Best posts made by Packrat

I have spent an awful lot of time on trains today, travelling about two hundred miles to attend a job interview, now I am on the way back.

As such I am going to be exhausted by the time I get home at 10pm or so but as I was leaving the building where I was interviewed? I had a call from the director who interviewed me saying how he felt it had gone really well, it was a pleasure to meet me and he wanted to arrange for a call with myself and his own boss ASAP.

So I am pretty sure that I am going to get a verbal offer for the job of Senior Export Control Manager for Europe tomorrow evening, for a company employing 8,000 people. I am thirty five and six years ago I was severely depressed in a shitty admin role with no degree and what I thought were minimal prospects.

So thank you SSRI medication. You really fucking work.

Also, this weekend the lockdown in the UK started to ease up (too soon but meh). As a result my mum got to spend the weekend visiting and she brought along her nine month cockapoo puppy, Tinkerbell.

Tinkerbell is the most ludicrously adorable thing ever and apparently decided that I (like everyone she meets) was her best friend within a few hours of becoming acquainted:

I got a new kitten just before Christmas. Unfortunately he came with awful diarrohea and I was for a few days unsure he would make it, I am also down about (translates) $500 in vet bills whilst awaiting test results. But? He is super cute and super affectionate, he basically purrs the moment you touch him and will immediately climb into anyone's lap.

Eventually he made friends with Artemis, though she does find him annoying when he goes into Zoom Mode and desires endless play.

Also he loves to climb into my jacket and purr himself to sleep.

Little Stentor likes to spend a good chunk of every day inside of any jacket or fleece I am wearing.

She stole my cuff links then decided to crawl into an empty cereal box:

Today, kittens judge me for not letting them into the wardrobe:

So my current employers have some very highly placed covidiots.

After multiple instances of positive tested Covid cases in the building, my actual boss has told me and everyone else (he is the safety and compliance VP) to work from home unless completely necessary. Additionally it is required to wear a mask at all times when in the building.

The senior program manager and program director though? View people working from home as slackers and essentially refuse to wear masks in meetings, they also keep asking when I will be in the office and only vaguely accept my 'when this stops and lockdown is over, or when I come in for individual days to give in person training to hanger floor staff'. It is just idiotic, I know people at work who have had immediate family members die to this disease and yet the top level on site managers do not take it seriously at all.

Fortunately I have just been headhunted by another company who want to offer me a twenty percent pay rise, six more holidays a year, a 12% pension match, better sick pay, private medical care and permanent work from home. I was not actually looking for another job but I am definitely going to let them know what lead to me talking to the recruiter in my exit interview.

@greenflashlight If it helps, this was him earlier today while I was trying to work and suddenly had a little friend pop up over the monitor:

My kitten Stentor has been... Growing, he is over eight months old now and has turned from this:

To this:

But he is still a cuddle monster:

Also he LOVES people, he spent a few hours today just playing with my eighteen month old niece beautifully and is happy to purr himself to sleep in a lap or in bed with me.

Artemis continues to decide that perching atop doors is the best thing ever. It allows her to peer.

Here is the cuter of my two cats, looking cute. She has spent the last three months during lockdown mostly following me around or sleeping next to me but is apparently terrified of all other humans.

Hera has very floofy little paws. Also she Judges you.

I am working from home today and somebody apparently has to make it difficult to concentrate on writing PowerPoint slides

To belatedly join in the black cat train, enjoy this majestically floofy tail.

Well the salary negotiation stuff has been a success, I am going to be starting a new job in late January. It will be a huge rise in pay and title and is a job I am genuinely excited for. But.

Now to give in my notice tomorrow at work then have a frantic few weeks to arrange a move, along with renting out somewhere to live short term, also I will have the fun of selling my home and buying a new one meaning that I will absolutely not get to properly settle into wherever I move to. It is going to be a stressful new year even if it is all of my own doing.

Edit: Now as another issue? I am going to have to deal with serious impostor syndrome. I am getting a 45% pay rise even if I am moving to a more expensive part of the country, plus a more generous bonus scheme. This not going to make me one of the 1% but it is going to make me part of the 2% and whilst I am, objectively, quite sure I can do the job I have a broken chronically depressed brain and am going to have to constantly work on my thought patterns to make this work and not just freeze up.

So, A while ago I posted Artemis perching atop a door and having HUGE EYES, she continues to love to jump atop doors and be Very Tall. But sometimes she forgets that she can just jump down and behaves in a hilarious but adorable manner. Enjoy!

Also featured: Me sounding Very British.

Silly Artemis

My mum just got a puppy, she is disgustingly adorable and loves everyone she meets:

I was proscribed kittens by my doctor.

Well not literally, but it was suggested that fuzzy friends might be a good way to help amelorate my chronic depression.

Meet kitten and other kitten, I have had them two weeks and they are now three months old, but I have failed to name the adorable little idiot fluffballs yet:

Artemis and the Sock Drawer.

I see something lurking in the cupboard

Something fuzzy

She pops out to say hi

I went to change my bedding earlier only to have a little head pop out from under the duvet. I decided to change the bedding tomorrow instead of disturbing her further but did take this picture.