doyenne08

By now everyone knows the election is over, and I admit it, I'm very pleased with the result.  But one of the most interesting things didn't strike me until later:  I sat in Delaware, watching television coverage in Chicago and Phoenix, then spoke to D1 in Seattle by cell phone, and then to K in Germany by computer phone, all in the space of 20 minutes.  Incredible.

 Today I met a doctor.  She is a Trauma Doctor, which means that when a bomb explodes and there are body parts all over the floor, she is part of the team who puts the pieces back together so the families can have funerals.  We had a great conversation about a number of topics, then we were both complaining about giving expert witness testimony for lawsuits.  I said I thought that was the most stressful professional thing I've ever done.  There was a pause.  I guess it's all in your perspective.  

 

Try this to see if you are in the right field:  

http://www.careerpath.com/career-tests/colorcareercounselor.aspx 

For me, it showed what I WANT to do, not what I actually do.......interesting!

My computer is fried. That's the technical term used by the IT experts at corporate. I spent 6 hours on the phone on Friday and 2 more on Saturday trying to get it worked out. No go. So they're shipping me a new computer. Meanwhile, I can't work, I'm really stressed, project number one is in the toilet and I can't even read the f'ing emails.

someone suggested that I just go to Paris. Now that they have the high speed train, I can get there in 2 hours. Yes, but if I can't work, I don't get paid and there you are. Best to stay home and conserve the cash.

*cries into bowl of sugar-free ice cream*

Work, again.  Having been gone for 2 weeks, I'm hopeful that things have progressed, and they sort of have.  One set of things seems to be pretty much where it was before, the other has definitely moved forward, but not very well.  And that doofus keeps asking me to do things on something that I firmly backed out of before I left.  I think he's just the kind of person that has no initiative.  He's fine as long as someone tells him what to do and when to do it, but he's just not mentally set to think up things on his own.  

Don't forget, see my other site at mw_europe for details on the non-locked portion of life.

"...everyone comes equipped with a face worth painting or a story worth telling.  We should hold fast to that knowledge and defend it..."  

Sounds good to me!

Excellent food!  Good solid white bread with a stiff crust, split in half lengthwise and stuffed with thin slices of mystery meat carved from a vertical loaf turning on a spit before an electric fire.  Pickled sliced cabbage, slices of tomatoes and feta cheese, pepperoncinis, all drizzled over with yoghurt sauce.  It costs E3.5 and I can only eat half of one.  By the time you add a Mixery (half cola and half beer, an acquired taste), you've spent E6.  Even so, it's about the cheapest meal around. 

Today I had that weird feeling again, the one I developed the last time we were here.  It's sort of like I don't know who I am and I don't have any value.  I have plenty to do:  laundry, library, apt hunting, finding a car, so that's not it.  It's just like I am transformed into a non-person or something.  After only 1 week!  This isn't good.  The last time I became a regular Putzfrau and cleaned our apartment every day.  Is it because I'm not working?  Or maybe being here where there's still a tremendous gender bias and women are expected to clean and cook and make things easy for their men?  Or just that I haven't settled in yet?  Or maybe don't have any friends here (I mean living bodies).  I'm really trying very hard to take a break from work, but maybe I should just give up and log in early...

I've been away from work now for an entire week.  It feels as though someone cut off part of my brain.  Sort of anxious making, like there's something missing and I can't do anything about it.  I may not be able to stay away for the full week next week.....

I have made myself a new livejournal account: mw_europeThis will hold descriptions of travels and will be suitable for reading by my work colleagues.   I'll still keep doyenne08 for The Corporate World, etc.  I won't duplicate entries.  Be welcome as a friend to the new site, if you like. 

 

 

Today was so bizarre. K and I have spent the last 3 days in a hotel, since our furniture (which has now become HHG in the shipping vernacular) is all in a container on its way to the Port, a ship, Panama, the Atlantic, the Rhine, and Stuttgart. So we had Haferbrei (aka oatmeal) for breakfast, then took our heavy suitcases up to the Transit Center for K to take the bus to the airport. His flight was supposed to leave about 1 pm but it was late, natch, so he finally left about 3 pm. I went to work.

Amazing, a whole regular work day, with meetings and conference calls and emails and the whole time, a little part of my brain was saying, "this is the last day...."

I could NOT make the computer phone work off the internet system at work, I think because our system is too sophisticated for the puny little residential phone. So people will just have to leave a message and I will have to figure it out later.

So I had a lunch meeting without food (the order had never been sent). Then my colleagues asked me to come down to the conference room for a second, and SURPRISE! a going away party. About 25 people were there, the big guy made a complimentary speech and there was a cake. In a weak moment (I can't help it, I was really surprised), I invited everyone to visit in our future guest room. Hope they don't all come!

Then another meeting, a lot of going away emails and phone things, 2 presents! out for a beer to our favorite bar, and then a ride to the airport. Now I wait for the plane.

Kein Problem, at least the crew is here.

Rhododendrons are faintly sinister after they've been blooming for a while. Something about how the inside of the flowers is dark and shadowed...

Well, all the items got checked off the list, plus about 15 more that got added on later. We're leaving tomorrow. K goes to the airport in the morning, so as soon as he goes, I'm going to the office. I might as well get paid to sit around while I wait for my flight, which doesn't leave until evening.

Ourlandlord gave us back all of the security deposit. Yay. So we are sort of cash-flush (having the security deposit back, sold both cars, etc.), but I know it's only temporary.

If only my clients had the same sense of urgency I did about this one particular project .... but they didn't. They were late getting me their comments, so now everything is just about 10 days late. I was supposed to have everything finished before I left, but now it will all be happening while I'm traveling and out of touch (setting up phone and internet). Ah, well, some things you can't control! Thank goodness this place has a cast of thousands who can spring into action at the punch of a phone button.

It is likely that the next time I post, I will be sitting in Deutschland, using a computer with umlauts. Ha! See you then!

Items are getting ticked off our list. The best part is, the internet phone works! Will carry it with me to Germany and hope that it works as well there.

Tomorrow's the yard sale. The weather's been dreadful here for months. It's very cold for June and I wore my winter coat to work today. My fingers are blue.

I met someone who works at my company here who grew up 4 kilometres from where we used to live in Germany and who used to date our landlady's father!

Yesterday in the plane on the way home from the meeting, it dawned on me that in two weeks (from yesterday) I'll be winging my way to Germany for 3 years. I just about had a meltdown at the thought of everything that needs to be done:

fasting blood test (tomorrow)
cancel Sunday paper
cancel local paper
make hotel reservations for Bellevue for the last 3 days of the US
make hotel reservations for Frankfurt for the first night
make hotel reservations for Landstuhl for the next few nights (how many? unknown)
turn off electricity
turn off water
track down our errant vacuum cleaner (out for repair somewhere)
sell the lawn mower, one extra table, 2 extra chairs, and assorted other material goods (this involves writing an add, posting the photos, answering the phone, being at home at the right time, etc.)
transfer the car to the new owner
file a change of address form (to where? unknown, but I suppose we could use D1)
change addresses on all credit cards, bank accounts, insurance, etc. (to where? unknown - my head hurts)
copy front and back of all credit cards
get copies of all medical records
make the travel package of important papers (wills, insurance policies, medical records, credit card and banking info, etc.)
back up both computers on the portable hard drive for travel
cancel or change the cell phone
be home for the movers
be home for the packing-for-storage people
have yard sale? or give the remainders away
take the fish back to the store
arrange for D2 to come down and take away her stuff, including the aquarium (empty but still wet)
get a replacement CU credit card (ooh, do this first!)
clean out the freezer, refrigerator and cupboards (can't take any opened food containers)
clean the bathroom (just a regular chore)
pack a suitcase for travel (must include my business clothes as I'm coming back for a meeting in July, also must include my beach clothes as I'm going to the beach for a week after the business meeting)
sort through crap in the closet, office shelves, hall closet, guest room closet, drawers of all furniture, etc.
pay dr bill (after first calling to complain)
get new sunglasses
refill prescriptions

Then there's all the stuff from work (in addition to just, you know, work):

make hotel reservations for Salem next week
find out about getting a land line to roll calls over to Germany (yes, my IT support staff failed to rise to the challenge of working that out, so I have to do it)
try not to worry that my company has not yet worked out the details of paying me while overseas (it'll all work out in the end, right?)
pack my office for shipping (that is, get it home in time to be included in the residential shipment)

Hm. Now that it's all written down, it doesn't seem so bad. Although I'm sure there's a ton of stuff I forgot!

So we'll be busy this weekend!

Have a good one,
d08

More corporate meetings, and I don't have any weird English to report. Either this group is meeting a higher standard or I've succumbed to the corporate-ness of this company. I chose the former.

This actually is really cool. A hands on, bring your own computer so we can all do this, sort of meeting. We are learning about groups for practicing technical specialities; all of us are the leaders of these little groups. The intent being to bring a sense of community to our huge inter/national company, so that the 15 people who do XX can have an internal web page and get to know each other (sort of), even if one person works in Tallahassee and one person works in Phoenix and two in Minneapolis, etc. I think it's a really cool idea. We've had one of these things for my specialty for about 6 months, but the company didn't offer any training until now. So at last, I'm learning how to manipulate the web page, the difference between announcements and discussion boards, and so forth. All of the about 20 of us who are attending are becoming filled with energy and enthusiasm for this task (which, btw is not chargeable and you have to do it on your own time, except for these meetings).

What the heck, a free trip, 2 nights in a hotel, meals, and a cool binder full of corporate BS and fancy color brochures. (OK, the binder isn't really cool, but the meeting itself is.)

Back to reality tomorrow. sigh.

Today was fun. In a "it feels so good when I stop banging my head with a hammer" sort of way. First, I didn't have anything that had to be done today, so I could catch up on some of the niggly details that have been hanging around for a while. Then, people kept dropping in to chat. Normally I can't enjoy that because I keep thinking that they're wasting my time and something's due at 5 pm. But today, it was just great.

Corporate HQ assured me they were putting all of their accounting, personnel and legal resources to work on my behalf to find a way for me to keep working while I'm living someplace else. That was nice, even if I don't really quite believe it.

And a bunch of us went out to lunch just for the heck of it so I had BLT pizza and chicken jerk pizza. new taste sensation, both of them.

Then home: laundry, cleaned, made choc chip cookies, cooked, did some desultory sorting of ship v store items. Looking forward to house guests this weekend. So yeah, it's all good.

It'll all work out in the end, one way or another.