- I got my appointment offer e-mail!
- I got my revised appointment offer e-mail!
- I got my revised appointment offer mailed package!
The appointment offer is the conventional employment offer. It included or referenced 23 forms to complete. Wow. Off we go!
This is definitely seeming much more real now. I have only three weeks left at work and only four weeks until we leave for DC. I like to think that we've been diligent about our house cleaning and organizing, but our To Do list seems to be piling up faster than we're Doing, largely because of unanticipated issues that are pretty obvious in hindsight. For example:
- We'd like to open a DC checking account that's geared for heavy traveling before we're in DC (we have this handled now)
- We need a new home mailing address to complete forms that are due before I start BUT we won't have our full temporary housing address until I start (we have this handled now...I think...only time will tell if The Plan works)
- We need to really start distinguishing between the three categories of all of our stuff (without physically labeling everything because our house is still on the market):
1) Stuff we're bringing with us in our cars
2) Unaccompanied Air Baggage (UAB) = 450 pounds of relatively small stuff to be shipped
3) Household Effects (HHE) = long-term storage until training ends
We have lists everywhere for everything we've thought of so far. (Hey, whaddya know: there IS an app for that. We haven't actually been using it, but we probably should.) Our recycling can is overflowing, and we've been very good about filling our garbage can each week with things we should've gotten rid of long ago. I posted 9 things to Craigslist today alone (one of which already sold). We've decided that our Clean Out the Bar party next weekend will include a silent auction for an incredible amount of stuff we don't need and haven't taken to Goodwill yet. Looking for an inflatable globe beach ball? Maybe you haven't [re?]discovered croquet yet. This one's killing me, BUT: my life-size cardboard Han Solo is already in rough shape and I don't think he'll survive many moves - he deserves a nice retirement in a cool, dry place.
For this week's retrospective on the top practical jokes in my 15 years at my current company:
3 - Projects Doppelganger and Latex. I'm breaking The Rules a bit here by picking two, but you'll get over it eventually. I spearheaded both, which were played on two of my clients. Fortunately I happened to know them well. And lest you get the wrong impression, we're still friends today.
Project Doppelganger was suggested by a friend and I marvelled at its simple beauty. One of my clients happened to have a lot of pictures of his family in his office. I know what you're thinking. "Did he have six pictures or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, with over 20 photos I kind of lost track myself. So I printed 21 different pictures of myself (as many as I could find - it wasn't easy) and made a few extra copies, got into his locked office while he was out, and changed them. It was disturbing. And hilarious. To me.
Project Latex celebrated another client's 50th birthday by filling his cubicle with almost 1000 balloons. After you get the hang of it, it's not hard to add confetti to the balloons as you fill them with an air compressor. They only very rarely blow up in your face and spray confetti everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. But this project wasn't completely without consideration to the victim: I included a balloon-deflating tool to help with the demolition - a small pet cactus. Of course, it might've been more useful if I hadn't buried it under the balloons. And on the seat of his chair for good measure. This community effort included other quality additions like boxing up his work boots and gloves behind a sign reading "In Case of Non-Administrative Work, Break Glass". We weren't completely heartless: we left a ShopVac so he could clean up after the mess he made. Good times.
(This post written while listening to The Clash The Magnificent Seven.)
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