Updates

It has been a little while since I posted last so I want to give a few updates.

Pregnancy
Everything is going fine with the pregnancy. You can read more about it over at http://halld.com/davidandmelinda/.

My job (or lack thereof)
I am being laid off near the end of April. My company needs to upgrade its mainframe and related software and decided to ship the mainframe and most of our servers over to Colorado in a co-location setup with other businesses in the same industry. One of those businesses will actually take over the day-to-day maintenance and processes on our mainframe and key software applications. A side affect is that we will no longer have the need for our existing intranet website and therefore no longer have a need for as many developers. Needless to say, I am on the short list. Actually, I'm on the long list as just over half of our original IT staff will be laid off throughout the process as well. A benefit is that if I stay until the end of the "conversion", currently targeted for the end of April, then I will get a nice bonus.


My Dilemma
Evan will be born in approximately 5 weeks. If I stay at my company until he is born, I can take 7 weeks off (protected by FMLA and all paid due to my bank of vacation and sick time) to help take care of and bond with Evan. If the conversion at work stays on schedule, then I would have to come back to work for a week and then could collect the above mentioned bonus. Not a bad deal, particularly since I could then stay at home with Evan for several more months and not have to worry about a paycheck due to the bonus and unemployment. The dilemma comes in because what could possibly be the perfect job for me practically fell into my lap. I inquired about the job, had a first interview within the week and will have a second interview in the next couple days. The job pays a lot more, has full benefits and a very nice annual bonus. The downside is that I will not be able to get seven weeks off when Evan is born. In fact, I'll be lucky if I can get three and for some reason expect to only get two weeks off. I would love to stay at home for 6-7 weeks with Melinda and Evan and then possibly for another few months after that, but the need of a paycheck is real and this job (at least on paper) is pretty close to perfect. Melinda feels I should take the job and I agree but it unfortunately means I will have less time with Evan when he is born. Looking on the bright side, I won't have to stress about finding a job later on, and I will have a son. I guess it can't get much better than that.