NOVEMBER 1st ... or How Did THAT Happen??

UNBELIEVABLE that almost a year has gone by since I posted last!
 

The short story is: I'm fine, Michael's fine, we're well and fat and happy and still sober and still together and still living on the Wind Walker in beautiful Fulford Harbour on beautiful Salt Spring Island. Still loving being grandparents. I'm still knitting. And still working for Welcome Wagon.

Aaaah, but 'there's the rub,' as they say. The one thing that did change drastically on January 1st of this year was my job with Welcome Wagon. I went from happily being the Salt Spring Island 'Rep' for Welcome Wagon .... to becoming Area Manager for all of Vancouver Island-Powell River-Gulf Islands! It's a huge territory, and needless to say, my life has been a whirlwind ever since.

The long story is: my boss approached me in December to see if I was interested in taking over her position when she retired in March. I thought about it for about 60 seconds, and said yes. :) I started training on January 1st by shadowing her (and she lives a ferry ride and then two-hour drive away) from then until March 15th, when I officially took over the job. I put on a LOT of miles in that time! But I also continued to be the Salt Spring presence AND had to train someone to take over that job, too... so it was a pretty crazy couple of months.

And it's kind of been crazy ever since... I'm on the road a lot, and spend a lot of time on ferries and in hotels (hence .... knitting has not suffered). I supervise (and hire and train) up to 30 reps at any given time (so I attend monthly staff meetings all over Vancouver Island, for example) and do sales and ongoing support, etc., as well as 'open' communities that haven't got a WW program yet. But .... it's a salaried position, with an expense account and a commission structure as well -- and no more jeans and t-shirts, I actually have to dress up! --  and I'm loving it!

Some of you are now thinking ... 'What does Michael think of this?' Well, if you know my hubby, you know that he's a 'homebody,' and much more introverted than me. He loves nothing better than to putter around here ... on the boat, doing housework, on the docks, etc. And he loves that I'm still up for some adventure, and that I love coming home and telling him all about whatever I've been up to - he just doesn't want to be the one living it. So it's worked out well for both of us! Besides ... the Wind Walker's engines are below our living room floor, so he can never work on anything when I'm around, anyway ... :)

I lug my laptop with me a lot, too, so theoretically I could still be blogging. The thing is that there is a time difference of 3 hours between where I live here on the west coast, and head office, in Toronto. The office there opens at 7:30 a.m., which is 4:30 a.m. here, and if you've been following my life for awhile, you'd know that I'm often up at that hour -  but now, in the time frame during which I used to blog, I'm now downloading emails, doing research, on the phone to head office, and starting my day, dealing with the daily stuff of whatever's happening throughout my region. The cool thing about that is that I'm often done for the day by 2 pm - but by then I'm too brain-dead to do anything but knit!

So here it is, November .... the month of NaBloPoMo, which I've participated in for the last 3 or 4 years. I'm not sure I'll officially sign up this year, because I'll be very surprised if I can keep up (blogging every day for the whole month) - but I might try, unofficially. So hopefully you'll hear from me a little more often - at least for November!

And next post, I'll even show you some knitting...