norsegirl

I asked for my vacation time yesterday to go house hunting. After the vacation was approved late yesterday I went home and had a good think about when to give my boss notice. Having concluded that he is a very reasonable human being, I decided to tell him today, giving him lots of notice. It was very easy to slip it into our meeting this morning as he brought up the subject of booking my 3-month review so my raise would come through in a timely fashion. I used that opportunity to tell him that would not be necessary and explain my situation and Jason's transfer.

I still haven't given him a firm end-date as our move is still dependent on US immigration approving our visas. If some wrench gets thrown in the works and we wind up staying here I want to ensure that I still have work. He won't start posting the position until he has a confirmed final date from me, but at least I've let him know and I don't have to walk around feeling all sneaky and like I'm hiding something.

He actually seemed pretty positive and used the opportunity to talk about how he too almost ended up on that side of the border during his last job search. It went about as well as could be expected.

Over lunch today I called one of the major American banks to see what we could do about securing a mortgage. The only mortgage broker we've talked to so far made it sound like it would be terribly difficult as Canadians with no US credit rating. The guy at the bank made it sound like it would be dead-easy. When I asked if our rate would be worse because of our lack of credit history, he indicated that the 20% down payment should make that irrelevant. Here's hoping it really works that way. We'll hear back on Monday. I'll also give the US branch of ING a call to get a mortgage quote from them and to see if they want to work with us. Probably will do that tomorrow.

Tonight we're heading to Ashlie's place for fresh-fried Newfoundland fish and chips. The fish was caught by her (or her parents) and brought back (frozen) from her vacation last week. I am VERY MUCH looking forward to tonight's dinner. Jason hates fish, so this will be interesting - lol.

Just a strange, random observation... I was originally hired by the City in Finance, Client Accounting. My client was Planning and Development. Planning purchased Kleenex for their staff. Finance did not. However, as we were on-site with Planning, we were allowed to take a box from their supplies for our desk. My second client was City Clerks. They did not purchase kleenex for their staff, we had to bring our own from home. In fact all supplies were pretty slim pickings (highlighters, pens, binders, everything but paper was in short supply really). Now I work for Corporate Properties, Buildings and Facilities maintenance and the supplies (including kleenex) are back in full force.

I wonder if it was the type of department (like finance keeps a closer eye on its budget because that's all they do) or the proximity to the elected officials (they love to question what staff really needs and what can be done without, just don't ask them to question their own expenses). Working for government is endlessly fascinating that way.

Today's task... record usage of our three meeting rooms for the last year to justify whether we really need them all or if some, all or parts of them can be converted into offices. Recording when bookings are and comparing the three rooms to find overlap is relatively easy. Time consuming but straight-forward. Figuring out usage of the rooms based on capacity (8.5 hours per working day if you include lunch) is also fairly easy. Now they've asked me to try to estimate the approximate number of people attending each meeting. This is ridiculous and impossible. The meeting invites are separate data from the room bookings so I have no way of knowing who was invited much less who attended. And even if I did have the list of invitees... would I seriously be expected to count every name for every meeting? Also, what would I do with that raw data? What kind of number would be useful there? I'm thinking averages are meaningless. And while they might be trying to figure out how often we hold 2-5 person meetings in spaces that can accommodate 20 to see if we're making good use of the space I'm still not thinking that is important. After all, if it's not being otherwise used, might as well have 2 people in there as have it stand empty.

I'm thinking this might be one of those problems you have to approach from the other angle... what is the capacity for the proposed new meeting space? How many hours worth of meetings do we have with attendance over that maximum capacity?

Of course, if you HAVE to approach it from historical data to proposal, to come up with a capacity for the new room one could also look at how many people attend the largest meetings we hold on a regular basis.

Either way, averages are irrelevant as are any meetings that end up under the intended capacity.

Put Lauren on the plane to go home this morning and cried my way out of the airport again. I'm such a sap. It was another good visit and we did some really different stuff this time.

The first week we mostly hung around, played board games and lots of Rock Band (X-Box) and Boom Blox (Wii). We also went to a concert/tailgate party and football game the first week she was here which was a lot of fun. The Esks won in a very exciting last 5 minutes of play, or so I was told, we left early to avoid the traffic. As it was City Employee appreciation night we were able to find out how much longer it would have taken if we'd stayed to the end. We were home by 11:30, the others made it home by 12:30 or 1:00. I'm thinking leaving five minutes before the end was certainly worth avoiding the frustration of an hour trying to get out of there.

Jason and Lauren came downtown once for Indian buffet and we had bubble tea a few times. Also ate Vietnamese food once. Last night we hit Red Lobster, so it's been a pretty decadent week. Must put myself back on some kind of diet now that she's gone. Time to go back to reality and get out of vacation mode.

Speaking of vacation, I did manage to take a few days off while Lauren was here between my old job and my new one. We decided to spend it seeing the Stampede and camping in Banff. We managed to leave so late that we completely missed the rodeo, which I had bought tickets to so that kinda sucked, but it's in the past. The band we were there to see that night (Finger Eleven) wasn't great. The venue was terrible so the acoustics were bad, we could hardly see and there were a lot of smokers. We gave up on the concert after about 5 songs. We did get to see a cutting horse competition, which was cool,
and we wandered through the agricultural arena and petted lots of critters. Also ate some junk food but avoided waiting in line for any of the rides as it just didn't seem worth it. Report on the food: corn dogs were good, the elephant ears were pretty bad (not stretched thin enough), the jello shooters were fun, and I like blue candy apples best. All in all, Stampede was okay I guess, but it kinda struck me as just another county fair. Maybe I'd feel differently if we'd actually made it to the rodeo.

The next day we met up with an old childhood friend, Janine, and "floated". We bought a bunch of booze, dragged a few rafts out to the Elbow river and floated down the river under the sun and a perfect breeze with all the people in one boat and all the booze in a cooler in another boat tied to the first. We managed to capsize the people boat, but the booze had a safe trip the whole way. It was a lot of fun and I think I'll have to go back to Calgary for another float in a few weeks.

After dinner we left for Banff, arriving at midnight. We set up camp for the first night at Two Jack Lake's Main campground. Most of the sites were empty as it was cool and rainy and the middle of the week. Lauren slept in the car as we intended to move sites in the morning. I made crepes in a wonderful dining shelter and then we packed camp and headed for Two Jack Lake's lakeside camping. We ended up in space 32, which the girl at the entrance had nicknamed the "honeymoon suite". It was right by the lake and the most isolated from the other sites. Though all the other sites were in view, they were not surrounding us, so that was rather nice. It was however cold and rainy all day.

We went in to town, saw the Banff Springs hotel, shopped, visited the hot springs and had my cell phone either stolen or lost, which sucked. I did buy a nice pair of shoes though. We spent our evening huddled by a fire in a dining shelter eating pizza sandwiches.

Banff day two was crepes for breakfast again and then an exciting caving adventure. We crawled through tiny spaces, rappelled, slid head first down the "laundry chute" and saw cave rats at the Ratsnest Cave. We didn't take any pictures as I was too afraid to mess up the camera while climbing.

Day three was mostly spent hanging around the lake in a hammock and trying to start a fire that just refused to stay lit (the wood was damp inside but dry on the surface). That evening we headed back into Banff to search for my lost phone, to no avail, and then enjoyed a wonderful meal at Grizzly House. Grizzly House is a fondue restaurant with a pretty hefty price tag, so we came kinda dressed up (as dressy as you can get when you get dressed at a camp site). I was rather surprised both by the tacky decor and the large number of families with children, but the food certainly made it worthwhile. Very yum and I'd highly recommend it as a memorable and interesting restaurant, but I don't think I'd go there on a regular basis even if I lived in the area. We spent the evening playing card games in the dining shelter by a warm fire which was pretty nice.

The next morning we packed up and were out of the park at a reasonable hour, but we dawdled through breakfast and didn't make it to Calgary until 1:30 or so. We got to spend a few hours with Janine and Carol (her mum who was visiting and who is my mum's best friend) walking around the more charming areas of Calgary's downtown and then headed back to Edmonton
around 4:20. We were delayed in Red Deer by both weather and a detour (accident maybe?). And picked up our doggies pretty late.

Monday morning was my first day at the new job, and of course I forgot to set my alarm and slept in. I still made it in only half an hour late, but I really wanted to be on time. Ah well, this is also in the past now. I was on time today. Day one in the new job was a bit of a blur, mostly spent meeting people (and immediately forgetting their names) and playing with Visio. Today looks like it will be more of the same. Interestingly, because he was unable to meet my salary demand, my new boss came up with the brilliant compromise of making me perm-term, so I get three weeks of vacation and after three months I also get benefits! That's great news for me and I think I'll stop the job search for a few months unless something really sensational comes up.

Big shake-ups at the old office in the week I was gone too. One of the interns left for greener pastures (I think they were only there a month or two) and Candice is on leave because her Uncle passed away, so poor Una is utterly swamped. I wish the timing of my departure had been a little better. I haven't heard from the girl in my old, old job yet to know if evil-harpy-boss granted her permanent status or is holding her in probation. I think her three months was up yesterday so it may take a few more weeks for that to shake down.

In other employment news, Jason got the interview in Austin and they have graciously agreed to buy a plane ticket and fly me out too! Poor doggies have to go back to the kennel for a few days, but I get a mini-break on someone else's dime! Woot! I'm really, really excited about the opportunity of trying out a new city with a warmer climate and maybe owning a house so I hope they make an offer good enough to allow us to move down there.

And the salary negotiation dance begins. I absolutely hate this part of looking for and accepting a new job. I was reading a book on women and money and while men compare negotiations to a ball game, women compare it to visiting the dentist. Frankly, I like my dentist a lot more than negotiating my salary and would consider that comparison an insult to him.

For one, I'm a poor negotiator and I always "leave money on the table" as they say. I'm always so grateful to be hired that I feel kinda guilty asking for any more. That said, I realize that they want me and that asking for more won't make them rescind their previous offer, so there's really nothing to be lost. The worst that can happen is that they stand firm. Okay, so given that I have to ask for more, even though I don't really want to be in a position of making any kinds of demands, I'm never sure how high to push it.

For example, the current offer has two possible types of hires... a standard hire, at the standard rates for that position and an "opportunity hire" intended for a new university grad with no experience. The "opportunity level" caps out below the lowest rate for a normal hire. He's offered me something in the mid-range of the opportunity scale, justifying it by saying it is a 4.5% raise over my current rate. I understand that I don't have the required two years of experience in this field that the standard hire requires, however, I am also a little more experienced than the average new University grad. In order to take this job, I would have to cancel an interview for an Accountant position, which has a starting rate at the same level as the starting rate for this job as a standard hire, a position which I have a very good chance of getting, though it is certainly not guaranteed. Also, this job looks more interesting than the Accountant one, so I would be willing to take less for the more interesting work. I have asked to be placed at the highest level of the opportunity scale. He has said he'll get back to me after the holiday.

I hope that a) I get what I asked for and that b) I'm not selling myself short.

We had a staff BBQ today and I ran into the woman who got my old position. It should be noted that evil-harpy-boss(Harpy) was actually involved in the hiring process this time (screened the resumes, conducted the interviews and invited people back for second interview/tests), so in theory, she actually has someone that she chose for this position.

The Replacement has been there only 2 months and is already wanting to quit. I let her know exactly what my experience there was like, including the "pitfalls" I made that caused Harpy to hate me (or at least what she said I did wrong) and tried to reinforce the idea that it's not Replacement's fault the job sucks and she's not doing anything wrong, it's all Harpy. The other woman who worked there, we'll call her the Sympathizer, expressed frustration that no one seems to know that all these assistants are just fine, and I indicated that I was sure that the ones on top understand the situation perfectly. Sympathizer then asked why, if people know that Harpy is the problem, is no one getting rid of her instead of ruining this endless stream of assistants that have the misfortune of working under her. I explained that the union is probably protecting her from this well-deserved firing.

I encouraged replacement to just wait out her probation, secure the permanent position with the union and then start looking for something less soul-crushing. Upon returning to the office however, I discovered that Harpy can actually extend her probation and keep her in non-permanent limbo as long as she likes. I desperately hope that Replacement can manage to hang on and that Harpy does grant her permanent status so she can then run off on her. I will be exceedingly disappointed if Harpy uses her power to withhold permanent status from another person and gets all her work done and then throws her away like so much used Kleenex.

Replacement's parting words as lunch ended were "I don't want to go back. Just thinking about going back to the office makes me sick to my stomach".

On the bright side, it does make me feel pretty good about my own strength. I lasted 7 months under the Harpy without quitting, and probably made it 4 or 5 before I even got the idea to quit. I think I was at least 3 or 4 before the "sick to my stomach" phase. And frankly, she hated me far more than she hates Replacement. Also makes me feel good to know that my reaction to her treatment (the physical illness) is not unique to me.

Applied for more permanent positions here this week and actually got interviews for two of them. I had two interviews for Accountant positions here, which would mean both permanence and a nice big raise. I really hope I get one of them, but my chances are slim as usual. Still, even having interviews is a nice confidence boost.

Work is boring as always and we're losing yet more of our duties. My boss is getting tired of spending every day looking at the clock. It's both tiresome and worrying as you start wondering if one day you'll just come in to no work at all and nothing but a pink slip. The others here at least have permanent status, so the union will at least try to make them find other work elsewhere in the corporation. I could just be let go as they can terminate my contract any time they like for no reason at all. It's interesting how stress can just as easily be caused by either being over-worked or under-worked.

The weather here is teh suck! We've got so much snow outside that I can't open my front gate due to the drifts. I refuse to go out and do any census work as long as it is below 0 and the long term forecast doesn't seem to indicate that it will ever creep above that in the next week, so I guess I've made as much as I'm going to make on that little extra-curricular. If I get the accounting job I would of course quit the census work immediately.

The fresh rolls made it to lunch in perfect condition wrapped in saran as per Utsi's suggestion. Now I just need the nice hot weather to make them taste as refreshing as they should and life will be perfect.

In other news my girls seem to have finally grown up. We no longer lock them in either their cage or the kitchen when we are out at work. They are now allowed to range freely on the main floor of the house as they have proven that they no longer seem to have the drive to destroy anything they can get their teeth on. It's a nice, refreshing change in routine for all involved.

Yesterday I was informed that I should set aside 1 hour today for an employee review. While I know that I have completed 3 months here and this is probably a scheduled, expected occurence, it doesn't at all diminish the cold anvil of dread which has anchored itself firmly in my stomach. Previous experience with employee reviews have not been stellar. At least not anywhere that had formal reviews. The places I have always felt most confident in my job and most appreciated by my employer, ironically, were at those places which never had any formal process in place.

Evil tech giant's reviews mostly consisted of my manager finding random reasons to bash me with respect to my relations with others in the office, without going into specifics or giving details (because really, it was just between us, no one else really objected to me I don't think), while praising me on my ability with the customers (which, let's be honest, is the most important part of the job right?). And to be honest, I knew I was doing a good job and resented her having the opportunity to attack me about unrelated stuff. That and I didn't care about the job at all, so there was no investment in how I was reviewed. No matter how I performed I was going to get paid the same crappy wage and thus be the same unmotivated worker.

At CA firm I only had one formal review. I was told I was doing well at most things, but needed to work on one area. Was also given a raise. Two weeks later they changed their mind, decided the one thing I needed to work on was a deal-breaker and I was fired within a month. So while the initial review wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be (I certainly thought I was failing, but I was surprised and pleased to hear they were going to work with me on it), the change of heart and realization that they could change their mind about me at any moment made me rather suspicious and hesitant about reviews.

So yeah, I kinda feel like a dog that had misbehaved, and was initially rewarded with a treat and then slapped across the face. And although this is a different master, my fear of their hands remains.

Big old life-update. This got rather winded so behind the cut it goes.
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First day here at the city. On lunch right now. Appears I can't access facebook here at all due to the city's IT filters, so I guess that will lure me back to LJ.

I'm on the 8th floor, ironically, just below where the partners used to sit at CB. So far so good. The woman in charge of training me was off on the day I was hired (Friday) so this morning was a bit of a surprise for her. She hasn't had much planned for training me as a result, so I've spent most of the day organizing stuff. I've got a nice, big cube-desk thing. We don't have a lunch room, so no eating together as a group, which is a bit of a bummer and a bit lonely, but that's life. I get every other Monday off. Would rather it was Fridays as Mondays doesn't help for SCA events at all, but again, that's life. Better Monday off than no day off at all. I also have to work kinda early (8-4:30) but that's okay too. I'm making enough here that I'm going to spring for a parking pass and kiss the damned public transit system buh-bye, so it's not as early as it would be if I had to catch a bus. And maybe me working early will mean Jason gets into work early and gets home in time to spend a little bit of time with me. That would be nice.

Anyway, lunch hour is over. Back to work for me.

I skipped practice last night. Felt tired and lazy. Told myself I was skipping practice to go home and walk the doggies, which I did not. Also claimed I would make jerk chicken for dinner, instead made spinach dip with nachos - v. bad. However, did spend some time handing out resumes online. Have now given resumes to Kelly Services, Harcourt and Executrade, three different head-hunters. We'll see if that leads to anything. All in all, while a bad night for diet and working out, potentially a good night for future job prospects. It probably balances out. Also spent some time last night cleaning the kitchen, which was in desperate need of doing, so I guess that nets out to a good, productive evening.

Tonight is the Just for Laughs' Ethnic Heroes of Comedy tour. Leaving work early to ensure I get there on time - yay! Tomorrow night must polish up the cover letter for the Bioware accounting position. And the weekend will likely be mostly cleaning. There's an event in Calgary, but as archery is not on-site (and is at an ungodly early time, as usual for Calgary) and the event is in a hall which I imagine does not allow doggies, I'll just skip it in favour of a quiet weekend with my family. Might also head to the park one day if the weather holds and practice my skating on a tennis court.