New Gig [lonnnng blab......]

A couple of people have been asking about my current employment gig. As some may recall, I started working as a Kitchen Designer at Lowes back in February. I had been talking about working for Lowes or home Depot since I was laid off from Xerox. I know that aspiring to a retail job is a bit offbeat - but during my house remodel - I was at one or the other [ or both] at least once a day. I figured - if I stayed a couple of hours, i could get a paycheck, a discount and save some gas money along the way. Lowes had been very helpful during my remodeling. I pestered their flooring guys ALOT. Not every employee at those stores knows alot, but if you find the right ones - they can be very helpful. SO - the idea was work at [Lowes] and find something to rehab and work the discount to the max. I have worked retail before, I know the demeaning beat. Crappy hours, Management by idiots and daily anarchy. I thought that with the idea that i was there by choice and actually being creative -[ i love kitchens..btw...] I could rise above or be insulated from it.

[ insert laugh track here..]

NO SUCH LUCK. After my first 6 weeks of some very stressful fly-by-the-seat training in kitchen design sales and some very positive feedback from my sales manager, associates and customers, I was walked into the office by another manager and told flatly that there was no budget for me to remain in kitchen [ 7 minutes after the sales manager said i had a great first month!] and i was to be moved to plumbing.

Plumbing.

The black hole of Lowes. I knew squat of plumbing and was now about to be one of those idiot employees who knew nothing about what they were selling. GREAT. I was quite taken aback, but did manage to say that "the crash training was stressful" and i expected better if I was moved.
"Sure" "OF course" "two weeks at another store before you start...." yada yada yada.

So - predictably, I was dropped in plumbing 2 weeks later like a wet sandbag. Meanwhile, I had a operations manager who considered me an F#&$%K up and never has anything positive to say to me. Talk about ruining your mood. And day. And week.

And here I thought I was sorta smart and stuff....Masters degree, shiny thesis, a couple of US patents.... And I was right back to 1983, 16 years old and my [former felon] Burger King manager berating me.

Talk about a tailspin. Eric told me just to quit. Which i could have. But leaving without a backup just would have made things worse in my mind.

So - sorta fast forward to May. One month since the store grand opening, store moral dropped through the floor and fellow employees who had options - were leaving... quickly.

Go figure - treat employees like they are a commodity..and .... [ you can the insert logic here... ]
[ and then mail it to Lowes please.] It will be news to them....

I, in the interim, am getting written up for 11 minutes of overtime and as well as spending my "training time" out in lawn and garden sweeping up leaky mulch bags.

Gotta be a team player.

Meanwhile - i get a note on my LinkedIn profile. [ i never expected it to do anything for me...]
a recruiter I spoke with in December says a client I interviewed with in December wants to talk to me RIGHT NOW. errr... OK - so after a little scrambling to actually finish my website - I head in for a 3.5 hour interview and TA DAH I started at WelshAllyn the following monday.

WelshAllyn is a medical device company in upstate NY about 25 minutes from here. I am the UI designer at the company now working on 3 projects, a computer workstation software and 2 touchscreen projects. When I left Xerox - I really thought i was doen with the UI stuff. But I am finding it all interesting. ....And get this.... people are glad I am there! Go figure! I walked into a meeting the other day and a coworker says "Thank god you're here" AND They think my previous experience is valuable. Quite a contrast to Lowes - i think my managers thought i just got out high school... or something..or whatever..... they never really cared or asked.

:O)

I have had several other positive comments like this since I started - which has gone a long way to help the mood. I am hoping by next year - i will have forgotten the Lowes trauma. Meanwhile - Eric and I have our weekends back and I managed to book the entire summer's worth already. Stay tuned for pics!

Coal - its whats for dinner




Such a smug ad. Too bad half the country won't get it.

The Pink Doughnut














I spent the last three days in a workshop at my new gig. An interesting place. I really do not know any of these guys that well yet, so it is interesting to me to play the role of observer of human nature. After i made a casual remark [ with an agenda behind it of course] regarding snacks being a great source of attention span.... our workshop facilitator started bringing in doughnuts for our morning sessions. My secondary job title at Xerox was Snack monger BTW... :O) So in the third day in a room of manly-men programmers, i enjoyed watching the doughnut box. It was amusing to watch as the meeting progressed..

[ or should i say drag ON and ON..] as the group slowly consumed the doughnuts.

But not all of them.

In the center of the box was a big yummy glazed doughnut. there was actually lots of them. But this one was different.

Like me in that meeting.

This one was covered in a huge slathering of bright pink girlie frosting. I am sure it was Cherry. and I WANTED it. But i really found it more amusing to watch as everyone else in the room very carefully pick around it. Nobody wanted to touch the Pink Doughnut. It entertained me greatly to observe. I could HEAR people's stomach's growling. But there it sat.. the Pink Doughnut.

Last in the box. Last picked for the team... :O(

Finally the facilitator grabbed it after everyone else left.

I could add that out of everyone in the room - i thought he had the least amount of testosterone [ but i liked him just the same..]

I am definitely thinking the next workshop i am going to bring in a whole box of Pink muffins.

And promptly watch everyone starve.

Ahhh..the easy credit days...













People are saying that the mortgage process has gotten ALOT more difficult these days. I will admit for the past ten years , i have taken my share of advantage on the all the Zero percent transfer balance offers in my mailbox to move debt around like dirt under the rug. Since I sold the house - I have been debt free, and would like to keep it that way. So all the credit lines are open and the cards just keep getting filed away. I would close the lines - but i have read that the "available" credit affects how you are evaluated for MORE credit. And we will be needing a mortgage soon...... so in the files they stay...

Happy Holidays! [again..]












Eric and I managed to get Chilipepper pried out of my mechanics hands at 9:30 pm Friday night. [ It will still need some additional bearing work..] After a stop at Lowes - it was off to Jones Pond for the weekend with an arrival around 11:30pm. We spent Saturday with our friend Jeff digging at our site. I started a big project at the site last July and er... kinda left it all winter. Basically a giant trench and a pile of R.R. ties. I was supposed to go down a couple of times before Memorial day to restart the project - but Chilipepper ended up being in the shop 4 weeks! The van needed some odd parts and the garage was really busy..... so except for mowing the grass last weekend - this was the first chance we had to work on it. We are building up a retaining wall with a french drain behind it. Once it is complete, we will have it filled with gravel. It was give us a wide [ and dry!] level driveway for camping. I was hoping to have it done by next week for family weekend - i have my sister and brother's families coming down for some camping and cooking! But ... the second load of R.R. ties never arrived... [ next week they tell me...] so it will probably be finished sometime in the end of June. We made good progress on Saturday.. so now i am trying to think of anything i should do before we fill it in. So I am looking at low voltage lighting and some additional drainage ideas in the meantime.......

Merry Christmas!















-Just got the photos together from our holiday party back in december. Our friend Gerry took them for us while we played party hosts. A very fun time. It was great that so many of our friends made the trip!

WTF?



Well, it is April 30th here in sunny syracuse and the weather man says it will be 50 today [ ha!] right now it is 39 and it is SNOWING. meanwhile you can hear my neighbor MOWING HIS LAWN.

Dreams in Syracuse

Sorry for no posts lately. Here's a few pics of day dreams of mine in Syracuse. Eric and I are starting to do real estate home work this month and I am looking around. I found alot of good information regarding FHA 203 K rehabing loans. I hope it will be an interesting summer.