January 21, 2005 Review With 12-24 inches of snow coming, Chris has officially become my favorite brother. Tonight, at Mom's birthday party, he said that he needed Sean and me to help him remove something from the back of his van. A SNOWBLOWER! A big, honkin', gigantic, could-swallow-a-horse-whole SNOWBLOWER!!!! All day, as I read the estimates of snow getting higher and higher, all I could picture was myself digging and digging through the inches of wet, sloppy, sloggy crap for hours and hours, never getting anywhere. Why, oh, why didn't I purchase a snowblower before this blizzard showed up? I was screwed. The weekend would be shot to hell. Living in New England sucks worse than anything else in the entire world!! But it all changed. Now, there is a snowblower not 30 yards away from my driveway. And life at Mom's house will never be the same again. Oh, yeah. I had my review at work today, too. I was very pleased with the peer and consultant reviews I got to read yesterday, but I still entered Dan's office with a little bit of trepidation. I know what I was like in 2003, and a lot of that carried into a good part of 2004. Though I've improved in a major way, I didn't know if Dan would appreciate how far I'd come. So I went in a little nervous. Dan started out by asking me what I thought about the reviews I'd been given. I told him that I was very pleased, for the most part, although a couple of them baffled me, since I got some middle-of-the-road responses that didn't come with any comments. I think that your answers should be considered null and void if all you're going to do is fill in a number without any backup commentary at all. However, for the other people, I agreed with just about everything everyone said. I need to work on upper-level IT-type work. I need to initiate more projects. I've gotten much better at customer service. He then asked me how I felt about my own performance, and I told him that, though I had a rocky start to the year, I think I've caught the motivation to take me into 2005, no matter what the outcome of the review was. I then went into my goal sheet, which I had created for this review, and he said, "Before we start going into 2005, let's get down to money." I said that was fine, and braced myself for whatever was to come. I could say that I'm very, very pleased with my compensation, but that would be understating it. I was completely taken aback with the level of compensation I was given, both in terms of the bonus and the raise. Though I can't go into specifics (source code) , it was very generous, and I'm going to have a nice check the next pay period to sack away towards the house. I've decided that I'm going to take a certain amount of the money and set it aside for something that I don't know that I want yet, but will know it when I see it. I'll purchase it without hesitation or guilt, because it's part of my bonus, and I've been responsible with my money to a great degree this year. Besides, it will still leave me with that chunk o' change in my savings account, and I've always gotten a refund on my taxes, so I think I'll begin the year in great shape. The whole experience just went to show that I've become much more comfortable in my own skin, and thus have been able to deal with the stressful aspects of my life much more easily. I find that I actually enjoy working now, even doing things on my off-time, which I never considered doing before. The last part of my review was going over my goals, and I gave Dan very specific ideas about the initiatives I wanted to start, the skills I wanted to improve upon, and timeframes in which I wanted to accomplish all of this. He seemed very impressed, and ended the review with a handshake and a comment of, "very good year, Patrick." It made me quite happy. Afterwards, I headed home to Mom's birthday party, which was thrown by Susan. She put out a great spread of baked ziti, chicken parmesean and meatballs. Sean finally told the cousins about Heather's pregnancy (Heather is still up in Maine with her grandmother, putting things in order), and Little Susan actually squealed when she heard the news. "A baby!" she said, "I love babies!" As always, a good time was had by all. I sat next to Little Susan and her fiancee Matt, who I've never really talked with a lot before. He's a great guy by everyone's account, and I finally got to know his sense of humor a little bit better. He's a quiet guy, but that's a perfect balance for Little Susan, who is nothing if not outgoing. The cousins also didn't know that Stephanie was now working with me. "What's she doing?" was the question everyone asked, and when I told them that she was doing the same job I had when I started at the company, they were suitably impressed. I think it's going to be great on her resume, and she seems to like the work a lot. We stayed late, for a party at Susan and Chris' house (with the kids being so young, parties tended to be short and sweet), and I was quite tired by the time I got home. I chatted with Laurie a little bit, then sat down to watch a little TV. I actually managed to get the VCR programmed to record correctly, only to find out that Joan of Arcadia was a repeat this week. At least I know that I can capture a show when I want to, if I just pay attention to when it's on. So tomorrow, I'm looking forward to another full shift with Steph. Though the snow is supposed to begin around 4pm, I'm not too worried about it now, because I have a snowblower at my disposal! It's the little things in life (even if they're massive pieces of machinery) that make things great.