Poor kitty

My newest coworker was laid off. She was worried she would be when we got the notice about early retirements and cost-cutting, and she just finished moving all her stuff up here from SoCal so I am bummed for her getting her life all disrupted. And bummed for us having to reorganize how we will get everything done. In the meeting they stressed that the work the laid off people were doing is not supposed to just get transferred to the rest of us, it is somehow supposed to shrink or get more efficient or something but I don't see how that's supposed to happen in our case. We hired her because we needed another person! The newest guy in Supply was also let go, so it looks like a certain amount of LIFO going on, but he was technically the only Supply Planner we had, the rest of the group had transferred to other areas (or resigned), so I don't know how that's supposed to work either.

The "interim leadership" at the top is the owner's son (who has been running the factory part of the parent/holding company for a long time) and daughter (who started and has been running one of our newer brands) so it's a major return to being a family run business. I'm not sure whether that's going to be a good thing or not. Probably a mixed bag.

I just got the email that I was not laid off

This is good, but mass layoffs are stressful no matter what.

Getting updates via rumor mill - 3 more people gone from our department, one of them has been with the company 20+ years, all 3 with jobs that I doubt anyone else really knows how to do. So that'll be interesting.

If I'm counting right, that's 8 staff reductions over the last month or so from 22. 36%

The office is going to feel like a ghost town '

I got summoned for county AND federal jury duty in the back half of January, and I DO NOT NEED THIS. We don't have a firm move date yet, but currently we may need to be at the new house on 2/3 for a walkthrough, and I do not wish to add jury duty to the middle of this.

That's uncalled for, summoners

At the same time? Geez. Often they’ll let you postpone once, and then if you happen to have moved by the time the postponement dates come, oh well!

And now I have 3 hours of meetings tomorrow morning, 9am to noon. Always a good time but especially when it's discussions of the current reorg at different levels! Ugh.

Ay, ay, ay, people. You are having stressful times. Do not like this for you, Dana or -t.

Or anyone else, of course. meara with the VPN, askye with the sick kitty. I do not approve. Though I am glad kitty is getting good drugs. Healing ~ma to her.

The guest list for the department meeting confirms that the rumor mill was accurate. So that's something, I suppose.

I'm glad Starbucks isn't on strike right now, I'm gonna need a drive through treat for my commute.

I forget, how long will Matilda be there, and what are her living arrangements?

Matilda will be in Kyoto from January 29th to April 19th. Slightly under three months so you don't need a special Visa. We'll be in Tokyo to start from 1/23 until 1/28. I'll be in Japan ten days in total. I promised Cashmere I'd look for Japanese Roller Derby merch.

Matilda will be living with a host family, and we'll get that assignment probably next week. We have to get gifts for the family, but never in sets of four (according to Cash!). It's bad luck.

The program is with CIEE: [link]

The CIEE center is walking distance to the language school, and includes people in Junior year abroad programs, Freshman year abroad, gap year and post-grad. So, Matilda will get to interact with people in a variety of different programs and ages.

The language school is not limited to the CIEE program so there will be a nice cross section of ex-pats and others in the classes. In other words Matilda won't just be lumped in with her Gap Year cohort: [link]

The CIEE center is literally three blocks from the Kyoto Manga Museum, and two blocks from the Cultural Museum of Kyoto. Our Ryokan is a few blocks from the Kyoto Samurai Ninja Museum and the famous Nishiki market.

Matilda will be in language class from 9-12 M-F, and then there's an hour or two of cultural studies. So she should be done about 2pm most days. She can walk over to the CIEE center and meet up with different people who are making group outings in various configurations. There's an organized outing weekly, and once a month they take a field trip (one is to Osaka which is 15 minutes away via Bullet Train).

I'll be flying home from Osaka because Kyoto is such a classy old school city, it doesn't have an airport.