roots.

With apologies for biting the flow of Mardi Gras, Chinese New Year, Abe Lincoln's 193rd birthday, Peter Cooper's 211th birthday, and Goon turning 30:

I'm sitting on the edge of a grey office chair right now and I'm leaning over the desk of my superior, the man whose voice has inspired fear, drowsiness, genius, guilt and stupidity on a daily basis for nearly five years. In my outstretched hand is a white envelope which contains 1 (one) meticulously crafted and innocuously proper letter of resignation (rewritten approximately seven times since last Tuesday to be ultimately sealed with a late night bout of hysteria).

As of March 1st, 2002, two and a half generous weeks from today, I will be officially unemployed, to my own delight, my future spouse's delight, and to the chagrin of my parents, for whom housewifing and novel-writing are not acceptable reasons to leave a perfectly well-paying and benefits-endowed job in the midst of an economic downturn.

There's a bit more to it of course, as they say, and as there always is. Lately the ever-diminishing stock price has ceased being a joke, and has become justification for simple meanness. Low morale has become high indifference, and I've been stretching work so as to appear useful. I simply cannot do this anymore.

There is also the aforementioned possibility of a move to Singapore which currently remains but a possibility but which continues looming in the ever-nearing future, and I'd really rather not dump two households' worth of shit into storage at the hefty rate we're likely to pay in NYC. So Marc and I decided it's a wise idea to start spending a fair amount of time consolidating and streamlining we two into one now, rather than in a year when we return.

As of right now the official word is that we'll be in the Bronx until June, at least, and then who knows? So the timeline goes like this:
1. I'll move NJ -> NY by St. Patrick's Day,
2. Wedding, April 6th,
3. honeymoon, gratuitous important married-people stuff through the end of April,
4. May... who knows? Hopefully MayNoWriMo, among other distractions (and continued gratuitous married-people stuff...).
5. June... I'll come back to this later.

I'm far busier than I should be (but what else is new?) and just writing this weblog entry was tough to fit in. I'm posting here just before my scheduled meeting with Seth, just in case there's anyone from work lurking. I've already been to Human Resources, and so I spent most of the day in quitting purgatory.

When I started working here I was 21, and I'm still the most recent Engineering hire. I'm proud to be walking away with dignity.

But it was not without trepidation that I made this decision. In the process of tearing out my hair while breaking out in a cold sweat for the last two weeks, I've come to a few realizations. First, finally setting up someplace with Marc again and staying there forever this time is going to be great. The contract-based aspect of his job (which will now be supporting two) is going to put that off for a little while, but still, it's something to anticipate. Second, I'm the panicking one in the relationship. Big time. Conversations generally have been going something like this:

Marc: Hello?
Kate: Hey, what's shakin'?
Marc: Hey babe.
Kate: AAAAAARGH! Where will we put my desk? And my socks? And my pots and pans? And my shoes? There's no room for any of my stuff!??!?
Marc: Um... I'm going to clean out some areas for you.
Kate: That would be great. AAAAAAARRRGH! Where will we put my desk? ...

And thus the great simplification of 2002 begins. I plan to reduce inventory by at least half... everything must Go! Go! Go!

yep.

Posted at 1:58 PM in category Old (this category is huge!)