Ugh

[liralen]

Sore today. I am just sore all over, jaw from the night guard, shoulders from tension and I do wonder why. Work is grumpy making, but mostly from having to track a dozen things at the same time. I guess I'm worried about the trip tomorrow.

I am also worried about the dentist appointment this afternoon, not so much for the adjustment to the guard, but I'm going to have to coordinate getting Jet's car seat and bag to John's cube, then get Jet to John during a meeting John's in, and then get me over to the dentist in time for my appointment. Then I'm probably going to join a meeting mid-stream, as it's from 3-4 and I already warned my boss and my boss's boss that I would be late. And then I get to go home and pack and pick the house up so that the maids can have even a remote chance at cleaning the place while we're gone.

John's going to probably just take Jet home after the 3 'o' clock end of the meeting, which means just one less thing for me to worry about.

It's all lined up and ready to go, though, so I don't know why I'm *worried* per se.

I also am finding that the crown on the bottom left of my mouth is still temperature and pressure sensitive, which might mean that it *will* have to be redone. Still the top part of that jaw has cleared up ever since Dr. Davis was done with it, other than the relatively minor nightguard problem.

Comments

[tenzil.livejournal.com]

I want to work for companies that are as flexible and understanding about children as yours and John's are. I think you guys must be in fairyland or something; I cannot wrap my brain around the idea that companies here in my world might be so understanding that having a kid dropped with me while I was in a meeting would not be looked at strangely.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

I have to agree. It is like fairyland, especially compared to what my parents or John's parents had expected of them. I remember Mom having to retire when she asked to go part-time.

The biggest chunk of what makes us able to do this with meetings and do part-time work to be with our son came when one of our three senior managers of software lost a teenage son in a gang related incident and then lost his eight-year-old son two weeks later to suicide in 2000. Everyone rethought their family priorities at that point, and HR and everyone here at this plant really looked hard at how important family was to them. And I think that had a very large deal to do with how things are now.

So there had to be some horror before the dream came along, I think. I think that with a group that was a close as the one was here, with only the 200+ employees here at that time, that big a tragedy struck home for a whole lot of people and did change the culture here.

I think part of why Boulder was allowed to go the way it has includes the fact that the world-wide Xilinx culture is influenced by the fact that nearly all of the senior and experienced and, in some sense, necessary technical staff has not only vested their options but, even this year, most of them have well past retirement possible levels of vested options. None of them really *have* to work, but in order to keep the intellectual property of the company and to keep the skills and to keep the knowledge these folks have, Xilinx has to have a really family and people friendly environment.

That's why Xilinx seems to have nearly a third of their people on part-time employment. Why there have been no layoffs and everyone's been very willing to take paycuts or go part time or spend vacation. They make it very easy to work here and work well here. So on nearly any campus there is more flexibility and more willingness to work with the needs of anyone that's good at their jobs.

It helps that Xilinx is spread across multiple campuses, and the particular meeting that I took Jet to had only two people at the Boulder site, and the others were spread across San Jose and Ireland and all over the U.S. as well. John and I often have Jet with us at home when we call in for meetings so it wasn't anything new for him to have Jet while he was in a phone conference, plus Jerry, the one other guy at the Boulder site, really likes Jet, too. *grin*