Thankful Thursday

TGIT!  One more day of work and then I'm off for three days.  It's only Thursday morning but I'm already counting the hours until the days end.

It's been a crazy ass week with more twists and turns than normal.  It started Monday when one of my new hires decided to turn down the job.  In the same vein, on Tuesday I discovered another of the new hires was ineligible because he'd already accepted a job at a higher level in another department.  It would have been nice if the other area had let us know.  So back to the assessment results I went to make new offers to two other individuals. Both were so excited to hear from me...so no worries that they will decide to turn it down.  Definitely a reason to be thankful.

Also on Monday, my friend and co-worker D called to say that her sister had passed away on Sunday.  Her sister S retired from our office less than 10 years ago, and although she'd had significant health concerns for many years, it was a shock.  She'd been in the hospital for several weeks; the family was preparing to help her move into a care facility, when she simply passed away.  While her death is a huge loss to her family and friends, S did not want to be dependent, so in some ways her sudden release from her pain is a blessing.

We had a meeting on Tuesday afternoon to discuss our upcoming move.  Our building is going to be renovated to the most recent retrofit guidelines called Workplace 2.0.  Basically we'll be living in cube farms, with about 30-45 square feet of space per workstation, slightly larger for supervisors like myself.  Storage in the cubicles will be very limited....since we have computers we're paperless, right?  For now, though we're being moved into space in our lower level.  It has the very old furniture we had when I first started here 17 years ago.  The space has a low ceiling and with dark blue cubicle walls that are 64" high, it's going to seem dark.  There are positives though...I'll have a window for the first time in years in the swing space and when the renovations are complete, it's going to seem so bright and open we'll probably have less complaints.

Yesterday, my boss was being his usual annoying self.  I won't get into it here but by the end of the day I'd had to work with his boss and her admin assistant to do work he ought to have done.  It's a well-known secret that he's about to retire...it's just a matter of when.  I pretty sure it's down to days rather than months and for that I'm thankful.  We're pretty sure we know who will be replacing him and that individual is known for being very capable and decisive.

Since this is Thursday morning, I'm not sure what today will bring.  But I know where I'll be tomorrow.  My younger brother R and I are heading to Alberta to help celebrate our older brother M's 65th birthday on Saturday.

Although we've got a 7 hour drive (each way), we'll be able to share the driving, and I know we'll have no trouble passing the time talking about his family, work, and mine.

It's been nearly 7 years since we've seen M (at our Dad's funeral in 2008) and I'm so excited about getting together with him and his family.  There is going to be lots of laughter...we gotta give the old dinosaur a hard time...lots of stories and reminiscing.

This is a photo of M when he was only 13 months old.  I would tell you his smile looks just the same.

I definitely have a lot to be thankful for...most of all for family and good friends.