Another day

( dance class )

Right now the oil guy is cleaning my oil burner. Something I should have had him doing the first year I bought the house... but didn't. I clued in this year, and got the oil company to send someone. He tells me I have the luck of the Irish. Apparently my chimney was so filled with soot, that in another month of heating, bad things would have happened. Given the large heavy duty trash bag of soot sitting behind his van, I believe him.

Hoping he is done soonish - I do have stuff at work I can only do there...

follow up

Well.. apparently I'm really lucky - not only was the chimney clogged, but several other important oil burner parts as well. He said "one more mote of dust, and you'd have been in big trouble".

A refresher to find & fix something BEFORE trouble happens.

On another note...

My favorite boss is leaving the company today. For happy reasons - more fun job, with people she likes, leaving a situation she's not fond of here.

This is the boss that I've worked for, on and off, for most of my career, through 3 different companies. She has inspired me and taught me to be both a good engineer and a good manager, through both gentle nudging statements and by example. I've taken on my first big leaps into technology and management under her wing. I've begged her for a job, begged her for mentoring, and begged her to help me out of tight situations - and always help was there. And I have the confidence that as long as I express myself professionally, she will listen and answer me rationally and thoughtfully - even when I am in the wrong. I have a truly feudal feeling of loyalty to her.

This isn't the first time we haven't worked in the same company - I followed her from a dying company to here, over a year after she had left.

I hope we will work together again someday - in this incestuous business of digital security, it's entirely likely.

But, I'm sad she's leaving, sad that I will come back from Pennsic and she will be gone, sad that in a time where I feel a little lost and adrift at work already I have one less anchor point... And sad that the normal bounds of not loosing it at work, not expressing anything *too* personal, and not scaring the woman with how deeply I care - means that I can't actually express my feelings to her - that makes me even sadder.

I did what I could - came by, said good bye, asked about her new position, and said to keep in touch. But it isn't really enough.


...

Ah well. Back to denial and trying to get all this work shit done to I can be ON VACATION!!!