Soothing and Trimming

There won’t be a lot to write tonight as things today conspired to keep me busy until pretty late.

Oklahoma is in the process of consolidating all the Information Technology branches in all the various state agencies under one “umbrella” agency and director. The IT division director at the agency where we work applied for and was hired for the position of being over all the IT departments of the state agencies that deal with “public safety.”

Since he did that, Jo has been moved into his old position at our agency and is now over all of our IT division. While she hasn’t gotten a raise yet for the extra responsibility, that could be coming in the next few weeks of maybe the next two months. That we’ll just have to wait and see what comes about.

In the meantime, she is faced with other agency directors who are now suddenly hostile towards the IT division here, even though we have been a good “family” of folks in the past. They are resentful, and rightly so, that the state is now going to still make each agency pay the salaries of the IT people who are working with the agencies PLUS an additional 4% “administration fee,”

Not only will that increase the need for more funds from the legislature to cover those additional costs, but I’m not so sure that the state is really going to save any money with this consolidation plan.

Anyway, since Jo’s been treated like the bad sheep of the family lately, I’ve been trying to help sooth her and keep her from getting too uptight about the whole thing. I suspect that those now hostile at work will eventually see the need to temper their attitudes and things will get back to normal.

Jo is hoping that she can hold out during this consolidation thing until October of 2013, which is the date that she could take early retirement. I’ve applied for another position within the agency that would be a management position. Should I get that job, there would be a significant increase in my salary, which would help us get completely out of debt sooner.

However, the quandary I would be in then is that if I were to stay in that position for three years, it would increase my potential retirement benefits significantly. So, if I get the job, which is a very big IF, we will have another decision to make.

After soothing Jo some, I went out and used the electric weed trimmer to “mow” on the off door side of the coach. That area is where the sewer line and our water supply lines are located, making it impossible to mow there with a regular mower. So, a trimmer has to be used to do that job.

Once I finished that, ate supper, took a shower, read blogs and typed this small entry for the blog, it is now 11:30pm. So, I think it is time to call it a day and head for bed. Good night, All.

In the picture above, note the splashes in the water behind each of the birds in take-off mode.  I think it is so cool that those splashes remain even after the birds have gone on past.