Coming Up For Air

Life at work...no, let's call that work at work. Work at work has been very busy since Feb 1 and I've been putting in some very long days. If I got paid for overtime I'd be pretty wealthy this week. Alas, I'm salaried. The weekdays look like this:

Work
Come home, eat dinner (maybe)
Do Homework
Sleep
Work
Come home, do homework
Sleep
etc etc etc...

...and the weekends look like this:

Sleep a few hours.
Do homework.
Sleep a few more hours.
Do homework.
Work.
Sleep some more.
Do homework. Think about knitting.
Work - oh crap, it's due Monday!
Sleep, dream about knitting.

...since February1. I think, finally, it's all settled down. What exactly does that mean? Our team doubled. After the MBNA merger project activity wound down last month, a bunch of people were given notice. I don't know how many but there were a lot. It happens. This is corpirate America and it was a merger. Everyone knew it was coming. At the same time, the SCM team (that's us, software configuration management) needed five new associates. We hired out of the folks let go five people on January 31 and since then have spent every day training, briefing, refining presentations, running mock boards...really, this wouldn't all be such a big deal if it weren't for the fact that I and one of my peers are launching two brand new configuration governance review boards...and some of these new people are going to run them! I don't think I've ever done anything like this so fast and furiously in my professional life. And all these little "gotcha's" kept coming up at the last minute. On the other hand, I don't think I've ever worked with a group of people with so much professionalism and elegance. We achieved so much. We lucked into a situation, hired terrific talent, and now we're pretty much ready to go for our governance board launch next week. I can't quite believe we chose the day after a holiday, but at least it's a minor holiday.

Two months ago I set aside today as a vacation day so I could take advantage of a four day weekend and spent the last few days making sure that there were absolutely no loose ends. Well, turned out there were a few and I answered email for a couple of hours this morning and made sure a few reports made it to their final destination, but all in all I think we (Karen, Janet, Teresa, Steve, Dal, and I) will all have a relaxing weekend with very little to worry about.

I feel like I've finally come up for air.