Today at a staff meeting (about 20 people present) a mid-level person noted some upcoming activities on a project, which generated a fairly lively conversation involving about half of those present. After the meeting, a Very Senior Person (who did not attend the meeting) came into my office and shut the door to introduce me to this same highly ( Read more... )

K got a job offer from Germany. Now they are in negotiations and we should get the next ball this week. Suppose they agree to his proposal? Should we go to Germany again ( Read more... )

Today the corporate shareholder's report came out, including appropriate quotes to emphasize company philosophy. The literary worthies quoted were: Roy Disney, Steve Jobs, Harrison Ford (!), J.K. Rowling, Frank Lloyd Wright, and OK, Samuel Johnson. Whew. Fortunately they included the last one, or one might suspect that corporate leaders only ( Read more... )

A friend once asked that every year, we divide the amount we pay to the IRS by our gross income from all sources to see what our actual tax rate is. Every year I'm surprised at how low the percentage is.

2007 = 14.5%

Office Feng Shui directs you to keep live plants in your office for vitality and put them in red pots for monetary success. How odd. I do actually have 3 plants in my office and they are all in red pots (well, dark red, not crimson). However, one is dying since the professional office gardeners have been overwatering it. (I put a sign up that ( Read more... )

Today at the staff meeting, I listened to other people talk about the pearls they gathered at the regional meetings that I was not invited to. Ugh. I did miss my chance to network, but the actual information? Not so interesting; all about young professionals and career building and selective career development (this means, you have to be ( Read more... )

For 5 days, the weather forecast has been rain, but it has sunned instead. Now the predictors are saying sun, so I'm planning for rain ( Read more... )

Today I was the only person in our senior management team meeting that had not attended the regional meetings. Today's meeting was spent in assigning topics to various people to report to the masses on the sparkling gems of wisdom that were (theoretically) distributed at the regional gathering. No, I said, several times, I wasn't there. *seethes ( Read more... )

Just listening to SWR3 (German radio) and enjoying the sunshine. Not at work, no, took the day off. Long walk alongside a river. Thinking about this and that ( Read more... )

After a day away from the office, I realized that the reason I got all perturbed about the miniscule project drawing national attention was EGO! I viewed the involvement of all those senior people as an insult to my abilities. Why should additional senior people be needed?, I thought. I'm here, I'm on the spot, I've got the right experience with ( Read more... )