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OK, from Pink Shoe Diaries I am going to attempt her meme from yesterday because it seems fun. I tag Clementine, Hashbrown, and MisaGracie, who will probably play and Heather, who probably won't.

Five Things I am Good at:

1. Microsoft Word. I know this is a boring one but I've been working in various admin roles since (and during) College and I've fairly thoroughly tamed this beast. If you need help figuring something out, I can almost certainly help you! Think outlines, style formatting, forms and auto-fill fields, mail-merges, etc.
2. Knitting. I can get you to purl, Sarah. Or, if you just can't do it, how about you learn to crochet? Hint: It's faster than knitting.
3. Drawing/Making Crafty things. OK, so I was an art major, and I've been drawing since I could hold a pencil. Not really related to my current job or line of work, but I try to keep the artist inside me from dying by making fun cards for friends and family, doing fun knitting projects (see above), and I'm working on my computer illustration skills. I haven't done enough of it lately, but I used to draw cartoons all the time on family vacations and at work. I think I need to start that up again, big source of amusement for others. Just have to be careful the work-related ones don't end up in the wrong hands.
4. Math. Maybe I should have been a math major instead - potentially more lucrative. I hated math in high school but was always good at it. I had to take Calculus in college and found it surprisingly fun in some ways. My boyfriend is in grad school for CS and has had to take some math-y classes, and I kind of like helping him study. Is that sick?
5. Fixing things. I have a little background in construction and construction management and growing up my mom more often fixed stuff around the house than my dad (she was home more and not one to make lists for my dad, she'd just figure it out herself) so I guess those things combined created Jenn fix-it. I'd rather take something apart and figure it out myself than pay too much money for someone else to do it. I can replace a lightswitch or outlet, refinish doors and windowsills rife with cat and/or dog clawmarks, patch holes in walls, hang things from hollow ceilings and walls with anchor bolts, etc. This doesn't mean I'd do something foolish like disassemble the dishwasher or rewire my apartment, but it does mean a leaky faucet doesn't have to turn into a $300 plumber bill.

Five Things I am Bad (and in some cases atrocious) at:

1. Confrontation. I am a peacekeeper by nature. I don't really do a good job confronting people about much of anything. I have done it sometimes but it really takes a lot out of me and I have to feel pretty upset about whatever it is to attempt this. I'm getting better at least at confronting strangers about simple things like their rudeness etc. I guess I'll work up from there.
2. Being a morning person. I don't think any tips will help this. I'm just not. For the first little bit, even if I'm in a pretty good mood, if someone crosses me in the morning I'm instantly furious. Also, I'd much rather live in a world where I could get up at about 10am and stay up till about 3am. That's a more natural clock for me. I think I can at least manage to force myself to get up earlier and go to bed earlier, but I don't think I will ever be a "morning person", waking up chipper and happy to start the day.
3. Exercising. As in, I never do it. Well, this isn't 100% true, I walk my ass all over the city (almost never use the T - as in, use it like 4 times a year), which is a good thing, but that's it. I don't run, belong to a gym, do fitness walking, play any sports, or even do situps or pushups (girl pushups) on a regular basis. I don't have an original excuse... no time, don't remember, don't feel like it, don't keep up w/it well enough to see results so I stop, etc. I am aware in my brain that it doesn't really take much, but I'm bad on the follow-through. Also, I'm no athlete, let me tell you. The only things I really like doing aren't so year-round in nature - biking and hiking. And hiking requires going somewhere worth hiking, which requires a car basically, which I don't have.
4. Seeing both sides. While at times I think I'm very good at this, I recognize that if it's something personal or of great personal importance to me, I'm pretty terrible at it. I guess this isn't always a bad thing - I guess it makes me a loyal friend. But if I think someone's wrong I can pretty much shut out any possibility that they have any kind of valid point.
5. Taking criticism. I'm bad at it. Period. I take things very personally usually. Even when I try really hard not to.

Tip time:

Using columns in Word: If you only want a portion of a document to be divided into multiple columns, enter all the text first, including any text before and after the column-divided section. Then select just the portion of the text you want to divide into columns and tell it how many columns to make. If you don't like where it breaks the columns (ie: it's a list of contacts and it breaks in the middle of someone's address), you can insert manual column breaks from the insert menu to force it to do what you want.