Quiet Weekend

Inches of snow fell starting yesterday early, early morning. I haven't left the house all weekend - and doubt that I will leave tomorrow as my boss just called and told me to stay home unless there was something that HAD to be done at the office. There isn't so home and safe I will stay. I think our neighborhood has yet to be plowed, and with the hill up our drive to our street, I'm not that anxious to try my luck with the roads.

It's interesting to see the tracks left by the deer as they've crossed our snowed-over yard. The dog has barely gone into the yard to do her business. I can see all the yellow spots in the snow around the base of the steps off our deck. And I think there are piles of poo on the drive. Guess those will have to be cleaned up as the snow melts. Yippee. This morning our younger cat scooted herself out the door as I was encouraging the dog to leave the deck. She was back at the door before I could put my shoes on, all puffed up. Here's hoping that she learned her lesson and won't try that move again anytime soon.

I think I've been even less productive this weekend than I was last weekend and I didn't get much done last weekend. Part of that is probably because I'm not taking in enough calories to do much more than sit around with the occasional burst of enough energy to empty the dishwasher or start/switch a load of laundry, or even clean the toilet. But I can only do one thing at a time.

DH is on his way home and is going to want dinner. I'm thinking some sort of baked chicken - only because it means the least amount of interaction with the raw meat. Thaw, pour sauce over and shove in the oven. Even thinking about doing anything beyond that makes me queasy.

Meet the Robinsons was on Disney this afternoon. The end made me tear up. It never has before, so I'm guessing that hormones had something to do with it. It's interesting how many cartoons deal with adoption/infertility - Meet the Robinsons, Up, The Rescuers just come off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more out there.

Well, off to do something about dinner. Wish me luck!

Excuse Me...

Have I mentioned that last week saltines became my new best friends?

Yeah.

Nothing like day-long low-level nausea (and burping) to erase those "am I really still pregnant" worries.

And can I tell you after a week off work, waking up this morning at the god-forsaken hour of 6AM was pure evil? I miss my couch.

Where am I?

Blue screen of death on work pc so internet use is limited to boss's computer.

Send good thoughts for resuscitation as purchasing a new CPU is not in the budget. (Neither is repair, but you gotta do, right?) Need to check but I think the external hard drive backed-up as scheduled last Monday. Learned that lesson the last time the hard drive crashed. That means only a weeks worth of work may have been lost. I'm hoping that the email files have been saved, otherwise it's a good thing I've been killing trees by printing out all the most important ones.

Forgot to bring book to occupy time (optimism strikes again), and I am realizing just how much time I spend putzing on the internet every day. My personal laptop will be coming in with me tomorrow. For today, after I finish filing the prior fiscal year's paper work, there are some work-related errands I've been putting off so can run those after lunch - which should kill another hour or so.

In the meantime, I'll just amuse myself with the games my boss has downloaded, against my recommedation.

IVF#1 - Friday Morning Thoughts

Back at work with my bottle of antibiotics and the hope of getting a positive phone call from the RE sometime around mid-day.

I swear the residue from the adhesive tape the anesthesiologist used to (a) tape the gauze over the first & failed IV location and (b) keep the second & successful IV location stable during the procedure is going to last longer on my skin than the puncture locations for each.

Also, the steroid anti-inflammatory I'm taking seems to be having a positive effect on the mark left on my face from the reaction I had to the metallic portion of my cell phone key pad. It's much harder to see and has stopped itching. While I still love my phone, I don't love that it's marked me in return.

I took some Tylenol this morning instead of the Hydrocodone - I'm trying not to move around too much but I can still feel some twinges. I may make it a short day as the bosses left for the weekend early this morning and there is literally nothing going on thanks to the torrents of rain we have had this morning and which are expected to last most of the day.

Will update when I know the results of merger attempt #2.

IVF#1 Retrieval Schedule (Edited - Already?)

Monday Night (otherwise known as this morning) : 1:45AM - IM trigger shot. Gotta love the lingering soreness from that one. Also tiredness thanks to an hour of sleep lost after waking and then getting Lady Marmalade stuck in my head during the shot prep.

Wednesday Morning: 11:15AM at the office for a 12:15PM retrieval.

Frankly, the timing, it sucks.

Especially when the people who do the schedule don't release it until 3PM and you are waiting for that information to tell your husband so he can arrange for time off.

But, on the upside, with such a late appointment, I'm able to have a little snack at 6AM Wed's morning so I'm not totally cranky from lack of food or hydration at 2:30 or 3PM when I'm released from post-op. No guarantees that I won't be cranky for other reasons though.

Today I pick up my 5 post-op medications at the pharmacy - Valium and Lortabs (the same combo that got me through the 2nd run of the dye test whose name I can't remember but triggered a panic attack on the first attempt.), a steroid antibiotic (Metfornin? possibly), more Endometrium (I've got some of that at home as well) which will supply my progesterone needs, and something else I can't remember. As of now I'm not having to do progesterone-in-oil for which I am sincerely thankful. (9mm lining, score!) While suppositories are messy I'm very glad not to have any more shots for a while, thankyouverymuch.

Expect an update on Friday as I don't anticipate getting online with my Mother in the house.

Cat & Mouse

In reality, while the cat's away, the mouse will play.
Cat = my boss
Mouse = me

Here's to an easy week while they are on vacation!

It's probably going to be quiet enough that I can read in between dealing with any issues.
(I hope I'm not jinxing myself.)

I plan to swing the library either this weekend or Monday at lunch to stock up on books. Any suggestions? There's one series which seems to be taking the blogging world by storm, but I can't remember the title (I think it's young adult fiction?). I'm a big fan of finding series for which all the books are already written. I'm such a fast reader that it's frustrating to wait a year (or months) for the next book to come out and then read it in a day or two.

Heck, I like most anything except books that make me cry or put me to sleep (dry factual histories, I'm looking at you!) or which have no satisfactory resolution by the end and just sort of fizzle out leaving the reader hanging.

I'm currently working my way through a paper grocery bag full of books my Mom picked up on the 75%-off day of her local library book sale. She just grabbed piles of books off the romance table and didn't look too closely, so it's a real surprise as to what's in there. The thing is, I'd rather save those for the beach and weekends away when I might damage or lose a book, and read library books at home or at work.

With out any suggestions, I'll probably wander the aisles of the library deciding which books to get based on the spine font and color. Whatever works, right?

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

So, the stuff DH was doing Valentine's Day evening that I couldn't talk about. I can talk about it now: He was doing the paperwork related to applying for a new job.

The place where's he's worked for the past 5 years is a total cesspool with no hope for improvement*. DH hasn't been happy there for the better part of 3 years. A couple of years back he looked for and was offered a new job, but wasn't convinced that other company was any better. As part of that process, the owner was able to re-convince DH that he could make a contribution to the future of the company. In the past few months DH has come to realize the company would never change unless the owner left the company** (which to be honest, he has very little life outside work, so he'll probably keep the company under his thumb until he dies, probably at the office!). He's been dreading going to work but hadn't had enough of a push to look elsewhere.

A couple of weeks ago it really came to a head for DH. The work load has dropped to practically nothing, the company has some contracts but the entities are stalling on making decisions, he was getting direct hits from the company owner regarding a project on which DH kept asking for guidance but received very little - and apparently made all the wrong decisions (not that the project is going badly, the owner just didn't get his fingers in it). In short, he's no longer feeling the love.

That evening he hit up Monster to see what might be out there locally (within reasonable driving distance & time) and found one position so appealing that he called me in from the other room to the office to show me the position description. That evening he polished up his resume and sent it off with a cover email to the company's in-house recruiter (in California, this is a large, national company).

The recruiter called the next day to set up an interview with the local manager (in Richmond). That was Valentine's Day morning. By the time we had dinner that evening he was still glowing (I know, men don't glow, but he was so happy) about the company, the people he would be working with, doing something so completely different (yet related), and most importantly the thought that he would no longer have to deal with the crap at his current job.

Friday he had a couple of follow up questions, revised his base salary request, and was told they would call him the beginning of the following week. Of course, on Monday he heard nothing, which drove him crazy. The more he thought about the potential for what he would be doing, the more excited he got, and the more afraid that he'd done something (namely increasing his salary request) to blow his chances. But late Tuesday afternoon, he got the call to look for an email from the recruiter.

The email came with a contract, at the increased salary he had requested. He was so happy. The only clause was a drug test, which came back yesterday, clearing the clause. (This is what I was waiting on.) For better or worse, today is R-Day. R for resignation. DH plans to take his subordinate to lunch so he hears it directly from DH before the news starts flying around the office.

Of course, DH will have to work out his 4 weeks notice at his current job, which will probably be hellish because the owner is known to take every departure as a personal insult, and thus will take every opportunity to belittle any departing employee. Talk about unprofessional! But it's pretty par for the course with all the other unprofessional things the owner does. It's really a wonder the company has been in business as long as it has.

In the end, the decision to change jobs really was a no-brainer decision for DH. The biggest con (for me) is that his commute will now be 20 minutes longer, in the opposite direction. So, instead of he and I working only 5 minutes apart in Williamsburg, he'll be in Richmond. But when you are looking at

• a 25%+ pay raise(if he hadn't been making less than the national average salary for his position, it would have been smaller),
  
• good health insurance (Blue Cross PPO vs. cheap, crappy insurance),
  
• 401k with matching (vs. unmatched with limited fund selection),
  
• the potential for an actual bonus (instead of profit sharing "whenever we feel like it" into the 401k),
  
• a really interesting job without the requirement that he wear a button down shirt on a regular basis,

that distance really isn't important (especially since we don't have to move and I won't have to leave the job I love that took me forever to find!).

I certainly can do no more than to support him in something he is so excited about. Of course, I'm going to miss our occasional lunches together- but that's not enough reason for him to keep working somewhere he dislikes.

So, my question is: do you like your job? If yes, is there a specific thing, or is it hard to articulate? If no, what would you rather be doing?


*This could be a slight exaggeration. There have been some good moments along the way, but the bad is very much outweighing the good right now.
**Ironically enough, this realization came after participating in a management training program paid for by the company. Of course, the people who need to attend the program never do.

I hate computers!

My computer at work has totally lost its Internet connection - no email, no blogs, nothing! It is apparently a CPU issue, which has not been corrected through replacing the Ethernet card. My computer guy is at a loss. Any suggestions out there?

Since I don't spend much time on the computer at home (reference above spending time on the computer at work), I haven't been reading/commenting or posting much myself.

Just needed to vent. Computers, like cars, should just work. No questions asked.

Is that too much to expect?


Oh yeah, I was at the local outlet center earlier this week - and they already have the Christmas wreaths out. I even saw one on the security golf cart. Jeez. Between early holiday decorations and the presidential campaigning, I'm ready to sequester myself away for a year with a stack of good books and ignore everything until it's over!

The Cat's Away...Update

The verdict: I spent all but maybe of 30 minutes yesterday trolling the internet...and had a pounding headache at the end of the day with nothing to show for it.

Lesson learned.

New Goal: To spend only a couple hours per day catching up on my current favorites and to not spend hours in a new blog's archives!

The cat's away...

My boss and his wife left this morning for 3 weeks out of the country.

Muwahhhahaha. Oh, the power.

I really hope I can keep my self on task and away from constantly reading blogs.

What are my chances?

Just Call Me Matilda

If you are familiar with the book, Matilda, by Roald Dahl, you should remember that her ability to move things with her mind left her physically exhausted.

Why, you ask, do I bring this up? For Christmas, my DH received a super-duper Weather Station which does every thing except run Doppler radar. It comes with two external sensing units - one for rainfall and one for wind. The sensing unit for rainfall was easy and safe to position and mount and so has been up for months now.

The anemometer (wind sensor) is a different story. On our property the best location (so that our neighbors wouldn't complain about it, and for proximity to the rain sensor) to mount it was on the rear of our house, at the peak of the roof. The back of our house has 3 stories plus a peaked attic with a steep roof line.

Can you see where this is going? DH made an aborted effort a couple months back to climb from one level of the roof to the next and make his way to the ridge and end of the roof that way. Halfway into that he decided the pitch was too steep and backed off from those plans. I was relieved because the thought of him sliding off the roof and landing on the ground so many feet below didn't exactly give me the warm fuzzies, but it still left the Weather Station missing data.

This past Friday he says to me that he has arranged to rent a 40' extension ladder on Saturday to mount the anemometer. I swallow and say "OK, how can I help?" (because I'm a supportive wife who still doesn't want to see him fall to the ground, but understands that it has been bugging him that the station isn't complete).

We pick up the ladder Saturday morning with no problems - except that DH only has me around to help him get the ladder off the Tahoe, around the house and extended. At 5'2"(ish) and an appropriate weight for my height (what, you thought I was going to tell you how much I weigh?) I am like an ant trying to support a lollipop stick while it waves in the breeze.

With the angle needed to properly support the ladder, it didn't quite reach the peak of the roof, or even to the edge of the roof, like my DH expected (simple geometry, really). The length made it sag and sway to an uncomfortable extent for both DH climbing and me watching. By passing a rope he uses for Ski Patrol lift evacuation training through our bedroom windows DH was able to tie the ladder to the house. That made me feel marginally better that the ladder wasn't going to fall down with him on it. See images of the falling skateboarder, Jake Brown, from the X-Games 13 and Chevy Chase falling off the ladder in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation for what possible scenarios were going through my mind.

Due to the aforementioned angle and height of the back of the house in relation to the length of the ladder he ended up attaching the anemometer to the roof line with his arms raised above his head. Scary! Needless to say, I was watching from the ground with the house phone clutched tightly in my hand so that if the unthinkable did happen I wouldn't waste any time dialing 911. And I was using every muscle in my body, and all the brain power I possessed to glue him to the ladder from my position on the ground.

In the end, all went well. The anemometer is now happily (as happily as an inanimate object can) sending information about the wind speeds and direction to the display unit inside the house, the ladder made it back onto the Tahoe and to the rental place in a timely manner, and neither one of us was harmed in doing so.

We spent the evening in a state of collapse. DH from working in direct sun in very humid 100+ degree weather, and me from doing the strenuous work of keeping him up on that ladder without touching him. If something happens to remove the anemometer from the roof we're in agreement that renting a mechanical lift is a very good idea.

I Don't Want to Believe This...

ugh!

I think I might have mentioned earlier about how much I love my job. What I didn't mention directly is the field in which I work. I work for a residential contractor. He's been building houses for 30+ years.

This is one of the things I don't love about my job...people who are stupid. OK, not stupid, just plan poorly. Recently I've taken a number of calls from people who want to know something about their house which was built up to 20 years earlier.

I want to say, "People. Why didn't you keep records of this? It is YOUR house after all." But I can't (mostly in order to keep my job - though my boss might not mind my telling them off, I don't want to take the risk of ruining his very high opinion of me). The most recent call - you built my house 11 years ago, can you look in your records and tell me what color and brand of paint was used?

Well, no. We aren't required to keep records that far back; so unless it's a fairly new custom house, I won't have it on record (my boss picks all the paint colors for the specs and I don't get much info to put in the file). And neither will the painters or paint companies. Good luck, sucker! Of course, I can't say that final bit.

Of course, since I've only been working here for a portion of that time, I CAN blame my predecessor. Who hasn't had the fun of doing that when the person is not around to defend him/herself? I find it a great cop out when I don't have the answer to a question.

Thanks for letting me air this out. I feel much better now.

Yay Friday!

It's so slow at work that I'm going to leave at 2ish! And still get paid for the 2 hours I'm not actually working. Sweet!

Actually, I'm really lucky to have a job that I love. And not because the schedule is supposed to be from 8-4 with a hours paid lunch, and not because I usually roll in around 8:30 and it's not a problem, or because I'm going to take off something like 4 weeks this year (without mentioning the paid week off between Christmas and New Years), and my boss is OK with that.

I love where I work and what I do (when I actually am working). It's nice to be able to schedule my day as I see fit. And have the flexibility of time to do other things as they come up without stressing over getting everything else done that HAS to be done that day. There's usually not too much that HAS to be done on any certain day. Toss in a little bit of power over sub-contractors and the requirement to give clients advice and I'm happy as a pig in slop. (there's my Southern coming out) Plus I can wear casual clothes (usually not jeans, except on Fridays, and never sweats) and never have to wear hose!

Sometimes when I look through my college Alumni publication I feel like a failure because I'm not the youngest VP in company history or doing leading research in one field or another. But then I think, hey I'm only working 35 hours and getting paid for 40, those people are probably working 60 hours and only getting paid for 40, plus have to wear suits and hose and look professional. I actually get to have a life. And that is worth a whole lot more than money. True, I don't work for a company in which I can advance; this is it, baby! But I also enjoy not feeling like I'm part of a rat race in which if I make even one wrong step my whole career is ruined.

On top of the surface stuff, my work is actually valued and I feel like I spend my days productively. I've been in some jobs which didn't require much of me and ended up feeling like crap about myself. The only good thing I can say about those jobs is that I learned what I DID NOT want in a job. And that's just as valuable as knowing what you DO want in a job.

I hope you have a happy, relaxing weekend. I fully intend to do so myself.