Well, here we go. We have decided to go ahead with Faith's jaw surgery scheduled for June 7th. I told my new boss about it to see whether it would be okay or if it might be better if I postponed it, and his response was to keep it as planned, everything else could wait. Nice response; I think I found yet another great person to work for! Really, over all my years of working, I have had some really great bosses who were good at both inspring hard work and being very human. I'm very grateful.
We went ahead today and bought our airline tickets, on Southwest of course! We will be arriving on Monday, June 4th, into Indianapolis at 6:45pm and will then drive to our hotel in Cincinnati, about a 2-2.5 hour drive, so it will be pretty late by the time we get settled in. Fred and I thought it would be good to be there a couple days early so that we could do a few fun things with Faith before her big surgery on Thursday.
We have started preparing Faith for the surgery, talking about the details a little bit, that they will be taking bone from her back to put into her jaw. So far her questions have been, will they give her the sleepy gas and will the bone in her shoulder grow back. Those are some pretty good questions! I also told her they may need to wire her mouth shut to which she responded by feeling how her teeth have a big gap in front and saying she would still be able to get a straw in there, which may or may not be true, since her lower jaw will probably be moved forward a lot.
I was having such a hard time dealing with this surgery being much more involved than a regular jaw distraction, but after talking with lots of people and especially just spending a lot of time talking with Fred about it, we just feel like this is the best thing to do right now. We realize it's going to be pretty hectic around here with me starting a new job just 2 weeks before this surgery, but in a way that is good, because the job wont have become crazy yet.
Just wanted to let everyone know we are going ahead. I plan to be posting regularly on the blog while we are there, and we really enjoy everyone's support and comments.
More soon,
Robin
Monday, May 7, 2012
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Quick Update on the Job Front (I HAVE ONE!!)
Just wanted to send out a quick update to let you all know that I was offered a really great contract job today with Comcast as an Operations Manager/Technical PM for their latest IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) product which they are hoping to start deploying this year.
This is a great job for me as it combines my technical skills in the cable industry as well as my software development management skills (as a ScrumMaster in case you've heard me talk about that before!), plus the job is 2 miles from our house, plus it's a great hourly rate, plus there's a good chance it could transition into an employee position in the future. I'm thinking it will be a contract position up to a year, but I'll just have to wait and see how that plays out.
So, thank you all for the prayers and good thoughts!! This week has been a crazy week with so much job activity that I felt pretty sure something would happen soon, but I was very surprised by how fast this happened! I also ended up getting a verbal offer from the company in Boulder that I had been through 3 rounds of interviewing, but their offer was significantly lower than what I was making in my last job and what this new contract opportunity will pay. So, that in combination with the fact that we would really have to look into moving to Boulder (its almost 100 miles round trip from our house to that office), it wasn't a tough decision.
I'm supposed to start a week from Monday, May 14th, so now I get to take a week to just relax, destress and maybe get some of my house projects done! I've also mentioned Faith's surgery to the hiring manager in an email to see whether it will be okay for me to take two weeks off so soon, or if it would be best to try to reschedule the surgery. I need to be flexible and I think we can manage to postpone Faith's surgery to either later this summer or even longer if we need to.
Best to everyone,
Robin
This is a great job for me as it combines my technical skills in the cable industry as well as my software development management skills (as a ScrumMaster in case you've heard me talk about that before!), plus the job is 2 miles from our house, plus it's a great hourly rate, plus there's a good chance it could transition into an employee position in the future. I'm thinking it will be a contract position up to a year, but I'll just have to wait and see how that plays out.
So, thank you all for the prayers and good thoughts!! This week has been a crazy week with so much job activity that I felt pretty sure something would happen soon, but I was very surprised by how fast this happened! I also ended up getting a verbal offer from the company in Boulder that I had been through 3 rounds of interviewing, but their offer was significantly lower than what I was making in my last job and what this new contract opportunity will pay. So, that in combination with the fact that we would really have to look into moving to Boulder (its almost 100 miles round trip from our house to that office), it wasn't a tough decision.
I'm supposed to start a week from Monday, May 14th, so now I get to take a week to just relax, destress and maybe get some of my house projects done! I've also mentioned Faith's surgery to the hiring manager in an email to see whether it will be okay for me to take two weeks off so soon, or if it would be best to try to reschedule the surgery. I need to be flexible and I think we can manage to postpone Faith's surgery to either later this summer or even longer if we need to.
Best to everyone,
Robin
Sunday, April 29, 2012
She did it!!!
Can you believe it? Faith learned to ride her bike without training wheels in one day!! I'm shocked! Now Anthony really needs to learn, but he just doesn't like to ride his bike that much! Oh well.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
End of Training Wheels!!
Faith asked us to take her training wheels off her bike today and wasted no time getting the hang of it!
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Anthony promoted to Bear Cub!
Of course Faith enjoyed being included in all the fun last night too!
Monday, April 23, 2012
What keeps me up at night...
A few jobs ago, I worked with someone who liked to ask that question. He wanted to know what kept his bosses/customers up at night because that would tell him what the highest priorities were for us to focus on. I've thought about that question often and I thought I wasn't very committed to my work at times because almost nothing at work would keep me up at night (except for a few times when I had so much to do that the to do list I kept in my brain would go into overdrive until I would get up and write it down so I could stop thinking about it!). Really the early challenges with Faith and her surgeries over the years have been more than enough for me to have to think about at night, I don't need to be worrying about work; especially considering I work in the cable television industry - getting better TV to the masses just isn't something to lose a lot of sleep over!!!
But tonight I am wide-awake. Can't sleep even after going to bed a couple hours ago. My latest job ends tomorrow. In the past 11 years I have had 6 different jobs and I have been laid off three times due to companies scaling back on projects I worked on, or basically going under (the case of my current layoff) one job change in all of those was truly my own choice where I left for a better job that was also closer to home; another due to a contract being completed and another due to not being paid regularly (and I was the lucky one for leaving when I did, the others who stayed lost 3 months of pay at the end of last year). I am tired of having to find a new job so often. It takes time and it's depressing when you think you have a bunch of opportunities and then they evaporate right in front of you.
At the moment, I have almost all my hopes on one possibility, I have been through 3 interviews phases and I know it's between me and some other guy. They interviewed 8 or more people for the position, so it's nice that I've made it to the final two, but, unless I get the offer, it really doesn't matter that I made it to the final 2!
I have a few other leads right now, but they are far from solid possibilities. So, after tomorrow I am down to 6 weeks of severance and after seeing the last 60 days (since we were notified of the company shutting down) fly by, I'm feeling much more stressed that 6 weeks will fly by in another heartbeat.
And of course on top of trying to find a new job, we are also trying to plan Faith's next jaw surgery. I haven't written about it lately because, in all honesty, ever since Dr. Gordon told us he thought we should do the scapula graft surgery instead of a jaw distraction, I've been having a hard time accepting it. Right now it is scheduled to happen on June 7th and she would be in the hospital for about a week afterwards, but I'll be honest, I could see us canceling it and deciding not to do anything this summer. Especially if I don't have a new job yet. I just don't think we can afford the trip without having a new source of income by then.
Sorry for my long rant, just needed to get all this stress out of my head tonight and thought it would be good to write about it. Hopefully I will have some good news to report by the end of the week. And then I will write some more about the scapula graft surgery.
Thanks for listening,
Robin
But tonight I am wide-awake. Can't sleep even after going to bed a couple hours ago. My latest job ends tomorrow. In the past 11 years I have had 6 different jobs and I have been laid off three times due to companies scaling back on projects I worked on, or basically going under (the case of my current layoff) one job change in all of those was truly my own choice where I left for a better job that was also closer to home; another due to a contract being completed and another due to not being paid regularly (and I was the lucky one for leaving when I did, the others who stayed lost 3 months of pay at the end of last year). I am tired of having to find a new job so often. It takes time and it's depressing when you think you have a bunch of opportunities and then they evaporate right in front of you.
At the moment, I have almost all my hopes on one possibility, I have been through 3 interviews phases and I know it's between me and some other guy. They interviewed 8 or more people for the position, so it's nice that I've made it to the final two, but, unless I get the offer, it really doesn't matter that I made it to the final 2!
I have a few other leads right now, but they are far from solid possibilities. So, after tomorrow I am down to 6 weeks of severance and after seeing the last 60 days (since we were notified of the company shutting down) fly by, I'm feeling much more stressed that 6 weeks will fly by in another heartbeat.
And of course on top of trying to find a new job, we are also trying to plan Faith's next jaw surgery. I haven't written about it lately because, in all honesty, ever since Dr. Gordon told us he thought we should do the scapula graft surgery instead of a jaw distraction, I've been having a hard time accepting it. Right now it is scheduled to happen on June 7th and she would be in the hospital for about a week afterwards, but I'll be honest, I could see us canceling it and deciding not to do anything this summer. Especially if I don't have a new job yet. I just don't think we can afford the trip without having a new source of income by then.
Sorry for my long rant, just needed to get all this stress out of my head tonight and thought it would be good to write about it. Hopefully I will have some good news to report by the end of the week. And then I will write some more about the scapula graft surgery.
Thanks for listening,
Robin
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