New Beginnings and Old Friends

Brand New Bebe

So the department’s Website Guru had a baby last Friday. Well, his wife had the baby, but they brought li’l Grace in to see everybody today. Okay, so Grace wasn’t seeing anybody cuz she was out like a light, but everybody was over there googling over her li’l sleepy self. They were here when I walked in from lunch at Fazolli’s with an old coworker, so of course I was required to check out the li’l bebe. Gotta admit: she was cute. With a li’l white bow in her considerable mass of dark hair. Wasn’t quite sure what to say, though, other than: “Yup, pretty cute.” I don’t googly well.

Lunch with a Friend

But lunch was great. My old coworker, I’ll call her Rockin Grandma cuz she has a teenage grand-daughter, but you’d hardly ever tell from the look of her. I’ve been to a few Happy Hours with her, and she can party hardier than most of the rest of us put together… lol She’s also from Cali, so we talked a lot about my trip over lunch, and her next planned visit to her sister over there.

Past Workplace

R.G. and I worked in the same office during my post in my last department. We got along great… in fact I got along wonderfully with just about everybody in that office. I can’t quite say I worked WITH them, cuz we didn’t belong to the same department, but I considered them my co-workers. I was pretty much the only employee in MY department, so the only person I truly worked WITH was my boss. And we got along like oil and vinegar. She’s the one I’ve previously referenced here as The Battle Ax. That was a biggie. Plus I was simply not a good fit for the department I actually worked for… and consequently, a few of the tasks I was required to fulfill.

Of course, it was my own fault for not really paying attention when I took the job in the first place. I’d been excited about a big step up in both pay and responsibilities, but failed to truly think about what a “Medical Research Center” means. Battle Ax had just secured a grant from NASA to start this new Center, and I was hired to build it up from an organizational standpoint. Unfortunately, the chances of my fitting well were doomed from the start.

Doomed to Fail

First, because I never even met the woman until I was workin there for about a month. She’d been traveling (which she did a LOT) during my interview with the Co-Director of the Center, and the Director of the department that donated office space for my use. And when we DID finally meet, it was Extreme-Discomfort-at-First-Sight, which quickly moved to Hating-Each-Other’s-Guts-at-All-Sightings. The only good thing about our interaction (and probly the only reason I managed to stick it out for a year) was it’s very scarcity. Her office wasn’t even in the same building as mine, plus she was constantly out traveling. The second reason I was doomed to fail was the very nature of the Center. First time I was required to order pigs for experiments, I knew my time there was short.

Good Things out of Bad Situations

However, I filled my purpose well in creating an administrative structure for the Center, garnered a year of invaluable experience wearing every hat in the department, and made some pretty good friends with the peeps in the office. In fact, R.G. invited me to come have dinner with her and her guy sometime, and has promised me for a year I’ll be invited to the next Happy Hour. Lol I’ll grant that she underwent some major surgery just after I left, so I can believe that Happy Hour hasn’t been on the priority list lately.

I’ve also promised to tell her ALLLL about my trip, and I’ll have to get my pics onto my Yahoo Photo Album or something so she can see em. :)