So sorry Anne. Hugs and strength to you and your family.

Passover without potatoes or nuts will be challenging.

I've got a pretty good idea of what I want to do, but I can't find anyone who'll hire me to do it.

Passover without potatoes or nuts will be challenging.

Do you eat kitniyot?

Anne, much-ma to you. My family is going through the same thing with Dad, and it's horrific.

So sorry Anne. Strength to you and yours.

I'm very happy with the current iteration of the day job, which is basically financial compliance monitoring, analysis, and troubleshooting in a university central office. It's reasonably satisfying work, I love my coworkers, and I feel secure in it, given that my boss gives me rave reviews and the highest percentage raise allowed each year (not that it's much, but still). But the only logical steps up would be to either become a manager in my current department or go back to an academic department as an administrator, and both of those in different ways sound like hell to me. I'm much better at managing information and processes than people, so I don't want my boss's job, and if I were an administrator I'd lose the ability to go home at 5:00 every day and not think about work over the weekend. So...I guess I do this another 20-25 years? Maybe?

At the same time I'm rethinking what I want from my writing career. I still love telling stories, but I've become burned out on wrestling with the publishing industry in my current niche thereof. So I'm taking a self-imposed sabbatical at least till our European trip this summer is over to try to figure out where to go from here.

Anne, lots of ~ma for your stepdad and mom.

Anne, I'm sorry for your mom. Calli is right in that often there's a medication mixup that can lead to dementia-like symptoms, so that's something to hope for.

But there are a lot of resources out there. Sadly, nobody has any quick and easy fixes, and even the stuff that helps requires a heavy investment of time and emotional resources on the part of the caregiver. I would say that your mother is in for a hard time of it.

Feel free to email me, as well.

As for job stuff, well, I really thought I had a gig that would have taken me to retirement, and I'm still cranky about having the rug pulled out from under me. OTOH, I did some good work in the last few weeks, enough to get some emails for my "Egoboo" folder. I remind myself I am still pretty good at what I do, despite all the petty annoyances of the insane bureaucracy we have to deal with.

This week I started testing a new system that was developed at headquarters and will be imposed on us in the future, to assist in what has been, up til now, fairly subjective decision-making. Of course the very first time I ran it, it didn't catch any of the factors that should have kicked the process into higher level of review. Nor the second time. Nor the third. Nor was there any way to go backwards if I'd made a mistake on the first half dozen questions.

This is after a solid two years of development. And it's something we'll be forced to use. Argh.

But hey, I climbed two 5.11Bs and a 5.11C tonight, so go me!

I swear, it's more expensive to go to SF than it is to Hawaii...

I would argue for Team Hawaii, but I won't be back (assuming I'm back. I'll almost certainly be back) until the end of July.

Anne, lots of family-ma