What a time we have had...

In the last month I had two weeks off work, we did some major repairs and minor renovation to our place in SC.  We cut trees and brush, re-decked our front deck, removed an old hot tub from our side deck, installed underpinning around the house, did some garden work...  Preparing to sell is hard work.

I hope I can recover some between leaving here and starting again.  Building a new place to live will be a full time job, albeit a job I dearly look forward to.  I can hope we sell quickly and find a reasonable new place and can close quickly.  We will have a tremendous amount of work to ready our new digs for ourselves, our two big dogs and the rest of the infrastructure that will be needed.

Well yesterday was another milestone in my life.  My anniversary date with my company came and went without notice, sort of anyway.  I asked my loving wife what yesterday meant and after a moment of reflection, she said "the day you quit contracting and became an employee"?  She's always the faithful one.  Comes through for me every time.  In any case, back to the milestone, my company in the early days of my career was very employee oriented.  We got our usual paid holidays and a few extra holidays, like the federal holidays, plus our birthday and company hiring anniversary date off with pay.  What a great company.

Fast forward nineteen years, the company was sold, the new management had a very different vision.  1st, freeze pensions, 2nd, take away "extra" holidays, 3rd take paid sick days and vacation, cut the total number of days and call it PTO.  So I now have worked my birthday four of the last seven years.  No real big deal, but in the old days, they made sure we had off for these special days and were not on call.  The reason I worked these days recently is because I was on call...  My sour grapes I guess.  In any case, I am now very close to the finish line, eighteen scheduled work days lie between today and retirement.  What a huge weight has been lifted.  I can't wait for the morning after.  I will have a great ceremony regarding the throwing away of my alarm clock.

Cheers!!