Hi ho, everybody!
It's about time for an update. Just personal stuff, but lots going on for Dr. Bravo and I've been holding off on updating until a few things finished up.
Job: I transferred to a new department at work. I was recruited by a colleague who was in the same lead role as me on a related system, and had moved to a more experimental/developmental group. I really thought I would retire as the senior know-it-all on my system, but got tired of reporting everyone else's work instead of doing my own. My manager also used to be in this role, and I don't think he ever left it; he overturned a number of my decisions despite me having other managers on my side.
My manager also seems a bit petty at times, and he "didn't feel it was right" to allow a direct transfer to this new position. That means that the new group had to post a position and I had to interview for it. One other viable candidate passed the initial screen, and the group was so busy that it took 3-4 months for them to find a time to interview my competitor, and finally offer me the position. In the meantime, the person we had tagged to take over my role (who was in my
previous group) was getting so stressed out by his job that he was about to give up on waiting and just go do something totally different. So, my manager let HIM transfer after originally planning a job posting.
This also took so long that my new group split, and I'm no longer going to be working for the manager who went through all of the trouble to hire me. As part of the original transfer, he had spoken to the next level manager about submitting me for appointment to the next employment level, and she agreed. Because I had lots of prior work experience, I hired in at the highest promotion level. The next level is an appointment, so there are papers to submit, a panel interview, and a max of 10% of the company can be at that level. The new manager I'll be working for has other people in mind for that appointment, so I'll just have to see how it pans out (or if the L2 says, "Hey, I was going to submit JB for this"). I'm not too bent up about this, but I've had alternating enthusiastic vs. reluctant managers on this point. (My original manager's plan was, "You're a good candidate, we put you in every year as soon as you're eligible because you never know when there will be a lot of open slots due to retirements.")
In the new job, we'll be trying to do something in three years that usually takes 10-15. My industry had a long down period where I think people came up with a lot of extra paperwork and procedures to keep busy, and those are really slowing us down now that we're relevant again.
House:In June, I bought and moved into a new house; I just closed the sale of my old house on Monday, so that's a big load off. A friend of mine here on HS messaged me and noted that selling the old house would probably stir up some old feelings, and she was right. That was supposed to be the forever (or at least long-term) home for XW and I, and some of the drives out of the neighborhood as I was moving into the new place brought up a lot of those feelings again. (But those feelings were overtaken by aggravation when the buyers had financing issues and I had to keep going back to take care of the place in the meantime, so that helped.)
The new house is a for-real 1958 Mid Century Modern: Open the front door and you're entering a 500 sq ft (45 sq m) tropical atrium, with a water fountain and a wall of glass facing into the house proper. There's a central pantry and kitchen core, and the living and dining rooms are on opposite sides of that, so you get a view of the atrium from both of those areas. The house is only 2/3 the square footage of my old house, so I'm still organizing and figuring out what else I can donate to pare down my belongings. It's also as energy efficient as you would expect a 1958 house to be (single pane windows and lots of them), but fortunately it has solar power that supplies enough for air conditioning. I also built solar screens for the back windows, which were letting a lot of heat in from the summer morning sun. The house is a Mossman, who was the premiere builder in this city for four decades, building about 7,000 houses total. Before going into home building he built wooden highway bridges for the state, and the construction of the house seems to reflect that, with extra structural bracing I haven't seen in other homes.
The house had a covered patio on one corner that was enclosed by a previous owner, and if that weren't done I wouldn't have a place to put my bar, so that worked out great. I'm trying to be careful about spending (as I do have to recover the divorce payout from the sale of the old house), but I'm laying conduit and drainage for a new motorcycle shed like I had at the old house, am looking at some new artwork, and just ordered a pair of Danish pendant lamps for the dining room from the Louis Poulsen store. The lamps are a Poul Henningsen design that looks a bit like a layered UFO. They originally came out in 1958, so very contemporaneous for the house. I've always wanted one of these lamps but never had an appropriate place for them (and wasn't too keen on spending that much for lighting fixtures, but hey, they're way cheaper than the "artichoke" lamp...).
Entertainment:I went to the one-hundredth anniversary of the Burning of Zozobra and it was... very New Mexico. Even for such a big thing (over 70k people attended), it had a home-town "we're doing our best" feel. I remember thinking the same thing while watching the live TV broadcast a few years ago. It was also a bit over-done. I got a ticket for the very front, but there aren't seats there or in most of the park for that matter, so I was standing for 4-5 hours. There was so much pre-entertainment that I think by the end most of us were just thinking, "let's light this thing and get out of here already." There were one hundred gloom ghouls dancing around Zozobra, plus the fire spirit dancer fighting back the gloom. There was also fire, fireworks, angry villagers, and a drone show. I had never seen a drone show before, and it was pretty awesome from a technological standpoint, but just didn't fit in with the sort of pagan feel of the overall event. It was probably better back when it started in the guy's back yard. I'd go again, but would get tickets in the back elevated seating section because there are seats, and I'd be able to take in more of the overall spectacle.
My next trip is a motorcycle ride to Tombstone AZ in mid-October for Helldorado Days, which have happened since Tombstone's 50th anniversary in 1929. I reserved a balcony room in an old building on the main street so I should have a great view of the fun. (And a shared bathroom for extra old-west authenticity!)
The MLC XW:I have no clue. I did go into my Facebook messages to look up a friend and noticed an old message thread with her in the list and saw her avatar picture. She used to dye her hair a dark red which was really pretty, but from her FB picture it looks like she's switched to a primary clown red, Sheesh.
For anyone who was able to read this far, a present for you. (Hi, Nas!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIFwI0jg6B8Take care of yourselves,
JB
Author
Topic: 
J to the B part 3