Sheep Guarding Llama

So even though I was in Manhattan all day yesterday, or nearly so, we are back in the city today too. Dominica had thought about going in with me yesterday but since she could find no one to be able to go around the city with her to help out with the girls she decided that she would wait until today to do it with me to make things easier.  That was a good idea as she would not have been able to easily maneuver the girls around the city on her own at all.  And she has never done the city on her own and has never even taken the Metro North before, alone or otherwise.  So a lot of firsts for her today as well.

We got the girls up and packed up and drove the Acadia down to Croton-Harmon Station.  I dropped Dominica and the girls off at the elevator while I drove way out into the visitor parking which is ridiculously far away from the station.  We were in a really tight time crunch to get the express train that we wanted so she hurriedly got the tickets and got the girls to the platform while I jogged across the expanse of parking lots to join them on the platform.

This is the first time that Dominica has ever ridden the Metro North community rail into New York (or to anywhere) and also, of course, the first time for the girls.  Liesl and Luciana have not been on a train at all since they were on them in Europe.  Their last train ride would have been the night train from Madrid to Lisbon that we took in June, 2012.

The train ride went well.  The girls, of course, fought over who would get to sit where  But it was not that long and they had fun.

This was, to the best of my knowledge, Dominica’s first time in Grand Central Terminal and it was most certainly Liesl and Luciana’s first time setting foot in Manhattan.  Technically they have driven through the edge of it once or twice because some of the highways that we use cut through it once ever six months or so.  The only time that I actually remember doing that was on the drive from Walt Disney World to Connecticut when the family was moving north in November, 2013.  But we might have done that again since then.  I remember Liesl being really excited to see New York City out of her window.  The girls are both really excited about being in the city.  They are city people, like me, I think.  They loved getting a look at it last month.  Now they are actually in it.

The reason that we are in the city today is that we are doing a Flat Stanley in NYC day for friends in Dallas.  So we are hitting bit sites in midtown to get as much as we can without making the trip impossible with two little kids in tow.  We can’t go to downtown and get the Statue of Liberty, unfortunately.  That is just way too much to handle.  Last time, when Katie and I did Flat Stanley in NYC (I am guessing that that was around 2008) we did only downtown and never went to midtown.  So the opposite this time.

Our first stop was brunch.  We had not eaten all day and it was a little afternoon at this point.  We went to the “diner” at Pershing Square right across 42nd Street from Grand Central, under Park Avenue, and ate there.  Expensive but the food was amazing and super fast.  Really excellent food.  Everyone really enjoyed what they got.  Liesl ordered penne with butter all by herself and loved her food.  Luciana got pancakes, big surprise.  I got eggs Benedict with salmon which was excellent and the roasted potatoes there are really amazing.

We did some walking.  We started by heading north on Madison and took the girls up to Rockefeller Center.  The girls thought that it was really interesting to see “The Rock” given that they have both seen so much of 30 Rock and know exactly what that is.  We got caught in some Columbus Day parades in the city.  I was pretty shocked to see that in this day and age that New York City would allow there to be public displays of celebration for that.  Very disappointing.  I thought that New York was a bit more progressive than that.  Incredibly insensitive and inappropriate.

From there we walked to Times Square and they got to see some fountains along the way and then they got to see my office, or hopefully my office, where we are waiting on news if I will be able to start working there soon.  It has been more than a month waiting to see if that will all work out as planned and, at the moment, it is looking rather precarious which is extremely stressful.

It took forever to walk through Times Square with the girls.  We are pushing them in a double stroller and there is just no way to get through the crowds there.  That was exhausting and the girls really did not enjoy it at all.  Dominica has decided that she truly hates Times Square.  I could have told her that.  Unfortunately my new job (knock on wood, fingers crossed) is right on Times Square itself, so little means to avoid it.

We went down to the Empire State Building, took some more pictures, and called it a day.  It does not sound like a long day but with the two girls in that big stroller and all of the crowds, the detours and the route that we took, it was a lot.  We were ready to get back home.  We got a lot of walking in today and pushing the stroller all day added to the exercise.  It was nice, though, and we were glad to finally get to take the girls into the city.  I cannot believe that after being here for an entire year now this is the first time that the kids got to come here.  And this is the first time that Dominica has been in the city since we lived in Newark, if I remember correctly.  It is amazing how little time they spend in New York City considering how close we live.

We had to wait a while for our north bound train but the ride was smooth and we had no issues.  It was late when we got back to the house.  It was actually a rather long day.  But we had fun.

Today I am in Manhattan for the entire day.  It is a nice chance to get out and see the city some, get some exercise and do something interesting.  Helps to kill some time while waiting for news and decisions.  Handy that I am home all of the time now and have nothing to do.

I drove down to Croton-Harmon Station early in the morning and caught the commuter line into the city.  It is somewhat cold and very drizzly today, just how I like the city.  I went into Grand Central Terminal and then walked down to 22nd which is a great hike in the city.  Lots of exercise but not so long that it is exhausting.

I ended up spending the entire day in the city.  Mark took me out for a light dinner at a pub around the corner.  A friend of his joined us.  We had a nice time hanging out.

It was probably eight or nine when I got back to the train terminal and an hour later that I was home with the family.  It was a nice change of pace going into the city today.  Of course, it sucks, because tomorrow Dominica and I are bringing the kids into the city but there was no way to combine the two trips.  If we had been able to find someone to hang out with her today and help with the kids they would have come in but being on her own all day with two kids in Manhattan was going to be too much for her.

Today is Friday.  I got into the office this morning and decided that in order to do the “right thing” according to how the company operates that I should talk to my lead and pull myself out of the active access systems at work.  Not a permanent thing, just following best procedures and practices until we’ve had a chance for everyone to sit down and discuss the situation.  We had a long talk about it but, in the end, he agreed and watched me decline my own access so that there would be no question of me attempting to have access when maybe I should not.

When we did so we noticed that my access has already been revoked.  So my judgement call was good in that, without knowing it, I was agreeing with decisions already made.

Once we had a chance to have a meeting with my lead and my boss it was determined that I had done exactly the right thing, as weird as it felt at the time and as much as people on the outside are likely to second guess my judgement on it.  It was a calm and collected decision based on company policies and practices.  I had really felt that I was doing what I was supposed to do given the situation and that turned out to be correct.  A bold move, I suppose.

The decision was made that I was not needed in the office, at least for now, and that I should head home and we will discuss the situation on Monday or Tuesday.  For now, I am getting a long weekend (paid, of course) to relax until we have time to get everything worked out.

Obviously this move comes with plenty of stress of its own.  While it is not the end of my career at Bridgewater, the unspoken understanding is that it is, of course.  I have already put in my notice and am just working out my notice period right now.  So this is not a big surprise.  The events from last night were a pretty big shock and pretty much make the long term potential of staying at Bridgewater a non-option from my point of view.  But in the big picture, while that is disappointing, it does not fundamentally change how things are going to happen going forward.  The process of me leaving Bridgewater is already fully underway and not stopping now.  Now we just have to figure out the transition plan.

Dominica and the girls were pretty surprised when I arrived home around noon.  I had grabbed a tuna melt at Dunkin Donuts on my way home since I had missed lunch at the office.  So we just spent the afternoon together as a family and relaxed for a bit.  My final denial has not come through yet so the only thing that we can do at this point is sit and wait and hope that everything works out.  It is going to be at least a week like this, maybe more.  We will know something more early next week, but very little.  End of the week, we hope, we will have much more solid information.

Feeling stressed, but also feeling confident in having maintained cool composure and solid decision making.  It was the right and proper response.  Anything less would have been some awkward combination of begging to stay in the office (even if unspoken) or being told I had to give up access rather than acknowledging it from the outset.  I really did think it through for a long time before making the decision and it was in no way a heat of the moment thing or anything of the sort.  It was principled and logical.

Now the waiting begins.

The day started off pretty normal but the events that would unfold today would prove to be pretty pivotal in the story of our family.  I am writing this post in December when it is almost Christmas.  Most of the posts before and after this one, except for tomorrow’s, were written roughly when they happened but these two were not, for obvious reasons (we were incredibly caught up in dealing with the situation) and I went back in late December while on Christmas break down in Houston to fill in the missing details of the last two and a half crazy months.

At the end of the day today my boss called me into a meeting to discuss the non-compete situation and my application to go to work at Barclays and SquarePoint.  This is not an official decision but the recommendation that was passed up, and will almost certainly be followed without further investigation, is that I should be denied the request to be able to work at Barclays.  This is pretty upsetting, as you can imagine.  I was told my Barclays that this was, in no way, competitive in nature and would not even be covered by the non-compete since it is going to a different type of organization.

This is a very complex situation and one in which I have no experience.  I don’t really know how you determine who is and who isn’t competitive, what legal protections I have or what to do next.  At this point, though, the situation is that I have to just sit tight because this is not the official decision but just letting me know about the recommendation that is going up the stack.  It could be a week or more before an actual decision is rendered and even that is not final as the official process is to get a decision then appeal it.  So the actual final decision could be some point beyond that.

So it was a somber night when I went home.  We have been sure for a month that we were going to Barclays and have been apartment hunting already and sure that this was what we were going to be doing.  This came as a complete surprise.  We had absolutely no idea that this was a real possibility given that I was not going to a hedge fund and not going someplace local either!  Now we are really trying to figure out what to do, what to think, how to react, etc.  And while it has been a month, almost, of feeling that Barclays was a sure thing it has been longer that we knew that it was a real possibility and we, more or less, were thinking that this was our game plan for nearly two months!  So this is a huge shock.

Mostly a normal day at work.  This was actually, in hindsight, my last normal day at work.  Today would be the last full day at Bridgewater.  The last day when everything went as expected and nothing abnormal happened.

No real news today.  Played some video games with the kids after work.  The events that will happen tomorrow caused SGL to get disrupted for a while.  This is one of the days that was mostly lost as not be memorable enough to, well, to remember.

Right now our main thing is just waiting for Bridgewater to process the non-compete request internally so that I can set my start date with Barclays.