Here is a thoughtful and interesting blog post. It's about what to do when people who you think should be on your side fail you - and who hasn't had that happen, on a national-politician scale, right on down to close family members - but also there is a list of ways to act when you've hurt someone's feelings through unthinking racism, sexism, whateverism. It's actually just a list of ways to act when you're having a conversation with someone whose experiences you don't share, starting with opening your ears and closing your mouth.

Frequently I read blogs written by people with whose politics I don't agree. I run across posts that have me rolling my eyes, of course, and I run across posts that cause me to think new thoughts, which is a major reason why I read those. I also run across posts that I think make excellent points, independently of any political content.

I think that in some ways white women make a bridge for privilege/non-privilege. Perhaps especially white women who were raised in the south and expected to be ladylike and not make waves. You can achieve, but you aren't supposed to make a big show or a spectacle of yourself. But in the workplace, achieving frequently isn't enough. You have to put yourself forward, even if it feels immodest or audacious or inappropriate or uncomfortable, and it's probably hard for certain segments of the population to understand that somebody could ever feel that way, let alone anticipate it, empathize, or know what to do about it.

I remember when we terminated the coworker I've written about before. He left a spot in the chemist rank, which we wanted to fill by promoting a black female technician named Libby. I'd worked with her while we were trying to save his job, and had discovered that she had chemist potential. Like most of our techs, she had a science degree, but more than that, she was very smart and curious and cared a lot about getting the job done right. But when I told Libby that the boss and I wanted her to apply for that job, she kept saying that she didn't want to do it. She didn't think she could do it, I thought, and I knew better. I kept encouraging her to put in for it, she kept not wanting to, and I finally told her - "you're doing the work, you might as well get the pay." That made sense, she applied, and we promoted her. (She turned out to be one of the most productive chemists we ever had, besides personality-wise being a pure delight to work with.)

All of the techs shared an office, sharing desks as people came and went on their shifts, but the chemists shared separate offices, two by two. The desk left by the man we terminated was in an office that he shared with another white male chemist, Randy. I told Libby to get her stuff and move into that desk, and once again, she held back. She would just stay with the techs - she would be more comfortable.

Now let me stop here and say that in a situation like this you have to be really almost a mind-reader. You can't bully people into leaving their comfort zone so far that they are stressed out and actually fail at what you're pushing them to do. On the other hand, some people have been trained to hold themselves back and if you care about them, you have to bust them out of that. One clue that I had was that Libby had told me that her mother had said she must major in education or social work - that "they" would never let her get anywhere with a degree in biology. She was surprised when we hired Libby on as a tech, and very surprised when we promoted her. "You be nice to those white folks," she told Libby, "they've been good to you." We aren't being nice, I told her, we promoted you because we thought you could do the job.

So I told her: "You have a chemist job. You get a chemist paycheck. You go to chemist meetings. You sit at a chemist desk. Get your stuff." She still didn't want to.

"Why not, for pete's sake?"

"Because Randy won't want me in there," she finally said.

"Why don't you think Randy will want you in there?" I asked.

Silence.

"Is it because Randy's white? You're prejudiced against Randy because he's white?"

"I'm not prejudiced!" Libby protested.

"Then get your stuff!"

So Libby moved into that office, and of course she and Randy got on like a house afire. He's a very nice person, easy to get along with. I wouldn't have put her in an office where anyone would have been ugly to her.

Was I bullying her? Probably. I don't know what to do in situations like that except to think with my head, and feel with my heart, and act, and hope for the best. And, as the writer of the linked blog post says, educate myself as much as possible as to how other people's experiences affect them, not expecting other people to be like me. Ignore the buzzwords that tell me I've left my comfort zone of political thought that I agree with, and have an open mind about stuff. It's not easy but you have to do it to be a righteous person, I reckon.

Okay, I guess Now It Can Be Told.

For anyone who's read my tedious ramblings going back to Sept. 2007, you may recall that the owners of the chemical plant where I work laid us all off while in the process of selling the plant. The sale did not go through, and a small group, including me, were brought back in to run one part of it. We've been doing that for a year and a half, and now the plant really has been sold.

I still have my job. Don't know particulars yet - it looks good for my pay rate to continue as-is. There's one funny thing: I talked to the president of the company that bought us last year before any of us knew this would happen. He had interviewed the plant manager where I worked in Memphis, and he called to talk to me about him. They didn't end up working anything out, but they liked each other, and that plant manager had told this guy that I was the best lab manager in the world. He didn't, this man told me, confine this statement to North America. So I have a tremendous build-up in place. We'll have a one-on-one discussion tomorrow - well, one-on-two, it'll be him and the new plant manager.

It's kind of strange. Normally in a job interview, there are two decisions being made: does the company want to hire the candidate, and does the candidate want to work for the company. I asked a lot of questions about the about-to-be-previous owners (not that I or anyone else knew what was about to happen, they didn't either or they wouldn't have paid for my relocation). Now this is a done deal, although we are of course free to walk away if we want. I hope it doesn't turn out to be another mom-and-pop. Sometimes I fear that that is my destiny.

We did some of our safety training today, from 8:00 to about 3:30. Actually, the forklift training happened at the end but I skipped it. If your straits are so dire that you have your lab manager driving a forklift you have bigger problems than her training. The day started with fire safety training and the ritual lining up to discharge a fire extinguisher and then continued with the safety presentations got up by the members of the management group. Mine was hazard communication: labels, MSDSs, and so forth. We also had slips, trips, and falls, bloodborne pathogens, housekeeping, signs including lockout/tagout, and electrical safety. We ordered pizza in but didn't really stop for lunch. For some reason this wore my butt out. I am tireder than if I'd spent the day on my feet in the lab.

I'm always kind of irritated by the absolute statements that some people insist on. Our EHS person, when we had one, would always chant, "You can't pour any chemicals down the drain," shaking his head from side to side. Well, water is a chemical. Could you pour a 0.000001% solution of table salt in water down the drain? Of course you could. So can we have a discussion of what you can actually pour down the drain? Evidently not.

On fire extinguishers, one might initially be trained that you always call 911 for any fire before you start trying to put it out, regardless of how big it is. Okay, I'll say it: that's stupid. We worked it out that if it's a fire you are utterly convinced that you can put out with one brief squirt of a fire extinguisher, then you can do that and call 911 afterward if need be.

And then there's the mandate to report ANY spill or release. So if my methanol squeezebottle dribbles a couple of drops out onto the benchtop and they evaporate immediately, I have to report that? We got that worked out too. I did remind the guys that we don't need to improvise when we're trying to remediate a spill. I have some material in the lab for the purpose of cleaning up acid spills. It's labeled for that. I happen to know that you can use sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) but the stuff that's labeled for it is formulated to absorb it and deal with it without much of a reaction. But I've known of people who tried to remediate an acid spill with sodium hydroxide and this is a bad idea: you get a violent reaction, lots of heat and choky fumes.

Bloodborne pathogens - you're supposed to report ANY injury. I nick my finger on a piece of glassware and a drop of blood oozes out - I have to report that? The accounting clerk gets a papercut and puts a bandaid on it, and she must report it? Well, no.

I think these things are like zero tolerance. They come about because person X doubts person Y's judgment and allotment of common sense. Well, sadly, I sympathize, but rules that reasonably can't be followed all the time quickly become ignored even when they can and should be followed. So this absolute stuff is actually counterproductive to what the safety program should accomplish.

So among other things, my blog is a spot for me to park my internal monologue. Here are further thoughts on the supervisor/supervisee relationship.

A smart boss takes into account the personalities of the people who report to her. Why? Everybody is different. People have different motivations and priorities. They also have their individual sets of ethical standards. Bosses get into trouble when they tell an employee to do X, and the employee does it, neglecting Y in the process: "I never told you to neglect Y!" Well, some employees will always take care of the more important consideration, whether explicitly told to or not, and some will do whatever it takes to get the noise to stop. And since you can't design the perfect employee from the ground up, and then use the mold to make an army of clones, you have to work with what you get, and you have to know what you're working with and think about what kind of noise you're making.

So you have a lab employee who is compulsive about doing every single detail of a method exactly as written, but gets caught up in loops of minutiae and spends three hours on a twenty-minute task. And you have another who is very conscious of what has to be done by when, and takes little shortcuts to make sure she gets there. Both of these have weaknesses, but both have strengths. Managing adults is a lot like parenting - you get a lot further if you work from and expand on strengths rather than run head-on into weaknesses all the time.

One strategy is frequent, specific, and immediate feedback. This task can't take all day. You need to tighten up these duplicates - when you see a percent difference like this, you need to rerun. Look at your controls on this chart - they're the pink ones - see how much tighter they've gotten over the last month. Thanks for getting this stuff ready for my meeting; I appreciate you.

Another is to think about what's going on with the person and help her figure out what to do. When you start a task, estimate how long it should take. Look at the clock. Then look at it periodically while you're working, and challenge yourself to get through when you thought you would. Or: Let's pinpoint exactly where you're falling in a hole. Find that spot and then ssssslllooooowwww down.

Another is to teach beyond the task. This is really useful in the laboratory. I draw molecular structures and explain reactions so that the techs can see that, for example, heating the material with sodium hydroxide forms soaps, which are sodium salts of fatty acids. We're titrating the unused sodium hydroxide to calculate the amount of fatty acid we started with. So the volume of sodium hydroxide solution you use is a critical volume and you must use a volumetric pipet. And then as you get close - you see the pH changing. It's getting close to the inflection point, and it's not just the electrode not keeping up, the reaction is happening now. So this is where you stop and let it happen; don't try to rush it or you'll run past your endpoint.

These are all easy when the boss knows exactly what the employees are supposed to do. It's harder when the boss doesn't know. I've had bosses who clearly made a conscious effort to keep their priorities front and center: safety, of course, and then accurate, defensible results. If you're going to push people you have to know that they're not going to yield on the things that you tacitly expect them not to yield on, and those bosses aren't tacit about it. I wrote a little more about that here.

Went to an American Chemical Society meeting last night. The local group is totally academic, except for me. I don't know how it happened that the Memphis group got such a good mix of academia and industry.

The speaker is retired from University of Washington, Seattle. He was here with his wife, which is not unusual for speakers, and usually the spouses are very interested and engaged people. After the meeting, he and his wife, and Carmen who is the professor at the local school who sponsors the ACS group, and I had dinner. And we talked about all the usual things - jobs, families, places we've lived.

Carmen asked if I would speak to her students some time about life after college. I said I would. I've had a different career trajectory than I would have had I gone to school past getting my bachelor's. One of the kids I met yesterday is a senior, she's having cold feet about what will happen after graduation (tell F about it), and I gave her a 45-second overview of my career path. The speaker told her she needs to hear stories like that from all kinds of people. Actually, all of the kids do. I've long thought it is very strange how we do education, although I don't know if we could really do it differently. It's as if kids get on a train in preschool, and the track runs through kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, at least into college and hopefully up to getting that bachelor's degree, and then the track comes to an abrupt stop and the kids suddenly have to get off the train and find a direction and a motive force. Some know what they want to do, of course, and they get off that train and onto the next one. Some don't make it to the end of the line, and of those, some do OK without their B.S. and some don't. But we expect 17-year-olds to make decisions about how they're going to spend the rest of their lives - and how do they know? How do they know what they even want to do? They don't know what all there is, or what they themselves are really like yet. Easier and safer to just stay on the train.

Anyway, Carmen is going to contact me about this and I suppose we'll talk about what I'll talk to her students about. I can think of several possible topics. In fact, I could probably talk their ears off, as F knows very well.

And I told Carmen my idea about teaching control charting; how I would do it if I taught a science course. I would set up a titration station to measure the chlorine in tap water. It's an easy sodium thiosulfate titration with a starch-iodine endpoint. The chlorine will vary a bit from day to day, hopefully within some reasonable range. I would have someone in each chemistry lab measure whatever the chlorine content is that day. The students would all cycle through doing that. They would plot their results on an Excel spreadsheet set up with date on the X axis and ppm Cl₂ on the Y axis, and with horizontal lines showing the average, plus and minus 1 standard deviation, and plus and minus 2 standard deviations. It's not hard to set the spreadsheet up to do that; in fact, since you need about 20 data points before you start getting any decent stats, I'd probably let the students see if they could set that up themselves for extra credit. Then you could talk about upper and lower warning limits and control limits, and revisit what you learned if you took statistics (I never did, sadly) about how in a normal distribution, 68% of the data points fall within 1 standard deviation of the mean and 95% within 2 standard deviations; and confidence limits; and how many significant figures you can reasonably report; and how you'd do an investigation of out-of-spec results. Could the sodium thiosulfate have gone bad - can you restandardize it? (You can.) Could the amount of water taken for titration have been measured improperly? Did the tap need to run longer before the sample was taken? Is the starch solution still good? And so forth. It would be a good exercise and give them a running start, and help them stand out among their entry-level coworkers. Or probably even their experienced coworkers.

In the interest of updating my memoirs - I spent Sunday evening and all day Mon-Wed in Tampa at an ASTM meeting.

I enjoyed the meeting quite a bit. Met some people I've dealt with by phone and email only - funny how, today, when I looked at emails from them their faces popped into my head. There's a lot to learn about how these standard-setting organizations are set up, and some interesting group dynamics. I had to speak just a bit b/c of the work group I chair. Everyone was very nice. Driving back and forth wasn't very nice - I live close enough to Tampa to day-trip but it meant leaving early enough to miss some of the hospitality things where the instrument vendors show their products. The next meeting, in June, is in Norfolk, VA. I can't day-trip there.

I ran into the instrument vendor who recommended me for this job. My sulfur analyzer had just started to act up when this meeting started - I discovered Sunday morning that it had lost its mind and didn't have time to fool with it. The vendor and his boss told me what to do for it, and also how to optimize it for my application, so that was worthwhile right there. This came after a technical and strangely satisfying discussion about detection limits. Perhaps you didn't know, reader(s), that when you analyze a material for a particular thing, and you don't find any, you can't report the result as zero. You have to report it as less than something, that something being your detection limit, and settling on what that detection limit is, is surprisingly complicated. For instance, you can analyze a standard that is two to five times as concentrated as what you think your detection limit is, seven times, and then multiply the standard deviation of your responses by pi. Or you can look at your signal-to-noise ratio when you run a solvent blank - but how do you know your solvent is really blank? One way to verify that is to use that solvent to make a set of standard solutions at various concentrations, plot concentration against response, and see how close your best-fit line is to going through the origin - in other words, how close your y-intercept is to zero.

I had lunch with various people every day, too. We mixed technical discussions with talking about our families, politics, a whole lot of other stuff. Yes, I had a very nice time.

I think I'm going to see if I can kick my local professional organization into a higher state of activity. I need this kind of thing.

Well, ha ha, ten days later.

Fay turned out to be, for us, the storm that wasn't. We were right in the path for a while but we ended up getting the usual amount of rain that we get every day in the rainy season, maybe just a bit more wind than usual. It's pretty breezy right now, in fact. One of the many things I like about living here is that after the sun goes down the temperature drops, there's a breeze, and you might want sleeves even in August. I keep a sweater handy for my evening stroll. I do feel for the people east of us who are being flooded out of their homes. A spectacular amount of rainfall will do that. When F and I came here last year to find a place to live we were very conscious of wanting whatever high ground there was, and we have it.

And she cracked me up on Tuesday afternoon, calling to check up on us. She gets jittery not being here to look after us, because we probably won't have any better sense than to run out to look at the hurricane - "I've never seen a hurricane before!" she imagined me saying in a ditzy voice - and have a tree fall on us, or something. But I have, I've seen what there was of Camille when it swept through north Mississippi when I was a girl, and I think we got some stormy weather when the remnants of Katrina blew through. And Hurricane Elvis, of course, which was bad news. No fun at all.

Eventually I will stop talking about myself, but here's some more stuff. I stopped Ultram on the weekend. I was on it for 3 months and that's possibly long enough to get a little used to it. Major insomnia. So I added another herb last night (Valerian) and it made all the difference in the world. Will do the same tonight. Before long I should be re-adjusted. I feel not having Ultram in that my shoulder is griping at me more, and more often, but it's nothing like it was three months ago. I'm very hopeful of getting past this, maybe completely by the end of the year.

Work has been pretty busy. We're trying some things to get the plant back up and running and back to the usual 30 or so employees. I've called back another tech to help with that. Kind of miss being by myself in the lab, but I knew it couldn't last.

I had occasion today to remember one of the owners of a company I used to work for. It was a chemical company and the lab/engineering group owned by it did environmental work - hazardous waste site remediations, effluent monitoring and so forth.

When a sample is taken for environmental sampling, the clock starts ticking on the holding time. This is the amount of time you have to get the analysis done, and it varies by matrix (soil or water) and by analyte. If you miss the holding time, and the sample exceeds the cleanup criteria, that's not usually a big deal. But if the sample is clean, you can't use the results because it has expired, so to speak, and you can't say the concentration of your analytes didn't decrease over time. Typically, if holding times are missed because of negligence in the lab, the lab has to pay for resampling. If bulldozers and things have to be mobilized, this can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Shortly after I went to work for this company, one of the owners had a meeting with all of us. He passed out copies of an article for us to read, that described how upper-level people with an environmental lab somewhere faced criminal charges and jail time because they'd missed holding times on samples from a Superfund site and falsified dates to cover that up. Some people had left that lab and gone to work elsewhere, but the feds went after them. He passed that article out to tell us this:

"DON'T HELP ME. If you miss holding times and we have to pay for resampling, that's bad. But if you miss holding times and lie about it, and I go to jail, that's real bad. Don't miss holding times! But if you do, don't lie about it!"

He went on to tell us that no one in that company would ever ask us to lie about anything, and if we thought they had, we were mistaken.

Some time after this I happened to be at work on the weekend, and he was too. He saw that I was there and asked me to come to his office. It seemed that the city had asked us to start checking the effluent of the plant there in town for carbon tetrachloride, and there was a surprising amount; the company was having to pay fines. The chemist who did volatiles had just turned in some results, and there would be more fines. The owner asked me to check the data and I said I would. But as I put my hand on the door handle, he stopped me and said, "I have to say something."

"No, you don't," I thought, but I stopped and let him say it.

"I'm not asking you to help me here. I don't want you to 'fix' anything. If the number is in error I don't want to pay a fine. But if it's right, it's right."

"I understand," I said, and I went to the volatile lab.

I found the chromatogram and the calibration data, checked the peak integration and the spectrum, went all the way back to the preparation of the calibration standards, recalculated the curve, recalculated the data against a single point, even found the sample and reran it on the chance that the chemist had run the wrong sample. Finally I went back to the owner's office.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I can't find an error."

"Okay, thanks!" he said brightly.

Subsequently they found out where the carbon tet was coming from and fixed the problem.

And subsequent to all of that, this same owner promoted me, twice. He put me forward to be in the pilot group for the in-house management training program we had, and to be in some process development teams at the plant, which was extremely cool. If the chemical industry had not had a downturn in the '90's, and at the same time we had not finished the remediation of those hazardous waste sites, so that they had to cut the lab loose, I would happily have worked there forever.

The point is that this man set a standard for integrity that none of his employees had any excuse for not understanding. When people try to duck responsibility for what their underlings do I think about him, and about the fact that anybody who falsified anything at that workplace did it in direct, explicit violation of the standard he set. I've also thought about the importance of telling the truth, being aboveboard and transparent and all those inconvenient things. There is no job, and certainly there is no audit, accreditation, or anything else, that is worth more to me than my integrity. Jobs come and go but I'll always have myself. You have to watch that slippery slope because every boss is not as principled as this one. If your boss sees you let this little thing and that little thing slide, you have only yourself to blame if he puts you on the spot by asking you to do something you really don't think is right. If your boss sees you being compulsive about doing everything exactly right and by the book, redoing work if necessary, painstakingly investigating when things don't go right, telling the salesman the material just can't go out because the specifications aren't met, he knows better than to ask. So setting high standards for yourself and sticking to them makes everything easier in the long run. (I will say that I can't see my current boss asking me or anyone to do anything that's not right.)

I made soup this evening. Why did I make soup this evening? Because R is down with a pretty wretched case of influenza. I am symptom-free right now but trying to plan ahead. If I come down with flu before he gets well enough to drive we'll be glad for some homemade chicken soup in the fridge. Even if I don't get sick we'll be glad for some homemade chicken soup in the fridge.

No, we did not get the shot this year. Because we are idiots.

Earlier in the week I was at a conference in Orlando. Had a good time, learned some things, met my former employers in Memphis. They acted glad to see me. They did finally replace me after I told them repeatedly that I was not coming back. (And I am still grateful to them for keeping my job open, which kept me from being terminally bummed out when I thought I didn't have a job here any longer.)

Last week I had lunch with the salesman who initiated contact between me and these people here. He was appalled to find out that the plant had mostly shut down and was fairly apologetic but I told him that we all feel that the move to Florida was the right thing to do, regardless. He has other contacts in the area and I am to call him if my situation changes.

I didn't write about my Pennsylvania adventure. F says that my blog is my memoirs (are my memoirs?) and if that's the case I'm not updating as much as I should.

I went to PA on Dec 21 and came back on the 23rd. The company that was going to buy the plant where I work has a plant there. They are starting to outfit a small laboratory but they have no employees with any kind of lab experience. Back when we looked like being bought, I had agreed to go up there when they got their gas chromatograph in so I could train them on it. Actually, chromatography done right takes quite a bit of training, but a day and a half spent on training to do just one thing on a GC certainly beats nothing. By the time my trip rolled around it was clear that the sale was off but I went anyway. The people were very nice and very appreciative of what I was doing for them. I was a bit trepidatious of traveling that close to Christmas, after several people told me I should be, but I had no trouble.

I happened to have some experience with the off-brand GC that they bought, and had had extensive conversations with the manufacturers. The method that they sell this thing for requires cool on-column injections. More expensive GCs have inlets with programmable temperatures so that during the run the high-boilers get onto the column and out of the injection port. Also, more expensive GCs can be set up to have constant flow, rather than constant pressure. This one comes with constant pressure as the default but you can adapt it so that the pressure is programmable, and I'd done that before back in Memphis when my former employer had one of these creatures. The advantage of constant flow is that the high-boilers get pushed off the column with every run, even though they still pile up in the injection port. So one of the things we did in PA was to set up their GC for programmable pressure, and I fixed their run program to use that. And we installed a guard column - I'd given them a list of things to have on hand when I got there - and discussed how to tell when the inlet was contaminated and how to do the front-end maintenance. But upon getting the calibration done I had to call the manufacturers and talk to one of the people I'd dealt with before. He remembered me very well and upon finding out what I was doing, asked if I am working full-time. They are located in California and could really use an installer/trainer on the East Coast. Probably couldn't keep me busy full-time right now but if my situation changes I am to call them. You know, I'd probably like that now that I don't have a small child at home.

And yesterday we took F shopping. This town has a very nice mall. She needed a coat, and asked about getting a pea coat. Apparently this is the thing right now - who knew? But it's cool because pea coats are very practical. Classic design that won't look dated next year. We looked in several of the stores with no dice, but this mall has a Burlington Coat Factory and there we had success. We used to shop at the BCF in Memphis. This one is a lot nicer. She had her choice of pea coats to pick from, and ended up with a very nice one, stadium length, not too fussy or detailed. It's simple enough to go with dressy outfits but will be fine with jeans.

The continuing soggy ...

Last week I flew to Wisconsin. Yes, I did. I had a job interview.

The interview went very well indeed ... but I was shocked at how I was homesick for Central Florida while I was there. I've only been here since July 21 and I've bonded to the area like a piece of sticky tape. Palm trees and weird birds. And highs in the mid-80's, in November. Lakes with ducks and swans. We just really like it here.

The job has a lot of promise. Actually, it looked pretty cool. I got an offer today and I turned it down. We are going to try to stick it out here. Dang, I hope the sale goes through.

Things are looking up, maybe, or maybe I'm just kind of a delusional idiot.

The sale of the business is still being held up. In the meantime, the owners, who had decided to shut us right down, found that they still needed some money coming in, so they are running a portion of the plant with a skeleton crew. On that crew is me. (And some other folks.) My pay is less, but so are my hours. I'm spending virtually all my work time in the lab, which is where all the fun is anyway. And supposedly this keeps the health insurance in place, and so forth. The hypothetical buyers relayed a request for me to be working on the quality program during my truncated workweek. I find that very encouraging.

R and I decided to go through with selling the house in Memphis. It closed yesterday. We got a little money out of it, not a whole bunch, but I'm thrilled to get that done because ...

... yesterday the Memphis newspaper, the Commercial Appeal, reported that the Memphis metro area now leads the nation in violent crime. I can just imagine everybody's property values plummeting in the wake of that report. I called my former boss in Memphis this afternoon and told him I was not coming back. It feels a little strange to do that with my job in question here and R between jobs himself, but I actually have a sense of freedom now. If this thing in Florida doesn't work out there is an entire continent for me to look for a job in. I will always wish Memphis the best and look for every hopeful sign, but it's going to take some time for that city to turn around and it will have to do it without me and my family.

What else. Ummm ... Bonnie (cat) found a chameleon in the yard the other day. I've never seen one change colors before and wasn't totally sure that they really do. But I saw it.

Way, waaay overdue for an update.

I have internet access at home now, finally.

BUT.

The home office in Boston has decided to shut down the plant where I work. Yes, really. Really. Why? I've heard several explanations, none of which make a lick of sense. We found out about all this last Tuesday.

They had an offer to buy. The hypothetical new owners came down and let us all re-apply for our jobs. My interview was Thursday. I am the only person who has been told that I definitely have a job with them ... IF the sale goes through. There have been some last-minute problems and the sale looks like not going through. Hopefully I'll know something by the end of the week.

In the meantime, my former employers in Memphis want me back. They have been so sweet about it. I don't want to go back there, but I need a paycheck, y'all.

Also, in preparation for my re-interview I had called a person I worked with before I went to this last job in Memphis ... the place I left b/c I didn't want to relocate to Kalamazoo. Got an email from her this evening to call someone I know very well at that business. May be something doing in K after all, or possibly Iowa.

We did get an offer on our house, were supposed to close last Friday; R and I talked about that in view of this sudden news and we decided to go through with it. But the sellers had some problem and so we're supposed to close next Friday.

I cannot stand the suspense.

OK, I'm not dead.

I don't have internet at home yet, for various reasons, and I don't want to do frivolous things at work even at off-hours. So I'm at the library.

We drove to our new home on July 20 and 21. Packed a U-Haul with stuff, and if we had it to do over we'd have given ourselves a lot more time to do that. We wanted to pack the stuff ourselves b/c having been at that house for 17 years, we had a lot of stuff, and I didn't want to bring old crap to Florida. Wanted to choose everything that went. That part was OK, but physically packing the truck took forever.

The drive was mostly OK. The cats started out in their carriers but F let them out to roam the car after a bit and they were fine except for wanting to get under my feet, which I could not allow. We had a small-dog carrier for the tomcat and a medium-size for the girls to share, so that they had room to move around. Riding in a car is a bit different from being shipped, so it wasn't necessary to keep them very still, only confined. At one point Molly was ready for a nap and she crawled into her and Bonnie's carrier and sacked out. Bonnie chose that moment to try to get under my feet (again) and I fished her out and threw her over into the back seat. F shoved her in the carrier with Molly. She didn't want to go but wasn't given a choice. Himself was in the passenger side foot area (can't think what to call that) and felt that he wanted a change of scenery so he clambered arthritically over into the back seat, bypassed his carrier, and crawled in with the girls. F tucked Molly's dangling leg in and closed the door and we had peace for a while.

They were very good in the motel. Freaked, but no barfing, meowing, or peeing on the carpet.

I'm skipping over a lot of stuff.

We got to our rental house in the evening, put the cats' things out, went over some stuff with the landlord, and were starving and snapping at each other and couldn't agree on what to eat for supper. I made an executive decision, pulled into a grocery store, and went to the deli and bought roast beef sandwiches, chips, and drinks. We sat on the fireplace ledge and ate and became human.

Returned the U-Haul on the morning of the 22nd, and took R to the airport to fly back to Memphis.

He said it was traumatic, coming home to that empty house. There was a bit of furniture left, b/c he had to stay there, after all, and F before she went back to school, but it looked like it had been ransacked.

F stayed with me until last Saturday, when she flew back to Memphis by herself (new experience for her) and was moved down to school by her dad on Tuesday. She went back early b/c she'd signed up for Welcome Week and had to get trained.

So it's just me and the cats, until R gets the house sold and can join me.

What other adventures can I report?

My boss and I went to Boston on the 25th and 26th, to meet the folks at the home office. The office is right on the harbor, at the USS Constitution. My boss and I walked out in the morning to look at the boats and all, saw about a million jellyfish (very cool) and were there to see the cannon they fire every morning at 8:00 and their flag ceremony, Star Spangled Banner and all.

And I saw the space shuttle go up the other night - when was that? It's all running together. I stayed at work a bit late and pulled up nasa.gov to see the countdown, waited until about 30 seconds to launch, and walked out into the parking lot and looked to the northeast. Because the sun was behind me, it glinted very nicely on the shuttle and I saw it move slowly up into the clouds. I'm saving that memory for "why am I here" moments.

Because I am having them, and I anticipated that I would. I gave this move a lot of thought, and R and I discussed it at length, but that doesn't keep me from questioning myself at odd moments. I miss him a lot. If the house doesn't sell PDQ we may button it up and let the realtor handle showing it and all, and he can come on and join me. There's a lot of exploring that I want to do on the weekends when I have time, and I don't want to do it alone.

The job is - well, I'll save that for another time. Everyone is being very nice.

Okay, so Thursday my group had a little cake and ice cream for me, and a $25 gift certificate, which I thought was really nice. I told them I'd buy a nice blouse with it and think of them when I wore it. (And for those who wonder how you can buy a "nice" blouse with $25, in the context of what you would wear to work in a laboratory, you wouldn't spend more than that, and most of the time a lot less.) Some of the plant people partook of the cake and ice cream, of course, and my boss, and the owners. I will say that I've been very disappointed in the way the owners have acted about me leaving. People always have the right to better their circumstances if they can. It's up to the employer who realizes he has a valuable employee, to see to it that she will want to stay. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

But they did tell me that I can still change my mind, and even come back if I don't like Florida.

So I'm unemployed for the next couple of weeks. Weird feeling. I have a LOT to do during this time. Finish getting the house sorted out, find a place to live in Florida - F and I are going there later this week to do that - and work out the logistics of me moving now and R following after he gets F off to college and the house sold.

We took a walk in our pretty historic-district neighborhood after dinner the other day. We've lived here 17 years and have a lot of memories of those walks after dinner, F on her tricycle and then her skates, and so forth. But on one of the gaslight-inspired lamposts we found, for the first time, gang graffiti. If I'd had any lingering doubt about the rightness of moving away, it's gone.

I have a little catching up to do.

Yesterday was R's and my 25th wedding anniversary. Yes, 25th. We have coexisted in close proximity for a quarter of a century without killing one another, and in fact actually still liking each other, which is something.

To celebrate, we and F had dinner at Paulette's. This is a Memphis landmark I will miss, even though I can't afford to go very often. The popovers alone are to die for.

My parents sent flowers.



They're lovely and they smell very nice, hence their being put on the mantel because the cats wanted to eat them.

And F gave us some very nice Godiva chocolate, which she ordered several weeks ago to be delivered for the occasion.

Today we were going to visit family in Mississippi but F elected to get a virus instead (kidding, I'm sorry she was sick) and I actually needed to be doing some stuff here in the house instead anyway. Got through a lot of cleaning, sorting, and readying to be packed. I continue to discover that cabinets and closets I'm going through were actually gone through not too long ago so doing this stuff is not as hair-raising as I had feared.

Friday they are having a final farewell lunch at my previous workplace (although the division I was in won't be leaving till the end of August) and I've been invited. But that's also my last day where I am, my coworkers may want to take me to lunch or something, and it would be churlish of me to go to the previous place for lunch if that's the case.

F and I will probably go to Florida next week to look at some places to live. We found some nice-looking rental property on the net and will line up appointments.

So that's it. I hope everybody had a nice 4th.

Trying to wrap things up at work and home. I had to ask the CEO to quit calling me a traitor. "Are you going to be mean to me for the next two weeks?" I asked. No, was the answer. But he's kind of mad. I'm having to talk to him to get things properly buttoned up, and he doesn't want to look at me. It's the mindset of the owner of a mom-and-pop, which I swore I'd never work for again, that employees are to be viewed and to view themselves as faithful family retainers. Forget that crap.

My boss and I had lunch out today. There was a woman in the restaurant with a stethoscope around her neck (either pretentious, or she forgot she had it) and her white coat with name tag, etc. OK, I kind of draw the line there. If she's a doctor, then the stethoscope indicates she's been with patients, most likely sick folks. Perhaps they have coughed on her. She had to wear the coat into a restaurant where people were eating? Isn't the purpose of the coat to keep germs and bodily fluids off the doctor's person so they can be left behind at the workplace?

Okay, I won't keep you all in suspense any longer.

I was out of town on a trip with the two owners earlier this week. Got a call from the Chattanooga folks, with an offer. The money wasn't quite as much as the Florida job, which I wanted more anyway, so that made it easy.

What wasn't easy was that at this conference there were people with the company I am going to. I was introduced to them as "the best lab manager anybody has, anywhere, ever" or something like that. Felt like a worm.

After getting home, I talked with R and F, we thought about it, and determined that our minds are made up. That is, R's and my minds are made up, and F has committed to the program. So I emailed the Chattanooga folks thanking them for their generous offer and telling them that I am going elsewhere, and called the Florida people to say that I am coming. They are thrilled. Unthrilled is my boss, who knew this was in the works. I gave him a signed letter today. And I called the CEO and told him. He's not thrilled either. R's boss is so unthrilled that he's trying very hard to find me another job here in town - isn't that sweet?

So that's that. I have 2 weeks to work, and 2 weeks unemployed to try to prepare for leaving this place. R will stay to sell the house, but I need to do a lot of stuff. We've been here 17 years, after all. My future boss says he doesn't think that will give me enough time, so we'll be flexible about my start date, if need be.

In other news, F had an MRI yesterday in support of her attempt to conquer her migraines. She had a sedative, which the neurologist had prescribed to get her through it, but I still ended up holding her hands throughout. She's been taking Imitrex and other meds in an attempt to see what will knock these things out. So far no dice, except for one that did knock her headache out for a while but it knocked her out too. F woke up this morning with a really outstanding aura and tried yet another med. She says she could feel the headache trying to happen but didn't have to take a second dose for 12 hours. This could be the one. I'm also eyeing her diet - she wanted a Sonic corndog for lunch yesterday after her MRI, and R got her a salad for dinner with ham on it, so processed meat could be a trigger. We'll try to avoid that for a while.

She is on Nadolol, which is definitely helping me.

And so it goes.

So I had told the Florida person that I would let him know *something* by the end of the week, after I had gone to Chattanooga. I called today to tell him that I neither *had* to have the Chattanooga job, nor hated it, that I'm leaning toward the Florida job, but I want just a bit more time. He was very nice and said that they will all be disappointed if I don't come to Florida because apparently no one else will do.
: )
The folks in Chattanooga knew about the Florida thing and so they will not drag their feet, I told him. I'll give him a definite "yes" or "no" by the end of the next week.

Immediately afterward, the Chattanooga person called to say they were all definitely interested and thought I would be a great fit, and that he will be talking to his corporate people and calling me back with an offer early next week.

So I will have a decision to make. It's a good feeling. I told R that if I'm what you want, then you want me. "You" just probably aren't going to be in Memphis. And I have to say that I'm tired of having a lush for a state senator, a paranoid megalomaniac for a mayor, and city councilpeople who can't figure out how to pay their own utility bills but have the spending of my tax dollars. Maybe wherever I go I should just make it a point to not read any newspapers for a while.

My gut kind of says "Florida", not sure why. If they offer me bookoos of money in C then that will make a difference. You can fly nonstop one-way from Orlando to Memphis for $100. How about that.

Edited to add: In putting together references, I got hold of my former boss, Jane, who left the company we worked for rather than go to Kalamazoo, and moved to Madison, WI to work for a competitor. She asked several times if I didn't want to move to Madison. Uh, no. But thanks for asking.

"Lend an ear and listen to my version
Of a really solid Tennessee excursion!"

We left for Chattanooga yesterday morning shortly after 7:00. Like an idiot, I planned to spend the night the day OF my interview. Uneventful trip, but I didn't get there till around 2:00 so didn't get to finish. So I went back and finished up this morning.

We wanted to do a little sightseeing. Lots of stuff to see and do in Chattanooga. But F was stricken with a migraine, among other things, so we scaled way back. (She has an appt with my neurologist tomorrow to do something about those.) We ended up just going to the military park on Lookout Mountain. There are lots of nice views and a fairly easy trail in the woods. We also stopped at the place where they do the Incline (didn't ride it) and were shocked at the smog. Man, it stank. It must be like that all the time b/c there's a sign to say that by city ordinance you cannot idle your car. Strange to think of ever-present smog high up on that pretty mountain.

And pretty it is. One thing Chattanooga has going for it is absolutely stunning vistas. We drove on I-24, which has some heavy duty traffic (R says they don't play and he's right) and even as we were dodging big trucks and trying not to get creamed while we found our way, we couldn't help noticing the breathtaking view, right into the city.

The job would be quite different. The job in Florida isn't too much different from what I do now. This one involves instrumentation I've never used and a lot of inorganic chemistry, not my strong point. I am not averse to learning new things, of course. I asked a million questions and I think they liked me. They are aware of the other offer and so know not to stretch this thing out too far.

So which job do I want (assuming I am offered this one)? Hard question. Yogi Berra said "if you come to a fork in the road, take it." That doesn't help me. I'm trying to kind of draw a decision tree with the pro's and con's of moving to each city, and of each job. R favors Florida (OK either way, tho) and F favors Chattanooga. Ultimately, whatever we do will work out. Of course, the Chattanooga folks may make it easy for me and not offer the job!