Random Thoughts, Notes, & Incidents

What's more tiring than going on your vacation? Going on somebody else's vacation! We've been hosting my parents, who are supposed to be babysitting my nephews, but it's basically turned me into the driver for a Wild Bay Area Adventure. It's fun having family here, mind you; but it's also damned time consuming and tiring.

During all this I managed to have my 43rd birthday. Wheee. I wasn't so much into having a birthday this year, and I suspect it's because, once again, I'm not feeling terribly financially secure. I've put out this personal statistic before but it bears repeating; I've now spent 40% of the Bush II administration without regular, full-time employment. Let's review the two lay-offs:

• Handsnet: went out of business as a result of fallout from the dot-com bust.
• CompassPoint: office downsized, several positions cut (including mine) and remain un-filled.

As I've also said, even with those two lay-offs in less than four years, I've managed to make ends meet. That's one of the benefits of being a 40-ish white guy with a Master's degree; if you call yourself a consultant people will believe you and you can put together enough little projects that you can avoid un-employment.

So what's been my largest consulting project so far? Managing the dissolution and bankruptcy proceedings of ARIS. In fact, I'm due in court in about three hours to finalize the liquidation of one of our major assets.

So, my personal work experience of the W years has been Bankruptcy, Downsizing, Bankruptcy. That's just my work experience, I'm not even getting into domestic terrorism and foreign wars. No wonder I'm depressed about all this. Happy freaking birthday to me.