I’m Back

So, this is my first post in a very long time. A lot has happened since that last post in October of 2020. That one was about local candidates and my recommendations. The intervening years was just too turbulent for me, and I know my posts would be mostly rants and filled with gloom and doom. We still face a lot of the problems coming out of the past couple of years, and I’m sure I’ll be ranting a lot, but it is time to get back into the game.

So what’s happened in my life? Well, back on the morning of December 4, 2000, I started a job with a company called IMC, Inc. based out of Reston, VA. I stayed in Tampa. Starting in about 2016, I think, the owner began to sell of the business in pieces, and by 2019, we had gone from about 450 people to five. We were building our own application. The plan was to get it into the market, build some valuation in the new company and sell it. That last remaining group was promised an equity stake in the business.

On the afternoon of December 3, 2019, I got a call from the owner’s daughters (who were “managing” the business) telling me that someone wanted to buy what remained, but wasn’t interested in the application, and wasn’t keeping any of us. There was no equity stake in that, and my severance package was that, if I’d help them wind down the few existing clients we had on the application, they’d pay me and provide benefits through the end of the month.

Well, the holidays are coming up, but I start working my network for a new job and then hit it hard in early January. I start getting callbacks and the usual follow-on interviews. Then, as we all know, COVID makes its appearance, and we go into shutdown mode. People are calling me back with apologies, their companies are putting a hold on everything. I finally got a new job, making a bit less money, in early July. I’m still with that company, and the money has gotten better.

I’d been working remotely for over 20 years, so this new work environment wasn’t all that new to me. Lay works for a global pharmaceutical company, and people still need their drugs, so they had to continue to operate (as a matter of fact, they got one of the contracts to manufacture the Moderna vaccine, and it was produced here in Tampa…didn’t help us get vaccines any sooner though). They had strict protocols about temperature checks and masks. So, our routines didn’t change a lot, but my slow-cooker sure got a lot more use.

However, we didn’t get by unscathed. In August of 2020, North Carolina allowed barbers and hair stylists to re-open with some conditions about masks. My mom was 86 then, and like women that age, getting a haircut was important, so she went to her usual salon wearing her masks. The two ladies that run the place were not, and when Mom asked them to, they refused, with one saying, “No one is going to make me wear a mask.” Early the next week Mom gets a call from her hairdresser explaining that she has to cancel her appointment for that Friday because she’s been exposed to COVID. Two days later Mom was in the hospital with COVID. She spent about nine days in the ICU, and it was bad for a while, but she managed to pull through.

That was the worst feeling of my life. I didn’t drive up because there was nothing we could do. At that point, you couldn’t even go through the door of the hospital, making it all the worse. Mom got through, but it took a lot out of her, so now she must have some health aides to help her get up and bathe each morning and put her to bed each night. It was still a couple of months before I comfortable going up to see her. I got a pharmacy test two days before finally driving up. Was extremely careful on the way up, and still kept my distance from her while there.

The policy where Lay works were that you must wear a mask inside unless you are in your office (alone). Lay shares an office with a guy who was one of the big anti-maskers. He had a lot of folks for the Holidays, and on Thursday of the first week of the year he sent out an early morning text showing his positive test. He’s always taken the “in your office” exemption to masks to mean he didn’t have to wear his, even if Lay was also in the office. Well, we gave lay a quick test and it was positive, and then a PCR test came back positive. By Friday evening, Lay was not feeling well, and Saturday was a pretty rough day. By Monday he was out all that week. On that Monday, I tested positive but never had any symptoms. By then we’d both been vaccinated and had boosters.

I’ve been back to visit Mom on a more regular basis now, always doing quick tests. I traveled to Salt Lake City in July to speak at a professional conference. I wore my mask on the planes. Another person I work with also attended, and she was positive a few days after her return and was out sick for a few days. I’m speaking at another conference in Nashville later this month, and me and Lay are going the Friday before some exploring. He’ll come home Sunday night, and I’m there through Wednesday.

That about catches you up with the big events in our lives. So far, we managed to get through the past two years OK.