Run Ragged
I’m at my ragged end. I’ve been doing too much.
First, there’s work Monday to Friday 8-5. That’s a given.
Last Thursday – spend the evening doing laundry to get ready for Carolyn’s trip to Germany
Last Friday – spend a quiet evening with Carolyn
Saturday – get up, go to church Officer’s Retreat and give report on Welcome and Outreach Task Force. Get home, discover that Internet router will not route. Go to Circuit City, buy replacement. Install. Have 1 hour with Carolyn before she goes to the airport.
Sunday – church in the morning. Then stay for Confirmation initial meeting lunch until 1pm. Go home, pay bills. Clean home office to get ready for FIOS installation. Get ready for evening. Go to church for youth group. Get home at 9:30. Get ready for bed.
Monday – after work, platelet donation – almost rejected for high BP due to exhaustion. That takes 2 hours. Go home, reboot DirecTV receiver. Prepare and eat dinner and get a chance to watch 20 minutes of TV. Get ready for bed and go to bed late.
Tuesday (today) – after work, go home. Make and eat dinner. Go to church for Youth and Young Adult Council. Get home about 9. Get ready for bed and try to go to bed a little early.
Wednesday – take day off from work for FIOS installation (expected to take 5-6 hours). Cut lawn if not raining. Possible quiet evening. Do laundry so that there isn’t much to do when Carolyn gets home. In the evening, conference call with pastor and co-chair for Welcome and Outreach Task Force.
Thursday – After work, eat leisurely dinner in only 1/2 hour. Head to Princeton for Theology on Tap young adult evening. Get home late, go to bed late.
Friday – Carolyn gets home from Germany in the afternoon. Do her laundry. Start packing for Saturday.
Saturday – Carolyn and I go to NYC for our 13th wedding anniversary and the 20th anniversary of our first date (both on Monday). Don’t have any specific plans for Saturday yet.
Sunday – go to church in the morning (St. Patrick’s Cathedral?). Go to Spamalot in the afternoon. No evening plans yet.
Monday – maybe a morning NYC activity, then drive home. Collapse.
Tuesday – Friday – vacation from work. No specific plans. SLEEP.
The only activities scheduled by me were the FIOS installation, platelet donation, and the NYC trip (planned over 6 months ago). The rest were scheduled by others.
Happy Birthday, Carolyn
On this date, some number of years ago that I’m not stupid enough to reveal, my wife Carolyn was born in northern NJ.
Happy Birthday, sweetie.
12 or 19 Years
Twelve years ago today, Carolyn and I were married at St. Anthony of Padua church in Butler, NJ.
Nineteen years ago today, Carolyn and I had our first date, attending a showing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail at the Rutgers University Student Center in New Brunswick, NJ.
We’re still happy.
(This is being time-posted. We have better things to think about today than blogging.)
My Wife has a New Job – Sort Of
Back in February, I asked you for help in finding my wife a new job.
On Friday, she accepted a new job with her current employer. This job is a Project Engineer job – similar to the work that she was doing 3 years ago before being promoted to Manager. It’s a step back – she’s going down a grade level and will be at the top of her grade rather than at the bottom of the higher grade, affecting future raises. On the other hand, it stops the “out of work” clock.
As a result, she is still looking, though less desperately. If you have any info that can help, please let me know. You can find some of her qualifications at the link above.
And thanks to all who did help.
Update: Wife’s Job Search
First, thanks to those of you who have e-mailed me directly with job search assistance for my wife. We’ve followed all of those leads.
Yesterday, they gave her a termination date: September 30. She’ll get 20 weeks of severance after that. This assumes that she doesn’t find a job within the company that is remaining in Trenton – there’s a chance of that but she’d have to take a grade-level cut (if not a pay cut) to do so.
Thanks for your help thus far. We could still use more leads if you have them – just e-mail me using the link on the left. If you’re just reading this now for the first time, this post and this post have more information on her situation.
Update on my wife’s job situation
Yesterday, she formally notified her company that she is declining the offer to relocate. At this point, she will be made part of the “Transition Team”. She will be given a termination date sometime in the future with at least 60 days notice. After that, she gets some severance (though not much for someone with 15 years with the company).
I’ll reiterate – we don’t plan for her to stay until she gets the severance. If you have new information or contacts that might help, please let us know.
Help my wife find a job!
Dear Blog Readers,
My wife has just been notified by her company (a large multi-national with foreign headquarters) that they want to relocate her job from Trenton, NJ to Houston, TX. For various reasons (including my own employment, family location, etc) we’ve decided that we are most likely not interested. She has until February 18 to decide.
If she chooses not to go, she will still have a job until summer (maybe September), when a small amount of severance will be paid. She’s also decided that she will leave immediately should the right job come along.
So, she is looking for a job locally.
Her qualifications and experience:
- 15 Years experience in large, rotating industrial machinery
- B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rutgers University’s School of Engineering
- B.A. in Economics from Rutgers University’s Rutgers College (simultaneous with the engineering degree)
- New Jersey Professional Engineer (PE) License
- Project Management Institute PMP certification (Project Management Professional)
- many years design experience – primarily in large rotating machinery and related support systems but also in small security devices
- several years supervisory experience
- has served as Project Engineer and Project Manager on multi-million dollar projects, occasionally filling both roles on the same project
- ISO 9000 trained. Was a member of her company’s internal ISO 9000 auditing group in addition to her engineering responsibilities.
- working knowledge of German, including experience with co-workers in the “home country”
- some Spanish skills
- Current Title: Manager of Project Management
- currently serves as Diversity Coordinator for her division
If you can help, please send me an e-mail at markrsmith@gmail.com and I can send you her resume. (We don’t want to post it here in order to keep some control over distribution.)
Thank you.
Thanks to These Bloggers who have helped with publicizing our plight:
- Laurence Simon – Is Full of Crap.com
- Michele – A Small Victory.com
My Wife’s Hearing Loss?
This morning on the radio, there was a commercial for hearing aids that began:
“Many people live with hearing loss …”
My wife (who is not yet 40, by the way) heard:
“Many people live with their in-laws …”
No, she doesn’t have a physical hearing problem. Her brain is just wired that way.
(NOTE: We’ve never lived with either set of parents.)
My Wife and Airport Security
My wife is flying to Houston today. For various reasons (mainly including her boss), she didn’t buy the ticket until two days ago.
Because of that (and presumably her last name of Smith), she got a little extra treatment from the TSA. She was unable to get a boarding pass from the ATM-like machines – she had to go to an agent at a desk and present her ID. They also searched the heck out of her laptop bag, thinking that they saw a pocketknife. It apparently was part of a computer cable.
She hadn’t boarded yet when I spoke to her, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they pulled her aside for another ID check at the gate.
At one point, the TSA was talking about implementing a “trusted traveller” program. I think they should – it would avoid silly searches of legitimate people.
My Wife’s Been Promoted!
My wife got big news last week. She’s being promoted!
I don’t think I’ve talked about her much here, so here’s a brief synopsis of who she is. She’s a little bit older than me, and we met in college at Rutgers. She graduated with two Bachelor’s degrees: Mechanical Engineering and Economics. She’s been working for the same company since then – a company that’s been bought and sold many times. They’re currently owned by a major multi-national industrial company whose name you would probably recognize (but I won’t mention it here). In addition to her degrees, my wife has gotten her Professional Engineer license in NJ and Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.
She’s also a bit of an odd duck. She and I share a skewed view of the universe – sort of the “Monty Python” take on life. (In fact, our first date was to see “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” on campus.) She manages to pull off strange acts like using sock puppets in meetings and beating trees with newspaper (to get the sap running in the spring – it was actually suggested by an arborist). She’s extremely good at engineering, project management, and customer relations so people are willing to overlook the occasional eccentricity. (I actually LOVE the eccentricity – though it’s much more often than occasional at home.)
For the last year and a bit, she’s been in the large company’s Black Belt program. This program takes regular people, gives them loads of project management training, and turns them into Change Agents. The Black Belt requirements have them running at least 3 major projects in 2 years producing cost savings or revenue improvements. They have to actually go hunting for the projects – management points them at a trouble area and tells them “Have at it.” They also have to supervise two “Green Belts” – people who get a watered-down version of the same training and who only spend 10-20% of their time on such things.
With the Black Belt program, you get pulled out of your regular job for the time in the program. Theoretically, your job is left open for you to return to if you decide that the Black Belt program isn’t working out or after you get your Black Belt certification. In practice, you’ve been identified as a “High Potential” employee and the company WILL try to find you a place once you’re done.
Her company is in the throes of a major reorganization. Everybody has been asked to apply for a job internally – either your current job, another job, or both. She chose to apply for jobs as Manager of Project Engineering, and Manager of Project Management. (Somebody wanted her to be a Supply Chain Manager, but she didn’t really want to run a warehouse.)
She was selected as Manager of Project Management. (Sounds like the old joke – “Dept. of Redundancy Dept.”) She will be supervising three people in Trenton, plus “some” people in Houston (they still haven’t told her who or how many in Houston). That’ll probably have her travelling to Houston at least once a month (her new boss is located there as well). The promotion came with a big raise – something like 20%. She’s been underpaid for several years now – mainly due to never having gotten the pay boost that changing employers will give you. She now makes more than I do.
I’m very proud of her. She’s a little nervous, but I know that she can do the job – maybe after a few rough patches up front. She’s gonna have some challenges – the three people in Trenton have been there a long time (as long as her or more in most cases), and it sounds like several of them applied for the same job and lost. It doesn’t help that they’re all male and I believe older than her. They’ll just have to get over it – my wife had nothing to do with them not being chosen, and very little to do with her being chosen beyond applying for the jobs. She’ll do fine.
Some people have asked me whether I have an issue with making less than my wife. It’s a tough explanation. I don’t have a problem with her making more than me – and part of me wants her to make ENOUGH that I can stay at home and still fly planes for fun (she’s a ways off from that).
I do have a little trouble with the idea that her promotion shines a light on how my career has been stagnating for several years now. I’m in the IT field, and it’s been over 5 years since I’ve been promoted or gotten better than the measly 3% raises that they hand out. I think I may have stayed too long under a boss who really doesn’t believe in me. I’m increasingly thinking that it’s time to go – find another job elsewhere. So – no – I don’t mind my wife making more than me but I really wish that my career was succeeding as well. Not her fault.
Of course, she could buy me lots of expensive toys to make up for it …..
Yay, Sweetie!
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