Officially and Completely Debt FREE!

I just wanted to announce that as of this morning, I am totally debt free! I've paid off all of my debt over the past seven months or so and this morning mailed the big pay-off check for my car. I am still a renter here, but at least I can proudly say that I don't have a cent of debt to my name. It's sort of a weird feeling.

Note to Self ...

When having a restless, sleepless night, it is best not to get up and take a TylenolPM at 1:30 in the morning.

I dragged myself out of the bed this morning, turned on the Today show and spent about 5 minutes freaking out over why the time displayed on the show stated it was "2:24". It took a long time to register that no, it actually said "7:24". doh.

For some reason I find myself really depressed today. I feel a little vulnerable at work, like maybe I'm not doing a good job. I am struggling with the working relationship I have with the PM, he is not the best communicator with me, but likes to schedule private meetings with the users that I've been working with for months, essentially cutting me out of the loop. He will then come and make a project request to me for whatever he has promised the client. Additionally, I am not confident that I am getting credit for any of this work I've done specifically at his request. Maybe it doesn't matter, but it is worrying me.

Today Tech Manager told me that they are relocating me to make room for a new support person who is coming in. I am to be moved from the cube I've been sitting in since January to this shared office around the corner. A shared office sounds good, but I walked by these offices this afternoon and realized that these are offices are designed for one person, two people sharing make it pretty cramped, so I'm kind of upset about losing my own space.

I don't know, I always struggle with confidence issues and maybe I'm just having a bad week, but I'm feeling a little low today.

Speaking of "Lobstah"

I was in the pet supply store the other day and found this stuffed lobster doggie toy -- you know that I had to buy it! I've been cracking up all week watching Lola play with the thing, dragging it around by a "claw", shaking it, growling at it. "Kill the Lobstah! Kill it!" heh. I'm so easily amused.

I Love New England

Summer Special (New Company Cafeteria) on Tuesday & Thursdays: Lobster (“lobstah”) rolls and lobster paninis. You gotta love it.

It's Lunch-Time

So I walk down to the cafeteria as I usually do and notice that they have a shrimp & crab salad sandwich as a deli special today. Hmmm, sounds good, think I'll take a break from my usual turkey. My turn comes:

Me: "I think I'll have the sandwich special".
Sandwich Lady: *blank look, long pause, vague look around* "we're out".
Me: "it's only 12:15!"
SL: ...
Me: *sigh* "I'll have turkey on whole wheat".

12:15 and they're already out? What do I have to do, come down there at 11:30 for my lunch?

Oh well, if this is the biggest hardship or annoyance of my day, then I guess I'm doing pretty well. Of course, the day isn't over yet.

When did our lives become so dull?

I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone the other day. Here is a guy that used to have a pretty exciting life, he traveled a lot, went out a lot – he and I used to do brunch all the time when I still lived in Manhattan. Or margaritas at Rancho (especially if it was a 2-for-1 special). Or martinis at Vermouth. I even once snuck him into Old Company’s fancy schmancy Christmas party at the Plaza. Anyway, we both had active and relatively interesting social lives (too bad I wasn't keeping a blog in those days, might have been halfway interesting). So yesterday we’re talking and neither one of us really had anything much to say. He was droning on & on about some problem he was having with his clothes dryer (his DRYER!) when I finally lost it and interrupted him with hysterical laughter.

Is this how dull our lives have become that the only topic of conversation we can come up with (after a month or two of no contact) is about his stupid dryer? Even sadder is the fact that I had nothing better to offer.

Sheesh.

Life is fragile.

And the last two days have reminded me of that.

First, yesterday, a building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (pretty much the wealthiest neighborhood in NYC) exploded and completely collapsed. At first officials thought the blast was caused by a gas leak (which is bad enough), but as the story has developed, there are suspicions that it may have been an intentional suicide attempt – WTF!

This is one of the things that has always bothered me about living in apartments, your safety is completely dependent on your not having the bad luck to live near some crazy or criminally negligent person. My personal worry has always been the random black-out drunk who falls asleep with a lit cigarette, but this incident opens up a whole new world of fears. Great.

Second, today, a multi-ton concrete “tile” fell from the ceiling of one of the major tunnels that snake under Boston and killed a woman sitting in her car on her way to the airport for a vacation. So here is this woman sitting in her car with her husband, on their way to the airport, probably all excited about their coming trip to Vegas and out of nowhere, WHAM! It’s all over.

You would think after 9/11 I wouldn’t need reminders such as these to shake me up, but apparently I do.

Definitely Summer

Damn, it's hot out there today, but pretty much in that "good" Summer way -- very sunny, quite warm, blue skies, but not that blinding-white-sky-so-humid-that-even-a-15-minute-jaunt-outside-makes-one-utterly-miserable-type of Summer day. I don't seem to be minding the Summer nearly as much up here in New Hampshire as I did in NYC (although, I'm sure there are a lot of factors contributing to that).

Friday was an interesting day at work. I had a couple of emails before I had even left my apartment in the morning, one to let me know that the PM on my project was out sick and the other a forwarded email from the business liaison about a reporting program that was screwed up (for an area of the Desk that is not usually my responsibility) and could I maybe help? (Since PM was out sick).

It turns out that the PM has a reporting program that he wrote that runs on with a regularly scheduled job and pushes an Excel file out for various VPs in the trading area to review. So, after this has gone out, it turns out that much of the info was wrong and it becomes an urgent issue to get it fixed right away. Conveniently, the author of the program is out sick, so they come to me.

After doing a little looking around, I find that this is a reporting program for which I had, at the request of PM, developed a special technique for pulling multiple rows of data together for display (something that wasn't straight-forward and took me half a day or more to do). Anyway, so I'm a little familiar with part of the program, which helps. I was able to pull apart the program and (after breathing a sigh of relief that the incorrect data was not caused by anything I had written) I was able to fix the problems. I then worked with the various parties to get the updated files in place for the next scheduled run that afternoon.

I'm glad that I was able to jump right in and help. That I was able to fix the problems relatively easily and that the clients were all appreciative of my efforts. All these things I hope will assist in their viewing me as a valued contributor. The business liaison sent out a very nice note to my manager late in the afternoon (cc:ing the tech manager on the customer side and me, of course) complimenting me on the work I did and the very quick turnaround, especially with having no notice, etc.

It is really little bits of feedback like this that make all the angst and frustrations and uncertainties of my work worthwhile.

There was one small thing that disturbed me, however. Speaking with the business guy, I found that the way the data was displayed, for which I had developed my technique for PM, had been a special request from the business. I quickly realized after discussing everything that no one has any idea that I was the one who worked this out for them. I didn't speak up then to inform them of this, but it bothers me a bit. I wonder what other future work of mine the PM plans to take credit for. Or perhaps I'm being paranoid (wouldn't be the first time).

Things I Love about New Company

(well, one of the things anyway) Free lunch! I try not to take advantage every day (although most people do), but Friday is "sandwich" day and there always seems to be plenty extra. I should put the money I save on lunch into a pedicure fund or something.

On Fridays this group also always has free bagels & donuts in the morning too, but I avoid all that like the plague.

ICK!

What is it with women who like to wear tons of perfume??? This morning, I go on the elevator to take Lola out and must have gotten on right after someone who had been wearing TONS of it, it was horrible. Well, after bringing her back in, I milled around putting together the bag I bring to work and my fruit & yogurt, I fed the dog, etc. Only to finally come back out, summon the elevator and find that it STILL stunk to high heaven. I mean, I could smell the elevator coming (and I am NOT exaggerating). Maybe this was from a new woman, I can't imagine all the perfume from the first trip hung around that long, but the smell was so strong, I couldn't tell the difference in fragrance at that stage. I sure do feel sorry for anyone who has to work in the vicinity of this woman (women), must make for a miserable work day.

Catching Up

So it has again been a long time since I’ve written. I don’t really know why, I’m just not feeling it, I guess. What’s new with me? Not a whole helluva lot, but let’s see:

I got a bit of a raise! That was exciting. It’s nominal, but then again, my big raise came by taking this new job and making this big move. The mid-year raise is important though in that it is a bit of barometer as to whether my manager thinks I’m doing a good job. It’s also refreshing to have a little review mid-year. This way if anything is not on track, I have the opportunity to make adjustments.

I am proud to say that in the next week or so I am going to be completely debt free! Well, except for my car, but all of the debt that I’ve been living with for years & years & years will be completely gone. It’s a great feeling.

I received my new bed and mattress and am very happy with both. The delivery of all was rather stressful however – first, I wasn’t given any options about the delivery of the bed, they said they were coming on Thursday (2 weeks ago) and that was that. Well, of all the days of the week, Thursday is my worst and least flexible (and unfortunately, that week was particularly bad). They then called me the night before and narrowed it down to sometime from 2:00 – 7:00 PM. Of course I had to be in a meeting until 2 PM and the meeting ran over. But still, they didn’t end up showing up until around 6 PM anyway. ARGH! And then the mattress delivery was the next day: I had taken that Friday off as a vacation day because of the delivery (I had hoped to also get the bed delivered that day too) and because my father was stopping through overnight on his way home from Maine. Well, we had severe storms that morning and, just as the delivery guys were pulling up outside my building, all of our electricity went out! If they had been just a couple of minutes earlier, they would have been in my elevator when it went out and they would have been stuck, stuck, stuck! (the electricity was out for about an hour). So, these poor guys ended up having to haul the thing up three floors of stairs – still, much better than being stuck in the elevator! Anyway, I now have my new bed and I’m loving it. Sleep. Is. Good. Although, can someone please explain to me why my dog thinks that she needs to sleep practically on top of me now that we have all this additional space? Sheesh!

As I mentioned before, my father came through for a short visit. Two short visits, actually. He went up to Maine for a fishing trip with some old college fraternity buddies and so he stopped over night on his way there and on his way back. Both times we managed dinner with my various cousins who live locally. The second visit everyone managed to come, so it was a lot of fun. Even though I don’t see my cousins very often, I really like knowing that they’re close by. Anyway, on his second visit, my father got to my place earlier and since I had taken a vacation day, I was able to take the time to drive him around a bit. I showed him New Company’s campus and drove around the area some. I also drove him through a couple of condo complexes where I had looked at townhouses. He seemed to really like the area and even liked the apartment that I’m currently living in. (Surprising because he is usually extremely hard to please). Of course when he was leaving on the morning of his second visit, he somehow managed to completely back up my toilet (I don’t even want to know how THAT happened) and was all ready to just leave me with it, but I made him run up to Lowes to buy a damn plunger. SHEESH!

What else? Well, it looks like my NYC friends, Ellen & Ken, are going to stop by on Monday. They are going to be in Massachusetts on a little bike trip and so are going to plan to come this way for dinner to see me (and my place and my dog). It should be fun, I miss them.

Oh, so this is funny! Have you ever seen the movie "Office Space"? If you haven’t, you HAVE to rent it, particularly if you work in an office. It’s basically a spoof on office culture, it was done about 8 years ago, but has a bit of a cult following. ANYWAY, last week they (this department where my project is located) announced that Friday (last Friday) was going to be Hawaiian Shirt Day! I almost spit out my coffee when I heard. Anyway, come Friday and EVERYONE was wearing a Hawaiian shirt (all the guys anyway, and there are mostly guys here). People were so serious about it that the big mucky muck here sent around an email letting everyone know that he had 5 EXTRA shirts, in case anyone didn’t have one. I was laughing my ass off all day. I am so jaded, I think I lived and worked in NYC for too long.

Free Time

Since moving here to New Hampshire, I am finding myself with plenty of free time and also with much more freedom to get around than I enjoyed in NYC, having a car and all. I'm child-free, don't have a lot of obligations outside of work, and so I've been thinking about what I can do with some of my free time. I've thought of going to school at night, various possible volunteering opportunities, leasing or buying a horse, and even getting a part-time job. I tend to wallow around on the weekends, the first half of the weekend may be a bit justified as I'm usually tired from crappy and not enough sleep during the week (hopefully my sleep quality will start to get better once I have my new bed), but the rest of it is usually pure laziness. Easy enough to justify when there is torrential rain outside (as has been the case for the past month or so), but this rain has to end sometime.

So, I've been thinking about it and I've come to the conclusion that I should be doing something I enjoy and also something that is completely different from my job (because otherwise, what's the point?) So I think I'd like to find some kind of volunteer opportunity working with animals. Even if it's just walking dogs for a local animal shelter, or brushing horses for an equine rescue or something.

With that decision, I sent in a volunteer application for this place today. We'll see if they get back to me.

A Good Week Afterall

Despite my physical complaints, I actually ended up having a good week at work. Things are a bit crazy & stressful at the moment while the project I'm working on is going through a bit of a reorg. The project management is being shifted over to our client side, and I'm trying to get used to the transition and the new project manager in place who I now have to work with. He's a very nice guy and very enthusiastic and approachable, but I don't think he's quite gotten it just yet (as I wrote about previously). I don't think he's grasped the various priorities and scope of the project. I think he also has a too casual attitude about some of the work and the meetings we have on a regular basis. Every time I talk to him he is spouting new and grandiose ideas about all these bells & whistles-type stuff we can do, while I am right now concerned about getting the actual meaningful content and necessary core functionality out to the users. Bells & whistles are great, but there needs to be a natural progression for this stuff and I don't think this guy is really getting that. He also has this habit of dragging me away from my work willy nilly to run over to his desk to help him debug something that he's working on, or to teach him how to do something with the BI tool. It's fine, but it seems to be happening every day now and can be distracting to my own work when I have to drop everything and go sit with him for an hour or so.

All of this sounds annoying and the makings for maybe a bad week at work, but this past week I got the impression from the head guy in the client space that he really appreciates my efforts and that my role is valued there. New PM is apparently going to be on vacation all of this week. One of the problems is, there is an important meeting/presentation that is happening on Thursday. New PM had put together this Power Point document outlining all the various areas of the project and a bunch of other information that is going to be presented to this mucky-muck trader guy who is supposed to be at the Big Meeting. When I found out that New PM was not going to be present for the meeting, I asked him who was meant to do the presentation in his absence (I had put together a bunch of slides with screen shots to represent some of the reporting I've done, but this is only one piece of the thing). So he says, "R" will be doing it ("R" is the head of the tech group on the client side and New PM's boss). So, on Friday I went into "R's" office and asked him how I could help him for the meeting for next week. He looked blankly at me for a moment and then said, "I thought we were just doing a demo?" I said, "well, New PM put together a whole presentation, so I think his intentions were more involved than that". "R" then communicated to me that he was upset that New PM had just announced at the last minute that he was taking a vacation for a week and basically dropping the ball on a lot of stuff. It is particularly bad timing as we're still in this transitional period and the Desk (for whom this project is for) is also in a transition (the new head trader guy who is supposed to be seeing our stuff for the first time in our Big Meeting). We also talked briefly about some of things the New PM is proposing for the project that are positioned to take everything completely off track. "R" thanked me for being proactive about the meeting and my assistance to him and asked me to take care of a few things for him.

I also had a meeting on Friday with my head end user, the trader who is driving all of the requests and requirements of the project. I was able to show him the new module that I am working on for him and he seemed pretty happy with it. We spent some time brain storming on how we could exploit the functionality possibilities to make it the most useful tool for them and I came away with a very clear plan of action for this coming week.

So things are challenging, but I feel like I'm making valuable contributions and am pretty firmly entrenched in my position within the project. I've gotten comfortable with the various players and they with me. Of course everything can change in a heartbeat with one screw-up, but at least I don't feel quite as tenuous as I did for the first few months. It was hard coming from a position that I had been in for years & years to a brand new company, environment, business, project, etc. but my comfort level finally seems to be growing a bit.

Not Having a Good Week

First I throw my back out over the weekend and now I both feel a virus coming on (I'm achy and headachy and I have a sore throat) and also have lots of female-style crampiness in my hip area suddenly. And my back still hurts. I'm just generally a wreck.

Today I Spent $3,000 ...

ACK!!!

I bought ...

This bed

and

This mattress

of course I now have to wait for a few weeks before I can enjoy my new bed, but at least I can look forward to some decent sleep sometime in my near future.

Tuesday

Julia is doing the cereal diet. I am thinking of doing it too. As much for the convenience of not having to cook or figure out what to eat in the evening as for the diet aspect. Actually, I had cereal for dinner last night, so I guess it's on.

I still have a lot of pain in my lower back, but it's a little better. Sitting in one position all day at work isn't helping much however. I just ordered a new bed, now I have to go buy a mattress. I am finally, finally, finally going to have a brand new, just for me queen-size bed. After years & years of sleeping on this full-sized cast-off. Certainly my dismal bed situation hasn't been helping matters with my back!

It's Always Something

While standing and reaching for something on my coffee table this morning, I somehow managed to throw my back out and now I can hardly move! Can't believe this.

ARGH!

Julia said:

"So. Are you ever gonna blog again? Or are we going to have to start calling you MJ?

:o)
Julia "

I know I know I know. So I didn't even blog at all for the entire month of May. I just haven't really felt like it. There also hasn't been too much of anything very interesting to write about really. I haven't even read a blog in all this time. Sheesh!

So, what's new? Well, my apartment finally, finally, finally closed! That was a complete relief. I had visions of this dragging on and on indefinitely, but in the end everything ended up going very smoothly and painlessly. So this makes my move out of NYC complete and final. Although I have to say that it does feel weird to think of some stranger now living in "my" place. That first weekend in particular I kept wondering if the new owners were in the process of moving in or what. Anyway, it's over now. I'll probably always miss many of the people, but I can't say I'll ever particularly miss Queens.

Work at New Company has been coming along and I feel like I've made progress on my project. I've had some good and positive feedback, both from the customer and from my manager. And my principal end user has in the past couple of weeks expressed a certain degree of satisfaction that I didn't really feel was there for the project previously. So I think I've turned a corner here. There is still a lot of work to do and a lot of requests & requirements to fulfill and I'm still stressed and I worry constantly, but I don't feel quite as freaked out.

There have been some other reorgs on the project lately however, and I find myself virtually the last one from my team still a major part of it. I was a bit dismayed the other day to find myself the sole representative from my group in a meeting otherwise full of our customers. ACK! There is now also a new project manager representing the customer who I don't feel has quite yet grasped the scope or complexity or even the various priorities of the project. He keeps talking about alot of bells & whistle type stuff when we are still trying to get the content required and the basic functionality out to the users. So, I'm stressed. I actually feel more comfortable and confident in my specific role, but I am worried about how & when certain necessary steps are going to happen. At least I feel like I know my day-to-day role and I usually have a good sense of the importance and necessary priority of certain steps and can also usually see the "big" picture, so as long as I'm given the freedom that I have had thus far, my end should continue to progress. The customer also expressed that they want me on the project through the end of the year (previously I was meant to be on this specific assignment until about June or July) and also they hope they can use me to pitch in on some other concurrent reporting work in the department during this time as well. So, I would say these are all good things and if you asked my manager, he would say definitely so. Especially since apparently this is one of the more important customers for my group. It's definitely interesting from my point of view anyway.

I'm enjoying my apartment, it's relatively spacious and comfortable and quiet. I love having the little deck and after living in old and semi-decrepit (creaky hollow floors & all) NYC apartments, it's rather nice to live somewhere where everything is pretty new. And you gotta love central A/C. LOVE!

I still have a lot of unpacking to do here though. I sometimes sit here and just look helplessly at the boxes around the place and I don't even know where to start. It's also kind of a bummer not knowing where anything is. At least my kitchen stuff is all put away, but I have no idea where most of my Summer clothes are.

I also love the walking trail out the back door of my apartment. Lola & I have enjoyed some nice, long walks there over the past month. The ticks however are plentiful, so I've taken Lola to a local vet and gotten her vaccinations for Lyme Disease and a new heartworm medicine that also kills ticks. Luckily I've only found one tick on myself though.

RAIN!

We've had crazy rain here over the past few weeks! Complete insanity, real wrath of God stuff. First there was the eight days of consistent rain, culminating in the weekend of over 100 inches. There were many flooded out homes and businesses in this area as well as road closures all over. At one point I drove a route along the Merrimack River where you could see that the river had risen all the way to the bridge. People were all pulled over to the side of the road to view the swollen river and the houses across the way flooded completely over their first floors. Since that crazy weekend, there continues to be periods of rain (like today), much of it torrential (like last night).

Here is one of the things I like about living here: I kind of like thunderstorms, last night some big ones rolled into the area and I was able to enjoy standing on my little deck and watching the storm (the deck has roof with an overhang so I can stand there during the heaviest rain storm and not get at all wet). A part of my trail has been turned into a pond (not a puddle, but a complete pond of standing water) that doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. There is a bit of a detour up onto a path along some RR tracks. Luckily you only have to cross that path for a few yards, otherwise I would be completely cut off from most of my wonderful trail.

So, things are quiet here in New Hampshire, but that's the way I like it these days. Quiet and serene with purposeful, interesting work to be done. I don't have much of a social life here, but then again, I hadn't really enjoyed much of a social life in NYC these past couple of years anyway, so I'm not really missing much in that regard.

Real Estate People are Unbelievable

At least sometimes. I decided to go to an open house that I knew about today since I had nothing better to do. I didn't think that I would have a serious interest in the condo, but I hadn't seen one in this particular complex yet, so I took the opportunity to take a look. Anyway, as I suspected, the condo isn't for me, it's rather small, too close to the highway and another busy road, the campus is a little cramped, etc. (but it was cheap!) Anyway, as I looked at the place, the realtor asked the typical questions, do I have kids, where do I work, etc. The realtor then went on to stress about how I didn't "need" any more space since it is just me. I love how these realtors love to tell you exactly what you need, while at the same time not really knowing anything at all about you. What does she know what I need or want? I mean, I could have lots of extended family and friends who plan to visit all the time, or maybe I have a couple of huge dogs, or a hobby the requires space, or I need a fully functioning home office, in addition to a guest bedroom or something. Sheesh!