On friday morning, I parted ways with my employer. This was probably inevitable since the IT Director who hired me stormed out a month or so ago after a bust-up with the CEO. At that point all my projects were put on hold, I was relegated to piecemeal web development, and told specifically not to take on any new work without approval. Which, obviously, never came. I was already talking to recruiters and considering options, but was hoping it would at least wait until after TAM Australia. Still, this way I get a pay-out of notice, leave and entitlements. Better, if I stay in the same industry, I'm likely to get more money and can leverage a few of the SharePoint 2010 skills I sharpened while I still had project approval, such as OpenXML Document generation and newsfeed programming. I did actually take a paycut in this role, purely for the culture and the promise of autonomy and cool projects, including integration of Peformance Point to an industry-leading, hosted LOB app suite (which never, in the end, happened). I'm disappointed from the three-month view, but the last month made it clear that after the loss of the global IT Director, my area was going to be marginalised and eventually starved to death.
So, anyway, I came home, called a few contacts, arranged some meetings for next week, replied "yes" to some TAM events that I'd thought I couldn't make due to work commitments, did some housework and settled down for a beer or two.
Which is where the tale turns from lame to simply pathetic.
On opening my second beer I spilled the whole bottle, in its entirety, into my lap. When in a reclining chair, it's hard to escape, so the whole thing soaked in before I could get up... I was drenched, but there was nothing I could do about it.
So I sighed, got changed, cleaned up and carried on as normal.
On Saturday, more of the same. At about 5.30ish I again settled in with a beer. This time the third one went into my lap, in a stunning repeat of the previous night. I was due to go out for birthday drinks at 7pm, but had just entirely soaked my last remaining pair of decent jeans, and I was fucked if I was going to wear cargo pants or a suit. So, sorry Rachael. That's the main reason I didn't make it.
Then today, I left the house bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for a day's shopping in preparation for TAM Week. I grabbed some office supplies then attempted to buy a music stand and ukulele hanger for my mic stand. (Actually, I was hoping to find this one)
This was where it started to go wrong. No guitar shop had what I needed, not even close. I tried several. Frustrated, in Gladesville, I decided to turn round and head back to town.
Straight into the path of a 4WD Crewcab Ute.
So, the front end of my car is mangled, I've strained my back (not from the crash but from trying to render the car drivable again afterwards), I'm unemployed and have developed a habit of spilling beer on my crotch. And I still don't have my music stand or ukulele hook.
So the best thing I can say about the weekend is probably that I'm not actually dead or in a vegetative state yet.
Still, this downer before TAM week can only render the coming shenanigans even more awesome. I hope.
(I write this post not to elicit sympathy, but merely to outline how stunned I am with the outcome of the last few days. Fuck)