Well, here we go with a quick roundup of what's been happening.
The office.:
You might have noticed we've all gone back to blue instead of red. Well, the most senior MD came back from his vacation and said he didn't like the red at all - he'd said OK to it before he went, but now he could see it he didn't like it. So everyone changed their minds too, all the red paper had to be scrapped, and we all had to wait for new blue print - just like all the old blue print that AJ had collected up and that was sitting waiting to go back for recycling for over a month - and that was finally picked up and went two days before the most senior MD came back.
We all finally got blue paper back in October. The red paper still surfaces occasionally.
Everybody's still the same, except Donna - who's left us.
Her husband was offered a retirement deal and they took it, and it was enough for them to buy up a mobile home and go off to Europe to tour and live in winter, so they went mid-October.
It didn't go as well as they'd hoped, and she wrote and called us a couple times to say they'd changed their minds and were going to come back. Apparently neither of them liked being abroad all that much, she was bored and missed her friends and work, and her husband missed his beer. Then they got to Spain and found it was just like England, but warmer.
They've settled on a site in the south of Spain, Donna's gotten some new friends (including one from her own home town), she's helping out in a Fish and Chip shop near the beach, and her husband's found himself a regular pub.
AJ wasn't too concerned with Donna going at first, as he thought no problem - we'll just get a replacement. It's been nearly three months and so far we've had a total of eight temporary workers trying to cover, and we're on our ninth right now. From what she said when she went out the door when we all closed for Christmas, she won't be coming back in the New Year. The job has been advertised, and Head Office told AJ he had to have at least three candidates to choose from, but so far there's been one applicant. She wrote to say she wouldn't be free to come for an interview until February anyways, so Amy got to write a letter to her saying we'll wait for you.
Her application form was left on Amy's desk so we all got to see it - now, maybe I'm out of line on this, but I'm guessing anyone who fills out your job application form in colored crayon because they're not allowed anything sharp where they are right now is maybe not the best candidate you could hope for. We'll all just have to wait until she's paroled in February to see what she's really like.
LeeAnn very carelessly lost both her boyfriends when she allowed them to meet up at the same party over Halloween, but she'd already met another guy at the party by the time they'd worked it out and found her to tell her they were dumping her. The new guy moved in with her the day after the party and they split up in time for her to save on his Christmas present, so she's free and hunting again.
We're still getting problems with the phones from time to time. Just before the office closed up for Christmas AJ was trying to work out how everyone can answer everyone else's calls when necessary without actually having to interrupt their work to answer everyone else's calls when necessary - but that's fine as worrying over that one means he's not bugging us on anything else.
So, in other words, it's the same ol' same ol'.
Real life.: Well it's confession time I guess -
Firstly, I've written out Donna, as I said I would, as I'm reluctant to use the character any more.
All the incidents and characters I write about are inspired by real happenings and real people, and the character of Donna was created from a mixture of five people.
One of those people was killed on September 11th 2001.
The company I work for lost several people that day, and all of us were affected in some way or another.
During the reorganisations afterwards it became possible that the job I'm doing here in England would be transferred and I would have to go back to home.
I have various personal reasons for running away from the US and really didn't want to go back, so I was selfish enough to be more concerned about what was going to happen to me and how I felt about going back before I was ready to than I was concerned about how my colleagues back to home were coping and whether I'd be any help to them by going back.
As a result, I felt unable to write, especially anything humorous.
I had to wait for the decision, but it has now been made - it was decided to keep the job here in England, so I can stay.
I will be doing more and will be taking on some further responsibilities to assist my colleagues in ensuring all our work is done. I know what a lousy worm I am in worrying about myself rather than my colleagues, but I can't say how glad I am to be able to stay here in England where I feel safer until I have enough courage to go back.
read 01/09/17-21 or read 01/12/31-02/01/04 