Sheep Guarding Llama

Just a “normal” day at work today.  No real news.  Everyone is calling around and emailing all day long waiting to get more information about the job in the middle east.  We were told that likely it would be a few days, but we really have no idea.  We are waiting on pins and needles; everyone is quite nervous about it.

This evening, while we had some people visiting the house, I got the call to head to Houston to get ready to go to the middle east… but before I had the chance to respond to that call another one came in contradicting that one.  There had been miscommunications and we really are not going tonight after all.  Argh.  This is getting frustrating quickly.

This makes us hopeful that the job really is going to happen since they made the mistake of almost sending us.

It is much cooler today in Texas.  I got up around seven and got into the office.  It was only seventy four outside as I was driving in.  Dominica left the Spark totally empty last night, to the point where it was blinking and freaking out, so I had to very carefully drive straight to the cash station because I ran out of gas.

Today was spent finding out more details about Saudi Arabia.  We found out today where we should be going and that we might be going at any moment.  Visas are being prepared for us and, in theory, we could be heading to the Middle East as early as tonight and likely sometime this week.  It’s a security job on the east coast near Bahrain.  Pretty cool and very excited (and nerve wracking.)

Still no word today about the “trip” to Saudi Arabia.  I talked to some of the team today and, obviously, everyone is quite anxious.  I hate this about consulting, the people who are sending you places and causing massive upheaval in your life seem to almost always forget that the weekend is the most stressful time for you because you are stuck for a long period of time without necessary information and then they also, universally, forget that the “business minute” one minute before 8:00 Monday morning is 4:59 on Friday afternoon.  I can’t tell you how many times I have been requested to do a project first thing on Monday and the people with the information leave on Friday thinking that it is “three days away” and don’t realize that they have to have coordinated with me by the time that they leave the office or there is no way to do so before it is too late.

So we are sitting and waiting.  More work at the house and hanging out with the family today.  Fingers crossed.

This begins my nervous weekend of wondering what is going to happen on Monday.  Since we are kind of on edge waiting to hear what happens we spent the weekend just at home.

Since we might be apart very soon we made this an all-family weekend.  Nothing much, there was work to do so I did what I could and just spent time with the family.

Not too surprising but we didn’t hear anything about the project in Saudi Arabia today.  We were not really expecting to hear anything, but had been hopeful for some amount of information.

Tonight we broke down and got ourselves dinner from Panda Express.  Sometimes you just cannot resist their honey walnut shrimp, it is so addicting.  And Liesl likes getting noodles from there too.

I was in the office again today.  It is going to be a crazy day as we learn more about the project that we might be on, continue building the team and sit around wondering if we are going to be heading down to Houston to go to the airport to head off to Saudi Arabia or not.  Far from a normal day.

Some of the guys from SpiceCorps met me at Redneck for lunch.  They brought back some phones that I had lent to them to demo.  I also got to hear the horror stories from their office.  They are no longer getting paid and the company is going under but hasn’t laid people off yet.  Not a good situation.  They are really stressed out.

We got a little more information on the project this afternoon, but not very much.  Information is trickling in but we really wont know anything solid until Monday.

After work I ran up to Plano with Chris and Andrew to meet up with Andrew’s friend Kara for beers at a specialty beer place up there.  We had a good time and hung out for a while. I spent quite a bit of time on the phone dealing with logistics for Saudi Arabia.  We have nearly a full team ready to go at this point.

After beers we drove back and went to Redneck for late night drinks before going home.  We are sitting waiting to head to Saudi Arabia at any moment, or not at all.  No idea what is going on.

Some of the guys on the team work with a datacenter in Dallas that is aware of there having been a major security breach over there and is wondering if we might be being sent over in conjunction with that issue.  Interesting, but it seems unlikely.

It is going to be a long weekend wondering what is going on.