my boss a $20 gift.