Valentines

Well, this is a surreal day. Normally my most hated day of the whole year.. started off with the ability to go horribly, two big presentations consecutively with the first one at 6am! But, both have gone okay. Some odd and slightly confusing feedback where seemingly the point was missed by several people.. so I might not have done such a great job there.

Anyway, heard from some old colleagues through LinkedIn which is always nice as well, got some good connections back that haven't been there for ages, and that's kinda cheered me up.

Scrawled cutesy message on bathroom mirror as well for my girl, so I've made some effort with Valentines, and I did take her to the ballet on Sunday!

Given I was thinking this Valentines 2006, this is quite a change.. maybe indicative of progress of my life? Who knows! Either way it's still a victory over common sense. We're making our own small protest to the day by staying in, having a quiet dinner and ignoring the insane consumer driven masses..

So.. V day report over!

Tuesday's explained...

As a note of courtesy to a few friends, well, pretty much just one at the moment.. I have decided to repost the reason for my hatred of Tuesdays.. on a Tuesday, whilst bad things are still happening.

Many years ago I began realising a pattern with my life in general, that every week, or at least most weeks, bad things would happen to me... on Tuesdays. It's not that I'm an especially unlucky person (though sometimes it does feel that way), it's just that everything bad seems to have occured on the same day of the week. It would be interesting if there was some kind of statistical study to show if this is true for others or not, other people around me have begun to experience "Tuesdays" after knowing me for some time, so I'm possibly contagious.

So, you're probably sitting there thinking "Pah, you grumbling simpleton, bad things just happen, it's nothing to do with days of the week". Well, I do have a short list which has pretty much landed me here:

1. I've lost people close to me (on tuesdays)
2. Over the years I've been consecutively dumped by 3 girls including one which broke my heart, on tuesdays
3. Of the 3 car accidents I've had in my life, *all* of them happened on a Tuesday
4. My visa debacle about getting to the USA, and the day I learned it wasn't resolved and got flung back, was on a tuesday.
5. I made some very silly mistakes in relationships on Tuesdays
6. If you read back through my blog, you'll find all manner of travel disasters, and episodes that occured on a Tuesday.
7. Today possibly holds inconceivable disaster for me, and it is, of course, a tuesday.
8. Lastly, I was born on a Tuesday.

So, you might still be thinking "Fool!!", but as far as I'm concerned there's too many things now and a pattern has been established.

So to explain where we're at. My long standing boss whom I respect and have thought of as both a friend and mentor over the years has moved on to a different position within my employer, and after a company restructure I find myself integrated and combined with a new group. This of course raises the question about whether my assignment in Seattle is being extended until it's planned point of December 2008. At the moment I feel like my whole life is hanging in the balance again, at the whim of my employer deciding if I bring value to the company, and more importantly if that value requires me to be present in the United States. Thank fully I have the support of some fantastic people, my new line manager joined us in January and has been fantastic in coaching and providing clarity (not to mention calming me down), also my colleagues at Microsoft have been incredibly supportive. The unknown factor is the new owner of the division, who is yet to pass an opinion in either direction, but today he will meet with Microsoft, my line managers and other representatives of the company and almost certainly my assignment is being raised into question.

Those who know me, know that I am not a patient man, and despite no real bad experiences I have some general issues with the concept of leaving things in the trust of others. My amazingly supportive and, well just frankly wonderful girlfriend has been beyond rock in this.. we're talking immovable object here. She's supported me and kept me at least sane enough to be able to carry on working whilst we await the decision that could alter both of our lives for good. It's very scary! Well, she keeps telling me this could be a good exercise, it's all meant for a reason and that maybe I should start putting faith in others.

Sorry to go all sombre on you folks but, letting go and leaving others to things is very hard for me!

Today, they're all in meetings together, not reviewing specifically this but the business in general, and of course likely I will come up in conversation, either during the meetings or over dinner. I can only cross everything and hang on to my chair! Oh and today is off to a typical start, I got up at 5:40am to get ready for a 6am presentation which nobody turned up to. and I've got the whole day ahead to look forward to!

The Risen... erm... Risen things...

That was supposed to be a big prophetic title about coming back from the dead etc.
Well.. b*llocks to that I have a life and work now.

So recent groups of people are now frantically blogging away on their own tired little lives, with the exception of one local american-type that actually has a deep and meaningful blog with genuine musings. (I'll link once she gives me the okay).

An update for you all : I'm still in the USA, clinging to my L1A visa for dear life, my company just got acquired and that means all manner of terrifying re-orgs that may see anything from nothing at all, to catapulted back to the UK or even worse, being laid off!

In the years passed since I didn't blog anything to here, not as much has happened as you'd think, so.. in some kind of wierd blog montage moment (you have to hum the Safety dance whilst reading this so it forms a true 80's movie moment montage), here's some high lights or interesting facts from the huge black hole since I properly blogged:

1. I got back to the USA after visa was finally sorted on February 25th 2008
2. Anybody who knew about my previous engagement (literal) to a local gal should know it ended in absolute disaster, but I'm over it, and moved on, and very happy.
3. Yes, I'm still in Bellevue, WA.
4. The US Credit system sucks if you're a foreign type. I'll probably do a whole blog post on that at some point.
5. If you're moving from the UK and you're here on an L class visa, give up on shopping around for cars on leases.. go straight to Audi or VW and deal with their finance, it's still expensive but the process is headache free.
6. Yank food is full of salt and nasty chemicals. Give up on being able to stay in shape through diet alone, exercise is required. For those of you picking yourself off the floor, no I didn't get around to the exercise yet, I just put on weight instead. See.. already adopted the american way "be lazy, eat, shop"
7. Traffic in the Seattle are is awful, and Bellevue is getting worse.
8. Holidays in Hawaii after hectic work periods and before the dead holiday season are a wonderful idea.
9. Dutch acquisitions are scary.
10. Never lose your little white I90 from your passport, you might not make it back into the country.
11. Finding a more permanent role in the USA is a lot more difficult than you'd think, start early. I didn't.
12. I'm sure there's more to this.. umm
13. Is that all that's happened?!?!
14. God my life sucks.
15. Oh yes.. the new girl. Well she's not new, she's wonderful, adorable best thing that ever happened to me, and she just moved in with me.. which is great.
16. umm.. oh one last thing, it takes approximately 8 months to buy a sofa. If you're me.
17. It is actually possible to have too many monitors for PC's.
18. Guilty pleasures are very fashionable if you're a geek, and they make you smile more.

Geeeez. It really has been dull.

Well folks, now the blog is going brace yourself for the.. erm.. roller coaster, which is my dark and miserable mind. Or possibly abject boredom. Either works.