Are we there yet??

Nothing like knowing there are new layoffs on the horizon to make me relive the fears of August '07 when I got my pink slip two days before we were leaving for a vacation to Vegas.

It was not the best trip.

All worked out well, in the end, I fell right into the new gig. But yeah, at new gig, we're facing our third round of layoffs in as many quarters.

The past week I've been living in the fear that I'd somehow get notice my job is done just a few days before the trip. I'm going to be really, really surprised if I remain after this round since we've already made deep cuts, and even though we're SUPER busy right now, these things always come at the most illogical times. Well, not always, but a lot of the time. I can only hang on to a small glimmer of hope that knowing we have to re-document a completely new interface for our next release will acknowledge my right to exist at work.

But today, all I could think about was the blackjack table on the last trip... I happened to be sitting with a few ladies who were there for a "women in construction" conference and they were all from Louisiana. They'd each lost at least one home during Katrina, and they had just faced another hurricane the week before, and were headed home to face another that was expected to hit the region. Their overall attitude.... "Smoke 'em while you got 'em."

Indeed.

I hope that the layoffs do come after Easter, as my boss suspects (and he's high up... he'd have known if they were upon us very very very soon - I hope) and we can take our trip, throw some money into the economy and have a good time. Because things are good right now. And if they do go bad... we've been there before... more than once... and we'll get through it.

But for now, I hope I can leave work tomorrow and pretend that all is normal and go on vacation on Thursday with blissful thoughts of some time away from work and some fun in Sin City.

Fingers and toes crossed.