Saturday, September 15, 2007

Today is something of a significant day for me.

#1 I am officially no longer residing in my trailer in Jensen Beach.

#2 It was ten years ago I started working at my current job.

The reason I have not blogged in so long is that I have finished moving into my friend Jason's house. My landlord made me stick to a strict 30 day notice for moving so I was paid on the rent until today. I had spent 6 years and 15 days in that trailer. As I took a last look around I had memories flood back. The Christmas mornings with my son, friends visiting, evacuating from the hurricanes...yes, as usual, I got nostalgic. OK, so I won't miss the water damage from the hurricanes, the cockroaches or the occasional ignorant neighbors. Overall, it was a nice place to be and, if necessary, is on my list of possibilities when my stay here is done.

My son, to prove his genetic link, walked in to the house with the last box, set it down, looked around the living room as big as the old trailer and said, "Nah! Dad, let's take all the stuff back. This place ain't good enough!"

To further prove the genetics, I had the opportunity to meet his girlfriend, Sara. I shook her hand and said to her, "You let yourself be seen in public with him?!"

She turned to him and said, "Why does everyone say that to me?!"

She is very pretty and they seem to have a really nice relationship going. They have been dating for almost 6 months; a lifetime at 16.

I had a hell of a time with the phone company during the move. They didn't get the service transferred when they said they would and left me without a phone over the Labor Day weekend. They also left me without DSL. Even though I had DSL and Jason had DSL because of the limited availability of nodes in the area as soon as both of our services were moved I was effectively put at the back of the line of a waiting list. So, I now have DSL with a local cable provider and am about to switch my regular phone over to Vonage and tell Bell South to kiss off.

I have made the place my own by putting put my pictures and nick nacks. I have spent time in the pool every day. The house is about 5 times the size of my trailer and I thing I spent an hour my first night here just walking back from one end of the house to another. I called Jason after my first night here and told him that I had already decided he can't move back!

My 10th anniversary with my company is a little bitter sweet. It is nice to have been somewhere for so long but with the way the company had changed its not the celebration I had thought it should be. I had my annual review right on the day of my review and there were subtleties in there that proved my point.

In the same breath that I am praised for always offering suggestions on improving my job I am berated for taking too much time in making those suggestions and taking away from my production time. "We want you to make suggestion but we don't want you to take the time to do it!" There was a time when I really enjoyed my job and I'm not sure I can say that anymore. As I looked through my past evaluations I can see that I did the best when there was an element of training involved. So, in an effort to try to salvage my career there, I will continue to steer myself towards the training department.

Of course, I will keep on hoping for Nickelodeon to come though!!!!!!!

Speaking of which, I am headed up to Orlando again Wednesday for another DAVE School graduation. This will give me the opportunity to hound the people working on the series they are pitching to Nick. Also, I will have the opportunity to rub elbows with someone who is doing what I want to do, Billy West. He did the voice of Ren on "Ren and Stimpy", Bender on "Futurama" and about a thousand others. I am dying to have the chance to pick his brain about breaking into this kind of work.

For now, though....back to the pool!

2 comments:

Lauren said...

Whoever gave your review must have read from the same generic management book as whoever gave my review, where they come up with something good about what they're about to tell you to stop doing. I think mine was... we like the way you've made the position into something that people feel comfortable utilizing. But we want people to see you more like they see us, in more of a supervisory role!

Does not compute, guys.

Also, being unemployed is vastly overrated.

Unknown said...

I too, just moved to a new place, where I found out the reason my new front door was in the condition it was in was because the girlfriend who lived there locked the boyfriend out, so he kicked in the door. Well, welcome home, huh? Congrats to you on the new digs! Battlestar at your place, right?

In response to the annual review situation, you may also want to consider changing your auto-sig on email to something like this....

Teamwork - A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction.

Seems apropos, hmmmmmmm?