Final Chapter?

You'd think by now that everything would be back to normal regarding "she who's name will not be spoken" (heretofore referred to as "she"). I guess I was wrong. However, I think we may be at some sort of crossroads.

I can pretty much guarantee that "she" won't be going away. She's managed to leverage all of her friends from the government and land a job supporting some kind of IT project for the same division where I work. According to the folks in the know at my company, some sort of "settlement" was reached between my company and "she's" company and mine. From my position, it would have been nice to know the terms of the settlement. Regardless, she's been slithering around my area recently. I ran into her two times in the space of a week. I overheard someone say to her: "sometimes things happen for a reason". I'm sure that she was talking about her "ordeal". Lest we forget about the things that lead to her "dismissal", here they are:

1. Constant disagreements with other team members
2. Lack of communication with the team to the point where important information was not disseminated, resulting in embarassing situations and emails
3. Emotional ourbursts in public and private
4. Inappropriate social relationship between her and the client
5. Falsified credentials - she claims to have a PhD. However, the college from which she received this PhD. is a "diploma mill". While this didn't really contribute to her dismissal, it was more of the same kind of dis-information she touted as "real"
6. Refusal to accept the generous offer of a paid leave of absense from the company. This would have given her time to get her head together (something that I personally recommended to her)

There were a couple more, but those were the big ones.

I have to live in the environment where each time I run into her I'm reminded of the stress and turmoil she put me through (the nasty comments, emails, dirty looks). Perhaps your ol' pal Clark is a little paranoid? I personally think it sucks, but I have to stick it out in order to pay the bills, if you know what I mean.

Clark

Honorary Grizzwold

To the family who drove their sainted Grandmother to the great Northwest in their RV only to have the woman pass away on the trip: you are an Honorary Grizzwold family!

http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_011408_news_grandmother_roadtrip.1fd45426.html
Reminds me of our trip to Wally World!

Clark

Nused car

My cousin (You remember my cousin, the one who visited at Christmas time in the RV?) had a car he was trying to unload. He had it checked out and everything. I looked at it myself and thought it was a pretty good car. The kids were even excited because it had a connector for their MP3 players!

Well, we worked out a deal that I would pay him in a couple months with the tax return I was getting. The car had a lot of miles on it, but my cousin took pretty good care of it. The car did great on the trip back home. I thought we were very lucky to find a decent car for not a lot of money.

Well, everything was good until I drove it to work. It did great on the way to work, but started acting funny on the drive home. It started missing under acceleration. Well, I stopped by my mechanic and he took a look at it. He thought it was either a spark plug problem or a distributor problem. I tried to leave with it, but it wouldn't start up. So I left it there. Long story short, what seemed like a great car was in need of about $1000 dollars worth of repairs. Not such a good deal. The mechanic was able to get it running right again

Thankfully, my cousin was cool with it and he decided to donate the car to charity...eventually. Right now it's sitting in my garage with a mostly flat tire. I hope I can get it inflated before the tow truck comes!

Clark

New job!

I'm proud to announce that my dearest Ellen is back to work full time!

Since money has been so tight, Ellen decided she would get a full time job and we would put the baby in child care full time. It was really weird...it took her three weeks to get her resume together and about three days to land this job. She is working at a call center for a pharmaceutical company. You know, the folks at the end of the 1-800 number on the back of the package? She loves it and she's making good money.

I'm very proud of her.

The kids have made the transition fairly well. We found a neighbor with a set of home-schooled kids that agreed to watch my 11 year old. The baby has even taken to the day care setting. It took a while and a great many tears, but she is almost completely transitioned. I have had kind of a harder time because I have to get up at about 5:30am in order to be able to leave work at around 4pm to make sure that I am home in time to pick up the baby from daycare. By Friday I'm pretty exhausted. I've also picked up all the dinner obligations. I really don't mind cooking, but the cleanup really stinks.

Happy Holiday!

Hi folks, it's your old pal Clark again.

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas (or Hannukah...or Festivus...or whatever you do this time of year) and a safe New Year. This Christmas was just OK. Money was way tight, so we really had to cut way back on presents. Still, the kids had a blast.

I got the worst flu I've ever had the weekend after Christmas. I honestly thought I was having some awful headaches. My heart was racing, I was wicked hot or cold, depending upon my fever. I begged Ellen to take me to the doctor, but she kept telling me they wouldn't really do anything for me. So I suffered. I had horrible things coming out of both ends of my body. The worst of it was coming out the back end...if you know what I mean. I was sick for about a week. I couldn't stray far from a toilet for 5 days. Even after that, my digestion was affected for about another week after that. I really couldn't eat anything with any substance. I ate a lot of soup and pasta and drank a ton of water and soda. Ellen said she had never seen me so sick (I don't get sick much).

I did manage to wean myself off of diet soda while sick (and without the withdrawals too!) I was drinking so much water that there wasn't room for soda. Your ol' pal Clark used to drink 4 or 5 diet cola a day. That's a lot of caffeine. Now I drink (on the average) 1 diet cola a day. I drink tea or water the rest of the time and indulge on decaf diet sodas (not colas) the rest of the time. I've also gone back to making fruit smoothies and drinking juices. Not sure if this is going to lead to any kind of long term benefit, but I think I'm the better for it.

Clark

Playing catch-up

It's been a while since I've posted...the holiday seasons took a majority of my free time away. So what have you been doing since January 1 you ask? Slacking off, obviously.

Thanksgiving this year was pretty average as they go. We spent our day at my mother in laws eating and watching the games and then eating again. It was a nice time. Now after that, I lost part of my life to....Black Friday!!!

Yes, your ol' pal Clark camped out in front of my local Big Box electronic store in order to queue up for the possibility that a $200 laptop would be available for him to purchase. Problem was it was wicked cold and windy. I had layers of clothes on, camp chairs, and a cold weather sleeping bag. I started out at around 8pm. There were already a bunch of people in front of me. I bundled up and sat...and sat...and slept...and sat some more. A friend came by to check on me about 1am. I must have been quite amusing as they made a recording of me snoring on their cell phone and sent it to my wife! According to this friend, I was keeping people around me awake! Sorry!
It all worked out for me thankfully. I managed to get the laptop and survive the human ice box and onslaught at the 5am opening of the store. I hope that next year is different!

Clark