Friday, July 18, 2008

And then again... maybe not

AB and I returned from Alaska a little despondent. Not so thrilled to be back here. We were thrilled to be home, but felt a little disconnected. For AB it was going "home", back to Alaska where he grew up and dreams of moving back that did it for him. He routinely reminds me that among his friends, he was probably the least likely to leave Alaska. Yet here he is 18 years after leaving and no signs of moving back. He rode in the car with his dad who conveniently pointed out engineering firms along their route.

A friend once related to us that he felt that if you grew up somewhere "cool", it was harder to live in a place with seemingly less to offer as an adult. Where I grew up and went to college - in Northern Colorado - I would call a cool place. Actually it was a great place to grow up, recently rated #1 on the best places to live in the US and is an area coveted by many to live. I understand why.

Looking at where we live now, versus that region... or Alaska... Well this place just seems not to rank as high on the cool scale.

What I love about this region is the size and the family friendly nature and not to mention the really great social circle we have immersed ourselves in. Then there is the wine... very nice to live in "wine country". We have strong, stable jobs here making good money and our kids are in a most fabulous private daycare/preschool.

Why then, given all this, am I sometimes left with an emptiness about where we reside?

For me, what it doesn't have is immediate access to the mountains, to forests of spruce, to mountain streams. And for AB, beyond that, it doesn't have the ocean. Being that I didn't grow up next to the ocean, I could take or leave it. Though I admit a growing fondness for going over to our family cabin on the Sound. I love the tides, the beachcombing and the completely different environment from anything I grew up with. But the big one that it doesn't have is our family.

After returning we somewhat consciously made a decision to start exploring options either in Colorado or Alaska. AB passed his FE/EIT exam making him a full fledged engineer and in theory at least, eligible for many other careers than his current one.

Then yesterday happened.

It seems as though whenever our minds start wandering to the other side of the fence, we get jolted back.

AB came home excited about a new opportunity. Seems that his lead in safety and environmental was in a bragging mood and was joking around in a meeting with the lead engineers who were complaining that none of their new hire engineers passed the recent FE/EIT. AB's lead decided to chime in that he had a safety and environmental guy who went up and passed it on his first attempt.

A sort of "my guys are smarter than yours" thing going on.

A couple days later and AB has been actively recruited by the engineering leads. The neat thing about it is that they are giving him the opportunity to "try it out". AB basically has nothing to lose. If he doesn't like it, it doesn't work out, whatever, he can go back to his job in safety and environmental (which his lead is hoping for). Smart of AB's company actually... after having passed the exam, AB knew he was more marketable with other companies as an engineer. Now? He is looking forward to trying a new position on for size within his company.

We got home yesterday and it was like a competition... who got to share their exciting news first?

I usually win that battle because I can just start talking when AB walks in the door. I have had that little unwind time to relax and formulate what I am anxiously awaiting to tell him.

My opening line to him went something like, "you know you are going to have a great day when your client asks what you would do with unlimited funds and there isn't a hint of sarcasm to her voice!"

My task over the next two weeks is organize my teams thoughts, revisit our Gantt charts and define our critical paths on our suite of projects to determine how much it will take to shorten it. (Like how I am using all this project management lingo?? Gettin' good at this I tell you.) Do we need to hire on a few more scientists to get the work done? It's that important to the client. She closed the call by telling me she has a new and unrelated project to start up and could I please assemble another team for this new project? I have to admit how much I enjoyed e-mailing a group of people who are virtual unknowns to me asking them if they want a project. Rare does a project fall in your lap unsolicited from a client. I enjoyed being the bearer of that news to unsuspecting people.

Later that afternoon I got an e-mail from my much adored deputy sector lead. He is routinely reminding us that he is retiring soon. I am often surprised that he seems to think we are going to forget. When in fact, actually, we will mourn his leaving and are right now just pretending that he will be here forever. His e-mail was actually to a few people with me copied on it, letting people know who he was going to be transferring a subset of his files to.

Me.

Now I am just trying to figure out how to word this for my staff development review paperwork that is due next Friday.

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