I was up really early this morning around six. I got right up and got ready so that I could head right out to the office first thing. I went down the basement and got signed in to the office so that I could catch up on all of my email and make sure that nothing was pending before leaving the house to go in to work. There was a bit of work to do so I ended up working until around nine thirty. The meeting that I am heading in to attend is not until four this afternoon so no hurry.
I decided that I was going to take the Mazda today. It has been sitting in the parking lot since the Ralstons were driving it in April and May before moving to the Congo. It has not been started since then. The front right tire went flat and we just left it. It was always too much effort to bother to use it. Today is a long drive, though, and I prefer driving the Mazda PR5 to the BMW X3 (I really, really hate driving SUVs.) Best to put the miles on the car and it could really use the exercise. So I pumped up all of the tires and started her up. She fired right up without hesitation and ran great. Probably could do with an oil change this week, though. Just for good measure. She has almost one hundred and twenty thousand miles on her now although she still feels relatively new. I am really impressed with how well that car has held up for us. It was Dominica’s first ever car that she bought herself.
I stopped by the Maple Avenue Deli around the corner and grabbed breakfast on my way out of town. Egg and cheese on croissant. That was delicious. We are going to be eating there a lot more often now.
It takes quite a long time to drive from Peekskill, New York to Warren, New Jersey. Almost two hours, in fact. It was almost lunch time by the time that I got out there. I did enjoy the drive, though. It is very rare that I get any sort of time to myself so when it happens it is very much appreciated. A chance for me to just quietly think and wrap my head around life.
I wasn’t at the office for half an hour before most of the office left for a preplanned lunch event so I was left on my own. I don’t have badge access to just come and go from the office so I decided that it was best to just hang around at the office rather than dealing with security again although I did notice on this trip out that over the last few months the security has lessened considerably from when I first started out in Warren almost four years ago. It is much easier to get around there now.
I tried to log in so that I could get some work done and discovered that I was no longer able to work from the office. I can work when I am home but my access no longer works from inside of the office. This is rather unexpected. They have always had a tremendously hard time supporting my workstations ever since I started at the bank but this is a new level of bizarre. How can I not be able to work from inside when I am able to work from home? Talk about a massive lack of efficiency. So no email or other work for me today.
The lack of ability to work actually didn’t turn out to be so bad since I had cleaned up a bit of work before heading into the office and because the real purpose of my trip out today was to get details about the move to Texas and get an idea from the office as to what is going on with that. So having no reason to sit at my desk gave me an entire day to just wander about and find out from everyone what is going on.
I got a good picture of where most people sit with the whole Texas deal today. The basic story is that very few people with whom I work currently are really considering going to Texas. For a lot of people it is simply not an option because of family or mortgage obligations. The current housing market is not one that makes it very easy for existing home owners to suddenly pack up and move across the country. So that rules out almost half of all of the possible considerations. Some are then additionally ruled out because they are dual income families and the move would mean giving up a secondary or perhaps even a primary income. So it is a tough decision for everyone but nearly impossible for many. It feels like only a handful of us are planning on going and only a very select group are seriously considering it beyond that.
After the lunch hours were over I finally had a chance to have a serious meeting and get some real details as to the move to Texas concerning me. At the end of that we had determined that pretty much everything was all set for the move to Texas and the intent is for us to be down there at the latest in February and, if possible, December would be great. So all we need is the formal offer and we are good to go.
From that meeting it was off to the four o’clock big Texas informational meeting. This meeting was really just a formality for me as I am, in theory all set to go. There was a little bit of useful information for me at the meeting but nothing much too useful as almost everything was either general information which I had gone to the effort myself to collect because I wanted to get the decision over and done with as quickly as possible so that we could begin the process of getting down to Texas.
There was some good news in the meeting involving some structural issues of which I was not aware but then, right at the end of the meeting, we hit a significant snag. It turns out that our previously agreed upon salaries were no longer going to be allowed and we were going to be taking pay cuts of an undisclosed amount as part of the move. This had been previously guaranteed to not happen so this came as a bit of a surprise especially as the information was not volunteered in this meeting but had to be asked specifically with the assumption that previous information had been incorrect. Oh boy. So here we go again.
So at the end of the day we know actually less than we did going into the day! Now we have no idea if we are going to Texas or not. For the past month we have been really confident that everything was going to go smoothly and now we have no idea if it is even a financial option for us let alone a good move. After the meeting I got a chance to hear a lot of rumours that would indicate that there is very little chance of it all working out well so we will see but right at the moment we are stuck in a situation with no solid information and no decision as to whether or not Texas is a go or no-go plan and it looks like there will be no information yet this week either.
I drove the long drive back home. I hate this “not knowing” situations. There are plenty of people who could make a decision and let us know what is going to happen but they are holding out on critical decision making allowing everyone to just wonder what is happening and what they should be doing. People desperately need to start working on selling their houses or whatever and this is making everything dramatically more difficult than it needs to be. Every time that we think that we have a solid plan, at the very least involving what we should be doing right this moment, it falls apart and we are up in the air again. It is very frustrating.
We ordered in Domino’s this evening because it was so late and Dominica did not feel like cooking and I was not in a good mood so best to have pizza and beer and call it a night. We spent the evening watching Ocean’s Thirteen which came on BluRay yesterday from Amazon and was actually pretty decent. Then off to bed. Ready for a long day tomorrow.