Category Archives: Ramblings

Changes

Posted on by

Today’s featured image is one of my desk at Digital Life one year ago today.  Ah, the innocence of rubber duckies, lightly-salted almonds, and not having a clue what was in store for me….

Or for Digital Life, for that matter.  I don’t think that, at least after the first year of my employment there, I ever made much of a secret of the fact that I thought upper management was taking a great idea at Digital Life and ruining it.  When I left Global Network Operations for the DL gig, I did so in large part because I thought I was getting in on the ground floor of a project that would actually make life better for a lot of people.  The buzzwords back then (2012?) were “Living In Place,” and I honestly believed that DL could change the way people live.

See, the big idea was home automation that could be monitored.  Monitored by oneself or by someone else.  So that, for instance, elderly parents could continue to live in their own home and their children or other designates could help to keep them safe.  Your 89-year-old mom leaves the iron turned on for 6 hours?  No problem – you can shut it off with your phone.  Fires, water leaks, gas leaks…all of those things that you want to know about would be detectable and actionable from anywhere in the world.  DL was literally almost called “Living in Place,” with the idea that you didn’t have to be at your home to run it.  You didn’t have to put the folks into assisted living.  You didn’t have to worry about your cats.  Nearly everything could be automated, and our platform was going to offer that automation and continually improve upon it.

Then the bigwigs got involved.  They saw that there was a very large portion of the American populace without home security systems.  They saw that ADT was making a truckload of money by playing to people’s fear.  And they decided that Digital Life was going offer some home automation, sure – but first and foremost, DL was going to be a home security system.  And not just ANY home security system, but one that was hopelessly understaffed, wildly overpriced, and pathetically devoid of anything approaching high quality or creativity.  Living in Place was secondary, as evidenced by the fact that new automation devices were not investigated or added to the list of supported devices.  Decent cameras.  Learning thermostats.  Third-party door locks.  Voice recognition modules.

You know….the kinds of things that Google is currently dominating the market with.

It was all about police, fire, and rescue.  Riding on the back of an antiquated system that was developed before digital switches.  Literally – software had to be developed to mimic physical switches so that cellular technology – which had damned near completely replaced landlines – would work.  And AT&T didn’t even take ownership of the software.  They farmed it out to a company that no one has ever heard of.

And for all of this mediocrity, they charged the customer significantly more than, say, ADT.

So I was among the first wave of DL employees to get the boot.  Got a text yesterday from the area manager of the call center that I supported.  He’s in the third wave.  Looking for a job now.  The call center will close on 4/28.  National sales will cease early this summer.  Digital Life, with all the promise it had, is or will be on the auction block.

And the sad part is that I doubt anyone will buy it.  That ship has sailed.  While AT&T dawdled and screwed around with home security, Google and a few others got serious about home automation and living in place.  And the little people – the middle managers and the front-line people who tried to make Digital Life a great thing, are now seen by other AT&T affiliates as (I quote the area manager) “bad meat.”  I experienced a bit of this myself, but thought maybe it was just me.  It wasn’t.  Those who are being laid off have virtually no chance of being picked up by other departments within AT&T.  A lot of long careers, like mine, are just going to end.

You can bet that the upper management people will not find themselves in that situation.

But back to my own life.  Just as I’d gotten used to getting up early, hitting the road, and beating the traffic in both directions, my hours got changed.  Rather than working from 7-3 with no lunch, I got put on a 9-6 shift.  Sure, I could make it 9-5 without a lunch; but honestly, what’s the point?  Beating the 6 o’clock traffic by leaving during the 5 o’clock traffic?  No difference.  My commute now – in both directions – sucks.

I’m also on the phone about 8 hours a day now.  The headset doesn’t come off.  I’m the secondary contact for one company and, as of yesterday, the primary for another.  I’m on the clock – and documenting it – just about every minute that I’m in the office.  There is no room for creativity and very little for curiosity.  A ticket is opened and my job is to close it as quickly and quietly as possible.

Yawn.  I’m still looking for/thinking about other things to do.

Had a crown fall out during the drive to work last week.  Naturally, right?  After my AT&T dental insurance is over and before my The X Company dental insurance kicks in.  And it was on Thursday morning, which meant that my dentist – who doesn’t work on Fridays – couldn’t see me until yesterday.  So I took an extra hour at lunch yesterday, went to said dentist, got the crown reattached, and paid $71 for the privilege.

Got back to the office and was handed my insurance card two hours later.  Figures, huh?

On the plus side, my dentist may call to have me fish some wiring in his house this weekend.  He recently got a new cable box, with HDMI only, and his house isn’t wired for it.   Guess what, Doc?  I make $150/hour for systems installation.

One good thing about the new hours, by the way, is that I can get decent walks in each morning.  Except for today, that is.  It’s raining pretty hard, and I’m just sitting in bed typing.  Or I was.  It’s 7:00 now, and I’ve got to hit the road pretty soon if I’m going to make it the 10 miles to the office by 9:00.

Laters, y’all!

Marching Forth

Posted on by

So it’s been a month since I posted anything here.  Had to go back and read a few posts to see what’s happened.  In spite of the huge number of faithful followers, that’s really the reason I type into these things: so I can remind *myself* of what happens in my life.

The featured image for today, if I can ever get it edited enough to upload, is of the boys (Chamberlain and Joshua) being boys – a week after their first birthday.  I’d given them a couple of plastic tubes filled with catnip (or maybe Jenny gave them those), and they were having a blast with them.  I still stumble upon those toys occasionally, so I guess they still enjoy them today – a week past their third birthday.  It’s really hard to believe that it’s only been about two and a half years since they came home.  Seems like a lifetime ago.  I guess that, in many ways, it has been.

The job, while still failing to make me leap out of bed in eager anticipation, is becoming more of something that I do without actually despising it.  I’m closing 6-8 tickets a day, have actually started using the phone (instead of trying to do everything via email, which is incredibly difficult), and have settled into a quasi routine of getting up earlier (5:15), taking a short walk, forgoing any “rest time” in the morning, and hitting the road by 6:30.  That gets me to work at around 7:00 – traffic is just starting to ramp up at that time.  I’ve discovered that, for every 5 minutes that I dawdle, my commute time increases by 5 minutes.  So if I leave at 7:00, it takes an hour.

My 30-minute commute normally includes a stop at McD’s, where I get two biscuits and a cup of coffee.  One biscuit is eaten during the drive.  The other serves as my late-morning snack.  Lunch no longer occurs, though I’ll sometimes eat a pack of crackers at my desk in the afternoon.  By skipping lunch, I can leave the office between 3:00 and 3:30, making my drive home take anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes – much much much faster than I’d be able to do it if I were to leave at 4:00 or 5:00.

There are still things that bug me about the gig.  Oddly, the work itself is not one of them.  I’ve gotten along pretty well with the clients that I’ve helped, and I’m learning some of the quirks and tricks of working in a cloud-first environment.  The kids working there, though….it’s jarring at times.  True story: nearly everyone has their own Nerf gun, which shoots little Nerf darts; and at any given time, there are darts whizzing around the office.  This activity includes not only the level 1 consultants like myself, but also the managers, level 2’s, project people, engineers…I think the only three people who DON’T indulge in this behavior are the CEO, the receptionist, and myself – though I’ve been known to get ticked off and simply throw an errant dart back at a shooter by hand.

Turns out, I’m still a pretty good dart thrower.

For people who are out of Nerf bullets, there is also a huge ball of blue rubber bands.  I don’t know where this came from, but it’s literally bigger than a soccer ball, bounces like a super ball, and weighs about 30 pounds.  I’ve dribbled it a few times, and it’s like playing basketball with a medicine ball.

Lots of “balls” in that paragraph.  Please keep your tittering to a minimum.

At any rate, the children in the office regularly take rubber bands from the ball and shoot THEM around the office when they’re out of Nerfies.  At the end of each day, I dutifully collect the 8 or 9 bands that have managed to collect on and around my desk and return them to a central location.  To their credit, the other people in the office appear to pick up those toys on a daily basis and put them back on the mother ball.  It has not shrunk since the day I started.

Regarding the desk (and the phone): THAT’S another problem that I’m working through.  Not since the mid-90’s have I been stuck at a desk all day.  Starting with my consulting gig at Compaid, I’ve always been able to combine working at my computer with other activities, from crawling under desks (or floors) to climbing ladders to running cable to walking around doing physical inventories.  Sitting for so long at my advanced age has led to a few, shall we say, delicate annoyances.  To be a tad more indelicate….hemorrhoids and testicular zits.

Oh sure.  You have your laughs.  Just discount my suffering.

While I can’t completely get away from sitting at my workstation, I did buy a new set of wireless headphones yesterday that will at least allow me to stand up when I’m on the phone.  The headset that the company provided has about a three-foot cord that doesn’t allow much movement.  Most of the people in the office have opted, as have I, to purchase their own gaming headsets and gain some mobility.  I do not in any way fault the company for this.  Good headsets aren’t cheap, and The X Company provides a lot of perks that, frankly, I am not used to seeing.  Free drinks.  Free snacks.  And, as I pointed out earlier,   a pretty loose working schedule.  Seriously, though, I’ve got probably 20 years on the next-oldest person in the office, and my body can’t deal with sitting down for 8-9 hours at a stretch every damned day.  I do take a couple of 10-minute walks around the outside of the building each day, but that doesn’t really undo the damage that’s being done to my lower anatomy.

I did indeed receive my severance check from AT&T in mid-February, which was nice.  As expected, I got raped in taxes, but it came in in time for me to pay my mortgage and car payment, which I couldn’t have done with my first paycheck from The X Company.  Now having received my second, I should be back on track to be able to pay all of the bills going forward – having also reworked my budget.

Not eating lunches is helping.

Also helping is the fact that Mary (and Princess) completed their move in on Saturday (Feb 25th), and I’ve received her first month’s rent.  The first few days were a bit hectic.  Mary is a weepy thing and there were scheduling problems with her movers, so she was not a joy to be around.  Adding to the stress was the fact that, due to our schedules, we really couldn’t let the cats run around freely.  Princess was ensconced in the second guestroom for a couple of days while Mary moved things in and out.  I locked my guys in my room on Tuesday, with a bit of shelving covering the cat hole in my door, so that Princess could run around the house and, if she chose to, sniff noses with my kids while Mary and I were both at work.

Got a text from Mary in mid-afternoon Tuesday asking me if I’d been home, because all of the cats were running around the house.  Turns out that my three had managed to work together long enough to break from their shackles and escape.  No bloodshed that we could find.  Josh and Chamberlain have been getting along fine with Princess (who is TINY.  6 pounds soaking wet), but Boo still has reservations, as I assumed she would.  Princess herself appears to be the instigator of most of the stress.  I know it’s all new for her, but she’s a weird little thing.  She’ll let me pet her and purr and be a happy cat for about 30 seconds.  Then she’ll start hissing and taking swipes at me.  She appears to do the same thing with the boys – though they could care less.  Boo just avoids her.  Truth be told, I think Princess is grandstanding a bit.  When she thinks that no human is looking, she’s perfectly fine hanging out with J or C; but as soon as she catches one of us in the corner of her eye, she hisses and runs away from whichever cat has been hanging out with her.

She’ll get over it eventually, I’m sure.

On the music scene: I’ve got a concert with the Gwinnett Symphony Wind Orchestra this afternoon.  Not quite as ambitious as the four we had last year – I think Dr. Wubbenhorst is beginning to realize that he’s not directing a bunch of A-listers at this point – but some pretty nice stuff.  While not incredibly musically satisfying for me, it does give me a chance to dust of the tuba chops, which is nice.  Next weekend, the GBB will be performing at Kennesaw State’s Brass Blast for the third or fourth time.  That’s going to be a concert comprised of movie themes, and it should be pretty good.  The GBB is also finalizing plans for a mini-tour in May, during which we’ll be presenting concerts at Jacksonville State (Alabama), Huntsville, AL, and Chattanooga; and then we’ll return to Roswell, GA, for a ticketed event that, I think, closes out the season.  The board is considering taking the band to the Gettysburg Brass Festival in 2018, which would be a blast.

Always assuming that I can get time off from work, of course.

I’d hoped to go to the woods with Brett this weekend or next, having completely forgotten about the concerts.  Maybe we can do it in two weeks instead.  I really need some woods time.

Having received the severance check, and in anticipation of getting my final bonus check from AT&T sometime this month, I’ve re-opened my negotiations with my landscaper buddy, and he and his crew have started mauling the growth in the lower forty.  He came out last week and decimated a row of privet that has been the bane of my existence since buying the house, and within the next few weeks they’re also going to take down all but two trees back there, clear out all the brush, take down the two trees by my chimney (and the hideous little bush that I’ve always hated…I can’t remember what it’s called), and, later in the year, help me get grass growing in the lower forty again.  It should transform the place and I’m looking forward to getting it done.  At some point, after the initial tree harvesting is done, I’ll also get Chamblee Fence back there to replace the existing, decrepit, fence.  Not going to be cheap, but it’s got to be done and should more than pay for itself in increased property value should I ever get nerve enough to put the house on the market and hit the road.

Oh!  I also got a thing from AT&T last week about a pension fund that I didn’t know I had.  So there’s an extra $100K available to me at some point.  Herb thinks I should roll it, and my 401, into a Roth.  I’m like, “Do you really think I’m going to live long enough to take advantage of that?”

I guess I’ve probably bored everyone enough for one morning, and I think I covered pretty much everything of substance for the last month, so I’ll wrap things up here with a shout-out to the one who gave me life.  Yesterday marked 7 years since Mom moved on, and it was the first March 4th since 2010 that I actually didn’t think about it until I saw Facebook posts from Dianne and Dad.  It’s not that I don’t miss her – I do think about her fairly often, particularly when I’m feeling lonely or frustrated and just want somebody to cry to – but I’m sure she’d be happy that I’m far enough along to – nearly – pass that anniversary without thinking about it.

One thing I’ll always wonder, though: What would she have thought about Trump?  You and I might have to discuss that at some point, Dad.

Midwinter Update

Posted on by

Mea culpa for not realizing that it’d been nearly two weeks since I put anything here….though I have realized in the last week that I should have done so.

The featured image for this post is of me at a game at VMI in (I think) 2014.  If memory serves, it marked the first game in Lexington, VA, since VMI returned to the conference after leaving for 10 years or so.  One of the cheerleaders took it for me – good kids, those.  I missed them more than the games themselves when I took last season off.

Anyway, the job search came (more or less) to an end last week, when I accepted an offer to join The X Company, an an Alpharetta-based cloud services company for CPA firms.  I’m not going to pretend that this is my dream job, but it has good and bad points.  It’s a small company (just over 100 employees), which has been around since 2002, has revenues of about $12 million, a 66% growth rate over the last three years, and has been honored by Inc. 5000 five times.  That information is both good and (potentially) bad, because I’m frankly tired of working for big companies (3M, NYNEX, ComputerLand, BellSouth, AT&T) and much prefer the little ones.  During my interview, for example, the CEO and co-founder was apparently making faces at my interviewers behind my back – I like stuff like that.  A potential drawback, however, is its growth: I learned from my time at Compaid (an Inc. 500 honoree) that small, profitable, companies are ripe for takeover by the big boys.  I am really hoping that I don’t have to go through that garbage again…and the fact that The X Company’s been plugging away by itself for 15 years is heartening.

The job itself (Hosted Services Consultant 1) is a severe jump backward for me.  My paychecks will be just over half of what they were a month ago, I’ll be on the phone for much of the day, and I’m basically at the bottom of the barrel.  I think the “on the phone” part of that scenario is what disheartens me the most, but hopefully I can stay busy and interested enough to either enjoy it or advance out of it.  I still have a few leads with other companies, with jobs more suited to my experience and preferences, and I’ll wait to see if anything pans out with them.

I’ve cleared all the pre-hire hurdles with The X Company, however (background, credit, and urine checks), and am scheduled to start work next Monday morning.  In Alpharetta.  I forgot that part….my commute will go from 5 minutes to probably 45+ minutes.  No more lunches at home.

At least I’ll be doing something.  Unemployment has been, to put it mildly, sort of exhausting.  I’m still getting up at 5:30 – the cats don’t care if I’m going to work or not – but, after my walks, I’ve just been kind of sitting around playing tiddly winks.  No energy to do much of anything, and I’m usually wiped out by 5:00 in the afternoon and in bed by 7:30.

I do have some work to do in the next few days, however: cleaning the house in anticipation of a new roommate.  My friend Mary, who I’ve known for several years, is coming up on the end of her lease in March and will be taking up residence in the guestroom.  She’ll be bringing her adorable little cat, Pretty Princess, with her – which is both very cool and a bit terrifying.  I have no doubt that Joshua and Chamberlain will be quite welcoming, but Boo isn’t the friendliest kitty when it comes to meeting new friends.  It will be a fairly slow and cautious introduction, with alternating days of cats being closed up in different rooms so that everyone can get acquainted without much bloodshed.

Hey, Jenny and I combined four cats.  Hopefully, Mary and I can do the same.

The GBB is back in rehearsals as of last week (although I didn’t start until last night – had a terrible cold/flu last Tuesday night).  The board is being pretty active about looking for funding and additional performance opportunities, which is nice.  Our board has been pretty lethargic for several years, and it’ll be nice to have input and organization from more than just the 2-3 people who’ve been running the show.  We’ve got a mini-tour of GA, AL, and TN coming up in (I think) April, a return engagement to Kennesaw State in March, and a couple of other local gigs scheduled in May.  I wouldn’t mind adding two or three more gigs, but a lot of the band folks are really weird about that.  They don’t want to play more than 5-6 concerts a year.  Not sure why you’d want to be in a band if you don’t want to perform a lot….

The weather in Duluth has been, shall we say, varied as of late.  A week ago, it was 18 degrees during one of my morning walks.  Today, it was pushing 65.  I actually had the A/C on in my car yesterday.  Am still waiting for the “chill” hammer to fall, when we have temps in the 20s for a couple of weeks and I can watch my natural gas bill go through the roof.  But, so far at least, the utilities haven’t been too overwhelming.  Which is good…because I haven’t received my severance check yet, and February is going to be extremely tight, financially speaking.

That should be enough for now.  In a nutshell, it appears that I’ve survived my first layoff; my days of living alone are once again about to come to a halt; the weather is nuts; and my biggest opportunity to hike the Appalachian Trail has, at least for now, eluded me.

But I’m going to do it before I die.

Starting the Second Act

Posted on by

Today’s featured image is of me sitting on the grave of Corinne Elliott Lawton (born September 21, 1846, died January 24, 1877) in Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery.  According to legend, Miss Lawton’s expression changes depending on what she thinks about her visitors.  I did not know this when I took my seat and tried to mirror her, but now that I do, I assume that she’s smiling.  Right?

If you like cemeteries, you really owe it to yourself to visit Bonaventure.  It’s an amazing place with lots of famous dead people, fantastic statuary, and long avenues of old man’s beard-draped live oaks.  There’s also generally a really nice breeze coming in off of the Wilmington River.  Great place to spend an afternoon.

So I spent a fairly quiet Christmas at home yesterday.  Did some laundry, hung out with the cats, took a couple of naps, paid some bills, and contemplated the fact that my final paycheck from AT&T will be deposited in less than two weeks.  For all intents and purposes, my final day at work was last Friday, though I’ll go in today or tomorrow to finish clearing out my desk, wipe my laptop’s hard drive, turn in my company phone and ID badges, and continue to wonder just what the hell has happened.

I had an interview with a company called The X Company last Thursday, which is somewhat heartening.  At least I got past the initial phone call and actually got to go somewhere and sit in front of two hiring managers.  That led to a background check by their boss (in Bozeman, MT).  Assuming no murders are found, maybe I’ll get an offer.  If so, I’ll be starting at the bottom again, handling support requests from CPA firms who use The X Company’s cloud services.  It’s a small company (just over 100 employees), which is nice.  Not sure how interesting it’d be, but a foot in the door is all I’m looking for at this point.

I also had a phone interview with Americold, a company that provides refrigeration services from farm to market.  110 years old.  I’d never heard of them.  That job, should I get it, would require a bit of travel (domestic) and would feature working in “environments as cold as -20.”  I told the phone interviewer that I grew up in Vermont, so that second bit wouldn’t be too much of a problem.  The call was on Thursday and I had a pretty good reference as a lead, so maybe something will come of it.

Another lead came from a bar friend of mine who works for Ricoh.  After I told him that I didn’t see any jobs that I could do listed on the Ricoh website, he went to his boss and asked.  Boss said, “Get me his resume.  Sounds like we could use him for something.”  So I sent my resume to my buddy on Thursday afternoon and we’ll see if it goes anywhere from there.

And, finally, I got an email introduction from one of my tubist friends to a guy who owns a number of IT-related businesses.  Introduced myself and told him I’d get him a resume after the first of the year.  Not hugely hopeful about that, but who knows?

Regardless of all of that, unless I get a miraculous job offer from AT&T today or tomorrow, it’s time to start over at something new.  I never envisioned myself looking for a job at 51 and I’m not entirely sure what type of job I actually WANT, considering that it’s probably going to be my last one.  Don’t see any reason to throw in the towel on my computer experience – it’s the one thing that I know I can do – but I’ve let my mind wander about other possibilities.  Teaching beginning music – to adults or little kids – is something that I’ve thought about quite a bit.  Have also considered freelance programming and/or web design (a friend of mine in Canada does the latter – basically just tweaking WordPress themes for people and sometimes updating content).  And I’ve talked with a couple of people about helping the online side of their small businesses.

Then again, maybe I should just get a license to sell insurance or houses or something….though I’m not a salesman in any sense of the word.  Ideas?  Email them to me.

So the weather in Duluth has been nuts lately.  Today is supposed to be rainy and in the 60s.  Yesterday hit 70.  Last week it was clear and in the 20s.  It’s an adventure deciding what to wear for my morning walks every day.  Will I need long-johns or just sweat pants?  Sweatshirt or light jacket (or, this morning, just a tee)?  Wool socks? No socks?  I make more decisions before 6AM than most people do all day….

Anyway, the house and car are paid for through another month, I’ve got one check coming, and hopefully a big one due in February.  Combined with my renewed Costco card (which got two workouts last week….I’ve got enough food to last a year, I think), I just might make it for a little while.  Long enough to figure out the second act, hopefully.   Here’s hoping 2017 has something good in store.

Crunch Time

Posted on by

It has been chilly for the last two days, with temps in the 20s when I take my morning walk.  That being the case, I finally turned on my heat this morning (it was 48 degrees in my living room), which is something that I dread doing every year for a few reasons.  First, I’m always mildly paranoid about firing up the furnace for the first time of the year.  I have this idea that all of the accumulated crud in my ducts is going to immediately burst into flame and I’ll have fire shooting out of my ceilings with no way to put it out.  I meant to have the ducts cleaned earlier this year (not sure if that would have done much good for my paranoia), but didn’t do it.  Also haven’t had the furnace checked since last spring – my furnace people are supposed to do it twice a year, but they haven’t called me so far this winter – and frankly I’d rather not have to write them a check right now.

Second, I really hate turning on the heat because, obviously, my gas bill will now increase – and I don’t need increased bills at this point.  As of 12/28, all of my AT&T crap is going to double in price already.  I’m currently determining what I can afford to do away with.  Cable (DirecTV) is obviously the first thing to get nuked.  DTV, to put it mildly, sucks.  However, once I get rid of it, then I no longer have unlimited data on my phone, which is kind of important.  I’ll go back to having 2GB/month, which normally would be enough, but when I’m sending resumes out from my phone, data adds up quickly.

Had to take Boo to the vet yesterday because she had an ingrown claw.  Jenny and I spotted it about two months ago, and I’d been hoping that she’d bite it off herself, but she didn’t.  Came home for lunch on Thursday and noticed that she was holding up her paw.  Wasn’t complaining, wasn’t limping, wasn’t averse to putting weight on the foot – but every time she sat down, she’d hold up her paw.  So I looked at it and the claw was completely embedded in her pad.  Off to the vet.  They cut it out (bled like a stuck pig), and all’s well now.  Boo took it like a little champ.  Only cried once and settled back in at home happily after the ordeal was over.  I’m a bit worried about infection, but she’s doing a good job licking at the wound.  Hopefully that will be enough.   The bill, by the way, was just shy of $100 (she also, by law, had to get a rabies shot.  Stupid).  That’s $100 that I didn’t want to spend.

So I got a letter from Meditech yesterday informing me that I’m not going to be working for them anytime soon.  I knew it was a long shot, but I really wanted to land that job.  The rejection definitely put me in a funk.  I’ve still got decent leads at Georgia MLS and The Salvation Army, but haven’t heard back from either of them after great initial contacts.   I’ve also become convinced that applying for jobs online is sort of like pissing into a storm drain and waiting for a glass of water to come out.  So I’ve decided that, next week, I’ll start contacting recruiters.  Didn’t want to have to go that route, because the recruiters that I’ve dealt with tend  to want to put me into jobs that I don’t particularly want, but as the title says, we’re getting to crunch time here, and I need to get a paycheck lined up somewhere.  As far as I know, I’ll get a check on 12/21, get fired on 12/27, get a final check on 1/6, and then – sometime, hopefully before March – I’ll get a severance check.  The danger zone in all of that is February.  I’m glad, of course, that I managed to pay off all of my credit cards this year, but doing so depleted by basically non-existent savings.  If I don’t have a paycheck or a severance check by March 1, I can’t pay the mortgage.

To that end, I’ve investigated the possibility of getting an hourly job at Kroger or somewhere.  I really don’t need to make a bunch of money to get by (and, obviously, making a bunch of money prior to now didn’t do me a great deal of good), and I figure I can get by fairly easily if I can take home about $500/week.  The only drawback to going an hourly route, be it at a grocery store or in retail or whatever, is that I can kiss the IT gig goodbye forever if I’m out of it for too long.  Not sure how I feel about that, considering that it’s what I’ve done for the last 26 years.  I have no problem with starting a second career, but I’d rather it not be a dead-end one.

Have been wracking my brain trying to figure out a way to make money on my own.  Internet-based stuff, home computer/phone repair, something like that.  I really am trying to see this as a good thing.  A way to have a second act.  The world’s my stage and all that.  But I’ve got to take care of the cats, and that means I’ve got to keep paying the mortgage.

And the high heating bills, apparently.

The caption for my picture, by the way (which I created in the months after AT&T acquired BellSouth) is “AT&T.  Your World.  Destroyed.”

I thought it was a fitting image for the way I feel today.

One of the Seven

Posted on by

Today’s featured picture, should you be wondering, is of a trail to the beach at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  I was just perusing some random files in my OneDrive folders and I liked it.  I think I’ll just start doing that – using random shots – from now on.

Anyway, this morning is what I’d call one of the perfect 7 days that Georgia has each year.  I used to say that we had 6 perfect days, but I decided recently to increase that to a full week.  Not for any particular reason, but it’s probably close.  There are usually 4 or 5 such perfect days in the autumn and 1 or 2 in the early spring.  The rest of the year is either ungodly hot, ungodly wet, or both.  This morning, though….it’s in the high 50s, there’s a luscious breeze blowing out of the south, the humidity is very low, and the leaves in my back yard have finally turned gold.  I have the weirdest tree back there.  I think it’s a Beech, and it stays green forever.  And then, overnight, it seems, it goes gold.  It will stay that color until January or so, and then – again, overnight – all of the leaves will fall off and it’ll be dead until summer, when it instantly becomes covered in thick green leaves.  Just a strange tree.

So I’ve got the living room window open and the boys are loving life, sitting as close to the screen as they can without actually pushing it out of its frame, and smelling all that neat stuff that only cats can smell.

The job search continues for me.  I’ve been rejected so far by AT&T (two or three times), Macy’s (once), GE (twice), NCR (once), and I think by somebody else that I can’t remember.  I have resumes out to AT&T (several), OFS (a job that, if the dorks would just read my resume, they’d break their legs running to get me), RaceTrac (HQ – two possible jobs), and nice lady recruiter in Columbia, SC, has been hounding me for the last two days.  I told her to leave me alone until I’ve exhausted my Atlanta options.  Oh, and I’ve got a resume in Huntsville, AL, too.  Private K-12 needs a support dude.  I think that’d be fun.

My boss called me the other day and said that a friend of his is thinking about back-filling at job at AT&T, and he’s going to pass my name along.  That’d be cool because I’d keep my years in service and current salary (which I’m not going to get if I leave the company), but it would also kinda suck because the job is for an outage call coordinator….which means that my job would be to sit on outage calls and yell at people in order to make them fix the outage.  On the plus side, I’d get to work from home.  Also on the plus side, it’d give me more management experience.  On the minus side….come on…if you know me at all, you know that I don’t get in people’s faces.  I fix the problems for them.  In fact, that personality quirk bit me on the ass last week during my second interview for a sysadmin job at GE.  The interviewer asked me why I haven’t advanced further up the ladder, considering my experience.  I told him the truth: I don’t want direct reports.  I don’t want to be a team lead.  I like being given a problem and told to solve it.

He was looking for a team lead.  Even told me that in the follow-up rejection call.  “We really like your experience, but we want somebody to run the show.”  I thanked him and told him to keep me in mind when they need tuba players and not trumpet soloists.  He laughed and said that he would.  All in all, a pretty pleasant rejection.

I’m also considering applying for a job as the assistant manager at an AT&T retail store – a job that is two salary grades below my own and would just barely pay the bills.  Why would I do this?  A number of reasons, actually.  One, I’d keep my years in services.  This is actually important to me, if for no other reason than the fact that I’m only three years away from being able to take an early retirement.  Two, there’s nowhere for me to go in my current career path except into people management, and I have no experience with that.  If I’m going to have to make that plunge eventually, I think it’d be good for me to actually get some experience as a manager – and what less stressful learning could I get than as an entry-level assistant manager?  Three, I think I’d be damned good at it, given that I’m still a geek who likes to play with all the new toys, that (this is actually true) I’m extremely organized, that I like crunching numbers and making charts, and that (this is also true) I have phenomenal people skills in a work environment….said skills do not apply to social environments, where I can be kind of a dick, truth be told.  I’m also free to apply for that job and to turn it down if it’s offered to me without losing my severance package (because it’s a step down, I’m not obligated to accept an offer).  So I’m working on a cover letter for that gig, meant to convince the hiring manager that I’m not overqualified and that I’m not just flailing away trying to stay at AT&T, but that I’m truly interested in learning in order to maybe start a second career in my doddering years.

In a nutshell, no job yet, but I’m not defeated.  I will admit that my smoke intake has increased markedly in the last couple of weeks, and I really need to chill out as far as that goes.  Stress level is indeed high, but I’m trying to keep it under control.

What else what else….?

Oh!  In between applying for jobs and avoiding all actual work in the office, I’ve been trying to learn more about Bootstrap, which is a CSS framework for mobile-first websites.  Why?  Because it’s cool.  So there.

As a beginner project, I’ve decided to make a mileage/gasoline tracker for myself, rather than going back to one of the myriad apps that do the same thing.  If you want to watch my progress, you can do so by looking at migration.theuffp.com/mileage.  It’ll open in a regular browser.  More importantly, if you open it on your phone, it should fit on the screen perfectly, thanks to Bootstrap.   As of today, it does absolutely nothing.  You can enter numbers and click buttons to your hearts’ content, and nothing will happen.  Next week, however, I hope to start filling in the fun stuff that actually writes and reads data and displays graphs.  Then I’ll have to add some security to it.  Then I’ll be happy to set up accounts for anybody who wants to use it – and I’ll charge you.

Career #3 maybe?

In the “spending money I shouldn’t spend right now” category, I bought Battlefield 1 the other day.  It’s a video game.  First-person shooter of World War I.  Having already beaten up the Japanese and Germans in two separate WWII games, and the Russians in a Cold War game, I’ve decided to go old-school and kick some WWI butt.  Unfortunately, I need to get a video driver update before the game will work for me on my Surface Book.  Hoping to do that later today, but I’m being very careful.  All I need at this point is to break the graphics on my main computer….

And that, friends and family, is all the news that I can think to print.  Maybe next week I’ll have something better.  If not, I’ll try to just ramble on again anyway.  After nearly 50 years of doing it, the act of writing (or typing) is still a very calming experience for me.  I spend more on pens and notebooks than anyone I know.  And then I leave them at my desk and type everything that I thought I was going to write.  Weird.

Almost as weird as that stupid Beech tree.

 

PB&J

Posted on by

No image for this post.  I apologize if you’re a picture kind of person.  Also, no cussing in this post – if you’re the kind of person who checks this blog every day, you got a profanity-laced one last week, which has since been made private.  I would’ve deleted it, but years from now I want to remember how I felt.

Anyway, here’s the deal.  Remember that I mentioned at the beginning of my week at Pictured Rocks that AT&T was going to lay people off?  Yeah, well, I’m one of those people.  In a nutshell, I’ve got until December 27th to find a new job.  If I can find another job at ATT (I’ve applied for 5), then I keep my years in service and it’s not a big deal.  If I can’t find an internal job by then, then I’m on the street, I get 50% of my salary in a lump sum (taxed to hell and back), and ATT wishes me good luck.

Having run the math about 400 times, I think I can live on that severance – if I eat beans and rice – for about a year.  I don’t want to eat beans and rice.  I particularly don’t want for my cats to eat beans and rice.

But that’s where I am at the moment.  I’ve applied, as I said, for multiple internal jobs – best case scenario even though I really hate ATT – and I’ve applied for multiple external jobs, which is almost wasted effort because I’m a jack of all IT trades and external jobs want specificity.  I’m over-qualified for damned near every job I’ve applied for, and damned near every employer will look at my resume and think that I’m not qualified.  So I’ve got that going for me.  If I have to go outside, I’m pretty sure that I’ve got to take an entry level job (and lie about my qualifications to do so) and start over.  I’m cool with that.  Not happy, but cool.  My kitties won’t know the difference.

Have talked to a friend who’s lease expires in February about renting a room from me.  Have talked to a senior director – who also got the axe – about a possible start-up company.  Have gotten through one interview with an outside company to be a systems admin 1 (major step backwards).  At this point, however, I’m still really scared.  I’ve tried being religious in the past.  It didn’t take. But if you’re religious, feel free to pray for me.

In an attempt to start saving money, I bought some peanut butter and jelly last week.  PB gives me incredible heartburn.  Jelly is way too sweet for me – I hate it.  But I made myself a PB&J sandwich tonight.  Two, actually.  I ate them.  They tasted terrible, and my stomach is currently rebelling on me.  It was cheap, though.  I can get through this.  I *will* keep my cats safe.  And they’ll stay together.  I don’t know exactly how I’ll do that if I get to the point where I can’t pay the mortgage….but they will stay together and they’ll be cared for.  I’m not married.  Have no children.  My kitties are my kids, though, and any of you who think that kids are more important need to stop reading this blog.  If not for my cats, I’d take the severance tomorrow and I’d be living in Canada.

So let’s end this one on a happy note.  The Cubs won the world series.  Dad, I’m sorry that it wasn’t the Indians…but come on: It was the Cubbies.  You can’t feel too bad about that. 108 years and all that.  Pretty good news.

A Superior Week – Part II

Posted on by

Well, it’s been 11 days since I put up the first half of my journal from a trip to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and I should probably go ahead and finish that story.  Before I get to it, however, I might as well catch everyone up on things that have happened in the last 11 days.

For starters, I’m now officially free of credit card debt, having paid off the last one earlier this morning.  Technically, I’ve still got an ongoing one, because I set up a few monthly utilities to be paid automatically by my Discover card, just to see what type of cash-back kicks I get.  If it works out, I’ll leave it that way.  If not, I’ll undo the auto-pay and call that one done, too.

In other news, I’ve been fighting a head cold for the last week, and it’s really getting on my nerves.  Particularly considering that I had a brass band performance yesterday, followed immediately by a wind orchestra rehearsal.  Thought my head was going to explode.

The performance went well, anyway.  And we sold a good number of our brand-new CD.  So there’s that.

On the home front, I switched from U-Verse television to DirecTV a couple weeks ago – mainly because my employee discount is so much steeper for DTV.  I was paying around $25 for U-Verse and I’m getting DTV for $10.  So that’s nice.  I’ve learned, however, that DTV is *worth* about $10/month.  What a piece of crap.  Leave it to ATT to push something that’s terrible while trying to get people off of the one really good product that they have.  Pathetic.  And now they want to buy Time Warner?  Seriously?  Ugh.

Enough of that.  It’s depressing me.  Lessee…what else has been going on in the last couple of weeks?  Oh!  I got a meatloaf from Publix the other day, and DAMN was it good!  I may have to do that more regularly.  Or, you know, learn how to make meatloaf.

But enough.  Moving on to the conclusion of my Superior Week:

10/6/16@11:20 – Hot dogs didn’t happen.  I made some freeze-dried Beef Stroganoff and a couple of cheese sandwiches in the tent and then crawled into bed at around 19:00.  Slept okay for the most part, although I lost my blankets at some point and woke up at around 02:00 due to the cold – and because I had to pee.

Ended up getting up for good at around 05:30, at which point I put on a sweatshirt and a headlamp and set off for the lighthouse in the dark in order to accomplish a number of tasks.  I needed to check my bank balance (today is pay day), shoot the sunrise, download some new podcasts, and book a hotel for Friday night.

Think about that for a second.  I checked my bank account and booked a hotel – in minutes – in, basically, the middle of nowhere.  It wasn’t long ago that, when taking a long trip, I drove until I got tired and then started looking for a hotel, hoping for a vacancy.  Cellphones really are kind of amazing, as intrusive as they are.

I had hoped that the cold last night would be enough to kill of the flies, but they seem to be worse this morning than they were yesterday!  Ugh!  If I do this again next year (assuming I still have a job), I may wait until November.  Stupid global warming.

[Note: The featured image at the top of this entry is one of several that I took of the sunrise that morning, using my phone’s camera.  I didn’t bring a DSLR with me on the trip and wanted to figure out if I could use the phone’s “pro” settings for low-light stuff.  I thought it worked okay.]

10/6/16@16:21 – So after getting back from the lighthouse this morning, I had a breakfast of freeze-dried Mac & Cheese (good stuff!) and then began pre-packing for the trip out tomorrow.  Put all the stuff that was in the tent into the car and then setup my mattress in the tent.  If all goes well, in the morning I can just deflate the mattress while in the tent, put it in the car, strike the tent in a few minutes, and hit the road.  Hopefully, it won’t rain tonight.  It’s been sunny all day and my stuff is dry.  I hate packing out wet stuff.

Going to start a fire in about 30 minutes and try the hot dogs again tonight.

Forgot to mention that I walked over to the Twelvemile campground and back this afternoon.  It’s a nice place, with several campsites very near the lake (almost said ocean!), guaranteed to have a non-stop breeze, though maybe a little sandy.  They look quite nice, though, and the wind would keep the flies away!

10/6/16@20:47– The hot dogs were excellent….but I forgot to use the relish!

10/7/16@18:47 – Lima, OH – And so I’m halfway home, staying the night at the same Carlson In that I stayed in on my way up to the lake.  Same room, in fact.  The ride down was largely uneventful, although I had about 100 stowaways in the car: the flies.

By driving with all of the windows down through most of the upper peninsula, I was able to lose most of them, but still had a few in the car when I hit the only traffic jam of the day – which happened less than 20 miles from this hotel.  Try as I might, I couldn’t get the last hangers-on to flee, so they’re still in the car tonight.  Maybe tomorrow.

Planning to have some noodles in the hotel room tonight and hit the road early tomorrow – after a shower that is going to feel amazing.  One cannot appreciate how awful one can smell until one goes a week without bathing.

And that, friends, Romans and countrymen, is the end of the journal regarding the trip.  I did indeed leave the hotel very early on Saturday the 8th and made it home by around 2 in the afternoon.  Spent some time emptying out the car, watched some football, and hit the sack.

Should you be wondering, there was one final fly left in my car when I went to work on the 10th.  It got out with me in the office parking lot.  So I’ve probably brought an invasive species to Georgia.

These things happen.

A Superior Week – Part I

Posted on by

So I’ve been back from my fall vacation to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore for nearly a week, and I guess I could share parts of my experience with the madding crowds hitting this here blog.  I’ve decided to do so by simply transcribing the notes that I took while there, and those will follow in this post and the next one.

To set the stage, I should mention that I took a short week to go camping at Hurricane River campground on the southern shore of Lake Superior.  If you look at the little map up there, Hurricane River campground is represented by the two little tent icons a third of the way across the map – oddly enough, on the Hurricane River.

The dot at the point of land to the right of Hurricane River is the Au Sable Light Station.  That small point is virtually the only area on the entire map where one can pick up a cell signal.

Moving west from Hurricane, you can see the icons for the Benchmark campsites (back country), Twelvemile Beach campsites (cars), and Sevenmile group and single campsites (back country).

To the east of the Au Sable Light Station are a number of back country campsites, the Grand Sable Dunes (labeled) and the little town of Grand Marais.  The distance from the Sevenmile sites to Grand Marais, were one to walk along the North Country Trail, is right around 17 miles.  Over the course of the week, I did indeed hike every inch of that distance.  And loved it…although one of my ankles is still bothering me.

Now that that’s out of the way, on to the field notes.

10/3/16@19:10 – I’m sitting at my picnic table in a leather bomber jacket, listening to Lake Superior crash on the shore while my fire crackles happily.  It is so nice finally to be somewhat chilly.

Today was mostly a driving day.  I left my hotel room in Lima, OH, after sleeping until nearly 07:00, which was nice in and of itself.  The drive to Grand Marais was uneventful for the most part.  It did get rather interesting in the last 10 miles, when my GPS discovered what it presumed to be the quickest route fro me.  Last year, I took only paved roads.  This year, however, the Garmin took me about 8 miles down what amounted to a logging trail – and not a very good one.  I admit that I considered turning around a few times, but the Subaru was a trooper.  The Audi wouldn’t have made it.

[Note: I opted to take a longer route on the return trip.  Did not want to try the Rhoddie Truck Road again after a night of rain!]

 

Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home

 I arrived at my campsite at around 16:30 and got things set up before taking the 2-mile walk to the Au Sable Light Station to check my email and to let Jenny know that I’m still alive.  Had a voice mail from my boss, so I called him and was informed of a mandatory meeting at 10:00 tomorrow.  Oh goodie.  I wonder if either a}Digital Life has been sold or b}I need to start looking for a new job…

10/4/16@08:15 – Not to be a global warming alarmist, but it is decidedly warmer here than it was during the same week a year ago.  If I had to guess, the temp is in the low 60s this morning.  I’ve put on my leather jacket now, but have been sitting here in just shorts and a t-shirt for the last 45 minutes.  Last year, it was more like 45.

Made some coffee this morning, but probably won’t have anything else before I start the hike to the lighthouse for the 10:00 call.

Charging with boiling water!

Charging with boiling water!

While making the coffee, I did my first real test of the “charging pot” that I bought a few years ago.  It has a wire attached to it that clips to other wires and eventually goes into my phone (or iPod or exercise band or whatever).  Through some sort of magic, it is supposed to be able to charge small electronics by using the heat generated in coils built into the bottom of the pot.  I was delighted to find that it works beautifully on my Coleman stove, and am determined to try it on my alcohol stove the next time I go ultra-light.  What a great thing it would be to have a renewable source of recharging on those trips, rather than having to carry relatively heavy charging blocks.

I also brought a solar-and-crank-powered radio with me on this trip, but haven’t tried it yet (though I did let it charge via sunlight on the first driving day, and it seemed to take a charge really well).

Woke up twice during the night.  Once at around 03:00 to pee, and again a bit after 05:00 because my blankets had become dislodged and I was cold.  The first time, my fire was still burning, but it had died by the 05:00 awakening; and it was so unbelievably dark that I seriously wondered if I’d gone blind.  After trying (with no success) to see my hand in front of my face, I pressed the “light up” button on my wristband and reassured myself that my eyes still function.  Had an interesting time falling back to sleep, entertaining myself by imagining what I’d do if I’d actually lost my sight and had to hike to the lighthouse in order to call for help.  Or, for that matter, how’d I’d be able to dial 911 (assuming I got there) on one of these newfangled phones with no tactile buttons.  I guess “OK, Google – call 911” might work.  I’ve never considered it before.

10/4/16@13:20 – As I suspected, the meeting this morning was called so that my boss could pass on information regarding upcoming firings at AT&T (“surplussing” is what they like to call it these days).  Apparently, the company has decided that too many people with my job title exist, and they’ll let us know later this month who will get to stay, who’ll get shuffled to new AT&T jobs, and who needs to watch their ass as the door slams shut behind them.   Having gone through this so many times previously, I’m almost too tired of it to be worried – although I’ll admit that it adds a bit of stress to life as I try to determine how I’ll take care of the cats if I end up looking for a new job in a few months.  But I’m on vacation, dammit.  I’ll try not to think about things like that for a few more days.

Made some hot dogs and mac & cheese for lunch and finished listening to “Mozart In the Jungle” this afternoon.  It’s a book by oboist-turned-author Blair Tindall.  A fascinating tale about a woman who hung her hat on being an orchestral musician while the world of orchestral music spun out of control financially.  At 40, she gave up on her dream, went back to school, and became a journalist.  Well worth a read (or a listen).

This afternoon, I think I’ll go for a long walk.  The breeze is lovely, temp is in the 70s, and rain isn’t due to arrive until late tonight.

10/5/16@09:00 – Didn’t sleep particularly well last night.  Not entirely sure why, as I re inflated my air mattress, had plenty of blankets, and got a lot of exercise yesterday.  I think that it might’ve been too quiet, although at one point I got my radio out (works great!) and listened to a bit of the VP debate.  There was no wind, however, so I couldn’t hear the trees or the surf.  I need that stuff to sleep when I’m here!

It is much cooler this morning.  I’m still in shorts and a sweatshirt, but the breeze has come back and the temp is probably in the 50s.  Weather forecasts, however, have been saying that it will remain unseasonably warm – nearing or surpassing the 80-degree mark.  Not at all what I was hoping for.

Flies were terrible this year.

Flies were terrible this year.

The heat – what else can one call 70s and 80s in the U.P. in October? – has had one extremely negative effect: flies.  Flies have been incredibly annoying over the last two days, and I’m sitting here now stamping my legs under the table in a way that reminds me of Vermont Holsteins in the summer.  During my walk yesterday – from Hurricane River to Grand Sable Dunes – I must’ve killed 1000 of them on my shirt.  It used to be an orange one….now it’s orange with multiple little blood spots all over it.  U.P. Tie-Dye, I guess.

Made some coffee and sausage links for breakfast today and took the opportunity to charge my charger while doing so.  Everything seemed to work pretty well in that area, and I’m back up to 75% power on the charger.

Not sure what today will hold, but if it gets to be as hot as predicted, I might just jump into the lake for a minute.  My hair could certainly use it!

10/5/16@19:03 – I took a very long walk today – long enough to drain the battery on my Microsoft Band, so I’m not sure how much distance it’s going to give me credit for.  I know, however, that I went about 18 miles.  Left my campsite at Hurricane River at around 09:30 and walked on the NC trail westward until I got to the Sevenmile back-country campsite, which is just about 6.3 miles.  I then turned around and came back east, passing my site and continuing to the Au Sable back-country sites, which are about 3 miles east.  Stopped at the lighthouse on the way back in order to upload the information from my Band.  As I mentioned the Band was dead by the time I got there, so I just checked my email and walked back to the tent, where I started charging the band.

My feet, by the way, are killing me.  However, I got a really nice (and really COLD) dip in the lake about 5 miles west of here.  I kept passing side trails leading to gorgeous (and completely empty) beaches; so finally I took one of them, stripped down to my jockeys, and got wet.  Spent probably 15 minutes there before getting dressed and continuing on my trek.  Yeah – getting the sand off of my feet was a major pain in the ass, but I dried off pretty quickly, so wasn’t cold.  In the water, though…wow!  “Bracing” seems like a good word for it.  Each dunk felt kind of like my torso was going to break.  But damn, it felt good.

This was MY beach. Gorgeous, cold, and empty.

This was MY beach. Gorgeous, cold, and empty.

As I said, my feet were on fire when I got back to my tent…and I was also sweating like a pig….and I was also out of beer.  The last problem needed to be addressed, so I unhooked the tent from the car and drove to Grand Marais, which is a tiny town about 13 miles away.  It basically survives by catering to North Country Trail hikers and hunters, although it was a booming lumber town in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Got some beer and some relish, figuring on grilling some hot dogs over the fire tonight, and came back to my site.  Got the fire lite….and then the skies opened up.  I spent 10 frantic minutes arranging tarps and tent flaps and getting everything into the tent, with a minimum of things getting soaked.

And that’s where things stand now.  The fire is burning merrily in the rain and I’m waiting it out from the confines of the tent, wondering if maybe I should just boil the hot dogs.   At least I’ve got beer.

To be continued……

Insidious and Insightful Insights Into the Debate

Posted on by

So it’s Tuesday afternoon and I’ve nearly recovered from the last 5 days of activity, which included driving up to Greenville, SC, for a mini family reunion – during which Dad met his first great-grandchild – and driving over to Conway, SC, for a football game in which Furman was pummeled by 20 points largely because their special teams gave up 18.

Both events were enjoyable, of course.  I’m just not quite as young as I used to be, and that was a lot of driving in a pretty short period of time.  Basically, I got about half of the sleep that I needed between Friday and Monday (and, believe me, I was a mess yesterday).

So the big presidential debate was last night.  Here’s my take on it:

 

Moving on, let’s talk about my cat Chamberlain, who has had a pretty rough couple of years but has come through like a champ and, in the process, has turned into possibly the sweetest feline on earth.
chamberlainIt was just about a year ago today that I brought him to his vet because he’d been losing weight and had very little energy.  He was diagnosed with diabetes and had to start getting daily insulin shots.  A month prior to that visit, I’d taken him in to the vet because he was scratching incessantly and had bald spots all over his head.  That, it turned out, was because he had a flea allergy.  Just a few bites had turned his life into a nightmare – which was cured with some superb flea medicine and a steroid shot.

As it turned out – or at least appeared to turn out – it was the steroid that kick-started the diabetes; fortunately, he eventually recovered from both.  I’d weaned him off of the insulin by about March of this year and everything was going great.  He had lots of energy, enjoyed playing and racing around the house, and occasionally snuggled in my lap.

In April, he got startled during one of my lunch hours, jumped off of his cat tree, tore through my music room, lost control cornering on a hardwood floor, and was immediately unable to put any weight on his left leg.  Two hours later, we were back at the vet and I was looking at the x-ray confirming that he’d broken the ball off of his left femur.  Surgery to extract the broken femur head was scheduled for three days later.  A few days after that, he came home and we started a long rehab.

For a week or so, Chamberlain was confined to my guest bedroom – the mattresses removed from the bed and put on the floor so that he wouldn’t try to jump more than a few inches.  In the mornings, I’d carry him downstairs for breakfast and then carry him back up to his room while I took my walk.  In the evenings, I’d carry him down to lie in the kitchen for a while before bedtime.  At night, I slept on the mattresses on the floor so that he could have some company.

It’s now 5 months later and, unless you know what to look for, you’d never know that the little guy has absolutely nothing attaching his left leg to his skeleton.  He runs and jumps and plays and does all the things that a cat should do – but his personality has completely changed.  Cuddling in my lap is no longer an occasional thing – it’s something that he loves to do whenever I sit down.  He used to be somewhat of a loner, but now he wants to be wherever everyone else is.  He rarely tears around the house now – not because he can’t, but because he’s more inclined to look around and SEE what’s happening before reacting to it.

Can’t say that I blame him for that.

Anyway, he’s a sweetie.  And – hopefully – we’re done with the vet for a while.

I’m on vacation next week.  The plan as of now is to drive up to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and spend a week on the southern shore of Lake Superior at the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  I discovered this place last year and fell in love with it.  Looking forward to some fresh air, cool temperatures, steady breezes, and solitude.