News Around the Office

As some of you may already know, the company I work for is negotiating a merger with one of their competitors (mild competition, mostly complementary product offerings, which is why this is a good "marriage").  The merger has not been finalized, and decisions have not been made/announced about who will be let go or asked to relocate.  We will find out about this after the merger is completed on January 7.  That may be some people's last day - it may be mine.  Or it may not.

As far as I am aware, the Milwaukee office will remain open.  Our headquarters will no longer reside in Atlanta, but instead will be in Scottsdale, AZ (an improvement, if you ask me).  Our CEO will join the board of directors, and their CEO will become CEO of the new joint company.  The company will receive a new name.  There will be "reductions in workforce" and "redundancies".  There will be severance packages (rather generous ones).

I will keep everyone abreast of what I find out and am allowed to share.  For now, it's "business as usual", and we have been asked to "hold off" on looking for new jobs just yet.  I don't know where the next two months will take me, but it will all turn out in the end.  I have my suspicions about what will happen at my present job, as well as my own hopes for what will happen.  For fear of public disclosure, I won't share them here just yet.

In happier news, I had a fantastic weekend last week!  It started with Thursday actually, when I attended a bread-making class at our church and learned to make no-knead bread in a "dutch oven" (in my case, in a stainless steel soup put until I can get a dutch oven - worked just fine but not ideal).  The bread turned out delicious, and I'll be making some to bring to my mother in law's house for Thanksgiving as well as to my parents' house so they can try some.

I met up with my siblings for dinner on Saturday night, and we had a nice time.  I'm sad to say that the restaurant I chose was inconvenient and hard to get to, but I hope they enjoyed the food and had a nice time anyway.  It was great to just hang out with them!  I'd like to do it again sometime, after the holidays have died down maybe.

Sunday we went out to Oak Creek to pick up a free hammock stand that I found on Milwaukee Freecycle.  We were hoping it would go with the rope hammock that I got at a garage sale for $12 earlier this year, but unfortunately the hammock in its current state is too long/stretched out for the stand.  I think the stand is a 9 or 10 foot stand maybe.

The hammock could potentially be shortened/tightened if we were to re-tie the knots along the spreader bar.  I may try that and see if that helps.  We also need to get hooks for the frame, since it did not come with any.  But hey, one thing at a time - if all else fails, lesson learned, and we'll find a different hammock and sell or Freecycle the one we've got.  It beats shelling out hundreds of dollars for a new one.  If anyone has any advice or tips on this I'd like to hear them!

Our trip to Oak Creek was not in vain, for we also stopped at Woodman's and got some items that we had not found when we checked out the new Trader Joe's the day before.  You can read my Yelp! review of the new store on Bluemound here, but the short version is that it's not going to be our go-to grocery store.  We found some interesting items, but we just don't care about stuff being organic that much, and the items we usually buy we can find cheaper elsewhere.  It was interesting though, and I think we'll go back for a novelty item here and there to spice up our meals.  I enjoyed their frozen and pre-prepared food selection and prices the most.

Overall, it was a nice weekend where I got some house cleaning done (which has been largely undone already) and got to see some awesome people.  Sadly I missed out on game night on Saturday night in Port Washington, due to my siblings dinner running long, but we'll do another one.  This weekend, in fact, I think there may be some game-playing in store!

Anybody else getting pumped for Thanksgiving and keeping busy with holiday shopping already?  I've got gifts for everyone but 5 people on my list now, I think...