Friday,
April 12, 2002

The Usual Suspects

Now that I've added another 10 MB to my web site, courtesy of io.com, I figure it was time to upload some pictures and revel in my new elbow room. These shots, by the way, were taken by the Man from McKinney (all rights reserved) during a departmental lunch that I wangled my way onto by, well, whining.

See, I sit with and do the bulk of my work with the Engineering Department, and I'm listed as being a member of the department according to the Commercial Company's phone book, but technically I was hired as a member of the Operations Department. As that's the case, the Engineering manager never really knows whether to include me in departmental activities. Which is fine if you're talking about departmental meetings, but this was lunch, dammit. So when the group was getting ready to leave, I called out plaintively, "Have a nice lunch, folks. . ."

A few beats later, the manager asked me if I wanted to come. Yes, I have no shame. . .

Frightening looking bunch, aren't we? This, by the way, is about half of the Engineering department at the Commercial Company -- you'll recognize the redhead gesturing in confusion at the left, followed by Aleksandr, Paul, Troy, DeWayne, Virote and another new guy whose name I haven't gotten yet. We're walking back to the building after lunch at Dickey's (mmm -- barbecue) in an attempt to burn off some of the 8,000 calories we just ingested while enjoying the two weeks of spring that Texas usually offers before turning into the ninth level of hell.

I think this would make a great album cover, don't you? Or maybe a recruiting poster. Note the excitingly tilted angle and the sense of action, courtesy of the Man from McKinney and his digital camera.

On to specifics. This is DeWayne, the CC's web designer and Javascript programmer (once again, I'm presuming that you'll recognize the redhead). DeWayne is kinda my counterpart in the Engineering department in that he's not actually a programmer, either. He does the images for the web-based tools and the actual company websites, and I do the words.

I should add that no, he doesn't normally look like that (and my right hand is visible, so you can just get that thought out of your heads, sweeties). He posed specifically for the shot. DeWayne's like that, you see.

Across the table from us are Paul, our new senior engineer, and the Man from McKinney himself. If the color balance looks odd, it's because I had some serious glare from the windows and had to burn and bump up the saturation so that you could actually see the boys.

I had another reason for wanting to go out and celebrate (well, not that we were celebrating -- oh, you know what I mean). Moments before the group was summoned, I'd finished our taxes for 2001, and a huge weight was gone from my shoulders. See, I'd gotten some paperwork in January or so detailing what I owed as taxes due to TBS moving me from Sweden to Texas last year (turns out most of it was considered to be taxable income, whee). Since the thought of paying over $2K made me want to vomit blood, I decided to wait until I got paid today to actually sit down and do the bloody things (well, it seemed kind of pointless until I actually had the money).

Turns out that, due to my 4-month stretch of unemployment and the fact that I couldn't claim unemployment, the tax bill was pretty much absorbed into what I was owed as a refund. All in all, I'll be getting a little over $200 back, which is a huge relief (and the Bodacious Brit is getting a rather sweet sum back, which he wants to use on a getaway weekend sometime in May).

So Mellie is a happy camper, and plans on celebrating by going to Isis' Belly Dance Treasures tomorrow and picking up the rectangular scarf she really wanted. Whee!