The Aerie
The trip to England is back on again, and looking moderately solid this time.
The training firm that's hiring me has set the dates of March 26-31st, and I'm hoping to extend that to something like Friday evening through the following Saturday. But we'll see what airfares and reality have to say about that notion. I'd also like to bring my spouse along, but likewise reality may have something to say about that. Damned reality, how I hate it!
And there's still a smidgen of a chance it can all fall apart, although at this point that would be pretty surprising.
I'm really really looking forward to visiting London for the first time in twenty years. The classes are scheduled after work in the evenings, leaving me the mornings of every day to tour and explore. It doesn't hurt, either, that I like British food. I know, I know, but what can I say, I just had a pot pie for lunch! I like gravies and pastries, bangers and mash, Shepherd's pie, the whole lot. Oh, look at me going all Madonna and I haven't even gotten to England yet, "the whole lot" indeed!
In other news, I had second interviews for a Chief Information Officer position for a mid-sized business, an online training firm, and today I got a callback from their HR which I suspect regards setting a meeting to come in and talk brass tacks about salary and the role and everything. To that end I've contacted a the firm that helped me build my resume, I'd like to get their tips on salary and role negotiation. This job isn't just a matter of salary, I suspect there are stock options and days off and other factors to discuss, so I want to approach it the right way. And of course there's the question of, should I receive an offer, can I and this company afford each other financially? We'll see!
Meanwhile this week has been a bear. Very exhausting. The objective at the client site is to install firewalls in a certain manner that ought to take a year, or at the very least a couple of months, and doing it in one month. I already told my boss it was impossible, but she encouraged me by saying that everyone's schedule and priorities could be reassigned to make it happened. Fortunately then one of the engineers, a brilliant fellow I worked with over at Wells Fargo, came up with a Scotty-I-need-Warp-10 solution. If he can make it work then we may just pull off the impossible, and right before my trip to England.
And should I accept an offer for that one job, then that's what I will have accomplished with my month at this client, and frankly that would be a neat little package to tie up.
Meanwhile I've put in a couple of 10 and 11 hour days already, so Friday will be a half day because I'm not permitted to go over 40 hours of work a week. Why is it I want this perm position again? Oh yeah, getting too old to continue consulting, right. Well, we'll see. There's every chance that they just can't offer me what I need to pay the bills...
So all in all a pretty good week so far - very busy, passing very quickly. And the weather is improving, so that's a nice change. By the time I get back from England it will be April already, and after that comes the summer - another winter survived!
One of my idle whims regarding visiting England is getting down to Cardiff, for absolutely the only reason being that it's featured in the series "Torchwood." There's a big eye-shaped waterfront plaza that features in the series, and it would be quite the larf to get some shots in that location. Which, I admit, is a pretty silly reason for going to one place in England over another. But if I don't go to Cardiff, I'll have to revisit Sandwich and get another photo of myself eating a sandwich...
So I can't complain! My job is going okay, I have a trip to England in the offing, albeit a working trip, and at least the prospects for a career-advancing new position if I play my cards right. If only I had a lovely spouse and three terrific kids, life would be perfect!
Oh, wait, I do!
Posted by Albatross at March 8, 2007 12:59 PM | TrackBack