It's been a wee little bit since I updated. Lots going on, though!

I am finally, finally, finally, FINALLY at the tail end of This Damned Cold™. Still got a slightly funky, junky, spasmic cough and I sound congested up in my head, but I can breathe fine and my right ear pops with a pleasant regularity so I'm no longer channeling Jacques Cousteau. I have to admit that I'm pretty pleased to have kicked this thing with little to no medicine other than a couple of sinus decongestant tablets and the occasional ibuprofen for headaches. Still, a month - damn. I'm not the only one, either - both the PA at my doctor's office and just about everyone I know has had it/knows someone with it and the reports are the same, 3-4 weeks of bluh. Hopefully my luck will hold out and I'll be ick-free for a while, now.

I also started back on the metformin for my PCOS and insulin resistance - every other time I've been on the stuff I've worked my way up to the full dose gradually, a week at 500mg, then a week at 1000, etc. until I was up to the full 2000, but this time I decided to bite the bullet and just started at 2000 from the outset. The biggest side effect for me is gastric upset and I figured I'm still working at home and have nowhere to really be so why not? Honestly, TMI aside it hasn't been all that bad and I've adjusted pretty quickly. A whole lot faster than the adjustment periods I went through in the past. That is a small blessing.

Already in just over a week my period has started (after not having had one for...three months? I think three months) and I've lost five pounds. I've not been exercising since I've been ill, and I haven't changed a thing about my diet, I daresay it's been worse than usual (again due to feeling like crap) so that just goes to show that insulin resistance is a mean fucking bitch. I am really, really, looking forward to my new job as I will have ample opportunity to go walking every single day. When it gets warmer I'm going to toss my bike on the back of my car. I'm targeting a sane two-pound a week loss until my body gets to its happy place. If I were able to ultimately get to 150 pounds I would be the happiest girl on the planet.

Oh yes! That brings me to the other thing! I am finally public with my new job. Those of you on my favorites list already know about it as I've been angsting for over a month but now the whole world knows. Thank GOODNESS. It was really sucking to have to keep it under wraps.

My final day with my current job is 2/10, and my first day with my shiny new job is 2/27. Better pay, way more time off, fantastic benefits, shortened Summer hours, and best of all a sizeable tuition discount. I am very excited to have the option to send both of my kids to a private college prep school, it's the kind of place that their father and I would never even be able to dream of affording normally. The job itself is going to be challenging and fun, and the people I'll be working with all seemed sincerely nice when I had my on-site interview. My new boss is awesome, I can already tell we're going to get along great.

I feel extremely blessed that this job literally fell into my lap - I mean, in the past six months I had noticed my current job was slowing down considerably and sort-of-maybe-not-really thinking about looking for a new job, but I hadn't done anything about it yet. Then this came along and the job description read pretty much exactly like my resume AND it'll be a huge opportunity for our family and hopefully a great thing for our kids, along with being more money and just a better job in general...well, I don't know what good thing I did in a previous life to deserve it but I am so very thankful to god or gaia or little green apples that it came along when it did.

I'm getting my own office in the gorgeous old (1814) main building, thick walls, high ceilings, my own door and window - very exciting. My official title is Assistant Director of Technology, which just seems very, well, grown up. I mean, I'm 37 years old and I've been working in the industry for over 15 years, so it's legitimately where I've worked to get, I guess I just feel like I'm trying on my father's oversized suit jacket because inside my head I'm still 23 and totally stupid.

(Why 23? Dunno, it was just a really great year for me.)

I'm still going to refer to myself as a software/database developer, though (or AssDir O'Tech, Ass for short). This school is a fairly small pond and I don't have any lofty airs about things like a title, never have. Still I'll admit I'm excited to see it on my business card. I feel like I've finally landed the position that I'm going to have for the rest of my career - we'll see where I'm at once the new job honeymoon is over, but it's very promising considering turnover at the academy is nearly unheard of - the sort of thing that I've endured years of bullshit and mysogyny and micromanagement to get to. If we put both kids through school that's 15 years right there, and after that who knows? Maybe I'll get a job at Harvard ;)

Right, so. Major excitement over the new job. I'm looking forward to the commute as it's through really pretty countryside and passes an excellent organic bakery and one of my favorite apple orchards - both places I would stop at on my way home when I worked in Portland - little to no traffic, no stress over parking or an EasyPass. I'm looking forward to having a lunch break where I can walk, work on a portable knitting project, or I was even thinking of bringing my spinning wheel to live in my office during the week so I can get in a few minutes each day. It also occurred to me that I could use one of the soundproofed rooms in the music department to practice the euphonium - goodness knows I would benefit from regular practice, we're playing that vexing arrangement of Holy City for Easter again.

The possibilities, as they say, are pretty wide open. One step at a time. I'm going to start with just getting there and getting settled in, first.

As for little Michael, enrollment starts at 5th grade so he's still got a year and a half before he commutes with me. I do think I'll get him evaluated just to see if he tests out of 4th grade, and then if he does we can make the decision whether to start him in the Fall or wait until 2013. It's all about having options that we didn't have two months ago.

(I really feel badly that I feel the need to apologize to all my friends who are parents, a few of them have told me that while they're happy for me they're also a bit jealous. I am jumping up and down with excitement inside but I try to temper it so as not to come off like an asshole.)

Speaking of my old job, what has gone on in the past week has only strengthened my resolve that I am totally and completely doing the right thing by bailing out. First I tried to speak to my "boss" (and I use that word loosely) on Monday to break the news but he wasn't in the office so I sent him an email asking about his availability. Which went completely unanswered until I emailed his lackey about his whereabouts, after which he got back to me within 5 minutes. Apparently he was at a sales conference in "back to back meetings" until Thursday, so I could either schedule something for Friday or send him an email.

Now, let me break in a moment to say that my former director, the best boss I've ever had, would have called me during a break or at lunch or after the conference was done for the day to see what was up. This was the guy who called me during his off hours at 8pm EST when I was in Oklahoma visiting this jagoff's office to make sure things were going all right. He called me during a layover from the airport because he saw an email that wasn't even addressed directly to him, but pertained to something I was working on, to make sure I didn't need any support while he was traveling. I mean, really. Best boss ever - didn't get in my hair or pester me on a daily basis, called me when he needed information, trusted my judgement, and was there to support me no matter what. Top notch material, I tell you. Jagoff? I think I've spoken to him once in the eight months since I became his problem.

So I sent an email.

Which then went completely unanswered until today, when I replied to all (HR was copied as well) saying "Hey, I haven't heard anything from anyone." Even then I've only got a couple of sentences out of him.

Aaaaand they wonder why I became so disenchanted with this job, being an island unto myself such as it were. I felt neglected through being ignored.

Anyway, long and short is I'll be mailing my shitty old desktop back to the parent company on Friday and then hopefully I'll get the full payout for my final paycheck and the 216 (it'll be over 220 by then) hours of PTO I have banked, which will pay for a couple of weeks off and a nice extra payment to the mortgage, or a whole lot of singles for the strip club, or something. I have a batch of things to pull together for my final expense reports, too, so I need to get on that this week.

Wednesday I got a call from the QA guy from that office, the same one who tried to convince me that I needed a future in their division with their product and I was like omgnothankyou, who then rambled on for half an hour about his experiences working from home, pumping me for more information about my job (what's the commute like? is the pay better (his first assumption was that I was taking a pay cut - ha)? will you be buying new clothes? will you be buying a new car?), confiding that he was also looking for a job, and passive-aggressively trying to guilt me into being at their beck and call for the next week and a half (he actually said something about how people sometimes like to blame the person who left just so they have an excuse, and how he wouldn't want that to happen in my case but, well, you know. in response I laughed and said, "Go ahead and blame me if you want, it doesn't bother me!") and pressuring me to be on a "knowledge transfer" call with the offshore team in India.

Now, listen. I like the folks from our offshore team all right, they seem to be nice enough guys, and this guy seems to be nice enough as well, but I have a really, excruciatingly hard time understanding a word any of them say. I have worked with a number of Indians in my career and I have found by and large that they speak quickly and very directly (hence the rather pointed questions about my future employment arrangement, which I deflected with little information). I really have to concentrate to understand them and it embarrasses me when I can't. Even worse, the offshore team always meets together and speaks quickly over a speakerphone which is about a million times harder, at least for me. It's so weird because when I've been on the phone with them as well as some fellow Anglos everyone else seems to be able to get the gist, so maybe it IS just me, maybe I'm not wired to understand an Indian accent when it's delivered rapid-fire over a bad connection. So needless to say I'd like to avoid a drawn out phone meeting if at all possible. Either that or I'll be very plain in asking them to please speak slowly as I can't understand them. Or I'll say I have a head cold and can't hear very well. ;)

I just can't get over how for months no one from the OK office could give a colossal flying fuck about me and now that I'm leaving I'm being told that it's going to take both a US and an offshore resource to replace me and I really must give them all this information and get it "signed off", yadda yadda yadda. Yeah, I'll tell you what. I'll send you some documentation and I don't care what you do with it, sign it off or don't, but that's what you're getting. I completely feel like I've been treated like a girlfriend that the guy is too much of a wuss to break up with - just ignore her til she gets the hint and goes away. Apparently, according to QA guy, he had been tasked with "giving me things to do" (read: giving me a bunch of shit tasks that no one else wants to deal with) but had been procrastinating for two weeks because he "didn't want me to hate him", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. The long and the short of it is there were discussions about me where I wasn't involved. I get a certain amount of relish out of the fact that he was afraid to talk to me.

Then, late last week I received a call from my former director (who I used as a reference) asking me to return the favor. Knowing that he plans to jump ship makes me feel even better about my leaving, because honestly the only thing that might ever have convinced me to stay would be working for him again. If I were still facing endless months of employment there knowing he was leaving, I would be pretty bummed out.