Week 3

I'm starting week 3 of my furlough. With all of the excitement last week with my niece being born and my dad having surgery, my job search didn't get off to the best start. I had what I thought was a pretty hot lead but, alas, haven't heard anything from the recruiter in a few days...usually not a great sign.

I sent out requests on LinkedIn for a few of my co-workers to write me a recommendation, including my boss. He posted his today and it was very good, but the last line worries me a little:

I could not recommend Jessica more highly for any developer position. I hope to have the chance of working with Jessica again in the future.

I'm hoping by "working with...in the future" he means in like 2 weeks.

I *really* want to comment on the Obama justice department's horrendous brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act, but since I'm still technically an employee of a place where what I want to say would be frowned upon, I'm biting my tongue. :(

I'm an aunt again!

 

Yesterday, we welcomed the newest member to our family, Sydney Michelle. Mom, dad, big brother, and baby are all doing great. It's probably hard to tell in the picture, but she's the cutest baby ever. :)

In other good news, my dad had his surgery today and it went very well. It ended up being done under local anesthetic and took less than an hour. His lab tests came back clean so it looks like they got it all. I think we still have to wait a little while to make sure everything's ok, but so far the outlook is good.

Let's get physical

Before I transitioned, I hadn't had a physical since I was in the military. For those not keeping track, it had been a good 8 or 9 years. I'm not sure if I started getting them regularly a few years ago because I'm getting older and not feeling so invincible anymore or if I just actually care about my body now. I'm guessing it's a little of both.

With the exception of a couple of spots/moles I need to get checked out, I seem to be in pretty good health. I was spared most of the lameness of a pelvic exam since I don't have a cervix - no pap smear/speculum fun - but did, rather unexpectedly, get a couple of lubed fingers.

I saw her put on the latex gloves and say "let's have a look down there" but didn't notice her apply the lube and she didn't give me any warning about what she was about to do. I wish I could have a picture of the look on my face when she did that - to say I was surprised is an understatement.

We did find an interesting correlation in my recent medical history. I'd mentioned that I've put on some weight since surgery and thought that it might be a hormone/metabolism thing since I hadn't really been doing anything different in terms of diet or exercise. I had been in for a couple of visits after my surgery, so we had some fairly accurate tracking on my weight out to about August of last year and then the weigh-in before this physical.

According to my records, my weight stayed pretty constant after surgery for those few months but has gone up 15 pounds since my office visit in August. One possible explanation suddenly seemed obvious - the only significant thing that had changed in that time period was that I got a new job.

After explaining a little bit about how stressful work had been over the past 9 months, my doctor actually asked me if it was possible for me to find a new (less stressful) job. I mentioned that I was on furlough and looking, so it was a distinct possibility.

I've never given much thought to any health impact a particular job might have. This isn't the first time I've had sustained high levels of stress at work but I've always thought more about how it's effecting my work/life balance than my health. Maybe it's time to go find something more mundane and stop going after the sexier positions. Ok, that last line didn't come out right...

Show archives have been removed

I guess there is some fallout from the google incident with my co-workers...I no longer feel comfortable having my show up. I've removed the embedded players and links to the mp3 files of all of my old podcasts but left the original entries they appeared on up.

If you read the description of one of the entries and are interested in hearing that show, send me an email and I'll send you a link to download the file.

I'm feeling like a little more control over certain personal information is a good idea these days...