I suppose

That last post entitled simply, "2012," refreshed my memory of how much I loved my job.  It held everything I wanted, travel, responsibility, multitasking, respect, financial consideration, and interaction with all levels of the workforce.  Unfortunately, the boss did not have the foresight to transition my position from compliance to salesforce, and ended the job.  The turnover rate there was phenomenal, and this should have been expected; but I was in denial.  I no longer have my dream job.

It's been almost 3 years since I last posted on this blog, and almost a year since I became suddenly and without warning unemployed.  The boss had called my work cell to see if I would join him for lunch.  Wrapping up a compilation of three binders that morning, and handing them off for mailing, I joined the boss for lunch.  The other two workers made lame excuses and left, so it was just the boss and I heading to Subway.  After about 5 minutes of small talk, I asked, "So, what's on your mind?"  His reply hit like Roadrunner's boulder drop on Wiley Coyote.  "Employment changes for the upcoming year that involve you."  And that, friends, is how I was "let go."  He apparently had given this some thought, because he had a 5-page no-compete agreement ready for my signature.  It looked like he and his wife (Pres & VP) were afraid I would rally the crew and start a business to steal them away.  He offered 2 months of severance pay.  He caused two months of depression.

After lunch, I drove home and applied for 7 different jobs, and continued applying daily.  Since I do not have a college degree, many of the rejection emails came unusually quick.  A larger percentage, though, provided no response whatsoever.  This only fueled the insignificance I was feeling.

And then, little lights began to illumine.  A phone call, a message on LinkedIn and Facebook, an email here and there.  Almost every customer had spent some effort locating personal contact information to reach me.  They all thanked me for helping them through the EPA emissions rule, and most mentioned what they thought of my boss for letting me go.  Each one played a significant role in my return to "normal." 

I have not landed other employment as of yet.  The combination of my lack of college degree and geographical location challenge the latest methods that HR utilize for recruiting.  Giving up is not an option.  God has plans for me, and I trust he will reveal them.  He knows how impatient I am, and He knows the right fit for me and my potential employer.  I have completed six more applications this week.  Who knows?  Maybe one of them will recognize the value I can bring to their business.

What I have learned from all this is simply that my significance does not come from what I do; rather who I am.  I am a child of God. 

2012

This year has been a busy one, thus, no posts to record.  I've traveled throughout the midwest, flown commercially and in the boss's plane, met some wonderful people, and experienced new things.  Recently, a utility membership asked me to present information on an EPA rule and answer questions on the "mechanical aspects" of the rule.  Levi is the "speaker" of the house, and I don't know where he got his talent from.  I am the sit-in-the-pew critic.  It is one thing to deliver advice on speaking, it is another to speak.  When I got back from being on the road this week, there was a card on my desk that came in the mail.  Those thank you cards are under-rated.  "The information was spot-on".... "couldn't have pulled this together without your help, especially the on-site power plant visit"......"thank you, thank you, thank you".......  and those were just excerpts. 

In Story City, the power plant administrator's wife has told him that any time I come there, she wants to know so she can take off work and hang out with me.  She's a nurse at the hospital and we talk "car talk."  It's funny how we hit it off griping about lug nuts.

This year the boss finally got rid of an employee that I was doing most of his work for him, and the stuff I didn't get involved with turned out to be a nightmare for the installers.  The last job he was involved in finally got done.  His replacement is exceptionally talented and I don't have to worry about him or his submittal drawings or approvals.  He runs all the quotes by me for my input, and takes criticism very well......... throws it back at me, too.

My job has been somewhat consuming, and I attempted to warn my family that the next two years would be this way.  It pulls at me not being able to be around all the time, but I do see hope at the end of the tunnel.

I was recently invited to a facility in Omaha where they have 42 engines and I offered them a free consultation.  The supervisor asked, "what's in it for me?"..... I answered the opportunity to quote the business, and he has respected that so much, that he offered 4 of the high priority engines to be done by our company without the normal bid process.  I gave him round numbers at the consultation, and he has called the boss and told him how impressed he was with me.  I'm just now starting to get the feedback of reassurance that what I'm doing helps people with their weighty decisions for their facilities.

A couple months ago, a rep from Minnesota called me and said he has completed an installation at a major company and they want him to do the performance test and compliance paperwork.  He said I was the best there was and wanted to know what we would charge to do this part of the work.  This requires me knowing the foreign components of his installation, trade secrets, costs, everything.  I was very up front with him and he sent it all.  I just wrapped up the testing in Minnesota and the Facility Manager treated me like I had done the installation all by myself.  When I told the boss all the stuff that was going on there, he said that the Facility Manager was "intuitive."  Haha, as if.

This is already November and this year has flown by.  It is probably the first year I haven't had trouble writing the year correctly since I was putting out bids last year with this year's dates on them for installation.  I've been doing that for 2013, as well, so I don't foresee any problems adjusting after December ends.

Next week I'll be in Jackson, Missouri, followed by Chanute, Kansas, and a side trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma.  I'm sure others will be added, as they always are.  I have the coolest job in the world getting to meet the backbone of America, the people that keep the lights on and the plug ins working in everyone's homes.  I see what they have to deal with on a daily basis and I commend them for their patience, their sense of humor, and their work ethic.  I am blessed.

My son and his co-worker, John, decided to take their motorcycles for a buns-of-steel-type ride and head out for the California coast from northeast Kansas. They left Thursday morning, today is Saturday, and apparently his car misses him so much that it just up and gave itself a wash and wax to be ready for his return.... sometime Tuesday?

Beatrice Speedway

Hard bleachers, loud noises, occasional dirt in the face, and a cool breeze on a hot summer night. What more could you ask for?

Ok, a few sprinkles of rain toward the end of the evening to top it off. This is what memories are made of.

How many does it take to....

I just thought it was nice to see three generations of Oehm guys tackling the glass for the church building sign. Two are bracing the heavy glass, the other is putting rivets in to secure it. I heard one of them say, "You think we should see if it closes before we go any farther?" haha, they didn't. Such precision work.

Flashing Green Light

After arriving home from work this evening, I found both computers had shut down due to a storm. Surprisingly, only one started back up. There was no response on the "down" one when we pushed the button to power it up. We unplugged everything from the back of it (monitor, keyboard, speakers, power, all the usb connections) and then plugged just the power source in. Still nothing. There was, however, a cute little flashing green light near the fan. This flashed even when there was no power cord plugged in. I thought this was strange. As it turned out, the computer's power supply box was fried. Luckily, I keep a spare computer around for salvage parts. The down computer is up and running now. We've taken the photos and burned them to cd just because of this warning. Storm season always reminds me to power down computers and other electronic devices.

Host Process for Windows Services Stopped

Have you ever wanted to throw the computer out the window? It starts running slower, then your searches get redirected, you can't download windows updates. This is what happened to my son. He asked me how much desktop computers are these days. Knowing he had a perfectly good laptop, I inquired why he was entertaining the idea of purchasing something else.

When he told me the symptoms, I suggested he run a program called Malwarebytes from the website www.malwarebytes.org and gave him caution to make certain it is the program he is downloading and not an ad. Realizing he didn't already have this on his laptop, I had a flash drive that had it on, so I connected the flash drive to his computer and opened Malwarebytes to run the "quick scan" on his laptop. It found 33 threats. After removing those 33, I opened Malwarebytes again and clicked on the tab to "update" the version so that he could scan for the more recent threats. This gave us 17 more to remove. The quick scan takes about 10 minutes, the full scan can take a little over an hour. Since we were headed for church services, I ran the full scan just to see if any further threats appear. When we got back home, the computer showed 0 threats.

I checked to see if I was able to download updates for Windows 8 from the microsoft website, but I kept getting the error "host process for windows services stopped.....blah, blah, blah"....... so I knew that either there were more problems to remove or some files were corrupted. It turned out there were more problems to remove.

I found another tool called Hitman 3.5 on this website http://www.surfright.nl/en/hitmanpro that also scans for threats. This website allows me to run this program for 30 days without an activation code (free). There is a 32 bit or 64 bit version to download; I right clicked on "My Computer" and found under "Properties" which one to use for the laptop. I must caution the reader that there are at least THREE "download" buttons but only ONE GREEN ONE that says DOWNLOAD HERE. The red ones are ads for something else you don't want. Hitman found a type of an alureon virus to remove.

After that, the laptop ran much faster, the error codes were all gone, and windows was able to update normally. My son is buying my dinner for this fix. Win Win. ☺

the sound of water

Last night I heard water running - it was the toilet! I couldn't get the shut-off valve to turn, so I turned off ALL the water in the house by turning a handle in the basement. It had cobwebs all around it, so I put my hand in a bag before attempting that one.

This morning, prior to leaving for work, Ray's strength got the shut-off valve to do its job, and was looking forward (NOT) to plumbing when he got home from his 12-hour shift.

Not knowing whether Wal-Mart carried the valve for this particular toilet (all in one, 1/6 gpf), I made a trip up to Ace Hardware and talked to the helpful hardware man. I explained it wasn't the flapper, and it didn't have a ball float. (I took my camera and showed him the pictures of the inside of the tank I had taken for just such occasion.) He said I need a valve and proceeded to take one off the shelf and out of the box and told me how to install it.

Well, since he had confidence I could do this, and I knew that whatever I botched up, Ray could fix, I decided to challenge my DIY knowledge and change out the valve in the tank. Ray always makes it look so easy......

With a wrench, a flashlight, and a small mirror, I finally managed to unscrew the nut that holds the valve on.... (the directions indicate to put it on "Hand Tight")... Someone should define "hand tight" ....... have you seen my husband's hands?

Project done; now to check for leaks. ☺

Amazing!

These pictures have been "stuck" in my camera.
I didn't have the memory card in the camera when they were taken, and I lost the usb cable that came with the camera, so I thought I had no way of transferring them to the computer..... until today. I was playing around with some settings with the memory card out and found "copy to card." After a few attempts (and putting the card back in the camera), I managed to truly copy these from the camera memory to the removable memory card. Wow! I love this camera even more now. :)

I've forgotten what they were doing, but I was thinking it was funny enough at the time to snap a shot or two. I'm sure it was a lesson in "safety first."

Living room done

Levi woke up just in time to help move the furniture back in.

The Living Room

Decided to finish the living room floor today. Just waiting for it to dry now.

Out with the old

The mauve carpet had to GO. I kept thinking I'd wait until I could get new carpet, and seriously couldn't decide on a color. I would go back and forth between Royal Blue and Apartment Standard Beige, then consider a floating floor, etc. It was never ending; so one night on our way home from KC, Ray and I discussed pulling up the carpet and just living with whatever is under it. I remember the wide pine flooring and the holes and discolorations and large areas of bad spots that drove me to say "carpet the whole thing" many years ago.

I really didn't care what the wood looked like, I just wanted the carpet out of there. We pulled in the driveway and Ray asked when I wanted to start this project. I don't think I answered, he just knew I wasn't going to bed until it was out of there. We started around 6 p.m. and had all the tack strip and foam and staples and carpet out on the front lawn by 1 a.m.

We traded rooms and made the living room the dining room and vice versa. I had Levi's stamp of approval on that decision.

Although the floor needs attention, it looks a lot better than I remember it.

We moved the flat screen down from the entertainment center to a library table top and it is working out nicely.

The end table Ray and I found at a used furniture store allowed me to display a family picture, a lamp and vase from my sister, as well as a teddy bear, clock and candle.

The green rug covers a square where a floor furnace probably was located and removed. Someone had put pine wood in as filler, but did not polyurethane it, just left it bare. It is also a darker pine than the rest of the floor.

The dining room floor was the worst. It had a 4' square of whitish stuff in one corner. A wood stove used to be in that corner, so I don't know if the white stuff was asbestos or just burned off varnish or the backing from an older rug, who knows. I suppose if we get mesothelioma in 50 years, we'll have solved the enigma.

After switching rooms, I decided to tackle the dining room floor and see if I could get the 4' square area to match the rest of the room. Nope. We only made that little area look
absolutely wonderful compared to the rest of the room. So, we emptied the furniture out of
the dining room (again) - taking the china out of the china cabinet, etc. - and polyurethaned the entire dining room floor. We also brought home a bookcase from work to hold our tapes and dvds and books/bibles.

Although there are big holes in the floor still (box staples removed?) the overall look is welcoming. Dining room done.

We will still need to remove the living room furniture (and that big t.v.) in order to polyurethane that floor, but the end result always outweighs the dreaded labor.

Us today

2010 going fast

It seems like just yesterday I was adjusting to writing a 1 before the 0 whenever I had to write a date down. 01/04/10 typically became 01/04/0 and then I "fit" the one in before the zero. Now it's November and with the holidays, these two final months of the year typically fly by. I doubt I will get 2011 right the first time.

Today is Douglas's birthday. Due to a mailing restriction imposed on him by his wife, he gets no presents to open from his family in the states. This blog is a reminder to him that next year we won't listen to her and send it anyway. :) Happy Birthday Douglas!

Thursday 7/22

Today I heard from all my favorite peeps. A client brought in a vase of flowers, my co-workers gave me cards and ice cream cake, the flower shop delivered daisies and roses - my favorite combo. A barbershopper gal sang to me; my son and daughter called long distance. My husband took me out for supper. My sisters-in-law and mother-in-law wrote wishes on fb, as did church family. I got an email from my favorite radio station, too. What a great day!

Flowers

Today Levi needed some motivation to do some studying. I told him I had just the thing for him, in a roundabout way. First, we must change out of our best white shoes, gather a koolaid pitcher and a shovel, then go to Wal-Mart, then the church building, where we will plant about 10 flowers in the front of the building. He asked how that is supposed to help him study?

Since it is so hot outside there is a heat advisory, doing anything in this heat will break a sweat, causing the immediate need for a shower, which is refreshing enough you don't want to get dirty the rest of the day and you'll stay inside and what better thing to do than get that studying out of the way?

We have marigolds and petunias and geraniums and impatients planted now.

Saturday afternoon stuff

Today we both were off work, so we decided to get a couple things done that we've been putting off. Yesterday I ordered some muffler parts for "grampa" the ancient Honda Civic. We drove up north to NAPA after finding out they came in today. A quick browse through Sears, a drive through lunch, and we're back home.

Ray started in removing whatever pipes and bolts were left of the old exhaust, making quick work of it installing the new stuff. He got a phone call just as he finished up. It was his dad coming out for a visit.

Before Ray Sr. got to the farm, we cleaned up the shop floor and pulled another car into the garage. A battery that goes under the back seat needed to be installed, and both Rays managed to handle that chore.

The two guys also tackled a job involving Ray Sr.'s van hatch not shutting and draining his battery somehow. After some tightening of some bolts that look like something Frankenstein's neck would don, and a little WD-40; voila, the idiot light on the dash went out.

Next, we planted an Austrian Pine in the front yard (all three of us) but only Ray Jr. got his hands dirty. :) And with that, we called it a day. Stars Wars I, II, and III are playing this afternoon. I guess we'll just watch t.v. the rest of our day off.

I'm glad all that gone done. Grampa is quieter, the car starts, the tree looks nice, and I'm tired.

If you can't say something nice....

I've recently realized the effect on the body that pain has. Late November and through December, I had the headache that wouldn't go away. In January, I decided to seek medical help in determining the cause of the headache. The internal doctor put me on medication at night that left me groggy in the morning, yet still with the pain. He then requested an MRI which showed no signs of the pain. He referred me to an ear/nose/throat specialist who determined it wasn't my ear, nose, or throat causing the problem, but suggested I take medicine at night and possibly ask my dentist for a mouth guard just in case I'm grinding my teeth at night due to stress, which in turn, causes headaches. Hmmm, I skipped the dentist and bought a guard at WalMart. In the meantime, I also signed up a chiropractor to see if spine alignment might be the problem. The chiropractor decided I needed a neck adjustment and promptly gave me a pinched nerve, to this day, I still have, and am seeing a different chiropractor to remedy. The mouth guard and muscle relaxer combination relieved my headache, but now I deal with not being able to turn my head to the left and a shooting pain down my left arm. Having said all that, I am happy to be healthy, just not in any condition to "write."

I can see where prolonged pain would cause depression. It is a daily fight to overcome, and these battles I have won. The winter weather is not on my side, but the hope of Spring and Summer keeps me going.

Now, I wasn't going to write much of anything, I didn't feel like I had anything "nice" to say, so for now, I'm not going to say anything at all.

And a Happy New Year....

This was a night time picture, somewhere I have a clothesline picture to compare this too. The back yard has about 2' of snow. You can see the top bar of the laundry basket holder directly under the clothesline and in front of the propane tank. It measures 30" and you can't see the other bar because it's buried in snow. That glob of brown on the left is our newly acquired wood pile. Some day I will get a really neat camera that doesn't blur my pictures and eat batteries.
This is Glacier, a Siberian Husky. She is the dog I said we would never have. She cannot be penned, she is more magical than Houdini at escaping. The dog pen literally was chewed and broken by her one night. She howls at the moon, but rarely barks. She has the most beautiful blue eyes, too.