Bond, Budget and Pushers

Greetings and salutations from sunny Jamaica! Yeah, don’t I wish (LOL). Sitting on a beach, enjoying the sun, listening to the sound of the waves rolling up on shore, watching the surfers, with a nice big glass of iced tea sounds soooo heavenly right now!

It’s been hectic this past 5 or 6 days…weekend was good however. Swim team had a big ol’ meet all day Saturday. I volunteered to help with the team lunch, feeding not only our guys and gals, but all the officials and the other coaches. We fed over 100 people! Whew! Our kids took first place; the Guppy took 1st and 4th in his 2 events…so proud :0) He shaved a couple tenths off his best time for the 100 free - way to go!! My DH and I went to the new James Bond movie at the early matinee Sunday. I know the critics have been trashing it, calling it the “Bond Ultimatum” or whatever, but after viewing the movie….I don’t think we watched the same film! I have no clue what movie they watched, but it wasn’t “Quantum of Solace”. It was action packed, good story, interesting new characters; I don’t get what was not to like, but okay…whatever. A word of advice: the action starts immediately…hold on to your hats! Oh and had a great preview of the new “Fast and the Furious”….yeah, baby!!! Two words….Vin Diesel :0) It’s got all the original cast members, the preview looked awesome!!! Can not wait to see it!!!

Work, however, has not been full of shiney happy people as of late. The department heads have been working on next year’s budget since last Tuesday. Certainly a task I do not envy. Mostly because we’ve gotta have it done by Wednesday! (Yeah, those lovely persons at HQ gave us 8 whole days to do our entire budget for next year. Generous of them, wasn’t it) My poor boss is about fit to be tied. And after doing budget for our office for my boss, I sympathize even more….ugh. By the time I finished compiling the data I was responsible for (6 months worth) to give to my boss I had so many figures in my head I think my pupils turned into dollar signs! If I never have to look at another piece of “greenbar” paper again it will be entirely too soon. And that would be tomorrow. I have to go over our costs for last week for my weekly Wednesday report. Ick. But for all my grousing, I am very pleased that I am trusted enough to help with my department’s budget. Kind of a big deal…at least to me. And then there's the union stuff....one of the labor unions is trying to unionize our facility (we are the only one in our company's US division that is not). This started about...oh, I'd say 4 months ago. And has gotten ugly to the point where one of the "pushers" in our facility has been threatening other employees if they did not vote for the union. The union has brought a flock of thugs up from Texas who have created traffic jams handing out flyers at the end of the work days, show up at our employee's doors, call them on the phone. They lie like rugs...how can you tell they're lying?? Their lips are moving. These "pushers" have promised our people pretty much everything under the sun (you know, like our politicians do) and yet my company has to play by the rules and are restricted in what they can say and do in their efforts to keep the union out. It's rediculous. Vote is tomorrow...we've got the goverment NLRA folks here to conduct it and to escort our employees up to vote so there is no intimidation on the way to the polling booth. Kind of late for that one but better late than never, right? Should be interesting. I will be glad when it is over. Just so it will be over and things can get back to...well, normal, or whatever the new "normal" will be if they get in.

Hope your week is off to a rip roarin’ great start! Enjoy your day!