Moog's meanderings

The blessing and renewal of vows service on Saturday was wonderful. It was so moving to see my parents so happy, in Church publicly announcing their continuing love for each other in front of everyone. It was a really lovely service and finished with the organist playing Widor’s Tocatta, which is probably my absolute favourite piece of music especially when played live. I even managed to do the reading without any hitches. There were a lot of old friends of Mum and Dad there, many of whom were at the original wedding reception (the wedding itself was restricted to very few guests because of the size of the registry office) and my parents were really delighted with it all.

It’s a wonderful thing that they are still so much in love and so happy, and I feel privileged to have been able to share their special day. What a lovely experience.

It all seems to have worked out. I went in to w*rk, the Personnel person I needed to see was there so we sorted out my hours and things (which were actually incorrect, so I am very pleased I went in to discuss it). I spoke to lots of people who were wondering what had happened to me, and emptied out the personal stuff from my desk. It was great to catch up with people, but also great that I am not going back to the frustration and the madness. I managed to spend all day there!!! I arrived just before 10.30am and didn’t manage to leave until 4.50pm!! In the mean time I did lots of talking, handing stuff over, having lunch with friend-colleagues, etc. And things are sorted, so that’s the main thing.

It’s interesting to see the contents of my desk drawers (which were locked). 6 packets of herbal tea (all different, one assorted), 1 packet of decaf tea, 1 squeezy bottle of ketchup, 1 combi salt/pepper thingy (from a camping set), 2 tins of soup, a bowl, a mug, a knife, a fork, a spoon, a teaspoon, a pack of business cards, an external floppy disk drive, a travel mouse, laptop instruction manuals, a folder of HR-related paperwork, a copy of the company handbook, a toolset, some cutters, a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, some training manuals, a tin-opener. And that’s just the bottom drawer!!

Needless to say I ended up with a couple of bags of stuff as well as filling the foldable box I took with me.

I am officially unemployed. This is probably a good thing (for now).

Today I am planning to go into my ex-workplace to empty my drawers and stuff. It’s a bit wierd, because I went in to talk to my bosses a couple of times while I was off sick, and the last time was to tell them I wouldn’t be going back to work. So that was fine. One would have thought that it would have been fairly sensible to take my personal things at that point and hand back my entry fob and desk keys. That didn’t happen. I did agree with them that I would be happy to go in and hand over things to someone else when they manage to recruit someone, so I suppose we all thought that I’d do that and then do the handing things back bit. I have been informed that they are unlikely to have a replacement for me before the end of July at the earliest and if things work out for me in the way of a job at University (trying not to get too excited about the possibility because I haven’t heard anything about that yet) then it would be mightily inconvenient to have to spend 2/3 days on the other side of the West Midlands.

So I have decided that it would be best to go in and discuss things with HR, make sure that they are paying my holidays owed (and that they are correct about what it owed – the holiday system is notoriously bad at just doing the basic thing of taking away the correct amount of hours. Earlier this year I discovered that since September, every time I took a day’s holiday – 8.5 hrs – the system had deducted 17hrs. My boss was no longer able to approve any holiday for me because I was more than 150 hours over my holiday allocation!!! I am not sure whether this was ever fixed), etc. I will clear all my personal stuff such as herbal tea out of my desk, empty my locker and give back the keys/fob to HR. Then if I do manage to go back in at some later date to hand over to someone else, I can pick up the keys/fob for those couple of days and hand them back at the end of it. If I do not do a handover, then at least things are sorted already and I won’t have the fact that I need to go back and sort things out hanging over my head.

That is, assuming that there’s someone in the HR office today. I was going to do all of this on Friday, so I e-mailed the suggestion to them on Wednesday evening. I didn’t hear anything, so assumed that the HR people were on holiday or unavailable. I received an e-mail on Friday afternoon (bearing in mind that the plant closes at 1pm) saying that Friday morning was ok. It had been sent on Thursday morning. Hmph. Something wierd must have been going on in Cyberspace to delay the e-mail. I think I had better ring them today before I leave the house.

That seemed like a long and complicated explanation. I could probably have given a much more succinct version. Rambling seems to be one of my traits. Oh well.

This weekend another party. It’s for my parent’s 30th Wedding Anniversary (which was actually on midsummer’s day). They weren’t able to get married in church because of Dad having been divorced, but they are both devoted Christians and active members of their local Church (and have been for as long as I can remember!). They are having a blessing service tomorrow followed by a party in their garden. It will be lovely as all the family will be there. They way I understand it, all of the people who were invited to their original wedding are invited along with their offspring, so it’s going to be quite a reunion.

I’m doing a reading for the blessing service. Humm. I should probably look it up, decide which version I am going to use and practice a bit. And hope/pray that my voice doesn’t give out part way through. Mr Moog and I are going to stay with one of my best friends from my school days and her hubby tonight, so methinks that far too much talking might go on and could result in my voice not being at it’s best tomorrow. Must remember to drink lots of water.

In other news: My runner bean plants have reached the tops of their respective poles and are even threatening to flower! Hurrah!

There’s nothing like it!! I feel refreshed this morning. The other night was a wierd one, I went to bed with just a sheet over me and the fan on (and all the windows wide open) only to wake up in the middle of the night absolutely freezing!!

Legally Blonde has beaten me to posting pictures of her engagement party. It was quite a blast, as you can see if you click on the link ) The weather was really lovely, and it was great to see lots of people I haven’t seen for a while and also meet new ones (especially the lucky man).

Yesterday I spent the day at the Uni to which I have applied for a job. The whole thing seems really good, I like the other members of the research team, the university is lovely and the only real downside is the time it takes to drive there (and possibly the fact that the work is full time – not sure how well my body will cope with that having had so much time off). Anyway, the applications closed yesterday so Although I don’t really think that crossing my fingers will make any difference. It’s funny to see how things have worked out over past years and very definitely seeing the hand of God in what I have done and where I have ‘ended up’. I am sure that in years to come the same kind of pattern will become apparent, whatever the outcomes to this particular set of life decisions (and the outcomes of the bits that are out of my hands). In any case, I do have my fingers crossed because the possibility of it working out is exciting.

I am back home. It’s boiling. I had forgotten how much a difference the ’sea breeze’ actually makes. It was lovely in Swansea – terribly hot on Saturday, but cooler today. Everything went very well and hubby and I had a wonderful weekend. It was fab to meet LB’s future hubby, and to catch up with lots of friends.

Right now I need to go and stand outside to cool off a bit.. the house was hot and stuffy when I got home, and although the first thing I did was fling wide as many windows as possible, things don’t really seem to be improving. In the interests of getting some sleep I might have to put the fan on timer (last year we bought this wonderful fan that you can set to turn off after up to 120 minutes, it’s great!! we set it before we go to bed to get air movement enough to allow us to get off into the land of nod without worrying about the needless wasting of electricity were it to be left on all night).

Hurrah! I am off in a couple of hours down to Swansea – land of my student days (and a few years afterwards). What gorgeous weather is forecast for it.. Shame we won’t have time to wallow by the sea. Mr Moog is working away (yet again) so we are meeting down there this evening. We will be whizzing around visiting lots of friends, seeing all of Mr Moog’s 3 Godchildren in the process and also attending Legally Blonde’s Engagement Party. I can’t wait to meet the lucky Man! ) I may even have some pics of the fun to post when I get back!

It’ll be good to catch up with everyone and I think that we have a relatively manageable agenda so hopefully won’t be too drained at the end of the weekend. Anyway, I have my lovely new automatic car to drive, so it should be quite easy (even though it’ll just be me and I can’t get Mr Moog to drive as I normally do on these longer trips).

Some friends of mine from Church have been telling me about this fantastic place that sells really cool fairtrade stuff for ages. A couple of weeks ago I ordered a load of things from them – cotton tops and things. It’s all fab!! I had to send a couple of things back because they didn’t fit properly but they’re fine and just refund you the cost or give you credit (you have to pay the postage to return it).
It’s Nomads. They’re excellent!

I have applied for a job at one of the Uni’s in the area. It’s within a Research Team I am in contact with and I even know something about their research. It sounds really good and the project is funded by Industry. Now I just have to wait and see what happens…

Over the last couple of months I have been thinking about what I might want to do. It’s difficult to consider that sort of thing when all of a sudden you aren’t limited to ‘what you’re doing’. I had originally thought that I’d see my current project through to mass production (i.e. this Autumn) and then look for something else. However that ’something else’ would likely have been something similar to or linked quite closely to manufacturing. And when you’re in a job, it’s easy to talk about what you might do instead, and to look around at job adverts and say ‘I could do that’ or ‘it’s the same money as what I’m on, so what’s the point?’ or ‘is the grass really greener anywhere else?’. I think a lot of it is to do with fear of the unknown and a level of comfort with what you know and are used to (however bad it might be). On that basis, planned or not, I am not sure that I would have moved on in the Autumn at all. Probably just looked around and not got around to doing anything practical towards getting something else.

Anyway, now the situation is different. It’s clear by the marked improvement in my health over the last few months that not being in that stressful environment surrounded by all that pressure and being so frustrated all the time had done me the world of good. So I am not going back. The plan is to leave the manufacturing industry altogether. I need a break!! (oops, did I say that out loud? I guess having had 3 months off work I can’t really say that, can I?)

I have been thinking about going and using my engineering skills in a university environment. I can see lots of advantages to doing something like that, but have only my experiences as an undergrad to refer to. There’s a Research Fellow position that I am interested in which could fit really well with my experiences, but I do have a minor worry that it’d be difficult to get into the sort of level of technical detail that would be required having been doing more of a management type role. It’d be less money than I was on before, but the contracted hours would be 35 per week rather than 39 (although I was actually doing closer to 60-70). It’d be twice as far away from home, but approximately the same time to get there (easier journey). It’d be 8 weeks holiday a year (wow!!), and they’re sympathetic to my voluntary activities with the IET. And the biggest bonus of all, it’s relatively flexible. I wouldn’t have to be there before 8am and not be able to leave until after 5pm (as is the case for almost all of Manufacturing). Obviously there would be meetings, and targets, and work, but I can’t imagine that it would be as stressful as what I have been doing.

If anyone has comments about working in Academia, please let me know! )