Posted in neighborhood, Uncategorized on January 31, 2010| 6 Comments »
Another elder lady in the neighborhood moved on and now her house is for sale. You can pick up her three bedroom, three bath house on about a half acre for only $1,050,000. Buy it now before a developer snaps it up and tears it down.
If you need bigger digs you can buy the house two doors down. This spec house is a five bedroom, 8 bath house with 6200 square feet of finished living space and 3,900 square foot basement. The house also has a pool. It can be yours for only $3,785,000.
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Posted in friends, my life on January 29, 2010| 2 Comments »
I’m having dinner with Lena, Pat and Dave tonight at El Noa Noa on Santa Fe. After dinner we’re heading up the street to check out the Sue Simon show at Spark. Sue is a very talented painter. Early in her career she created illustrations for science textbooks. She incorporates scientific formulas and images into her work, which in my opinion, is outstanding. K loves her work too. I hope it’s a good show.
Posted in friends on January 29, 2010| 4 Comments »
Yesterday the boyfriend threatened to trash the house, kill Cindi and her dog. A new restraining order is now in place. For some reason I don’t quite understand there wasn’t an active restraining order. The boyfriend should be moving out on Saturday with the police on site for Cindi’s protection. The boyfriend is now making monetary demands. This is a real mess. Will it ever end?
Posted in politics on January 28, 2010| 2 Comments »
The man can deliver a great speech. I liked most of what Obama said. I’m not going to provide a political analysis. There are other blogs that will a better job of the analysis than I can. I will say I think the republicans are still acting like a bunch of bitchy queens.
Posted in work on January 27, 2010| 1 Comment »
I don’t get to talk to Chatty Cathy very often since our move to the first floor. He’s on a different aisle and has a private office to himself. Yesterday I was testing code for a product line that Chatty Cathy oversees as the model lead. I couldn’t get my laptop to download the new software load so Chatty Cathy had me delete the file from my directory. That turned out to be big mistake. I ended up working with TJ, the department’s top software developer, for an hour and half to get the directory restored. TJ told me to never ask Chatty Cathy for assistance with software downloads because he doesn’t know what he is doing. Later in the afternoon I talked to Chatty Cathy about the discrepancies I found between the engineer’s specifications and software load. Instead of taking accountability for the errors Chatty Cathy blamed the discrepancies on the engineer. He accused her of changing the documents without informing the developers. I was a little stunned. I’ve worked with this engineer on several occasions. She always follows the official process. All of the other model leads get the issues corrected without blaming anyone. Chatty Cathy always has to blame the engineer. What a prick! I guess some things never change.
Posted in Uncategorized, work on January 26, 2010| 2 Comments »
My job will not be moving to India. My manager could not find enough qualified candidates with good English language skills. The management team decided to move the work to Argentina. However, the office in Buenos Aires does not have sufficient space to accommodate the new workers. It has been decided that new employees will be hired in Denver. They are looking for new college graduates who will work for an entry level wage. My manager has yet to discuss any of this with me. I was given an off the record briefing by an employee friend.
I’m not sure if my contract will be extended past March 31st. I have work assignments for April, May and July but that doesn’t mean much. The assignments can be changed at the click of a mouse.
I can be rehired as an employee. Unfortunately, becoming an employee will violate the fee agreement with my lawyer. I will owe him a sizeable amount of money if I become an employee with benefits.
My job search will need to pick up steam. I have a distant possibility to work for a business partner that sells the company’s products. The business partner has an immediate need for a systems engineer. The job would involve spending about a week each month at a customer’s office in Chicago. There’s no guarantee the opening will not be filled before my contract ends. I don’t want to terminate my contract early because I don’t want to burn any bridges.
I’m not sure I want the job at the business partner. I know I can do the work. I’m not trilled about it. I’ll probably have to renew all of my certifications as mine have expired. It’s a task I don’t want to do. But want and need are two different things.
Posted in my life on January 25, 2010| 3 Comments »
K has only been away for two weeks but for some unknown reason it seems like four. He’ll be away for two more weeks.
The boyfriend did not move his things out of Cindi’s house yesterday.
Cindi told me she gets a smile on her face every time she pulls into the garage and sees the box labeled gay porn.
Lena was sick this weekend so we postponed our dinner until next weekend.
Sue Simon has a show opening at Spark Gallery on Friday night. I’ll have to check it out. K and I love her work.
The weekend flew by and now I’m at work on Monday morning. I have no motivation today. I have a document review in an hour so I’m killing time until the meeting starts.
Last week I was in a document review where the use of “an” or “a” before a word beginning with vowel was discussed for ten minutes. At first I was amused and silently listened to the many viewpoints. I finally had enough. I googled the subject and read a passage from a rules of style website. A consensus was achieved. Didn’t these people pay attention in school?
I decided to return one of the shirts I bought last week. It was a bargain because it was marked down $110.00 but it’s too similar to another shirt I own. Returning the shirt will help relieve my buyers remorse.
I should know more about the future of my job tomorrow.
Posted in friends, my life on January 24, 2010| 2 Comments »
It took four of us five hours to pack the boyfriend’s music studio/man cave. This man has saved every ticket stub from every concert he ever attended and tons of memorabilia from touring with Martina McBride, Natalie Merchant and a host of other well know musicians. The boyfriend also has hundred of guitar magazines, CDs, DVDs and cassette tapes. We found an O magazine in the porn stash. I couldn’t resist putting a porn label on that box. We also found a stash of condoms, two drug scales, several packages of rolling papers, a bottle of marijuana seeds (that I brought home for a backyard horticultural experiment), a vibrator, several small boxes of inexpensive women’s jewelry, a package of 100 plastic bags ideal for holding an once of pot, at least fifty watches and about thirty pairs of sunglasses. The vibrator and condoms went into a boy labeled sex toys. Just for the fun of it a gay porn label was put on another box. We had to have some fun with this arduous chore.
I’m glad it’s over. The boyfriend is picking up his stuff today. Hopefully, this will be end of this chapter of Cindi’s life. At least Cindi had friends to help her. She needs to keep her friends close and stay away from this man.
Posted in my life on January 21, 2010| 1 Comment »
I was feeling blue yesterday. I think it was a combination of Cindi’s drama, K being away, my job ending in March and the election in Massachusetts. When I got home from the gym I had a voice mail from my salesman at Neiman Marcus advising me that a sale had started. I decided to check it out. Perhaps if I bought a new shirt I’d be in a better mood. I ended up buying two shirts and a jacket at Neiman’s. Then I went to GAP and bought two pairs of khakis on sale. As I was leaving the mall I went past the Allen Edmonds store and saw a pair of shoes on sale that I liked so they came home with me too. In a little less than an hour I spent almost $600. Now I’m nursing a case of buyer’s remorse today. I probably shouldn’t have spent that much knowing I’ll probably be unemployed in April. What the hell! I’ll consider it my last shopping spree until I find a new job.
Posted in friends, my life on January 20, 2010| 4 Comments »
I called Cindi last night to go over the details of our trip to Cabo in April. The conversation segued into a discussion of relationships. She filled me in on the details of the relationships of two of her female friends. Both are successful affluent women in their fields yet have less than desirable relationships with the men in their lives. Then the gates of hell opened. Cindi told me some of the horrible things the boyfriend did. He would trash the house in arguments, he threatened to kill her dog, he threw things at her and he threatened to kill her if she left him. Several times she slept in her SUV a few miles further up in the canyon after heated arguments. I finally told her I didn’t want to know any more details. I was horrified that she endured such wrath. I was upset she didn’t tell me what was really happening at home. I was angry at the boyfriend.
Why would a successful educated professional entrepreneur continue to allow herself to be emotionally abused? (That’s a rhetorical question and I don’t expect anyone to answer.) I’m a stew of mixed emotions today. I’m bewildered. I’m grasping for an explanation. I can’t concentrate on work because I keep thinking about the hell Cindi endured. I’m angry that the boyfriend put on a caring demeanor in public but was abusive at home. I’m sad that Cindi stayed in this relationship so long.
Even though the relationship is over I still fear that the boyfriend will not go away. I’m scared this situation could turn into a murder/suicide. I want Cindi to sell the house and move back to the city. I fear for her safety up in the canyon. Cindi has a landline but there’s no cell service. If he cuts the landline she would have to run through the snowy forest to get help from a neighbor. I’ve offered to let Cindi stay at our house while K is away but Cindi seems reluctant to accept any offer of temporary housing.
The packing party has been moved to this Saturday. I don’t want to pack his things. I want to toss them out the door and burn everything he owns but I don’t want to cause the next Hayman Fire. He’s not work going to jail over. He’s the one that belongs in jail.
The Corporate Slave 