I owe the entire second half of the Las Vegas entry, which covers wig stores and drag queen shoe stores, three separate spas, a Vampire strip show, a crazy Tejano gay dance club, a gospel brunch combined with a peep show, serendipitous rock star accommodations, and tumbling into the airport at 4 am with Red Bull and Vodka breath, but at this rate, I’ll never write it. Suffice to say, it happened. And it was good.
I suck.
Before I left for Vegas, I ominously warned that something needed to change at my job and hoo ha, something did. A few hours before writing that, I had had it with Annoying Coworker and with the stagnation on a personal level. My daily tasks were starting to be the afterthought for my project work, which is a giant sign that I needed to check into something else, so I posted for two other positions, one that I probably had no chance of getting that would have doubled my salary, and one that was practically written with me in mind, one that caused the Human Resources person to call me about fifteen minutes after I submitted the electronic internal app, to ask if I was going to be satisfied with the salary cap (way more than I make now in IT). Then I got called into my boss’ office, who told me that something big had happened the day before, something huge, something ginormous. Something where my name got checked by people who, by rights, are very frightening people to know your name. As it turns out, someone big was cherry picking me out of my cozy little nest of dysfunction and whappah, putting me on a majorly huge project, one of those projects that millions of dollars has already been invested, one of those projects that has a name which was supposed to be a savior and has become a kind of curse. Oh and by the way, I wasn’t really given a choice in the matter, they wanted Weetabix, so Weetabix they were getting. Like a good little hired assassin, I was reluctant until they gave in to my demands. So that’s intriguing. Oh, and I have to spend a shitload of time in Shermer, Illinois over the next several months.
Awesome.
The unfortunate part of this is that I came back from vacation and boom, had someone standing at my desk, waiting to be trained to fill my position. So that’s been my last two weeks, trying to slog through my vacation backlog, trying to do my standard job, catch up on the details of Project Hellhole and also train this new girl. Sadly, she’s witnessed some of the Annoying Coworker’s antics, so keeps asking me worried questions about the zeitgeist of the team and whether one thing or another is cool to do. And it’s all I can do to not say “Run! Run! Run! You got screwed!” It’s like she’s the war bride coming home to meet the family for the first time and sits down to dinner where everything seems normal and then it all falls apart, with people screaming at each other and throwing food, while the others are running around saying “Oh, you’re going to love being part of this family!”
Esteban has a new job. As for negotiations, he is the pro, since his severance goes through the end of the month, he wouldn’t accept the offer unless he didn’t have to start until the end of the month, essentially giving himself the entire month of July off, with pay. He’s so annoying. I would have started the new gig right away and then gotten a double paycheck for six weeks, but that’s because my blue collar background prevents me from ever turning down work (there’s the secret assumption that you turn down work and then you’re out of work and then where would you be? In the gutter, that’s where!) and I would just be thinking about investing those paychecks into money markets or something. Who am I kidding. I would have bought shoes.
Esteban promised me that he would finish the work on the dining room/den as part of his Month of Sloth, but on the 15th, we started talking about how the room still had everything in it and if he wanted to get it done by the end of the month, he had to empty it, rip up carpeting, fix the plaster, seal the floorboards, prime and paint it, replace the outlets and also get carpeting down, and since he was going camping during the last five days of the month, when was that all happening. I didn’t mean to say all of this within earshot of Ward and June, but ha, it sort of happened that way and ha, they kick his ass into action much better than I can. They agreed to come over and help him with the carpet the next day, and to cement the deal, I left Ward and June’s house and drove directly to the carpet people to schedule the installation for the last day of the month.
I’d like to think that I’m not manipulative. It’s a good dream.
I must hand it to Esteban. Four days later and the carpet is gone, the floors sealed, and I picked out four potential paint colors (taupe, chocolate, another chocolate and red) at lunch today, with Esteban picking out his favorite (red). I’m modeling the room on Starbucks. I am not even making that up.
The best part of this plan? He’s painting this weekend. I’m going to be out of town. There’s no choice in this matter, because we’re both going to be out of town the following weekend (Esteban at his annual camping extravaganza and me at Blogher with Sarah, representing Elastic Waist), so as it is written, so shall it be. And right now, the man is in the kitchen making snickerdoodles. I’m really not trying to be smug about it all but I just have to shake my head. I might just have connived myself into the perfect life.
Now if only I had more closet space.
