So...

This week has been kind of hectic. I knew we were going to make some changes and that some people were going to get the axe but I was not prepared for what happened today.

When I logged in this morning to get an email for a conference call number I saw the email, but wow a 300 person reduction wasn't what I was expecting.

San Francisco was shut down completely, which I already pretty much guessed. All that work is coming to LA, which secures our positions a bit better.

They cut Susan Archer which was to me the biggest shock. It seems that every office had to take some type of hit other then admin and Chris had to make a decision on who to cut. Either someone from LA, or Susan. It's kind of impossible to cut anyone from LA is the reality. We barely cut it as it is with vacations on busy days and with the SF print and maintenance for their stuff coming to us it's pretty obvious.

The San Diego office is also pretty much barren. Losing Susan gives them the chance to close the office completely as the only other thing being done there is the training. Whenever I went to work with Susan she was the only one ever there. What really sucks though is she was an invaluable resource. She had more knowledge then I do about older practices, although I'm much more current in where we are going.

Whenever questions came up I always deferred to her if I didn't know the answer because I know she knew, or knew who to ask.

A few other AE's and random people whom I wasn't as close with were let go but overall it was a pretty black day. To top it off when I got in ITW had a major problem and I spent ALL day figuring out what happened. Turns out that our BARR crashed Tuesday and lost about 150 payroll packages. I had to thumb through 1000 pieces of red paper to find 150, alphabetize them, then match them against a list of what should have went out, then reprint them, not to mention double checking everything, even three times.

On to other things. The XB is doing great and I got some insurance tonight. Looks like I'm saving a little over $200 every six months in insurance costs. Also gas has been great. It costs me about $30 (compared to 45) to fill up my tank and it gets a bit over 300 miles. Since my carpool pays for pretty much one fill up a week my change from acura to XB looks to save me about $35 a week, another hefty savings.

Turns out my car payment stays about the same, but the other savings look to be close to a $2000 in savings per year by making the change. I was thinking about going with a company blackberry/phone but they just announced that all minutes will be shared, so if I started using it as a regular phone it would get noticed, no go on that.

Magic is going really well and I've been practicing a lot, I still haven't found a ring. I need to find a size seven and a half military or class ring for cheap to start practicing De'ring. I'm hoping by my birthday to actually be adept enough to start performing somewhat and making some money off of it. I think I've progressed to the point of understanding most basic concepts well enough, I just need to train my fingers a little bit more which I'm doing a few times a week.

The little tykes are doing outstanding. We went to color me mine this past weekend, which if your an artist is awesome. I didn't paint because I can't tell a paintbrush from , well you know. My stick figures are bar none though I swear!

I read Wicked which was awesome!! Highly recommended.

The End.