Brain Dump

It's been a long while since I posted anything here. I just haven't had much to say, and I really haven't felt like coming up with anything to write. No, there's not been anything wrong, I've just not in the mood. It's already been an interesting year, and it's not quite the end of January.

The big news for me is actually at work. My perpetually late/absent employee announced last week that she and her husband are moving to Japan, next week. She's always been prone to tall tales (although I'm convinced she really believes them) and this is no exception. The story is something about her husband, who doesn't actually meet the qualifications of the jobs his company needs to fill, was somehow their first pick our of several hundred people who applied for various transfers and he could go anywhere in the world. So, they chose Italy (stick with me here...) and were all excited about it. That was Thursday morning and there were stories of how they would be leaving immediately, his company was paying to move all their stuff, giving him a huge raise, and paying ALL their living expenses for the next year. Sounded fishy to me already. So how did they end up in Japan? By Thursday afternoon the story had changed to be that his company, which employees easily more than 100,000 people, needed his apparently one-of-a-kind skills desperately not in Italy, but in Japan. So, they decided to move to Japan, with barely two weeks notice. The company is still paying for everything and for them to live after they get there. It all sounds like bullshit to me. Her story has too many holes to be completely true and maybe she just wants a different job but she's too chicken-shit to say so.

So, long story short (too late huh?), it causes me major changes at work. I've already got two official titles and am really doing one and a half jobs. Until we hire someone to replace her I'll be adding all of her work to mine, so I'll be doing two and a half jobs until we fill that position. I'm not looking forward to it, at all. The upside to all this is that she's been unreliable with her schedule and now that little problem is moving to Japan. She uses any excuse to be late or out completely and more than once in the last year has gone beyond the sick and vacation time she has available. She does a good job when she's there, so she's sort of got many others bamboozled which has made it hard to discipline her. Each time I talk to her and get her back on track, she takes advantage again and the powers-that-be let it slip and cover her time off. It's hard for me to be an effective manager when the people above me undermine me. With her departure, she solves the problem for me. In spite of being so busy for the next month or two I'm welcoming the change, and welcoming being able to get started with someone new in that job.

Otherwise, work has just been work. It's been getting slowly busier since the beginning of the year, but that's not a bad thing in itself. It certainly makes the day go faster.

Home has also been busy, but we've been having fun. We've just been on the go a lot, which is typical. The hubby has developed a minor case of Bell's Palsy and it's not painful, but it's just odd. It scared me at first since I wasn't sure what it was. Luckily the doc confirmed that it's harmless and will eventually go away.

We took a friend to the boat show over the weekend. It was his first time to go to a boat show and I enjoyed getting to play expert and edumacate him about boats. Plus, it was fun getting to dig around boats I don't own or have to clean. The only problem was when our friend started pushing buttons and levers on one of the bigger boats we went on and almost dropped the anchor. It was a heavy anchor, and there was a smaller, but VERY expensive boat sitting directly under the anchor. He thought that the "windlass" (look it up if you're not sure what it is) had something to do with the windshield and kept pushing the button when he didn't see the windshield doing anything. He figured something wasn't right when the loud beeping noise started, and the salesman on the boat came running up to the top deck. I let our friend know that, as a rule of thumb, it's a bad idea to start pushing buttons on a boat when you know nothing about boats. The idea of "What does this button do?" can get very expensive on someone else's boat.

I did one really good thing happen at the show. I had ordered a sail for our boat way back in May. After I ordered it, the guy kinda vanished, so I started looking at other options. I found his booth at the boat show and chatted with him and told him that I had found other options. He didn't have any use for the custom-made sail, so he is selling it to me at cost. Having a 5 minute conversation saved me $800. I like those kinds of conversations.

Sadly there's not much more I can think to blather on about. Life's not to exciting at the moment, but I've learned not to wish for excitement; the universe tends to give me a lot more than I want. I've not been doing much more than laying low...I've not even been keeping up with the news sites and blogs that I normally read. I think I need to hibernate for a month and start fresh in March.