Job Search Updates

The job search is ongoing. My manager said this morning that he’s been told to start the separation paperwork, so I should get some emails next week. I guess the divorce is about to become final.

So, no job, but a couple of prospects on the horizon.

I did update my resume, and that has started calls from some recruiters, so I recommend take a resume course if you’re looking.

I also accidentally discovered the fastest way to find a new job – become a recruiter.

I got a call from a woman in Houston yesterday at 2:25pm. She had a perfect position for me and wanted to discuss it at my earliest convenience. I was in a meeting (ironically with another recruiter), so I missed the call, but I sent her a polite email and said I’d call today.

I called at 11:34am this morning, asked for the recruiter, and the receptionist said, “She’s no longer here. Could someone else help you?”.

I said, “No longer with the firm?” and the receptionist said, “She decided she wanted to follow a different path.”

So, my recruiter found herself a new career and left the firm in a little under 22 hours.

WTF?

I guess if you read job requisitions all day long, eventually, you will see one, and say, “Screw this! I could do this job!” and just send over your resume instead of your client’s.

I wish her good luck in her new career, whatever it may be. I hope she’s not a presales software engineer, as I really don’t need the competition right now.

In the meantime, the receptionist found my by my phone number, found the job requisition in question and gave me the name of my new recruiter, who had just left for lunch. She will call me.

I should have asked, “Are you sure she’s coming back from lunch?”

Permanent Layoff

I was selected as a member of IBM’s Resource Action, Class of March 2017. So, after almost nineteen years at IBM, I am back on the job market, and immediately available.

I consider myself an experienced technical leader with a proven track record in first-line management, technical sales and support and development roles.

I’m most accustomed to customer-facing assignments providing pre-sales systems architecture guidance, technical education and technical support.

Any pointers are welcome.

My Failed Bid For Pope

I was cleaning up my domain list the other day (aka Why am I still paying for this?) and I found popexriva.com. I had forgotten it was there, actually.

My problem is that I will come up with something that is hysterically funny to me, pay the small fee for a domain, write up the basics, and then forget about it until the rather large renewal fee is extracted from my bank account. So, it’s time to clean house.

When Pope Benedict stepped down, I decided to run for Pope, so I put up a website. I’ve preserved the contents here, since I’m not going to pay the renewal fees. I may put it back if the office opens up again.

Pope Xriva I

REJECTED. White smoke from the Sistine Chapel and no missed calls on my mobile. I’ve been passed over again. However, it’s somewhat political, so my new campaign starts as soon as our new Holy Father appears.

I have tossed my hat in the ring for Pope. I actually don’t have a pointy hat, but I do have a number of baseball caps. I will have better hats once elected.

I have added a personal statement and my qualifications.

I do hope this isn’t breaking any Cardinal rules.

Personal Statement

I realize that there is not really an official application for Pope, since the College of Cardinals is guided by the Holy Spirit to choose the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

However, since the only people they see in the locked room while deliberating and voting are the other Cardinals, one of them invariably gets elected. Hopefully, if one of them is idly surfing the web during a particularly boring presentation, he will find this site and think, “Hey! A new guy!”

While I don’t have any real experience leading the one true Church, I have been a team lead for years and have heard the Lord’s name invoked on a fairly regular basis. Hopefully, this will be enough.

I’m in my mid-fifties. I’m not going to retire any time soon. I like most Italian food. My wife wants to visit Rome. (Oops. That may be a deal-breaker. I suppose divorcing her wouldn’t help.)

My fervent hope is to be the first overweight Irish-German-American-Texan Pope.

Qualifications

Baptized
Confirmed
Former Altar Boy
Wedding Officiant (Universal Life Church Minister)
Only divorced once
Team lead of technical team, so used to personnel issues
World Traveler
Not looking to retire within eight years
Hear the Lord’s name invoked on a regular basis at work

Endorsements

If I can get some red Prada shoes – New York, New York
Anything to get him out of the house – Dallas, Texas
Anything to get him out of the office – Coppell, Texas

Smokey and the Bandit IV

Smokey and the Bandit was fun. In Corporate America, not so much.

Every once in a while, you realize how entertainment sometime actually reflects real life. This time last year, I was thinking about Survivor and why I find it difficult to watch. (The same thing happened last night.)

I was thinking about Smokey and the Bandit the other day, a fun movie – not a lot of deep messages, really, but a fun way to kill part of an afternoon. Bandit is challenged to drive to Texarkana and back to Atlanta in 28 hours with some bootleg Coors. (Since some of my fraternity brothers later borrowed my pick-up to drive from San Antonio to Texarkana to get bootleg Busch kegs for a party, I can say the story makes sense. Somewhat.)

Of course, Bandit was not the truck driver, Cledus (the Snowman) was. Bandit was the blocker – a distraction to make sure the truck made it through (and a good excuse to have a Trans Am in a movie).

The corporate world doesn’t really have many blockers, which is unfortunate, since a shield is a good thing every once in a while. Here’s how Cledus would fare in the corporate world today:

Cledus arrived at work one day and was told, “Congratulations! You are our new truck driver!” He was a bit surprised, since he was in charge of the entire factory floor, but management knows best, so he became a truck driver. He anxiously waited for his first assignment. And he waited. Then, he noticed there weren’t any trucks anywhere around the factory. There was just an old beat-up van, parked in the corner. It was either parked almost on top of some tomato crates, or it was up on blocks. It was hard to tell.

One day, about three weeks later, his boss asked why the tomatoes were all rotting in the warehouse. “Why didn’t you drive the tomatoes to Chicago last week? The van is in the back of the warehouse.” Now, that explained the van. It didn’t explain why a van driver was called a truck driver, or how Cledus was supposed to have divined that tomatoes went in the van to Chicago, but at least he had his first assignment.

He apologized profusely, ordered some new tomatoes after going through sixteen levels of management approvals, and drove them to Chicago in the van. He had to do the speed limit, since there were no blockers, and the van couldn’t go that fast, since it was overloaded with tomatoes. Also, one of the tires had a slow leak, so he had to stop and fill it every few hundred miles. Corporate had said they don’t reimburse for tire repairs.

When he got back from Chicago, Cledus went to tell his boss he was back, and the tomatoes had been safely delivered. His boss said, “Where are the sausages?” “What sausages?” “The ones you were supposed to pick up in Milwaukee, on your way back from Chicago.” “Why did nobody mention the sausages to me?” “What do you mean? Joe knew about the sausages. It was discussed in three meetings while you were away. Everyone in marketing knew about the sausages. The web team is waiting to photograph them for the web site. Are you not a team player?”

So, Cledus got ready to go get the sausages. First, he looked around to see if there was any rotting fruit in the warehouse, in case something else he didn’t know about was supposed to go Northbound. Before he left, his boss said, “There are too many sausages for you to carry in the van. You need a truck. You will need at least six people. Take Bob and Phil with you.”

Cledus wasn’t sure how to tell his boss that adding two people to himself was three, not six, and Phil was in a wheelchair, but he set out for Milwaukee. He took the van, since there still wasn’t any truck in sight, and corporate directives specifically forbid renting trucks. He wondered if they would ever get a truck. He wondered when he would have his title changed to “van driver” which would be correct. He knew an actual van driver in another department, but he drove a forklift.

Halfway there, his cell phone rang. “Hey, I need Bob on a different truck in Memphis, tomorrow. You’ve trained him to load potatoes, haven’t you? It came up in our staff meeting this morning.” Now, Cledus wasn’t sure how to answer, since he hadn’t even taught Bob to load sausages yet. Oops.

So, he dropped Bob off at the next town so he could catch a bus to the warehouse where he would load potatoes. First, he stopped by the store so Bob could at least see a sack of potatoes before he left. That way, he could say he trained him. (Cledus asked Bob to call him and tell him if they were loading a van or a truck. Bob called the next day, and said it was a station wagon.) He thought about asking Phil to drive, but the van wasn’t a handicapped-accessible van, and Phil had forgotten his distance glasses, anyway.

After loading sausages for two days, he and Phil headed south. Phil still couldn’t drive the van. It was really smelly in the van.

He got home with the sausages in spite of the challenges, and was pretty happy with the results. He boss said, “There are only twelve dozen sausages here. I called the manufacturer in Phoenix while you were on the way and told them I wanted sixteen dozen. Where are the rest?”

Cledus wasn’t sure where to start. The manufacturer didn’t have any control over the independent warehouse in Milwaukee or his ordering system. Nobody told the warehouse or him. The manufacturer simply was the wrong person to call. Maybe this wasn’t his fault.

No, it was. His boss said so.

So, he was given one last assignment, to prove he was worthy of being a truck driver that didn’t have a truck.

Late that evening, Cledus texted the Bandit, who was working for a different company. The text said “Do you know if there is still a land bridge?” Cledus is a truck driver. He has to deliver a van full of pickles. To London. From Cleveland.

I miss Cledus. You can go really fast in a van, but it’s a long way to jump from the US to the UK. If you don’t make it all the way on the first jump, there’s only so long you can hold your breath, and it’s hard to swim and pull a van at the same time.

Some of his co-workers wanted to name the warehouse in his memory, but he got a really bad final review for drowning a load of pickles and losing a van.

Eastbound and Down has a whole new meaning in the corporate world.

Genealogy From Spit

This is My DNA Profile that I received today. It’s not the most exciting set of results.

I’ve been working on my family tree off and on for years. I don’t really need to do a lot of work as my Mom’s Mom’s family seems to have an unofficial historian and there are lots of notes out there. My Dad’s family is not well-documented – I think I first discovered my grandad had a brother when I was in my forties. (Dad didn’t talk about his family much, and when I asked him once what “Gilhooly” meant, he said, “The bastard down by the stream.” He may have just been stressed that evening.)

My wife has done some work on her family tree, but some of the branches seem more interested in their own specific branch than where the entire tree goes. I think it’s pretty much you go as far back as the people you saw at Sunday dinner at Grandma’s, and call it good. That, and she’s Brooklyn Italian, so a quarter of the branches in her family tree end up in the East River.

When I found out about the AncestryDNA kits, it sounded like an interesting idea, but a bit far-fetched. I wasn’t sure want bodily fluid was required to extract your DNA (it’s saliva, so calm down), but it sounded scientific and mysterious.

Why trace people’s names when you could find out you were part Gypsy just by spitting in a tube?

The test is interesting – you actually do spit into a tube (up to the fill line), seal it with another tube that has preservative in it, shake it, drop it in a post-paid envelope, and wait for the results.

I may be the first guy who was looking forward to a DNA test coming back.

They tell you it takes six to eight weeks to get your results, but I was pretty sure that was setting expectations low. I was correct. I mailed off my spit in a tube at the beginning of the month, and my AncestryDNA test results arrived today. Actually, I got an email that said they were available on the web site.

There is nothing earth-shaking in them, which is good and bad. Good, because it means nobody has been lying to me about my origins, and bad, because it means I actually am descended from these whack-jobs.

My wife and I sent out samples in the same day, and mine are back, and hers aren’t, which just shows alcohol is easier to process than tomato sauce.

It did occur to me that genealogy would be a wonderful subject in high school, when everyone is desperately trying to prove they’re not descended from the tyrants at home.

I’m pretty sure my wife’s family will now buy kits for each other, since they all criticize each others’ cooking and eating habits, and the greatest insult is “You can’t possibly be Italian.” Well, let’s see, shall we?

My key results:

56% Ireland, which would be my Dad’s contribution, as his family is from a small town in northern Ireland – which is not to be confused with Northern Ireland. We’ve visited there, it’s beautiful countryside, and small farms. If you go far enough north in the beautiful countryside, you will meet British soldiers with tanks and automatic weapons. That would be Northern Ireland.

24% from Europe West, which must be mostly Mom’s donations – her family emigrated to Texas from Germany (probably technically Prussia) in the late 1850s, and my maternal grandfather’s family was from Alsace, which is either German or French, depending on who won the last war. Mom’s family left Germany since all of the sons would very likely be forced to go into the Kaiser’s army, but ironically got to Texas just in time for some of them to fight in the Civil War for the South. Ouch. Luckily, I don’t think any of them saw active duty, they just wandered around the State, not fighting Yankees, since they’re weren’t any in Texas. Yet.

6% Scandinavia, which I have no idea, but it explains why I like lingonberries. If it’s ancient DNA, then it’s just the invaders who went to Ireland to rape and pillage, and found beautiful countryside and small farms. Either that, or the invaders who went to Germany for Oktoberfest.

6% Italy/Greece which is probably just from the gallons of tomato sauce that Virginia has fed me over the last 16 years – some of it is bound to be in my blood. Either that, or it’s from my ancestors who left France to teach the Italians how to cook and make wine, or the ones who left Germany to teach the Italians how to make sausage, or the ones who left Ireland to teach the Italians how to make love.

4% Great Britain which is probably some of my Irish relatives getting lost going home from the pub. “Sean! It must have rained while we were havin’ a pint. I don’t remember having to swim across the street when we left the house.“

There are traces of random other stuff, but I’m not an African Prince, so don’t email me money, no matter how much I ask.

This is a wee bit more specific than “Irish and German” which is what I’ve been told all my life.

The results can’t say I’m German (it’s Europe West), since I think when my family left for Texas, they were Prussians. When my family left Ireland, they were technically British, but they were not happy about it.

I really didn’t think that I would ever pay a company $99 to process a vial of my spit for two weeks, but my cousin had done her DNA test a while ago, and we were discussing her results last month. Her results showed a lot of Great Britain in her DNA, which is interesting since her Mom (my Aunt and my Mom’s sister) and Dad are from the same small town in Texas and have roughly similar family trees. (My Mom’s home town had five or six founding families who all tended to marry each other.)

The DNA results did predict that my cousin and I were cousins, so that part of the test works.

There’s a part of me that was really hoping to find out I was descended from gypsies or pirates, but so it goes.

Now that I have my results, I have to get the dogs checked. Rocky cannot be all Chihuahua.

Un Poquito Espanol

I have been dealing with our corporate team in Latin America lately. They are lovely people, very easy to work with, but their customers all speak Spanish. This has been a challenge. I took Spanish in prep school, never did that well, and never practiced after that.

The first internal call with the team, I apologized and explained I knew “Bar Spanish.” It is a very simple dialect:

“Una cerveza, poor favor.” (A beer, please.)
“Uno mas.” (One more – can be repeated.)
“Gracias.” (Thank you – after each delivery.)
“Manana.” (See you tomorrow.)

They found this quite funny (whew.) I did not cuss in Spanish, which I learned in college, although not officially. The problem with Bar Spanish is that it only works in Cozumel, and they all speak English there, anyway.

Most of the rest of the basic Spanish I remember is “Una cerveza y dos helados” which is “one beer and two ice creams.”

It was from a story we had to read in sixth grade, a picture book using basic phrases as captions for each picture. I never understood why a Dad would order beer while getting his kids ice cream. Then, I had my child.With grandkids, I would have to learn “one defibrillator and three ice creams.”

For the record, my former manager (current translator) told the Latin America team about beer and ice cream, and they found it hilarious. At least laughter is the same in English and Spanish. I hope.

There’s Trouble a’Brewin’

I started drinking coffee because years ago, one of my bosses had a secretary that would bring him coffee, and after we went out a couple of times, she would bring me coffee, too. It pays to sit next to your boss’ office. It pays to date the coffee maker. (The person who makes coffee, not the machine.) (Yes, this was a long, long time ago. At my current job, nobody has secretaries but upper management, and they have assistants, and they don’t make coffee. Well, they might, but if you’re in Dallas and your assistant is in Raleigh, it doesn’t help much.)

That started a long addiction to the bean-flavored hot water.

I’ve had fresh-brewed coffee, stale-brewed coffee, coffee from random machines, Starbucks (it gives me a headache), instant coffee, you name it.

Eventually, I became a bit of a coffee snob. I went from instant to brewed coffee to grinding beans just before brewing. I even roasted my own beans. Once.

I spent years on the Gevalia plan, getting overpriced coffee shipped to my door, so I could grind beans every morning, and make a fresh pot. (Being home-officed means you are in charge of your own coffee.) I finally gave it up to prove to the Spousal Unit that I could give up my frivolous spending, but it just encouraged her to increase hers, since we were saving money elsewhere.

If I had to go into the office, there was a QuikTrip on the way, and I like their coffee. Plus, the drive there was about as long as it took my diuretic to kick in, so win-win.

Over time, slowly, I stopped grinding. I suppose it was because I found that I could order Wawa coffee (after having it every day while visiting the in-laws) but they didn’t have beans, just ground. It may also be because I am getting lazy. One less thing to clean, one less thing to do.

So, Wawa is pre-ground. But it’s good.

So, I went from “Frankly, I feel that if you don’t grind your own beans, you are not receiving the essence of coffee” to “Wawa good. Brew now.”

That was the first step into darkness.

The next issue was that the Spousal Unit gave up coffee. So, now, when I made a pot of ten to twelve cups (aka three to four mugs) in the morning, I was drinking it. All of it.

Wow. That will raise your heart rate, especially when coupled with constant conference calls.

That is just too much coffee, even for me.

So, I needed a way to make less, and I really don’t like how coffee tastes when you try to brew only a couple of cups in a big machine. I got down to making about three mugs, which was less waste, but it still took a while to brew, and I was usually behind schedule in the mornings.

That lead to the … evil … K-Cup.

There were only a few things in the coffee world I had said I would never do.

I had made instant (shudder!)
I skipped coffee, had soda or tea and survived the mornings, but would have a headache in the afternoon.
I had used an Italian stovetop espresso machine (and not blown up the kitchen), after I had to go buy espresso cups.
I had used a French Press (Spousal Unit broke it.) Actually, I had a large one and a small one.
I had used a vacuum pot (Spousal Unit broke it.)
I had made cold brew coffee, the last time it was in vogue – it’s coming back again.
I had used an aluminum percolator like my Grandmother had, just without putting eggshells in it to mellow the brew.
I had used a single-cup drip coffee maker that was really just a filter holder that sat on top of a cup.
I had a four-cup machine, a ten-cup machine and a twelve-cup machine (Spousal Unit broke the carafe.)
I ended up with a twelve-cup machine with a reservoir for the coffee and nothing made of glass that the Spousal Unit could break.

However, I had never used a single-cup K-Cup machine.

I don’t know what my original objection was, since I’m old and rather forgetful, but it was a pretty strong objection, let me tell you.

So, now I have a single-cup brewer. In my defense, it will also brew grounds and pods (if you can find pods), so I’m not stuck with just K-Cups. It’s a multi-tasker. Sort of.

Now, I can make one cup of coffee at a time. It takes two minutes, which is a lot less time than brewing a pot of coffee. In fact, I can get one cup brewed while I’m removing the previous cup from my system. Efficient.

Single-cup tasted better when somebody was bringing it to me. However, I’m not wasting a half a pot any more, and that bothered me a lot.

The only issue is that the K-Cup universe thinks 10oz is a large cup. Have these people never been to Wawa? QuikTrip? 7-11? (I leave Starbucks out, since I do not make enough to enjoy a large cup of Starbucks coffee.)

Luckily, the cups that came with our dish set are the perfect size for single-cup use. Now, I know why they were so tiny. Otherwise, you just brew twice into the same cup. This is non-optimal, obviously, because who has four minutes to wait for coffee?

I still make a pot of coffee on days I will need it – say, more than two meetings. The rest of the time, it’s one at a time.

Wawa sells K-cup pods.

Life is good.

NaPoWriMo

It’s April! Time to start writing poetry! Every year, I try to accomplish the goal of NaPoWriMo – write one poem a day for a month. This year, I actually have a couple of days head start, because this week has been fruitful.

It’s interesting trying to write on a regular schedule with a self-imposed deadline (I was going to post here daily – haha!) but poetry can be much easier than prose, because all you need is one line (“I am an Irish Pirate, I drink Guinness every night”), and then you work around it. With prose, you have to have a (relatively) coherent thought, which is much more difficult.

So, I think this is year three for me (have to go back and check.) I won’t be on a ship during the month this year, so there should be much fewer works about the sea.

Two down, twenty-eight to go!

Survivor

My wife loves Survivor. She loves it so much she tells people we love Survivor. This particular usage must be the Royal We, because I do not love Survivor. I will watch it with her, but I actually prefer the Amazing Race, where contestants have some control over their own destiny. Survivor actually distresses me, although I couldn’t really articulate why.

Last night was the conclusion of another riveting season. Actually, all the players were returning contestants, so it was better than most seasons. Some guy who had been in the back most of the time managed to build a large enough alliance to get into the final three, pleaded that he was there to win for his family, and won a million dollars. He won one challenge.

I was incensed that he won, as he had minimal accomplishments. I thought the whole “for my family” speech was pandering to the jury. My wife was very pleased he won, since she liked him.

It’s today’s Corporate America in a nutshell, and that’s my problem with Survivor – it’s just too close to my work life to be enjoyable.

I’m hoping the producers originally envisioned a true contest of strength and endurance, where the cream would rise to the top, and the most powerful would be rewarded with riches. Assuming that a TV producer had ever read Darwin (a leap of faith on my part), the strong would survive, by natural selection. This is a good theory.

Here’s what actually happens each season on Survivor:

A bunch of random people are placed in a relatively high-stress situation somewhere in a remote location. They are not truly random, since the producers choose them ahead of time, and there always seem to be patterns. It’s almost like there were quotas to fill. There will be a big tough guy, an pretty boy, a nerd, a slightly crazy woman, a proud ethnic woman, an overly-sensitive guy, an old guy, a Mother Earth woman, someone with a secret, and a few others. The “random” people are placed on teams.

After a couple of days of assessing each other, some of the rather weak performers start to band together and methodically wipe out the stronger performers, simply because that’s the only way they will remain in the game. They swear loyalty to each other, but will switch allegiances whenever necessary, just to stay alive. If their friends are sacrificed, so be it. There are always one or two incompetents who manage to stick around week after week, just because they are no threat to anyone, even if they are an incredible annoyance to the people who actually know what is going on. Someone thinks he is in charge, but everyone is actually working behind his back to destroy him.

The truly weak are kept around because at the end, in theory, the best player of the few left will be crowned the winner. So, rather than surrounding yourself with strong players, you select weak players, since that makes you look stronger.

Each week, all of the contestants are required to complete a task which has no apparent actual value other than it was the task assigned. One of the teams will get rewarded based on how quickly they can do the task. It doesn’t really matter if you don’t master the task (except for losing the reward), since you will never have to do the task again. If you win, you get a reward and the other team gets told “I got nothin’ for you.”

After that, there is another random task, but this time, if your team loses, your team has to send someone home. There are hidden trinkets that you can find that can prevent you from going home, but only if you display the trinket at the proper time. In the end, some of the last ones who were vanquished are allowed to pick the winner out of the losers that are left.

It’s natural selection on acid.

It is also, my friends, the past thirty or so years of my life, except that on Survivor, nobody has to do annual performance reviews, mainly because they’re not out there that long. I’m constantly amazed I’m still here. I guess I’m just not a threat to anyone.

Holidazed

This is specifically written to make me feel better, because I’m about to have my annual panic attack. Read this, and you will probably understand why. This is all just self-reflection, and not designed to insult or offend anyone who may be mentioned or thinks they may be mentioned. So, apologies in advance, just in case.

I hate the holidays. I will admit that. I used to deny it, but even I realize I really dislike this time of year. This has been true for so long that my first wife warned my second wife about it while we were still dating, and I’ve been married to my second wife for fifteen years. I was never sure why, but I’m pretty sure I know now. I’m beginning to recognize some of the annual patterns, and they may have something to do with how I feel.

First of all, for anyone that is even tangentially connected to a sales organization, Christmas is really the end of fourth quarter and the end of the year – when the sales guys are either going to make their quotas or not. Not making end of the year quota is bad, since reviews are coming up, and you’re about to get a number between 1 and 4 attached to you that is not a ranking (Really. No, it’s really not. It’s just everyone with low numbers is better than people with high numbers. But it’s not a ranking.) So, if you’re a technical resource like me in a sales organization, you can get called into anything that resembles a sales opportunity no matter how hopeless – and the hopelessness will be matched by the desperation of the salesperson. Unfortunately, their bonuses are riding on my performance, so they will expect me to work 80-hour weeks. I don’t get a sales bonus, and I know desperation when I smell it. Usually, once it is apparent that the sale is completely lost, someone will start suggesting that a visit on-site would save the day. The site will be in a remote area, prone to being snowed in, with crappy air service. The only customers available will have no purchasing authority.

I will begin crying at stupid things, especially commercials, starting at Thanksgiving. It may be that I’m really sentimental, it may be the crushing disappointment of never getting a pony for Christmas, it may be the realization that my extended family will probably never get together for an event again – no matter how much we talk about it, or it may just be I gave up drinking too soon in life. So, please just ignore me if I’m crying. It’s probably not you, and it will be over soon.

I will have my annual theological issues with the commercialization of Christmas. These feelings start at the Fourth of July when the first decorations go up. This then leads me to the realization that I’m quite possibly a really, really bad Catholic. However, I’m not especially welcome in the Church since I’m divorced and remarried. Or maybe I am welcome. It depends on whom you ask, and what you mean by “welcome”. Also, I have a fundamental issue with the Church hierarchy who lately seem much more interested in being popular with people and fixing global warming than actually saving souls, which I thought was their job. I understand politicians pandering to the masses, but the Church should be keeping people on the straight and narrow. So, trying to be religious this time of year is very difficult for me. The Catholic Church is a lot like most big corporations – there’s somebody in charge somewhere that has a vision of what should happen, but they keep hiring incompetents to implement the vision.

The Spousal Unit does not want to be home on Christmas. This has been true since her Mom passed away seven years ago. That’s fine, I can live with that. So, logically, we have to go somewhere. In 2009, for lack of better ideas, we went on a cruise, and survived – actually, it was fun. So, now, we take a cruise over Christmas. Interesting point – Christmas Week is the second most expensive week to cruise in the entire year (only New Year’s is worse, and one year, we had both holidays in one cruise.) So, as with anything you have been paying for since at least February, the expectations are high. Anything with high expectations is pretty much doomed, at least on some level, because the expectations amplify minimal imperfections – for some hilarious examples, just read the CruiseCritic website. Also, since the cruise and accouterments (airfare, hotels, excursions, drinks, souvenirs, pet sitters, new clothes, camera gear, insurance) cost quite a bit of money, anything that can threaten it (work, injuries, pet issues, family issues, travel issues, possible divorce) is made that much worse.

Since we’re gone for Christmas, my family will want to have a Christmas gathering (much like the one the Spousal Unit is avoiding) some time before we leave, since nobody in my family wants to go on the cruise with us – the Parental Unit wants to stay home just as much as the Spousal Unit wants to leave. So, Christmas will be between the 12th and the 23rd and then again on the 25th. If the Spousal Unit’s family ever figures this out, I could end up with three Christmases a year, which is more than my son had as a child of divorce.

Now, ket’s look at what always seems to occur within a few days of Christmas, usually a week or so before – i. e. when I’m trying to close out work projects and get out of town for vacation. When most of this happened this week, I realized it was time to document it.

Some time during the week before we leave:

One of our dogs will have a minor to major medical issue. (This actually happens before most vacations in addition to Christmas.) This week, Ripley spent an $845 day at the veterinarian’s. So much for my bar tab on the ship. (On this day in 2011, Bubba crossed the bridge, so I am very glad Ripley is home in one piece, but I wish we didn’t have to spend almost a grand to find out he’s old and temperamental.)
The Spousal Unit or I (maybe both) will have a very painful, short-term medical issue that has the potential to derail the entire vacation. Last year, the Spousal Unit had stress-induced vertigo the night before we left that was so bad, I moved our flight eight hours later to give her time to recover (and pack). This year, I managed to slip on a pee puddle in a dark hallway and sprain my ankle. (Yes, pee puddle. The dogs don’t always wait until they’re outside.) I’ve almost finished limping.
Someone in the family will start a very distracting project that will then keep the Spousal Unit very distracted until the absolute last minute – to the point where I assume I will be sailing naked, and even though nobody said the project was actually her problem or that it had to be done before Christmas. My Parental Unit will have house repairs or insurance paperwork. Someone somewhere will be ill. Someone needs desperate pet advice, whether they know it or not. My sister-in-law will have some of the carpet in her house replaced. One of the dogs will have a new medication, which requires a sixteen-hour rewrite of the ten-page pet manual for the pet sitter. Something. (One year, it was an actual death, so carpets aren’t so bad.)
There will be a major crisis at work. I will be one of three candidates in the Universe that can solve this issue, even if it is not in my job description, my department or even my field of expertise. I will be the only one of the three available. It will blow over eventually, but it may be January before it’s fully resolved. Usually, because of the way annual budgets and finances are designed at work (“Fall Plan” starts in May and ends in February, if you’re lucky), there will be a wee question of whether I will have a job when I return. One year, I had a paper for a conference rejected and found out about it on the ship. So it goes. Then, they said, “No. You have to rewrite it. By Monday.” I redid the paper from my Spousal Unit’s aunt’s house via a T-Mobile hotspot we bought at Home Depot. (She didn’t have Internet access, but she did have a fax machine.)
The pet injury and family projects will be the number one, single most critical issues for the Spousal Unit, which make my work problems seem trivial in comparison to her, even if my work crisis is helping management figure out how best to phase out my own job. Having to hear about a Chihuahua’s possible ingrown toenail or how difficult it can be to choose tile while I’m trying to find an extra half million dollars somewhere or I’m patiently explaining for the third time why if a job is necessary in December, it’s probably still necessary in January tends to be slightly annoying. Possibly stressful. Just saying. Maybe it’s just me.
I will be told by at least one manager to “forget about work and enjoy your vacation.” I know this is a trap, because I just spent a week trying to figure out where to cut the budget. So, $250 for Internet access on the ship, and I need to watch my email.

On Christmas Day itself, I will not realize it’s Christmas, because we’ve already had the celebrations, I’m still stressed from work, and I will probably be snorkeling. On the bright side, there will probably be rum.

Some years, the calendar is particularly cruel, and I will have work days between the end of the cruise and the end of the year. That’s the case this year.

I don’t really know why I hate the holidays.