My 40th Birthday Tour

Most of you know may know this already, however I'm in the middle of crazy travel time which I've done to myself. However it's been fun so far!

- CC's 40th Bday Weekend in DC: included staying at fabulous house, helping out with Saturday picnic (which involved a fabulous roasted pig), Saturday evening at W in downtown DC with fab roof view of mall. Relaxing and eating with many friends.

- Las Vegas with Lady W and her guy P. Stayed at Paris, walked a lot, gambled little, saw "O" which was fabulous. Wonderful pedicure! Had good dinner last night and just back tonight

- This coming week, Labor Day weekend which ends with my actual birthday. Will be in FLL with my darling sister. Really looking forward to it.

Work is nuts and I'm tired of it. Nothing new there.

Hope it doesn't rain tomorrow so

I could wear my new flippy floppies!

Saffy - RIP

Just heard from Dad, very sad that they had to put their kitty down tonight. She had kidney failure which is usually happens to cats as they age. He and stepmother are very upset naturally, they lost Saffy's brother Rhee-Khan earlier this year. They were bengalese cats, very mischievous and spoiled.

An aspiration that so fits me

"Be steady and well-ordered in your life so you can be fierce and original in your work."

Gustave Flaubert

what I need - superficial edition

• place for decent, not too expensive, regular manicure and pedicure
• somebody to take out the trash
• clean up my apartment
• new shoes - two pairs at least
• a decent sports bra
• co-workers who complete their work without my asking 3x
• a better way to space/format bullet points on this blog
• occasional response to this (though maybe no one is reading anymore)

I predict a tv show coming......

"I think on a national level your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out."

Sarah Palin, on how she would handle ethics complaints if she were in the White House

Rhymes with Witch?

So back at work last week. Crazy busy, which was to be expected since I had been out and deadlines. Though did lead me to want to rant on two things, though maybe I'm just a controlling perfectionist beeyotch?

There was a deadline on a semi-annual process at quarter end (related to SOX for those in the know). I coordinate this activity yet since I don't actually manage a department not technically responsible for the details. My job is to sit down with the various managers to discuss the process and help them evaluate their department's key functions. I had started meetings in APRIL, to discuss this and get them moving (quarter end being June 30). I ended up each meeting going over who was doing what and asking them to send updates when done. I did get distracted with other projects, yet still they didn't need me to finish. Or I guess, they did. Cause periodically I had to remind them and the response was "oh yeah, we're working on that." Then I go on vacation and email a few days before I leave some reminders. Of course no response to emails while I was out of the office. One manager gave me raw data which I couldn't tell what had occurred, one had finished the tests at the last possible minute and the other missed some items. This is getting to long already, however basically still needed my work, they have yet to understand the basic process, and my fave quote "We didn't really test this, however given my experience it's probably fine." (Which I'm saving for top ten things we don't say to internal audit!) Basically does managing a process, require multiple (more than 3) emails/ reminders for people to do what they are responsible for doing? I'll be critiqued later for the last minute completion of this when I've done what I could, it's in the hands of others.

As you may be aware last weekend was a holiday. It's very common for mgmt to let employees leave early the Friday before, however due to nature of industry, it's rare managers announce ahead of time. I enjoy this and glad for everyone yet I'm starting to see people treating this as an entitlement. To me, it's a priviledge granted by mgmt assuming your work is done enough for you to leave. It's also a scary time, we had some major layoffs, some areas aren't busy though you'd think they'd attempt to be productive. All week people would talk about "do we get to leave early?", I started getting annoyed. My direct mgr made a joke about how we're staying til 5pm - I responded "how dare you remind me!" - a good chuckle.

I have a project deadline at the end of this month and needed to schedule a team meeting on Friday, due to availability of key people, 3 of which I knew that even if mgmt told everyone to go, they would stay due to work load and quarter end, so I scheduled for 2pm. This project technically started in March, no one was taking responsibility so I was assigned to make sure it was completed in critical time. Came back from lunch and found out that mgmt said everyone could leave at 2pm. Chatted with direct mgr, we both agreed on too short of timeline and need to get this meeting done if we could. Then at 1:15 got phone call from one dept (that lost half it's staff in layoffs) " are you rescheduling since >>> said we could leave?" I asked "Do you have to leave early - is it critical? Cause 3 have to stay anyway?" He agreed, yet I was a little annoyed - why did he have to ask? If I have a meeting I assume it's on unless someone cancels it. His previous mgr (laid off a while back) used to let the team go all the time, guy doesn't have bad work ethic - yet doesn't see how this can be viewed? I did gripe a little too a colleague and her response "well people want to see their families" - I know! So do I ! I want an early weekend too yet there are things to do plus everyone in the meeting is exempt not hourly so can take time when they need to and make it up later, it was only an 1 hour delayed which still got everyone out 2 hours early.

Maybe I'm just uptight or tired of the lack of consideration or interest. Maybe I'm too sensitive since I don't have family living nearby and I think the assumption at work at times is I have no life, I do, it's just a little different from most there. Well that's a vent!