Coffee heat rising

Blowin’ in the wind…

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Well, it’s time to nail some suspenders onto the old oaken barrel, since that’s what we’ll be wearing now that our shirts are lost.

Called the redoubtable financial advisors this afternoon. It must be said that they sound pretty nonplussed over there. On the other hand, even though they allow that conditions are unprecedented, historic, and weird, they continue to insist that cashing out whatever pittance you have left in the market is a bad idea. One of the senior partners remarked that if the market continues to drop at today’s rate, it will only take about 14 days for it to arrive at zero.

“Is that a logical possibility?” he asked rhetorically.

“No,” he answered himself. If that happened all the stock in the land would be worthless. You could pick up an IBM certificate off the street, for free. This, he believes, does not compute. He and his colleagues are convinced the fall will stop sooner or later and the market will bounce back up.

We shall see.

The answer to another question is also blowing in on the wind: the University Academic Committee is having a little emergency meeting come Monday morning to discuss how to cope with a 20% budget cut. I’m told this is the first step toward the rumored layoffs.

We shall see about that, too. Personally, I no longer care what they decide. I’ve done all I can to protect myself should any such layoffs actually occur: applied for a half-dozen jobs that look like good fits, laid out a plan to pay off the Renovation Loan, and developed a strategy with the financial advisors to weather a period of unemployment.

Interestingly, though, I’ve spoken with a couple of auld acquaintances who, I discovered, happen to be on that committee. They tell me no announcement regarding layoffs of any specific job class was made, nor do they believe my particular set is likely to see blanket layoffs.

There’s not a thing I can do about whatever action the Great Desert University takes. And I am not going to get myself exercised over something I can do nothing about.
Thaes ofereode,thisses swa maeg.

Rumors redux

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We still don’t know whether the report of widespread layoffs is true. I did find the minutes of the University Academic Council meeting in which this was discussed, and that shows the group DID discuss another pending reorganization. No mention appears of specific layoffs affecting specific job classes. But of course, according to our spy, the members were sworn to secrecy about the layoffs.

Frankly, so much about this seems unlikely.

  • If they intended to keep it secret, they wouldn’t have announced it to the University Academic Council, whose meeting was attended by SEVENTY-NINE people, at least two of whom (that I recognize) were from the vastly demoralized West campus and therefore certain to be disaffected.
  • The UAC was charged to present the reorganization proposal to the academic senate on October 6. That was two days ago. If a layoff of ALL year-to-year academic professionals was explicitly stated in that proposal, then we would have heard about it by now.
  • GDU employs a horde of academic professionals. I don’t know how many of them are year-to-year. The librarians are continuing, and so they won’t be affected. But a lot of the institution’s work is being done by academic professionals on year-to-year contracts. Laying them all off doesn’t seem very practical…or very probable.

So I’m wondering how much of this story is accurate. There’s no way of knowing, I suppose, until an announcement is made. Or not made.

Whatever. I just applied to two more jobs, bringing my total number of pitches to six. If even one of them—especially the one I just interviewed for—comes through and does it with an offer in the ball park of what I’m earning, I probably will take it even if the current rumor comes to naught. I am soooo fed up with this garbage. Morale at the Great Desert University is in the sub-basement and still riding the “down” elevator. I don’t know one person here who doesn’t bitch and moan nonstop about their jobs—everybody is miserable. No, wait: I take that back. My dean doesn’t complain…no doubt because whining about her job to the underlings would be unprofessional.

While I appreciate a job whose workload is, shall we say, minimal, it also is boring as hell. That isn’t helped by sitting around breathing toxic air in a condemned building that was magically resurrected after having been slated for demolition years ago. I’m beginning to think that I’d like to pass the last few years of my working life actually doing something, which ain’t gunna happen here. The job at the cultural center would be hugely fun, and what a gorgeous place to spend your days. And evenings: stuff is going on over there in the evenings all the time.

Another day, another dollar…

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…and maybe an extra day lopped off the life expectancies of moi and my staff.

When I left for my minivacation last week, the asbestos abatement contractor was busy decontaminating several suites on our floor, by way of moving in some new tenants. A week ago Monday, I walked into the building through a cloud of what smelled like chlorine fumes. The stench inside the office was so toxic it made my nose and throat hurt. I left after a short time; it took three hours for the smell to dissipate from the nose and throat. Yuch!

So now, nine days later, I stroll into the atrium and smell…a smell. It also smells kinda toxic, but it doesn’t resemble chlorine. It gets stronger inside the building, and LOTS stronger inside our office suite. One of the RAs comes in and asks what is that pervasive solvent smell. Solvent, yes.

I call Facilities Management and suggest enough is enough. The FacMan rep says no one has complained of any odors and we should have called the first time we smelled it. I say well, I’m calling now. She says she’ll get back to me.

Several hours later, phone jangles: an all-business woman’s voice on the line. She, it develops, is the owner of the asbestos abatement company, calling to get to the bottom of this. I complain; she says her crew has been told to use a different product, but now it’s FacMan’s job to get the lingering fumes out of the building. Then she says—hang onto your hat, now—that her crew had incorrectly used “a solvent that’s banned on the GDU campus.”

Say what?

“Why on earth,” quoth I, “did you use a banned solvent in a building with classrooms full of kids and offices whose windows can’t be opened?”

“I mean, I just banned it. So after this it’s banned at GDU.”

Fast thinking, Lowest-Bidder Lady!

Shee-ut. What a place.

I sent out two more job applications today, for a total of six.

Interview No. 1

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Yesterday afternoon I had the first interview in the new job search, for a program manager’s position at a prominent local cultural landmark. It seemed to go well. I think they liked me, and it certainly is a job I could do well. On the other hand, I’m pretty long in the tooth. The East Valley Tribune just laid off 120 employees, and so a great raft of people in “communications” will swarm across the land in search of jobs.

If I don’t get this job or something like it very quickly, I’m going to be in deep trouble. With the market tanking, my savings will not support me, not by a long shot. Apparently it can take up to three months after you apply for Social Security to start. If it is true that credit is pretty much nonexistent, selling my house or even borrowing against it to get enough to live on is an unlikely prospect. Unlike GDU’s HR people, the UofA tells retirees that RASL—the amount the state pays for unused sick leave—is considered earned income, not a retirement benefit, and so is taxable at your regular rate. This would cut the annual amount I’m supposed to get for that over the next three years to around $4,000. COBRA alone will cost $5,000 a year. I may end up without health insurance, since I may not be able to pay for it and also eat.

I do not know what I am going to do if I don’t get another job quickly.

At any rate, after the interview I wandered around the grounds and ended up in a monarch butterfly exhibit. There I met a meeter & greeter who was all alone and happy to deliver her lecture on the wonders of butterflies. When I remarked that I had just interviewed for a job, she said she had started there as a volunteer and wangled her way into paying work. She said she loved it; the place is a great place to work.

News from GDU is uniformly negative. The library director at the West campus has been replaced by a part-time interim director whose job, we are told, is to figure out what to cut. Librarians no longer have a budget to buy books, and the president is trying to spread the West campus’s library budget among all four campuses. Staff expect widespread layoffs in the near future.

While strolling around the gardens, I thought wouldn’t it be wonderful to work for a place whose management you don’t hate!

Well, we’ll see. I don’t hold out much hope. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. Here’s what it looks like at the place where I’d like to work.


The Continuing Saga…

1. Unemployment for Christmas?
2. Does any of this have meaning for individuals?
3. Rumors start to fly
4. On the trail of the elusive job
5. Beating the layoff stress
6. How low can I go?
7. Interview No. 1

Dumb tax

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F’cryin’ out loud. In the “I can’t believe it’s possible to be that stupid” department, here’s a memo: when the binger goes off to tell you the bread dough has finished rising, get up and attend to it!

Yesterday afternoon I was dorking around on the Internet, my favorite time-waster, when I heard the breadmaker hollering “beeeep beeeeep beeeeeeeep,” signifying the dough was kneaded and risen, so I should retrieve the stuff, put it in a pan, and preheat the oven while the bread made its second rise. Did I get off my duff? Ohhh noooo. As I recall, what I did was mutter “please. shut. up.” Then forgot all about it.

Forgot it, that is, until I walked into the kitchen and found the stuff had continued to bubble up, overflowed the container, run down into the breadmaker’s innards, and then, its yeasties exhausted, collapsed back on itself.

That was a fine mess to clean up.

Determined not to lose five cups of flour plus the ancillary ingredients, I had the bright idea of adding a little more yeast, turning the stuff back into the freshly cleaned breadmaker, and letting it knead and rise again.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Lemme tellya: it doesn’t taste good! The result was a large blob of bread dough with a strangely rancid, bitter flavor.

At first I thought I could pass it off as sourdough. On second taste…well, no.

Into the garbage with it.

So, I had to mix and bake a whole new batch of bread dough. This occupied my attention until about 9:00 p.m., annoyingly enough. Dumb tax!

Isn’t it interesting how many of the stupid things that happen TO us are actually stupid things that happen BECAUSE of us? Consider how much of the present financial chaos falls into that category.

Now, I will say: I didn’t vote for our present national leadership and thought anyone who did was nuts; I did not get myself into debt over my head; I do not even run a balance on a credit card.BUT…yes, but: stupidly I left the bulk of my retirement money in the stock market, even as I could see the out-of-control train racing up the tracks. If I was smart enough to think of investing monthly savings (meant to pay off a small loan) in the money market, howcum I wasn’t smart enough to think of transferring at least some of my stock holdings out of Vanguard’s Wellington and Windsor II funds into the same Vanguard Premier Money Market fund?

Right now that moron Bush is on the air saying sure, he knows people are losing their retirement savings, “but I think in the long run they’re gunna be fine.” Long run? That illiterate, bird-brained idiot. When you’re 65, 75, 85 and retired or (as I’m about to be) laid off, there IS NO LONG RUN!

We appear to be a nation of morons who have followed a moron into predictable disaster. I will not disown my personal contribution to the national dumb tax fund, nor, I suppose, can any of us. Our dough has bubbled up, spilled over the bowl’s edge, collapsed back onto itself. The breadmaker alarm has been binging for a long time, while we have muttered “please. shut. up.”

Moments of Fame

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At Girls Just Wanna Have Funds, Ginger has posted the 173rd edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. She has kindly included one of Funny’s chapters on the job saga, among many possibly more distinguished entries. For example, Silicon Valley Blogger, proprietor of The Digerati Life, offers some wise advice on how to cope with the current market unrest. Over at Living Almost Large, a lively tho’ mostly one-sided conversation is going on about some people’s kids who walk away from mortgages they actually can afford. If you’re feeling a little nervous, you can bring on an attack of hyperventilation by perusing Terence Gillespie’s piece, at YourOptimal.com, titled “Your Optimal Bailout Plan.”On the other hand, if you intend to stay the course, My Dollar Plan has a very interesting piece on strategies you probably haven’t used in your 401(k). Need a break from hyperventilating? Try a little Canadian humor with Big Cajun Man’s Stupidest Bill Ever.

The 146th Festival of Frugality is up at Dollar Frugal, who provides an entertaining Ben Franklin theme. Funny’s story of the pursuit of the new barbecue shows up here, along with a very nice compliment. 🙂 Lots of good stuff in this festival. Free Money Finance reminds us to ask for discounts–and don’t be shy about it. At Saving to Invest, Andy has an interesting tip about a tax-free money market fund. Think Your Way to Wealth sorts all those gas-saving tips we’ve heard into fact vs. fiction. And Cheap Healthy Good reports on the new country of origin labeling that we soon will see in the grocery store.

Living Almost Large hosts the 79th Carnival of Money Stories with a fun (and funny!) cartoon theme. The “beat the stress” chapter of Funny’s layoff saga appears in this carnival. And oboy! Here’s another update in the Blueprint for Financial Prosperity story of Jim’s garden project! Since I just filled up the backyard flowerbed and a gigantic pot with vegetable seeds in preparation for coming unemployment, this tale has taken on special significance. SVB posts a thoughtful rumination on bailout pro’s and cons that has spawned a long series of interesting reader responses. And at Simply Forties, Mary tells the story of a very fine money day.

The Make It from Scratch Carnivalappeared at Make It from Scratch. Funny’s discovery that you can clean your kitchen cabinetry with baby oil was among the many entries. Check out Almost Frugal’s incredible endive-gorgonzola soup, which she reports is offered in France as a recipe for small children. I actually looked for gorgonzola when I was at Costco yesterday (they often have a very nice version, but not at the ghetto store near my house, alas)…next time I find it, yum! More my speed in the upcoming days of unemployment is Cheap Healthy Good’s low-down curried root soup, which sounds like delicious comfort food and may be affordable on the dole. At Little House in the Suburbs, the Tomato Lady explains how to make home-made whole wheat pita bread, mighty tasty-looking. At Stop the Ride, Stephanie shows how to help the kids make personalized drinking glasses—lots easier than kid-painted ceramics, and just as fun.