Yesterday, I started my new work schedule. Since my father is sick, I have flexed my hours at work from the normal m-f 8-5 to m-th 8-7. This will afford me every Friday off work; making it much less stressfull to drive home on the weekends. So far, yesterday wasn’t too bad. I’ll have to see how I hold up on the long days though.

Additionally, I received my first annual review yesterday. Well… actually… it’s only been 9 months, but the whole company does their review at the end of February every year. My review was quite good. Dare I say, better than I expected. Essentially I had to do a self evaluation, my manager evaluated me, then compared the two. There were a couple of areas that we disagreed upon. In both those cases, he rated me higher than I rated myself. That’s always a good thing. Consequently, my annual raise exceeded both my expectations, and my hopes. Again, a very good thing.

Also, yesterday a group of us from work went on a nice 3 hour lunch excursion. We went down to the local indoor shooting range and popped off about 750 rounds between the 5 of us. We have a special employee purchase deal coming up from Springfield Armory, and several of the guys wanted to try out the different weapons. We had 3 of SA’s models of 1911, a 40cal/9mm XD, and my old Norinco 1911. The range was rather dimly lit and pretty filthy, but it was more than suitable for hour outting. Much fun was had by the group. Afterwards, I came to the conclusion that I really want an XD. Maybe that can be my birthday present.