Category: 2017

Sad News in Silicon Valley

Laura had sad news this week – her company is not doing well. When she got back from visiting Japan she discovered an email that had gone out, telling staff that the company was going to shut down for the entire Thanksgiving week, and they would have to take unpaid leave if they didn’t have vacation time. The email tried to make it sound like a good thing, “enjoy some quality time with your family and friends”, but of course we were thinking, “They can’t make payroll.”

Laura immediately started sending out resumes. I’m expecting she will get a great response, because she has everything they are looking for in Silicon Valley – data analytics, leadership experience, youth, creativity, great ideas, hard work and determination. It’s going to be a challenge for her move and learn a new job all while continuing to work on her master’s degree, but she’ll pull it off.

Then yesterday, her company laid off about ¼ of the staff, at all levels including executives. They did not lay off Laura! But still, it must have been traumatic to watch. I’m guessing ¼ of the company would have been about 50 people. There was a security guard posted in the lobby, and they walked people out, one at a time. Some were allowed a few minutes to say good-bye to coworkers, others were walked straight out. The entire morning staff just stood around waiting to see if they were going to be tapped on the shoulder to go. Can you imagine? Watching people being taken out and waiting to see if you’re going to be next? It makes me cry to think about it. Laura’s manager told her when she first got in that she would be staying, but most were not so lucky.

Red Dirt! (I mean, sand)

Our brick flooring guy is really good and not too expensive. Except he’s slower than molasses. He started the project a full month after the contract said he would, and he’s been slowly working on it for a couple of more months. Which wouldn’t matter if we had lots of other things going on anyway, but if we’re paying rent because we can’t move in because we’re waiting for him – then he isn’t such a good deal after all. But at least he seems to know what he’s doing.

And he’s very local – meaning he really knows the local ways. Remember when our pink sand had too much dirt? Once he realized what we wanted, he went out and found red sand for us. I don’t know where he got it, but I can see red hills from the freeway on a local reservation. So it could be there or somewhere else nearby.

Red sand! (looks like dirt to me)

Día de los Muertos and aliens and other things New Mexican

Hello world! Just a heads up, we are going into blogging mania this morning. I’m “supposed” to be packing. I was also planning to cook. Carina is having a Day of the Dead party, and we’re supposed to bring a favorite dish of a loved one who has passed (that’s what Day of the Dead is about; honoring those who have died).

By the way, in Mexico it’s called Día de Muertos, but in the US it’s usually called Día de los Muertos, which is sort of interesting. Because basically from what I can understand, the phrase Día de los Muertos came from English speakers translating Día de Muertos into English (Day of the Dead), and then back into Spanish incorrectly. And that so epitomizes New Mexico. Back-and-forth iterations of culture, with the result not being Spanish or English or Native American, or even just a blend of those, but an actual truly unique evolution growing out of the three.

Plus, the past 75 years have added a fourth culture – the nuclear labs and the crazy scientists (like my hubby). And of course the aliens. I blame the labs for the aliens.

(Note how that alien sort of looks like a scientist?!?) LOL. I haven’t talked much about the New Mexican aliens, but presumably that’s all linked to the labs and the lab activities.  The labs have definitely put mysterious flying objects into the sky at times – and then attempted to keep it all a big secret. So of course you’re going to get colorful stories.

Here’s a cute little one in Old Town Albuquerque:

Plus the insane sky.  For example, there’s no colored lenses or photoshopping on this picture; I just snapped it with an iphone. It really did look exactly like this. Purple! And weird-shit clouds. Truly the heralding of the aliens.

Anyway, back to today’s agenda: I could spend all morning cooking some traditional food dish for Día de los Muertos (I had in mind stuffed green peppers, because I know my grandmother liked them). But my grandmother also really liked modern conveniences after a brutal childhood on a failing farm, and she wasn’t actually all that into cooking. I think she would totally approve of me purchasing a pie instead of cooking all morning.

So let the blogging begin!

Acronym inundation

Sandia likes to think they have the world beat in the ridiculous number of acronyms that new employees have to learn. I would say the Air Quality Bureau is holding their own.

I’ve been making myself an acronym list as I come across them so I can learn them all. I’m realizing this isn’t even half of them. I may never know them all. But here’s my first 4 weeks worth:

Fresh eggs

One of my new friends at work has chickens and sells eggs. I excitedly signed up for weekly eggs. Here’s my first dozen. Look at all those colors!

Then I heard he had accepted a new position with a different department in a different part of town (the state offices are scattered all around). I was bummed! He’s saying he’s going to keep bringing us eggs anyway. But…we’ll see how long that lasts. Probably just until his new coworkers find out and start putting in their egg orders!

Last week in review

THE JOB: My boss’s leave date is now official, and it’s even sooner than we thought. The 8th instead of the 13th. So I have just over a week to learn everything! They have not named the new acting manager yet. They’ve asked me for a long version of my resume, detailing my project management experience. I believe I’m still my management’s top choice, but they’re having to justify the decision. Now that everyone knows that Carina is leaving, I expect that other managers have put forward their own top employees as candidates. They do not have a formal interview process for the acting position – it’s appointed, but I know that Human Resources is involved.

Later they will go through the full advertising and interviewing process to fill the position permanently. Of course, everyone who has their eyes on the permanent position wants the acting position, because it gives you great experience (assuming you do well).

We have a halloween party tomorrow at lunch. I’ve made a spicy, sour, cabbage-based relish (of my own devising). It probably won’t be as popular as if I’d brought brownies. No brownie points for me. I get spicy cabbage points instead. It’s really spicy. They’re gonna hate me.

THE TOWNHOME: We’ve just been waiting for the new appraisal, which is happening today. Then it will be a few days before we have the results.

THE REMODEL: Turns out not all sandy stuff is sand. Our brick guy said our pink sand had too much dirt in it. But he says he knows an arroyo where he can get reddish color sand, now that he knows that we want. Apparently the distinction is particle size. If it’s too fine, it compacts too much and settles down too far. We want the sand to lodge in the cracks between the bricks and not settle out.

This is the sand that has too many fine particles. He’s going to vacuum it up and go dig up better sand elsewhere.

Also John ordered cabinets – the same ones we’d seen in a neighbor’s casita this summer. He ordered one for the downstairs bathroom vanity too, which is great. All the bathrooms are in terrible shape.

THE MOVE: You all know I’m quite an experienced mover (LOL), but OMG this is the most time consuming move yet! It’s insanely difficult moving into two houses instead of one. I can’t just mindlessly put stuff in boxes. Every single item we own (thousands of things), needs a decision made – which house?

 

Just a comic for now

It’s been a busy week, but I will bore you with more blog soon!

Local art

I bought this from a local artist for my new townhome. Isn’t it fun?

The artist is Erica Wendel-Oglesby

Confused? Start here

I have a new reader – one of my favorite brothers! (I have two brothers – they are both one of my favorites.) But I haven’t been doing a good job of keeping close friends and family members appraised of all our changes because so much is going on so rapidly, and anyway, you can just read my blog, right?

But without any context, the poor guy is confused. Who works where? Who lives where? What’s with all the houses!?!?

I figure if my own brother isn’t keeping up with it all, then it’s time I post some explanation.

First the lay of the land. You know how those epic fantasy novels start with a hand-drawn map with ^^^^ to indicate mountains and strange sounding place names penciled in? Well, here’s the modern, real life version of the map of our own personal epic.

It is approximately 30 minutes from Albuquerque to Placitas, almost another hour from Placitas to Santa Fe, and another 45 minutes from Santa Fe to Los Alamos, for a total of over 2 hours.

We don’t actually go up to Los Alamos very often, but I included it on the map because it just happens that John went up there last week and is going again tomorrow, so we’re both staying in Santa Fe tonight. More often, we are commuting to and from Albuquerque, Placitas, and Santa Fe. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s the rundown as of this moment in time:

Jobs:

  • I got frustrated with “at home” duties, such as running the remodel (in particular, running the remodel!) and missed the comradery of the office, and missed doing environmental work, which is something I do well. I also felt I was spending too much time waiting for John to get home – which isn’t a good thing because he often works quite late in the evenings. So I recently accepted a job with the Air Quality Bureau for the State of New Mexico, located in Santa Fe. So far, I’m very happy with the new job.
  • John also really likes his current job. However, his team is actually located in California. So although he’s “officially” located in Albuquerque, he is in California about 1/4 of the time. He’s also on business trips to other places fairly frequently as well.

Commutes:

  • John likes living in the quiet of a rural area. And he finds a modest commute to be a good transition between work and home. He actually enjoys driving out to Placitas from Albuquerque when the day’s work is done.
  • Commuting does not work very well for me.  Driving at night gives me migraines. Plus, I have coaching clients scheduled in the evenings (I coach over the phone at home), and wouldn’t have time to coach if I had a long commute. I like to be close to everything and spend as little time in the car as possible.

Houses:

  • We are buying a small townhome in Santa Fe near my new job. I’ll be up there during the week. Then on weekends, we will either be there or in Placitas, depending on what we want to do that weekend.
  • Meanwhile, while we are waiting for the townhome purchase to complete, we are renting a small casita in Santa Fe.
  • We are remodeling the house in Placitas that John bought 20 years ago. When it’s done, he plans to be there during the week. And I’ll come down to Placitas on whatever weekends that he doesn’t go up to Santa Fe.
  • While we are waiting for the remodel to get finished, we have been renting a nearby house in Placitas.

We are looking forward to getting settled into the new townhome in Santa Fe, and the remodeled house in Placitas. We’re hoping both those things will happen by the end of this year, and we will no longer need either of the places we are renting.

To add to the confusion, we sold our rental property in California and purchased 3 replacement rental properties in Albuquerque this summer, which I blogged about quite a lot while that was going on. And we almost bought a house in Placitas this summer. I blogged a lot about that one too. But we didn’t buy it, and are remodeling our original house in Placitas instead.

There’s your rundown. This one’s for you, Steven! I hope that offers enough clarity that you can sit back and enjoy my amazing wit and light-hearted insight about the ups and downs of everyday life (LOL), rather than just shaking your head in puzzlement wondering what in the world your crazy sister is up to this time!

Spreadsheets!

https://xkcd.com/1906/

Organized problems are much less scary than random, looming, drifting, problems skittering around, zooming in and out of corners and waiting for you in the dark.