As I glanced at my electronic pay statement from work yesterday, I noticed that the contents were fatter than usual. At first I thought that my masters at BDS might have slipped a couple of pre-tax C-notes into the works for services rendered, which has been known to happen now and again, but upon closer inspection I noticed that the "annual" figure had also been bumped up, advancing me a decimal point for the first time in…well, a long time.

Turns out that the High Sheriffs have given me a raise in two stages: the first just arriving, the second due in February (why two stages? For that one must be privy to the byzantine procedures of the BDS Personnel Department). This one will translate to just about $65/week net; February's will be approximately that again, although most of it will likely be eaten up by the traditional annual increase in the HMO premium.

I learn of this the same week that a colleague from the old BDS "International Division," of which I was a munchkin in good standing until I took this one-year reassignment in 1987, tells me that the I Division is about to endure another round of cutbacks to its budget and staff. In 2002 my then-boss, who did not wish me well, warned me that my little skunkworks, established by her despised predecessor, was a career dead-end. I wasn't then aware that she was scheming to get me dismissed, but I had to acknowledge that she was correct as far as it went. What she didn't foresee was that my dead end was also a safe harbor against the storms that were about to hit the I Division. The proposed cutbacks are just…boggling. The senior people are bailing while they can to take advantage of the "defined benefit" retirement package, and the juniors, who were formerly wont to talk up their modern 401(k)s, are looking shifty-eyed at one another and measuring the square footage in the lifeboats.

And I, these 20+ years somehow never figuring in the orgcharts that the beancounters dissect…I get a raise. Two raises. I know that most of you in IWT have been more like cowboys, signing up for this or that drive from range to railhead, with no assurance of another gig once the cattle have been delivered.

I've never won the lottery (although hope springs eternal) but I was most fortunate in landing up with a culturally and economically sluggish employer back in the mid-seventies that put up with me when I was an impertinent youngster and now tolerates me as a lovable old eccentric and living tie to the ancient roots of the firm.

cordially,