The Busy

It's the end of the fiscal year, which means it busy at work. Although things have slowed down this week. I think we may be done spending money.

I took Friday off to get my hair cut. I think it had been 6 months since my last professional cut. I had cut my bangs 4 times in that time. She took 2.5" off of the length and layers. So much better; it was approaching Hermione Grainger for unruliness.

I then put on my crafter's hat for the weekend and created some small art pieces to finish a gallery of stuff for our stairwell. I had a nice collection of my grandmother's needlework and a nice art print that Beau bought in Spain back in his single years. Anyway, it was a nice little bit of creativity and realized inspiration.

My mother and I are working on a collaboration. More on that in the weeks and months to come. There are some details to work out still, but we think it'll be fun.

And that's about it. I don't have much else to say.

Random Bits

1. Saw Captain America on Saturday. Awesome. 4 stars out of 5.

2. My kids are the sweetest and most hilarious people.

3. There's a bunch of stuff I'd love to say about politics, but I'm keeping mum. It's hard to remain mum. Really.

4. That said, I have to say that I heart Allen West.

5. Folks who know me know that I abhor bureaucracy. Today I am bringing the red tape bureaucracy to my peeps at work. It's horrifying and satisfying all at once.

6. I married the best guy ever and I adore him.

By Wire

This is a long story, but I'm going to try to keep it concise. Our office ships a lot of expensive equipment around the country. A couple of months ago, a pallet was shipped and when the pallet arrived at the destination the plastic wrap around the boxes was ripped and one box was missing. The value of the stuff in the box is in the 5-figure range, so we filed a claim with the shipper for the loss and they initiated an investigation.

Turns out they couldn't recover the lost box and because the federal government is self-insured, the shipper is not going to reimburse us for the lost goods. We did receive a small reimbursement for the pro-rated shipping amount (less than $10).

I emailed our HQ to inquire about what we need to do to recoup the loss and I was told that there is a fund for this kind of thing. In researching how to go about filing a claim, I was reading some of the federal regulations about shipping losses. I'm wondering when this code was last updated because nothing resembling our equipment was in the lists of items deemed "valuable" by the government. Also the instruction said to send the claim report by wire.

By wire?

My first thought was that I could hitch up my pony and hand deliver the report. Let's bring back Pony Express.

Nowhere in the instructions was there an email address, phone number, or fax number. A PO box address was listed, but were telegrams ever delivered to PO boxes?

I'm half tempted to send this to my Congress-critter as an example of inefficient and wasteful government.

I later found a phone number on this agency's poor website. I plan to call today to get more information about filing our claim.

Efficiency At Work

My job requires a clearance. Back when I transferred to this office/position in March 2010 I was granted an interim Top Secret until the actual TS was blessed by the powers that be.

I got a weird email with a .jpg attachment today. It looked official, but the .jpg was odd, so I sent a direct email (not a reply) to that person to inquire about the validity of the weird email. She then called me in response. Her email is real. The .jpg is a copy of the letter to notify me that my TS was granted. The letter is dated today, my job title on the letter is my previous job title, and the two pooh-bahs CCed are my previous management.

Turns out about 300 files have lain fallow while the HQ powers replaced the person who previously held the position of clearance blessing. Wow.

My boss came to my door when he got the new email with the updated, current information. He had a good chuckle that it took 15 months from when I transferred over. In reality, from when the OPM investigation began in September 2009 to today it took 21 months to receive my clearance.