Finally another update
GAFilk was loads of fun. I even remember some of it. Moxie rocked the place, I had some great conversations with Tim and Larry and many other people I'd never met before (well, I'd met Tim Griffin at OVFF but this time we got to talk critters!), and even had some music. I cut back on the singing and scat a good bit because I needed to preserve my voice for work. I was starting a new job the Tuesday after GAFilk ... which now leads to:
I am buried in work. Well past my eyeballs and other such measurements of over-loaded-ness.
The new client seems to like me. The team members seem to like me. I'm able to do some solid contributing and the assignments aren't totally out of my abilities. When they throw a task at me it's something I can jump on and do without having to spend ages finding a manual or pestering others for walk-throughs. My biggest fear had been arriving at the jobsite to find that for some reason I couldn't walk the talk, and that proved groundless.
The business is really way cool and different and I'm learning tons. I wish I could talk about it. It's so weird going to work and NOT living and breathing credit and retail.
Right now I'm wading through lots of orientation videos, documentation, and learning the tangle of expense and time reporting when three layers of agencies sit between you and the end client. And getting the two laptops - one end client, one agency - properly set up. Tonight I just finished getting both to talk to their respective home VPNs via my aircard, making me free to work from "home" on ice days.
Did I mention that I'm living in NW Alabama now, for the next few months? It's a longish-term consulting assignment in one of my non-financial specialties.
Where we stand now is:
I am doing 50-hour weeks so my days are fairly packed. This is a good thing when you are paid by the hour and living away from home, and so have no life or much in the way of distractions. It is a bad thing when you are living away from home and was considering saxophone lessons and perhaps community band as a way of having some sort of life.
I've signed a lease for a corporate apartment and will be moving in next week. This will give me a 2-bedroom furnished apartment in the historic part of downtown, a few blocks from the local university's campus and the downtown restaurant strip. The walk to several restaurants will be shorter than the walk from my house to the mailbox at the end of my driveway back home in Georgia.
The apartment allows pets - I immediately plunked down a deposit to let me bring Entropy along. I don't want to come home to an empty place at night, and he's picking fights at home without me there to shower him with attention. He's going to be eating up the competition-free time with me, I suspect. Once he forgives me for hauling him to the vet for a microchip and fitting him with a collar as he's not worn one of those since his kitten days.
This also means I can practice saxophone and have friends over to game or jam or talk or whatever. And I'll have a spare bedroom that they can crash in.
And I can COOK again! No more hotel "kitchen" that's a microwave and a single-burner glasstop stove!
Time to get to bed. The biggest downside of this gig, besides the travel and the spending-all-day-inside-a-windowless-conference-room-consultant-ghetto, is having to get up early in the mornings. I am NOT a morning person. NOT.
I am buried in work. Well past my eyeballs and other such measurements of over-loaded-ness.
The new client seems to like me. The team members seem to like me. I'm able to do some solid contributing and the assignments aren't totally out of my abilities. When they throw a task at me it's something I can jump on and do without having to spend ages finding a manual or pestering others for walk-throughs. My biggest fear had been arriving at the jobsite to find that for some reason I couldn't walk the talk, and that proved groundless.
The business is really way cool and different and I'm learning tons. I wish I could talk about it. It's so weird going to work and NOT living and breathing credit and retail.
Right now I'm wading through lots of orientation videos, documentation, and learning the tangle of expense and time reporting when three layers of agencies sit between you and the end client. And getting the two laptops - one end client, one agency - properly set up. Tonight I just finished getting both to talk to their respective home VPNs via my aircard, making me free to work from "home" on ice days.
Did I mention that I'm living in NW Alabama now, for the next few months? It's a longish-term consulting assignment in one of my non-financial specialties.
Where we stand now is:
I am doing 50-hour weeks so my days are fairly packed. This is a good thing when you are paid by the hour and living away from home, and so have no life or much in the way of distractions. It is a bad thing when you are living away from home and was considering saxophone lessons and perhaps community band as a way of having some sort of life.
I've signed a lease for a corporate apartment and will be moving in next week. This will give me a 2-bedroom furnished apartment in the historic part of downtown, a few blocks from the local university's campus and the downtown restaurant strip. The walk to several restaurants will be shorter than the walk from my house to the mailbox at the end of my driveway back home in Georgia.
The apartment allows pets - I immediately plunked down a deposit to let me bring Entropy along. I don't want to come home to an empty place at night, and he's picking fights at home without me there to shower him with attention. He's going to be eating up the competition-free time with me, I suspect. Once he forgives me for hauling him to the vet for a microchip and fitting him with a collar as he's not worn one of those since his kitten days.
This also means I can practice saxophone and have friends over to game or jam or talk or whatever. And I'll have a spare bedroom that they can crash in.
And I can COOK again! No more hotel "kitchen" that's a microwave and a single-burner glasstop stove!
Time to get to bed. The biggest downside of this gig, besides the travel and the spending-all-day-inside-a-windowless-conference-room-consultant-ghetto, is having to get up early in the mornings. I am NOT a morning person. NOT.