11 of 12

 Tagged with: , , , ,
Jun 102011
 

I’m spending 11 of the next 12 nights on the road on 2 separate trips.

I should be really excited about it, for starters I get to go on my very first-time-ever-in-my-life-trip to Europe. I’ll be spending 5 days in Germany and then traveling to Paris, France for 3 days!  But right now I’m so incredibly stressed out about the logistics of the trip, my role while I’m there (I’m going for work in support of my boss) that I literally can’t sleep.  It’s 5am as I draft this post and I’ve been up since 3:15, my brain absolutely won’t stop, there are some incomplete details and I’m NOT looking forward to dealing with my boss in a few hours.  We’re scheduled to leave tomorrow yet there are some administrative details that are not complete, that he’ll hold me responsible for, yet are out of my control.

I’m sure that I’ll enjoy myself once I get there. For starters I GET TO GO TO GERMANY AND FRANCE!  I also have plans to see an old enlisted Army buddy of mine, he’s now an officer and stationed not too far from where I’ll be.  I haven’t seen him since 2003 so it will be good to catch up with him.  Once in Paris we’ll be staying in the heart of the city and you know I’m packing my DSLR for this trip!

I’ll get home from Paris next Saturday and then barely 24 hours later will head out again, this time to nowhere exciting at all, somewhere in the eastern US. This will be a purely business trip and there’s nothing to look forward too. Especially after returning from 8 days away from my family, I’m not relishing the idea of turning around and leaving again so soon.

===============================================

I would love to have been able to take Veronica with my to Germany and France. Unfortunately the trip came up only a few weeks ago, after she had arranged vacation time from work, a grandparent to watch the kids and bought her non-refundable plane ticket to join me in Denver last week.

She’s turning 40 in the fall and talked about wanted to escape for a long weekend alone in Paris, so I’m just thinking of this as a scouting trip for her!

===============================================

We have a public affairs office at work and I’ve gotten to know the staff photographer who works there. I often tease him that if one of his lenses ever goes missing that I’m the first person he should suspect. I was talking with his boss, the head of the public affairs office, about the trip to Europe and about teasing the photographer about stealing one of his lenses someday.

“You know, I bet he’d loan you a lens for the trip if you ask nicely. I’d have no problem with that”

Now I didn’t get my hands on the Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 that I’ve been lusting over, but I do have a very nice 24-120 f/3.5-5.6 to carry with me! The specs aren’t too different from the kit lens I usually carry but it’s much better quality glass and I’m looking forward to shooting with it all next week.

===============================================

I’m not too fond of my new boss, fortunately this is just an interim job for me and in mid-July I’ll be going back to my regular job, my own hours, and best of all my own office.  He’s just not very personable, he’s not someone I would want to spend time with outside of the office, we just don’t have any kind of report that way.  Eight days on the road with him will be interesting.

===============================================

Can you tell that I have mixed emotions about this trip?

 Life, Work  7 Responses »

Day 137 Atlas

 Tagged with: , , ,
May 172011
 

Yesterday I found out about another work trip, I had to get the big National Geographic atlas out to show the kids where I’ll be going in a month or so.  All that I’ll say for now is that it’s a different continent and it’ll be my first trip there in my life :-)

105mm macro lens, 1/25 sec at f/3.0, ISO 1600

 

 Pictures  1 Response »

New Office Policy

 Tagged with: ,
May 162011
 

Since it’s Monday morning, it’s a good time to remind all of you of the new office policy

Dress Code:
1) You are advised to come to work dressed according to your salary.

2) If we see you wearing Prada shoes and carrying a Gucci bag, we will assume you are doing well financially and therefore do not need a raise.

3) If you dress poorly, you need to learn to manage your money better, so that you may buy nicer clothes, and therefore you do not need a raise.

4) If you dress just right, you are right where you need to be and therefore you do not need a raise.

Sick Days:
We will no longer accept a doctor’s statement as proof of sickness. If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work.

Personal Days:
Each employee will receive 104 personal days a year.
They are called Saturdays & Sundays. 

Bereavement Leave:
This is no excuse for missing work. There is nothing you can do for dead friends, relatives or co-workers. Every effort should be made to have non-employees attend the funeral arrangements in your place. In rare cases where employee involvement is necessary, the funeral should be scheduled in the late afternoon. We will be glad to allow you to work through your lunch hour and subsequently leave one hour early.

Bathroom Breaks:
Entirely too much time is being spent on the toilet.
There is now a strict three-minute time limit in the stalls. At the end of three minutes, an alarm will sound, the toilet paper roll will retract, the stall door will open, and a picture will be taken. After your second offense, your picture will be posted on the company bulletin board under the ‘Chronic Offenders’ category. Anyone caught smiling in the picture will be sectioned under the company’s mental health policy.

Lunch Break:
* Skinny people get 30 minutes for lunch, as they need to eat more, so that they can look healthy.

* Normal size people get 15 minutes for lunch to get a balanced meal to maintain their average figure.

* Chubby people get 5 minutes for lunch, because that’s all the time needed to drink a Slim-Fast.

Thank you for your loyalty to our company. We are here to provide a positive employment experience. Therefore, all questions, comments, concerns, complaints, frustrations, irritations, aggravations, insinuations, allegations, accusations, contemplations, consternation and input should be directed elsewhere.

The Management
Pass this on to all who are employed!

Happy Monday!!!

 Funny  2 Responses »

Day 131 Bed

 Tagged with: , , ,
May 112011
 

I was thinking about what to photograph for today, something I’m grateful for, and all I could think about was going to bed because I’m so tired. Then I realized, I could take a photograph of my bed!

Why am I so tired Tuesday night? Allow me to recap the last day or so…

Monday I worked a full day, 9 hours or so in the office. I left my truck there are rode my bicycle the 18 miles home. Keep in mind I’ve barely done any riding this spring and am woefully out of shape right now. Of course, this obligated me to ride back into work on Tuesday morning.

Normally the ride takes me somewhere between 54 and 57 minutes.  Tuesday? 1 hour 8 minutes :-(   Not only was I tired from the ride home Monday evening, but I had a stiff headwind for the entire ride. To add to my misery it started to drizzle intermittently during the ride. Sounds like a fun start to my day, right?

Of course, I still had a full day at work ahead of me, then since Veronica had a meeting in the evening I was on Mr Mom duty, picking up the kids, making dinner, supervising homework, etc.

Bed is sounding really good right now!

105mm macro lens, 1/15 sec at f/3.0, ISO 1600

 

 Pictures  4 Responses »

Apropos of Nothing

 Tagged with: , , ,
May 012011
 

Absent motivation (and time) to write a real blog post, you get a brain-dump instead…

Project365 has become a victim of circumstance. I missed a day 3 weeks ago, another day 2 weeks ago, and now I’ve missed 2 days in the past week.  Some of the days when I did get a picture, I felt like I was looking for something to shoot for the sake of the blog and for no other reason. Remember when I attended a weekend workshop put on by The Nikon School back in January? One of the instructors said something that has stuck with me- “In the age of digital photography, we’re shooting more than ever, but sharing less than ever.” There are times when I shoot a bunch of photos of the kids or life around the house, but when I look back my efforts went into making sure I had content for Projec365 instead of sharing photos with family. I need to reevaluate my approach and find ways to share memories of the kids with grandparents, etc.

Work has been kicking my ass, but in a good way, lately. Several weeks ago I was given the opportunity to spent a couple of months as interim executive assistant to a senior leader new to our organization. While this may sound like a step down, it’s not, it’s actually a great professional development opportunity and has the potential to improve my career progression and chances for promotion.  My new boss arrived last week and we have been VERY busy, we’re just getting started and I put in a 55 hour work week and this coming week looks to be about the same.

Katie and I are doing well, I did manage to escape the office on Tuesday to have lunch with her. I told my colleagues that I was heading off to have lunch with a hot woman, they assumed that I was referring to my wife.  If they only knew :-) (Not that Veronica isn’t hot, of course…)  We haven’t had quality alone time in a few weeks and with my new job responsibilities it’s going to become increasingly difficult to arrange that.  But we’ll manage, she knows what’s going on and understands.

I’m now part of an office of 5 people- my new boss the senior executive, his deputy, a secretary, a public affairs person and myself. I think his deputy is going to drive me batshit crazy. Here’s an example of her management style- an e-mail is sent to both she and I from someone outside the organization. Rather than looking to see that I’m also on the To: line, she forwards (without comment) the message to me. Okay, that’s not really a big deal, I just delete what she forwarded since I already got the message. But 30 seconds after she hits send she’s standing at my desk letting me know what she just did. Really? Apparently she has nothing better to do, doesn’t trust e-mail to work and/or doesn’t trust me to read and react appropriately to e-mail messages.

Another downside to the move is that I’m sharing an office with someone, no more private office for me, at least for the next several months. If you follow me on Twitter you might have noticed that I was VERY quiet during the week. Even if I wasn’t so damn busy, I don’t have the privacy that would enable me to goof off online once in a while during the day. Oh well, they are paying me to work (and paying me quite well) so I guess I can’t complain…

Oh, one bright side besides the professional growth and development is that the public affairs woman is smokin’ hot and has a flirtatious streak. So there’s that :-)

Time to get off my ass and do stuff around the house, the boss and I have a flight this evening.

===========================================

AN IRISH BLONDE IN A CASINO

An attractive blonde from Cork , Ireland arrived at the casino. She seemed a little intoxicated and bet twenty-thousand Euros on a single roll of the dice.

She said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I feel much luckier when I’m completely nude’.

With that, she stripped from the neck down, rolled the dice and with an Irish brogue yelled, ‘Come on, baby, Mama needs new clothes!’

As the dice came to a stop, she jumped up and down and squealed…’YES! YES! I WON, I WON!’

She hugged each of the dealers and then picked up her winnings and her clothes and quickly departed.

The dealers stared at each other dumbfounded.

Finally, one of them asked, ‘What did she roll?’

The other answered, ‘I don’t know – I thought you were watching.’

MORAL OF THE STORY -

Not all Irish are drunks,
not all blondes are dumb,
but all men…are men.

 Life, Misc.  3 Responses »

Paging Dr Hubman

 Tagged with: ,
Apr 132011
 

What is it with family?  You’re kinda-sorta an expert in something and they think you know it all. Anyone who knows me knows for damn sure that I don’t know it all, much less part of it all!

So I’ve earned my Ph.D. in a field related to medicine, but not IN medicine, I have ZERO clinical skills. Even though I’ve been working in this area for many years and have talked at length about the work that I do with my family, I still get the most inappropriate questions. Two recent instances reminded me of this.

First, my dad has been having trouble with his knees. He proceeds to describe to me the pain he’s been feeling, when it occurs, what aggravates it and so on. It’s like he thinks I’m an orthopedic surgeon!

“So what do you think it might be?”

“Dad, I don’t have a clue”

“Really? I thought you knew about this sort of thing”

“Why, because I had an anatomy class 20 years ago? Have you been paying attention when we’ve talked about my work for the past 10 years?”

Fortunately he did see an orthopedist, got some physical therapy and his knees are feeling a little better, at least as good as 67 yr old knees can feel.

Last week Veronica’s mom, who I love dearly, e-mailed Veronica with her latest medical issues. Among the issues was something abnormal appearing with her lungs that showed up on an abdominal x-ray.

Am I a radiologist? No

Am I a pulmonologist? No

Did that stop Veronica’s mom from asking for my opinion of what the doctor saw? Of course not!

Oh yeah, I should mention that she was asking me because it was her gynecologist who wanted the x-ray and told her to follow-up for her regular doc. She couldn’t wait until she actually got to see her doc, so she turned to me, as if I have a freakin’ clue…

I can’t be the only one this happens too, right? At the very least there have to be some IT types who are bugged by family- you know computers so of course you know every piece of software out there, right?

 Family  13 Responses »

It wasn’t just me

 Tagged with: , , ,
Apr 092011
 

We really did have a pretty bad winter!

Now that winter really seems to be over I think I can talk about this without risk of jinxing us and causing more snow. If you enter “snow” in the search bar over there on the right you’ll see that I posted a number of pictures this past winter. Here’s a chart from the local paper (best use: for the dog to shit on) showing data from the department of public works- we had almost twice the normal amount of snow this year!

=======================================================

I’ve really been neglecting my blog this week. I have another weeks worth of Project365 photos to post, Veronica and I still have to follow up with part 2 of A Promising Start, I’ve got some posts I can write about Katie, there’s a Swing Shift post or two percolating in my head, and I’ve got some big changes going on at work that I want to try to talk about (but without giving away who I work for, which is the challenge).

I leave for another work trip on Monday, I’ll be gone all week and may not be able to bring my Mac, just my work laptop, which I can’t blog from. I hope to get some posts written and scheduled this weekend, wish me luck!

Anyone in the Washington DC area and Baltimore areas? I’ll be there all week :-)

 Misc.  5 Responses »

Home Stress

 Tagged with: , , ,
Mar 242011
 

No, not stress at home, stress about home. Let me explain.

We bought our home in 2007 when we moved to Massachusetts. Since then, in case you’ve been living under a rock and didn’t notice, the economy hasn’t been all that great. For a while we owned more on the house than it was (probably) worth, though I think that situation has changed at least. What I know for sure is that we’re not going to come close to making out like we did when we sold our home in Pennsylvania. We owned that house for just 3 years and walked away with over $40K after closing costs were paid. Not too shabby!

Why am I concerned about this?

We’ll be moving in 2012.

More explaining is in order, though a little more circumspect for now. Maybe someday I’ll say just who I’m a research scientist for, but certainly not yet. I will say that my employer offers some unique opportunities to relocate to other parts of the company (and country) periodically, and in fact such moves are encouraged if I’m interested in moving up the ladder someday.

Since last weekend I’ve been at 2 locations in Maryland for a training course, one of which is where I’ll be moving to in 2012. I’ve taken advantage of having some free time in the evenings to explore the area, checking out neighborhoods and gauging what areas we might consider living in.

This has lead to all sorts of stressful questions

What if we have trouble selling our home?

What if our home still isn’t worth what we owe on it?

What about keeping that place and renting it?

Do we want to be landlords from 400 miles away?

Can we afford what we want in Maryland?

Can we find the perfect house for us in an area with good schools? We plan on being in this area at least until DB graduates high school (now there’s a scary thought!)

Will Veronica have trouble finding a job?

Thursday evening Veronica called and we spent 20 minutes talking about our options, and about my impressions of the area.

I felt so much better after talking to her.

Still, this being a responsible adult shit is no fun some days…

 Life  9 Responses »

Quickie

 Tagged with: , , ,
Mar 232011
 

Not you pervs, not that type of quickie, I’ve only got 10 minutes before I have to finish getting ready to go! Quick thoughts, in bullets…

- there are some high maintenance people in this course I’m attending. Attendance is 100% voluntary yet you’d think someone held a gun to their heads to get them here.

- I need to get out for some exercise, 9 hrs a day in a classroom is NOT helping me reach my weight loss or fitness goals!

- While I’m here I’m able to check out the area that we’re 99.9% sure that we’ll be moving to someday

- It’s a shame to have 6 nights in a hotel room and no one to share it with

- I’m glad I choose to drive rather than fly here. I was able to stop and meet a blogger friend on the way here, I didn’t have to worry about packing light because I was flying, and I have the freedom to get around once I get back to my hotel once the work day is over

- But why did I bring my work laptop? I spent 2 hrs last night replying to e-mails that have accumulated while I was gone

- I’m looking forward to a couple of vacation days when I get back home. And a date with Katie :-)

- Now that we’ve changed training sites, I’m not forcibly Disconnected from the outside world.

- I really need to do better at replying to comments on my blog, I appreciate everyone who takes the time to leave a comment yet I don’t do a good job of showing that appreciation.

Time to go, have a great day!

 Misc.  6 Responses »

Disconnected

 Tagged with: , , , , ,
Mar 212011
 

Between e-mail, text messaging, Twitter and Facebook, I normally have several ways to stay in touch with the virtual world.

But not this week!

If you follow me on Twitter you might have seen on Saturday that I was on a bit of a road trip. If you follow me on Twitter AND you possess exceptional powers of observation you may have noticed my absence for 11+ hours during the day on Sunday.

I’m certainly not what you would call a prolific Twitterer, at least I don’t think I am, but I do tend to at least keep up with my timeline and occasionally chime in with something, so I’m not completely invisible. I also do my best to respond to e-mails and if I’m really desperate I’ll log on to Facebook. Hey, that’s where family is; it’s boring by default! What I’m saying is, is that I can often be found online in some form or fashion during the day, as work allows and my extended absence on Sunday was very unusual for me.

The reason for my trip this week is for a training course, part of which is taking place somewhere with very strict security measures, so strict that visitors such as myself are not allowed to even bring camera phones into the building. I can’t try to cheat and bring my phone with me anyway, we all have to pass through a security checkpoint, including metal detectors, to enter the building.

For a few hours in the morning I felt like I was going through technology withdrawal, but as the day went on it got better and after a while I didn’t really miss it all that much. Sure, it would have been nice to randomly text Veronica to tell her I love her and was thinking about her, but after 20+ yrs, she knows that anyway :-)

I realized a couple of things Sunday. For one, I spend too much time online, even if I’m not interacting with others. I practically have Twitter ADD, checking it much more often than I “need” to. It’s a good thing all of these online connections and friends weren’t around when I was in grad school, I never would have graduated!

While this cartoon is true to some extent, I need to start pulling back some…

 Misc.  5 Responses »
 Older Entries  Newer Entries

Subscribe Via Email

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner