We were just informed that our defined benefits pension plan is being frozen in June as part of ongoing cost-cutting. (We still get whatever we've accrued as of the cutoff date, but nothing else is going to go into it.) To compensate they'll be increasing the employer matching funds on our 403b. As far as I can tell this isn't going to affect me ( Read more... )

OK, so remember that mockup report my boss was so enthused about? The people who ordered it changed their minds about what they wanted several times, and the final request turned out to be something for which I had to rewrite the whole damned thing from scratch and then debug frantically while they breathed down my neck and demanded to know why it ( Read more... )

My brother-in-law and the kids were up in Flagstaff yesterday, on the final leg of a tour through a bunch of national parks. I'd fortuitously taken the day off to take Mom to a doctor's appointment, so once I got her back to her place, I drove up to Flag and met them and my brother for lunch. They were staying at bro-in-law's boss's summer cabin ( ( Read more... )

This is the time of year when baby birds get pushed out of the nest a lot. From a dog's point of view, this means the park has become an AWESOME DEAD BIRD BUFFET. If it's a dead adult bird, I can usually spot it and keep him away from it, but the babies can be hidden in the grass and half the time I don't realize what's happening until I see bird ( Read more... )

I dreamed that we'd been given an all expenses paid trip to Disney World, but when we got there, I realized I'd forgotten to take time off, and had to buy a plane ticket back home immediately so I could run the Report of Doom on schedule. I told my boss about it, and we had a good laugh. Apparently when he related this to Grand-Boss, she felt it ( Read more... )

The estate sale people came over yesterday and looked at everything, and opined that I would be better off going to an auction house, for various reasons (she'll get many more buyers for some of her specialized collections, etc.) and would ultimately realize more profit that way. They gave me the addresses for two of them, as well as a guy who ( Read more... )

I managed to get caught up at work today, for the first time in what feels like years, and my boss pretty much ordered me to take the rest of the day off. I've been doing a lot of overtime lately and will be losing some vacation days, so I can see his point ( Read more... )

And it's pretty and fast and I loves it, my precious! I shall scornfully kick the old one to the curb now ( Read more... )

My brother, having retired from the military, is now a flight attendant at A Major Airline, and they have a thing where family members can fly standby for half price. We had planned on using it to travel to Washington next week, but my sister, who used it to fly to Nashville this last week, has had nothing but trouble with it and was advising us ( Read more... )

Had my interview today - thankfully, for those of us who applied for more than one position, they mushed it all into one interview. I think it went reasonably well. But it may be another four weeks before I find out whether I got a position, and if so, which one it is ( Read more... )