1 out of 10

Yesterday my former employer decided to have me join the 10% of the work force that is looking for a job. I had worked for ARCADIS for 10 years and 1 month up to yesterday. Apparently company loyalty is not what it used to be.

A week ago a biologist in our office was let go. He was part of a different operations group (Permit and Planning I was in site investigation and remediation) and had been with the company for the past three years and had also been with the company in the 1990's. He had over 20 years total experience. Apparently his supervisor called him the day before to tell him that they were going to have a call on the next day. He said this didn't make him feel good. On Friday his supervisor called him, along with a person from HR and they told him he was done as of that day. His department had been light for work and he said that he had been up and down for work load, but currently was busy and had a bunch of work coming. Overall (form what I have been told) his department was reducer by about half of it employees.

So this past week the department operations manager was in the office on Thursday and Friday for a standard office meeting with everybody. On Friday when I got in around 10am after being at a job-site I noticed my supervisor was in the office. I didn't remember that she was going to be visiting on Friday. I checked my emails and no where was it mentioned that she was going to be in the office. So I went and asked her why she was in, she said it was only a short visit a adverted the question the best she could.

Around 11:15am I was siting at my cube and I saw my supervisor walking towards me, at the same time the operations manager walked out of the office he was siting in and came towards me. At this point I new already that I was done. He said they wanted to talk to me in the conference room. As we stepped into the conference room I thought they have already announced that three people in the department were promoted, so I was pretty sure that was not where this meeting was going to be heading.

They said that corporate had decided that staffing reductions were made my employment was terminated as of a result. So the years of loyalty to the company only meant more severance pay as apparently the new guy they hired one month ago was now more valuable to the company than I was. This was a nice kick in the gut.

So now it is on to looking for a new job. Maybe this will be a blessing in disguise. I need to keep a positive attitude, send out a lot of resumes and make a lot of phone calls.

Happy Holidays

Happy New Year to everyone. Chirstmas was a snowy one this year. We celebrated Christmas in Chanhassen with Lois, Con, Jon, Amy, Noah, Carly, Willy and Lily the Saturday before Christmas. In hindsight this was a a good decision, since we didn't have any of the weather issues.

On Christmas Eve we planned on going to Oak Hill Church, but the service was canceled. Christmas eve we did got out to diner with Joy to the St. Paul Grill. It was great food and fun to sit by the window and see the Christmas lights in Rice Park. Christmas and New Years have come and gone so quick before you know it it will be Fourth of July.

1st Real Snow of the Season

We had our first snow storm of the season and we survived. According to the National Weather Service we did end up with 8 inches of snow. This was followed by wind and the very cold temperatures. It seems that winter has finally arrived and it came all at once.
During the build up to the storm KFAN radio was calling it a "snonami" and that we were going to be in "snomageddon". This is of course from all of the hype the local weather people were giving out. You think by listening to them you will be stuck inside of a week with no access to the outside world. Well we survived.

Deer Camp

The first weekend of deer hunting has come and gone and our group did not harvest a deer. We went back to our sport near Long Lake off of Cusson Road north of Orr. It was a warm weekend and it seemed that the deer were not very active. I did kick one up after getting out of the car prior to shooting time. That was the only deer that I heard or saw the whole weekend.

This weekend I am planning on hunting with my dad, brother, nephew and possible others that hunt at their deer camp. They had a successful hunt last weekend so hopefully they did not harvest all the deer in their area.

Moving back home

Well maybe you heard and maybe you didn't but our house sale fell through do to financing issues for the buyer. We didn't find out until a week before the closing date that the buyer was unable to secure the funds. This apparently was due to a a bunch of different, most related to our condo association rules, the number of owner occupied units and changes to the mortgage laws.

We have decided to stay as it would be very unlikely that a different buyer would be able to secure financing either. We had nearly everything moved into a storage unit and now we are moving things back home. As we are getting stuff out of storage we have also been selling, donating and giving away somethings. Pretty soon we hope to have all our stuff moved back home.

House Shopping

Well we sold our house in August and close on Septermber 28th, so we have been busy packing and looking for a new house. We will miss the townhouse in Maplewood after we moved as it has served us very well. Our interim plan is to move in with Sue's Mom Diana and Gordie's townhome. We put an offer for a house in house today in St. Paul and are waiting to here back about the offer. We are hoping that it all works out otherwise we will just keep looking and something will come along.

Antique tractors

This past Sunday I went with my dad to the Scott Carver Thresher's Association tractor show. My dad brought two of his tractors (Farmal Cub and his W-6) and my Simplicity garden tractor to be displayed at the show. I had been to this show one time before, but I never had my own tractor on display. We arrived on Sunday in time to have a quick lunch and then drive the tractors in the parade. I drove the Cub while he drove the W-6. His tractors were near the front of the parade and my Simplicity was near the back, so it gave me time to drive mine in the parade as well.

We spent sometime after the parade walking around looking at all of the different tractors and steam engines. We watched threshing machine thresh rye for a little bit and talked about the fire that started on a hay wagon the day before. I missed this, but apparently it added for some excitement on Saturday. While we were loading up the tractors with it being so dry a log started to smolder near the sawmill, probably starting from a steam engine that was runnning the sawmill. It was put out right away and didn't cause any damage.

It was a fun day. After the show we loaded the tractors up and brought them down to the shed in Waseca where they will sit until the next show.