Time to Bolt

Goodbye, apartment. As Dorothy said to the Scarecrow, "I think I'll miss you most of all." :-) See you June 15th.

Well, things blew up at work... I've had my manager tell me he was disappointed in me for telling my mentor about the planned trip (please tell me how this makes sense), the German personnel lady tell me she would've handled the situation differently in my shoes - then more or less hang up on me, and been passed from department to department because my trip wasn't being planned and I wasn't getting any information. I still don't believe I did anything wrong. I'm going to try to do my best to leave all that behind, enjoy my time in Chicago, and have fun in Michigan during the next couple of months. And besides, I got my company to pay for the flight home since what was originally vacation has now turned into a business trip. Not bad.

I plan to check in here every now and then. To be continued...

Frau Stein. Paging Frau Stein.

Hallo? Frau Stein? All I know is that she doesn't live here. But for some reason, quite a few people seem to think she does, because I've started getting several phone calls for her again. Odd! I've had this telephone number for a year and a half now, so I don't know why she's still so darn popular. I think I'm gonna start calling random people asking for Frau Stein. If we all work together, perhaps we will find her!

A group of us from work went bowling last night as our intern from England had a birthday. I had only bowled like once in the past 10 years, but out of ten people in our group, I won the first round with a 126. Amazing. Four strikes in that game - not bad, I say. Not bad. I got second place in the next round with a score of 103.

So, plans for an extended stay in the U.S. are all but certain. It's just awaiting a signature from the President, who is back in the office on Monday. But they don't foresee any problems and therefore told me on Friday to pack for three months. I've been cleaning up in the apartment all weekend and have started packing. I will be keeping my apartment here, though. Plus they worked it out for me to return to Germany mid-June so that I don't miss my trip to Croatia. That's nice of them :-) Therefore, my schedule looks like this:

March 28 - April 1: Chicago
April 2 - mid-June: Michigan
---return to Germany---
June 19 - 24: Croatia
June 24 - Sept/Oct: Germany

Heading to the US... For 3 Months?!?

I have no idea why I make plans anymore because things are always changing in this crazy life!

What a wild day. I'm so confused.

After arriving at work this morning, my manager asked to speak with me. He never does that, so I was a bit nervous. Well, they want to send me home from April to June to assist amidst the craziness of the restructuring. What a shocker first thing in the morning. All I could think about was all the little things - trips to London, Hamburg and Croatia, my apartment, having a car in the US, etc. etc. So we discussed some of those things and he said it still needed final confirmation.

Then after lunch, HR called me to discuss the arrangements they had already made for my compensation calculation, apartment in Michigan, car, etc. What the hell? They had obviously been working on this for a few days. He was surprised that I just found out about it this morning. Ehh... I take it this means they're serious about going through with it?

So the idea is that after arriving back in Michigan from Chicago, I'd start up right away in the office.

Clearly everyone but me knows what's going on.

I Can't Think of a Title

YAY for weekend trips to Freiburg. One thing is certain: The sun don't shine in Freiburg when I'm there. Saturday was a bit cooler and threatening with rain, so we nixed the mini trip to France. Maybe next time? We went out both nights and had a good time. Plus I got to go behind the bar and mix my own gin and tonic on Friday night. That was fun. And then he didn't even charge me. How else did we fill the time... shopping, eating, becoming one with nature, lounging around, watching DVDs, laughing, crying, drinking... Listed in no particular order. Actually, I don't remember seeing anyone crying, but I'm assuming there were tears shed after my departure :-)

A coworker asked me if I would do the English homework for her friend's son. This consisted of answering three questions related to a short article. The boy had already answered the questions in German, and they wanted me to check it over and translate it all into English. The article was a (ficticious?) letter to an editor from a young girl talking about how dolphins are kept in cages and used to make soup, and how they get caught and die in the tuna fish nets, so we shouldn't eat tuna fish or go to dolphin shows. Good grief! Supposedly the teacher is very strict and only gives out bad grades, so we'll see how well I do.

A fellow trainee at work who sits next to me is moving on to her next rotation after Friday. She's been here since January, and although we get along great, I have to say I'm really glad she's leaving!! This is only because she's always complaining about something. There's always some problem - with her parents, her boyfriend, any and every task at work, meals in the cafeteria, the room temperature, her car windshield, her vacation, her hair, the drive into work… Should I go on? I must agree, though - The cafeteria meals ARE pretty bad. But as for the rest, I can hardly take it anymore. I'm forced to listen to it the entire day, every day, five days a week. We have some good laughs every now and then, but usually she's just a downer. Even worse than Debbie Downer. So it's time to say goodbye to that.

It's also time to say goodbye to this post.

Goodbye.

Countdown until departure to Chicago: 1 week, 0 days, 11 hours

All Booked Up

Hi there.

Looks like I found myself with nothing to talk about after my little episode. But things are going well.

One of my coworkers asked me when I was going to have another pizza party at my place, and then I realized it couldn't be until mid-April. I'm all booked up, which is a good thing. This weekend will be spent in Freiburg, next weekend is a birthday party / bowling, and then I'm in the U.S. the following two weeks.

The poor MasterCard has already gotten a workout this month, and it'll continue to take several more beatings during the next few weeks. I'm afraid they'll suddenly start blocking charges for fear that my card has been stolen or something. I usually don't use it while over here.

I got a new project at work. It's actually more of a systems analysis task, as they're finding errors in how the ancient database is loading sales data into Access, which loads it into yet another database for retrieval. Well, things aren't being bucketed correctly, so I get to document the current scenario, what it should be doing, and then oversee implementation. First step is finished. Now it's turned into one of those things where nobody knows what it should be or whom to contact to find out, etc. So I'm being bounced around a ton of people that I don't know, and not really making any further progress. It's fun.

Countdown until departure to Chicago: 2 weeks, 0 days, 10 hours