Jeez. Drink one beer, stay up half an hour late, and everything goes to pot. I
couldn't do anything in the gym this morning -- slow on the erg, low on the
weights, even wimped out of some of the reps. Or maybe my body is just drained
from an intense workout yesterday. Yeah, that's it. Unfortunately ths would be
more convincing if yesterday's workout were actually hard enough to require
recuperation. Though I did sdo some full-pressure bits, which I do tend to feel
longer...for the same reason weight lifters don't exercise the same muscles
everyday.
We're going camping for the Labor Day weekend, which should
be nice and unstressful, at the Airpark so we can participate in their annual
meeting and throw our vote behind changing the covenants to allow the use of more
stone and faux-stone, instead of requiring all-flammable-wood siding. Camping is
also a good cheap way to spend a weekend which is nice because September is car-
insurance month. One problem with buying your vehicles around the same time of
year is that the insurance payments all come due at the same time. Because the
Honda was cheap to lease and not cheap to insure, the insurance costs almost half
as much as the entire car payments each year.
I need to be better
with money anyway. I've been offered a promotion at work (well, sort of a
sideways-and-up move -- this is the work stuff I kept saying I was waiting for).
The catch is that I'd have to convert from being a contractor to being a real
employee, which translates to a pay cut of nearly 20%. This company has great
benefits, but I get decent medical coverage through Rudder anyway, so the only one
that means much to me is the three weeks of vacation I'd get. ANd of course,
there's more security as an employee. Company rules only allow contractors to
stay on for a max of 24 months (actually 18 with one allowable 6-month extension).
So if I want to stay on -- and I like it here -- I'd have to convert in a year and
a half anyway, and of course there's no guarantee that they'll be hiring then. I'd
get very good and useful training, and great experince if I took the new position,
but I'd get some of the same experience plus more in-depth technical knowledge if
I stay on in what I'm doing, though the latter is probably less transferable. And
the new job might be more flexible, as far as being able to transfer to another
site, say one nearer home. It's not a bad choice to have to make, because the
"pro" list for either option is long, but it is a tough one.
Oh, and
did I mention that the pay cut would leave me making $10K more in base salary
than in the job that laid me a year and a few weeks ago?