On Being a Federal Contractor, Avoiding Verizon and Trying to Move on Up

Holy crap! It’s been busy around here lately.

Things have been happening on my end even if I sometimes forget that I actually have a blog and pay for a domain. To start off with, work has been insane lately. An adventure that began at the New Year finally culminated over the past two days, rendering my colleagues and I dumbfounded, speechless, angry and then safely ensconced in a bar. Such is the life of a federal contractor, eh? Towards the end of the event, the fed we’d been working with the most stood up to thank everyone who put together this event . . . except us. Even if we did the lion’s share of the work and saved their asses, oh, a million times. His/her supervisor got up at one point and thanked us, but I was already out of the room. At this point, knowing the federal culture and this agency, I know federal employees see contractors as sub-human wastes of space who are taking their jobs, but as demonstrated during this gem of a fiscal year, they have no clue how to do their job. But they sure will take the credit at the end when everything goes dandy!

Lovely.

But—and this is a big but—my role was substantially different this time around during the event and I actually had a good time. If I got to do what I did over the past two days on a more frequent basis, I might not want to leave. Might.

However!

I do have two interviews lined up right now, which is awesome. If anything else, it gets me back into the mode of interviewing. And the event plus the interviews also cement the idea of buying another suit. I do need to invest in another high quality suit, but I was able to buy one for $50 at NY and Company thanks to their Labor Day sale. Obviously not the best suit out there, but NY and Company pants are pretty damn comfortable and flattering on me. And $50 for a suit after spending $300 for the J Crew one? Hot damn, yes.

In addition to job-related excitement, IP and I have had visitors to entertain, birthdays to celebrate, anniversaries to celebrate, people to visit, books to read and a crappy Internet connection to contend with these past few weeks. I know that we’ll have to bite the bullet and call Verizon to get them to fix the goddamn issues (as I’ve done all the troubleshooting I can do on my end), but seriously, who ever really wants to call Verizon? Not I, said the WordNerd.

And oh? Another bullet I did bite was ordering a computer. Soon I’ll be posting from this baby:

No, I did not get a MacBook Pro. But yes, I did my best to make it look as much like a MacBook Pro as I possibly could.