Well there’s going to be layoffs. The number that I’m hearing for our department is worse than I thought it would be and they are working on a new work schedule for everyone that’s left. The axe will fall on March 9th which is when they will tell the “winners” of their fate. I feel pretty good about making the cut but you never know. My last job hired and laid off people all the time and I made it through 3 or 4 cycles of it there before I ended up quitting. It sucks every time. Just gotta hope for the best and prepare for the worst I guess. I ended up getting a 7% pay cut which was more than I thought but I adjusted my tax deductions a little to compensate for the additional money that I can deduct next year from the recent stimulus. That plus the little tax cut from the same stimulus where they will be taking out a little less each pay period (eventually) and I’m coming out pretty close to even.

I was going to go see about a car loan yesterday actually but I decided to hold off until after the 9th too see how that goes first. The truck is pretty much on it’s last leg and I don’t really want to put any money into it so I thought that it’s finally time to get something better. I found some good deals on a couple low mileage Ford Focus’s that are only a couple years old. The Focus isn’t all that cool of a car though. It’s nice enough I guess, and they get 35 miles to the gallon. It would be nice to be able to go on a road trip somewhere and not have to bang on the dash to make the radio work.

I did 18 miles on Sunday and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be a couple months ago when I was looking at the training schedule. I was definitely tired at the end but I made it through ok. I’m glad it’s going to be nice today when I wake up and tomorrow so I can go outside and run instead. It needs to be nice on Sunday just once so I can do that long run outside too. I got a pretty nice fleece beanie cap in the mail embroidered with the Olathe Marathon stuff for being one of the first 200 people to register for the marathon. That was pretty cool.

I guess that’s all I’ve got for today. How’s everyone else doing?

I only noticed this because it had my name in it.

Hopefully everyone wakes up to find some fancy new chopped off extremities left for you from our hockey mask wearing patron saint of murder, Jason, under your Friday the 13th tree! What fun!

Seriously though how’s everyone doing? Me? I’m getting a little nervous since the weekly update on the status of the company came out and now for the first time they are talking layoffs. That just sucks. I still think I’m relatively safe (knock on wood) just because of the way my job is, unlike a lot of the shops where if they have no work, they are out of a job. They have us in the line department staffing the place 24/7/365 whether there’s anything going on or not just in case something happens which it often does. There’s really no rhyme or reason to it honestly. Personally I’m not noticing all that much of a slowdown in what I do. Guess I’ll just cross my fingers and hope to ride it out.

They say there’s going to be 8-10 inches of snow tomorrow. Thankfully it’s starting at about 6am when I get off this morning and then I’m off work until Monday so I get to miss it all for the most part. I’ll just cocoon up in my apartment and ignore it since I can’t stand snow. Let’s hope that will be it for the year and it gets warm again.

School is going well. I guess I have a 100% in the class since the teacher ended up scaling the last test so more people would be passing. I suppose that means I’m tied for the top of the class since you can’t get higher than a 100%. I am truly a shining example of excellence in mediocrity if I do say so myself!

Tomorrow is Valentines Day! That great made up holiday created by the Florist Mafia in conjunction with the Hallmark Corporation! Everyone got their crap for their sweetie? Me, I got no sweetie, nothing new there. It would help if I went out and looked I guess. Actually Valentines day is the best day of the year for a single guy to go to the bars and meet single women. If you see a table of women all probabilities are that they are all single (or really, really pissed off at their man) and they decided to get together for a “to hell with, them we don’t need any damn men, let’s go out and get drunk and wear our skankiest clothes so that they see what they are missing” girls night out. I’m not going anywhere though since I can’t think of any single wingmen to go with anymore. Everyone is on lockdown now, married with kids and all that. I could go by myself I guess but I just feel completely lame doing that, especially with no booze to lubricate the situation.

I paid for my entry into the Olathe Marathon the other day. There was really no rush I guess, it isn’t the most popular race in the world and there was no chance of it selling out. Hell, I think you can sign up on race day for that race. I’m keeping up with the training, although not always on the day I’m supposed to be doing it. Did 15 miles last Sunday which is the longest I have ever gone. I didn’t do it straight through though, I split it up into 4 pieces and got some water in between and took a breather for a few minutes. That counts I guess, it just took 15 minutes or so longer than it would have if I ran all the way through. Gotta do 16 miles this Sunday and then 18 the week after that with other shorter runs during the week of course. It needs to be nice on a Sunday for once so I can do these long runs outside instead of on the hamster wheel. The wheel is getting brutal.