Happy Birthday to yoooou
Happy Birthday to youuuuu
Happy Birthday dear Ann (sorry your salary isn't in the bank, it shouldn't be a problem, it went through honest, we're phoning the bank to find out what's happened and if there's been a problem it'll be put through later this morning)
Happy Birthday to youuuu
Dear Ann
It is with regret that I write to confirm that for commercial reasons your position within the company is being made redundant.
As per your terms and conditions of employment, you are eligible for 4 weeks notice and any oustanding holiday entitlement. Your final day of employment with the company will be Friday 24th September 2001.
Your holiday entitlement for 2001 is xx days, of which you have taken x. Therefore your final salary will include xx days of outstanding holidays.
Your terms and conditions of employment will remain in force throughout the notice period and we would expect you to continue with your duties in a professional mannter. The company will treat positively any request for time-off to attend interviews etc. All time off must be agreed with myself and/or the COO, in advance.
I would like you to understand that this decision has not been taken lightly, however, we have to react to unfavourable market conditions, and as such, have no option other than to reduce the size of the company by a significant margin.
May I take this opportunity to thank you for all your contributions whilst at the company and I wish you the very best of luck for the future.
If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact the HR Manager or myself.
Yours sincerely,
Chief Operating Officer
For and on behalf of the company.
Okay, I know it's a week later, and also not Monday, but I've been busy, and tired, and not really able to collect my thoughts about my weekend away into anything coherent, other that it was wet. Very wet. Miserably wet. But the less said about that the better.
So I've been trying to find the words and the energy to write, and now I'm wondering if I should.
This afternoon something very odd happened.
I got an email from a colleague. It contained a url, and two lines of text. The url was a page from my journal and the text said something to the effect of "I found this on the web" and "hmmm... very interesting".
I suddenly felt sick.
"Yes? What about it?" I immediately shot back.
"Just like I said... very interesting" came the reply.
"why interesting? and how did you find it?" went my reply.
"I was looking for domains and I found it" came the reply.... and I smelled a rat.
First off. He's a guy. A fairly big and burly guy. Who is highly unlikely to type "pixeldiva" in as a domain to look for.
A quick check of my stats confirms my suspicions. The referrer to the page he sent me came from a google search. The search term? My name.
Sure, he was probably bored, and curious... but why would he lie about it?
Before I start sounding like a paranoid nutcase. I'm not. It just creeps me out more than a little. I know it's up on the web, and therefore public. But it's not exactly easy to find unless you're specifically looking for me, or the condition I have, or the various utterly gross things vaguley related that people search for that I don't want to know why they're looking.
So, I head over the road to the other building to have a wee chat. I figure if the's that curious about my websites, he could have just asked. Or if he was curious about what was wrong with me, he could have asked that too.
Most of all, I'm utterly creeped out by someone I hardly know, who I work with, reading the most personal details of one of the worst periods in my life.
I know I made the decision to make it public, but I did it in the hope that expressing my feelings about what was happening would let me get it out of my system and stop me boring the arse off all my friends by whinging about it, and secondly, help anyone who was feeling the same way, and felt like they were the only one... and so far, it's served it's purpose. I still get emails from people who are just finding out their diagnosis and find my site something of an oasis in a desert full of the most dry medical information.
So while that still happens, I want to leave the site up there, but things like this make me want to immediately tear it down and crawl back into my little hole. I've already moved my writing, and cut the personal stuff waaaaay back because a colleague at my previous job (who also happens to be my sister's boyfriend) took the url into work with him, and I didn't feel comfortable writing there any more.
I had quite a long chat with this guy this afternoon, and at first he was very defensive about how he found it... and stuck to his guns about domain hunting, which I know is a lie. I don't know if my explaining why I feel a bit sensitive about it, and why I'd rather it didn't get sent round the office has had the intended effect, or whether my talking to him made him decide to send it round, when he hadn't been intending to.
I just don't know. I don't know whether I want to tear it down and hide, or whether I need to get through this feeling, and stand tall, and proud, and ignore the sick feeling in my stomach and the feeling like I've turned up and work and forgot to get dressed.
If this is even a little of what it feels like to be famous, or even popular, then you can keep it. I'd rather stay in the background.
Imminently departing on the pixeldiva-and-mum weekend away to this years ukbloggers holiday destination of choice.
Tonight sees us staying overnight in Oban, leaving for the scenic route to Mull after breakfast tomorrow. Arriving in Mull some time around lunchtime, I think. Then, three wonderful nights staying in Fionnphort, at the very western tip of Mull, with incredible views of Iona, and probably over to Iona each day, with an additional trip to Staffa to see Fingals Cave and some puffings on Sunday.
Will be attempting to use the power of cWAP to keep in touch with the world (dependent on signal, which I suspect will be lacking), and check on how my dad is (because the hospital, being the hospital, called him in today for a CT Scan directed biopsy, and won't let him out until after we'd planned on leaving, so the hard decision has been made, and we're going anyway).
In the meantime, if you feel like a few views of my intended destination, Meg has some great pictures here.
See you all, on Monday, and have a GREAT weekend.
Good to see Meg's back to her usual self again.
A year ago today something very special happened.
I received a gift. Even though it wasn't my birthday.
It came as a complete surprise. I had been expecting two parcels, and on this particular day, two parcels were delivered. Which was fine. Except that they came from two different places. One from the address I was expecting a parcel from, but the other from an address that was very familiar to me.
Mystefied, I checked the customs label. It said the big white box contained books.
Confused, I opened it, not really understanding how they came to have my address, or why they would be sending me books.
It wasn't books. It was something a whole lot better. Not just the physical item, but what receiving that item meant.
It had been a hard year, and this year hasn't been that much easier, but I still get the warm fuzzies whenever I use it.
So a year on, I just want to say thanks again.
Rob and Darren. Thank you. You made my year (and still do), and I couldn't have done it without you.
... the online home and (not very) alter(ed)-ego of Ann McMeekin, a recently freelance Web Accessibility Consultant.
... passionate about many things, most of which will turn up on this site at some time or other.
... contactable via email.
Design and content copyright 2000-2007 pixeldiva, except where noted.
Copyright of comments remains with the individual author.
All rights reserved.
