A Week with Toby

This past week, Katie was down in Orange County to visit friends and family. Yes, while I got to enjoy a week of rain and mid 50's temperature, Katie had to suffer through 85 degree days at the pool. Poor lady. She even sent me a photo of the sky in Palm Springs to show me just how much better I had it up here... I think something was wrong with it -- it was a sickly blue and had no clouds. Yuck.

Joking aside, I'm happy she got to go down and see her friends. It looks like they all had a great time reconnecting. I will admit: each photo Katie sent me from down there made me jealous!

That's okay, though. I managed to fill up the growler with an absolutely delicious Stout this week. I forget the name of it, but it was brewed right here in Portland. Seven dollars very well spent, in my opinion. 

I did manage to get out a bit while she was gone, though. A trip to Cathedral Park with the dog was a nice way to break up the day.

This past week went by kind of fast, even though I had to spend it without Katie. My branch sent me to Tigard (a small town South West of Portland) for a four-day sales training workshop. It was a great experience that has already paid off! The instructor did an excellent job at making it simple and engaging that managed to renewed my interest in working for the company. It helped me view the whole sales/relationship building process in a more positive light. Additionally, my sales numbers for the week shot up. The icing on the cake came at the end when the instructor told me he thinks I am management material and that he "doesn't have a doubt in his mind" that I'll be managing a banking center within a year. Woo hoo!

To unwind this week, I also managed to get in some extra games of Call of Duty with Todd. Working six days a week, albeit 40 hours, really does cut into personal time, so I am grateful we had the opportunity to log some gameplay.

Today, Katie came back home. And Toby was ecstatic to see her. On the way back from the airport, we decided to stop into our favorite Chinese restaurant: New Happy Fortune. Ultra cheap and delicious. For $5.95, we got to take advantage of an amazing lunch special: Pork fried rice with fried wontons, giant eggrolls, hot and sour soup, sweet and sour chicken, and Oolong tea. So much food.

Oh! I almost forgot to share my April Fools prank. Well, the prank was played on me by my scheming coworkers who had all week to plan it while I was away at training. Sneaky. One of the tellers took me into the vault and said, "Hey Nick I just want to give you a heads up so they don't catch you off-guard. I overheard the managers talking the other day about you being red-flagged for opening an account improperly. They said the guy ended up defrauding something like $40,000."

Wow! It seemed plausible because earlier that week I got two e-mails from Corporate Security regarding a very similar situation. One of the e-mails was directed at me specifically for an account I opened improperly (oops), but I thought I had fixed the problem. The other was about $40k missing from the bank. Anyways, a little bit later, my manager took me aside and told me I had been red-flagged for accepting phony identification. She led me on for a few minutes, telling me they had stolen over $40k from the bank and I was convinced it was all due to my mistake. I even had an idea in my mind of who it was.

"April Fools!"

What an effective prank, made possible by my own mind. I guess it's true what they say-- "Man's greatest enemy of all is himself."