Put in my 60 day move-out notice for my apartment. Yay!

Oh, an apparently I don't have to do any move-out cleaning either. It's standard they clean everything and paint. This is good because my cat has rubbed the paint off of every corner in the place.

Picture of the cat? pleeeease

Moving is always exiting. Happy for you that everything worked out nicely.

His name is Cheeto



And if I had a bunch just like him...................

cute. Love cats.

I've somehow come to some sort of zen with my job. The latest recruiter has a couple of potential things lined up and I'm just not all that fired up about them. I think I've reached a point where I'm OK with the insanity here as long as they don't pile hours on me, which they haven't. Also, I suspect I'm going to be transferred to another team soon. I'm ambivalent about that now because I've sort of figured out how to manage my boss lately and as bad as she is, it could be worse.

This was weird and annoying. The neighbors below me have an obnoxious schnauzer. I absolutely hate this breed. I've known two other people with them an they are the worst dogs ever.

Anyway, several times I've been close to their door when they opened it. The dog immediately comes after me. They have it on a leash but do nothing to hold it back. I've been going up the stairs when it appears at the top and I've just gone back down the stairs and around to get to my apartment. I've never said anything to these people. I just walk away.

Yesterday, the woman came around the corner with the dog and it, as usual, immediately went ballistic. I backed up a bit and she kept walking towards me. I backed up to the side and she LET MORE LEASH OUT!. I did this again and SHE DID IT AGAIN!. Third time the same. WTF!? I gave her an earful and she said she wasn't deliberately doing this. LOL.

WTF is wrong with people?

Haha, I used to live next to a guy who ran a dog sitting/walking business out of his apartment. He would let the dogs out of his apartment off leash and either never leash them if he was taking them out back to piss/****, or leash them up just before he went outside. There was a fire door in the hall between us, and any time I opened my door to see a team of barking dogs off their leash in front of his apartment, I'd turn around and go out the back door instead of fighting my way through.

Much worse was getting swarmed coming in the door and trying to get to my apartment with a load of groceries. Most dog owners think the world revolves around them and are completely oblivious (just like the non-dog-owner population in general).

geez

I come back from a run and guess who I see. The dog woman. But this time her husband is with her. He starts at me about me "yelling" at his wife. I did not do that. I explained the situation and we went back and forth for a bit. Then he threatened me if I ever kicked his dog. Something I've been very careful not to do. He never settled down but the woman actually tried to engage me. I think she sort of gets it.

LOL I thought about suggesting, to kick this dog, so that he doesn't dare to go for you.

I would say that rules in Germany are a lot more restrictive for dog owners. Situation like that would lead to a steep penalty for a dog owner.

It's the owners that need a good kick, not their dog.

Yeah, I don't get how they think this is ok. But I really don't want to start a war with them. I just want to go to my apartment without having their dog come at me. Doesn't seem like I'm asking much here. Oh well.

Went by the condo today. I'm a bit disappointed on the progress. They have painted some but I thought they would have finished painting in a week and have some tile done. Javier was there so I did get a chance to talk to him. He said they would start tiling next week.

They had enough paint up for me to take some pics. I'm sort of meh on the cream in the guest bedroom. It's a bit too yellow but I think when the carpet gets in it will be sort of ok. The blue in the master was a LOT darker than I thought it would be. Javier and I talked about the master bath some. I originally picked an even darker blue but he suggested much lighter. I was going to go back to Lowe's but there was a swatch that will match up well so we went with that. The living room came out as expected and I'm happy with it.

And, when it is all said and done, paint is easy to fix. I can always get anything that I don't like repainted later.

Guest bedroom



Master bedroom



Living/office/dining

It appears as if the MLH thread was deleted.

I was informed today that the 2 contractors working on the systems I'm in charge of are no longer on our team. So, the whole steaming pile of dung just got put in my lap and I have no backup.

There are so many things wrong with this.

1) The "language" this is written in isn't even a language and I have 0 experience with it. And I don't want any. It is a huge negative on my resume. I'll basically have to lie about what I'm working on to get another job.

1b) The whole thing is a giant house of cards and working on it is gonna suck so bad.

2) I'm now the only person that the bitch from hell user can contact anymore. This alone might get me fired because I'm not in any mood to put up with her

3) Of course, management has no plans whatsoever. I "think" they think this gets replaced by the end of the year. Not a chance. This will mean that our year end changes will fall on me and me alone. It took 2 people that both knew the application and were experienced in the language a buttload of hours to get this done last year.

4) I'm now on call 24/7

5) I'm actually now responsible for 3 systems all written by different people. I'm only familiar with one.

grrr......................

I doubt this news is surprising to anyone who reads your blog here or what you've posted in H&F.

I've been quite surprised recently that you've said you want to stay at your job. It's solidly below 50% or whatever your average expectation should be for a job in your industry. Maybe bottom 10%? I don't know, it seems like a huge mess all the time.

Can you tell that recruiter you're even more motivated to find something else?

Had a long talk with my boss's boss. He's a good guy and I think he's pretty sincere. I feel somewhat better about the situation. I doubt much gets done about it but I think I can live with it.

The conversation veered off to my immediate boss, which wasn't really my goal. But he's super aware that our group is not very happy. Not sure what gets done about that but I think something will change.

Obviously this isn't an ideal work situation. On the other hand, much of my reaction is due to a negative thought process that I struggle with a lot. After letting this settle in a bit I'm sure I'm thinking the worst case scenarios are inevitable and that probably isn't true.

I met Rob yesterday, but not so much business. He has season tickets to the Tampa Bay Lightning. I have never been to a pro hockey game. Super game - scoreless until the last 1:40 when we scored. Much excitement!

We did discuss the condo. He's sort of been out of the picture. He's actually an independent contractor and is strictly sales but has taken over management of this just because. But he's been busy on other things thinking all is moving well. I mentioned to him that I didn't think they were moving much at all so he said he would light a fire under them.

I got a half day off yesterday so I stopped by the condo to check on progress. Unfortunately, very little has been made. There was one guy still painting. It's been almost 3 weeks and they have done nothing but paint and it still hasn't finished. Nobody else is doing anything.

I sent a huge email to the owners expressing my displeasure.

I have a bad feeling I'm going to be living out of a hotel soon.

I did take some pictures while I was there but I was so pissed I didn't spend much time.

This is the new master bath tile. I think I'm going to like it much more.



The paint color is starting to grow on me. I'm not sure why I didn't take any living room pics but here's some bedroom/bath pics.

Guest bath/bedroom







master bedroom




master closet



I took this because this is where the urinal is going to go. Javier said he had to do some extra work here (obviously not yet). But it does show the master bath color which seems ok so far.



Laundry room kind of a grey white



Powder room (same grey white)

I wonder, don't you have a time line in the contract? I mean something where it is written, by when this or that job should be finished.

Unfortunately, no.

These guys got glowing reviews and seemed to have their act together. Maybe I'm gullible, I dunno. I just believe that you should bargain with people in good faith instead of the lawyer method but I keep getting burned with this.

Do they have any incentive to get it done quickly?

Money I guess. They have a pretty big payment due upon delivery of the cabinets and a relatively smaller one upon completion. I've decided to give them a small good faith payment next and hold back the bulk until completion. We'll see how that plays out.

Good luck!

The project manager, Keith, sent me a lengthy reply indicating he WILL make this happen by the end of May. It seemed pretty sincere and he assured me he would send me progress reports until then. Fingers crossed.

Rob texted to tell me the electrician was there installing switches/receptacles. He asked if I wanted him to replace the other existing ones to match. He told me I could just pay the electrician directly. Sounded good since there were quite a few and they looked pretty crappy.