Warm Heart

I was thumbing through some old photos from my webshots albums tonight and came across this one, it really warms my heart and makes me feel pretty lucky!

July Ramblings

Well we haven't camped since our Maine vacation, mainly due to my schedule at work. There has been a lot of overtime and yes I have sucked it up and will continue for a while.

As far as work goes I have been accepted into the operations team of the Utilities dept permanently which in my opinion is safer than being in maintenance, I feel that there will be future cutbacks and typically maintenance gets hit first, that is not saying that operations will be left untouched, it just make take longer.

I'm not fooling myself in believing that I will reach my full retirement with Pfizer, I just need to hit the next milestone of 50 years old, which if past severance packages continue and include a 5 yr addition to age or service would qualify me for free medical for life and a discounted early retirement, (very important in my case).

I will continue to go to work and do the best job possible but the feelings I have towards the company have changed so much, they preach respect and value for people but all I see is corporate irresponsibility and the almighty dollar. while I know education is important, Pfizer manufacturing was a place where someone could go with a high school diploma, a good work ethic and make a decent living for his family, now it is all about degrees, there are many colleagues of mine that have give 20 t0 30 years of their lives to this company, very few of these colleagues will or have been able to transition to the research operation and those that have are engineers, managers and directors, What does that tell the average Joe? and Research is not the crystal palace everyone makes it out to be, they are in the process of cutting their own underlings and contracting out those services you can only wonder when you will be next. Because your not considered talented or creative and you don't have that parchment paper.

So my goal right now is to make as much as possible and set Deb and I up so if and when the time comes for me to part company we will be prepared for it and treat it as a new chapter in out life instead of the end of the world, which is what I thought this time last year, Right now I am one of the lucky ones, I found a different job and will be here longer than a lot of my co-workers, but I think of them a lot and think how unfair all this is.

The next outing with the camper will be to Stonington High school for the relay for life Aug 4th, hopefully the weather will be better than last year.

Diane is in Oregon with her nieces and we are taking good care of her pooch Annie, not quite use to the 5 am kisses or the 11pm "I want to play not sleep" she is doing fine thou and we look forward to Diane's return, and speaking of her return she will be starting her own new adventure as a homeowner, before she left Diane purchased a condo, a 2 bedroom town house hopefully I can do a couple projects before she comes home.

That's about it for now, keep plugging away, keep a positive attitude and don't let the bumps in the road give you a flat tire!