Did anyone ask how work is going? Too bad...I am telling you anyway

You people have NO sense of humor! C'mon, don't we all appreciate a little bit of fun? I figured at least SOME of you would find me funny. Ahh well, it's not the first time I have over-estimated my own funniness. Nor will it likely be the last;-)

Ahh well, I guess I will have to keep my little "funny-to-me" moments to myself from now on. A big raspberry on all of you:-P

So...let's see...what else is new. Um...I find myself blogging at night a lot lately. I have been working like a crazy women lately, and it serves as a good distraction when I am working at home. For the last couple of weeks, I seem to have a whole mess of shit to get through when I get home, and then around this time (10:00) I need a little break from spreadsheets and figure that blogging is a good way to break up the work.

The busy-ness with work is actually kind of a good thing. It is not a result of us being swamped so much as it is a result of people giving me new and different stuff to do. In fact, we are sort of fortunate to even have much to do at all. It is a tough time for a lot of people in our industry. I have never really gone into great detail of what we do here, because the long story is dreadfully boring, but the short version is "buyouts", and that relies on the credit markets a lot. Anyone who has read the paper in the last year knows that anything that relies on the credit markets is having a tough go of things right now. As dreadfully ill-informed as the general economic and business news is, they got that part right.

That means that there are not a ton of new deals being done. Fortunately for us, the partners and VP's have some really top-notch operating experience that other firms (and even some Management Consultants in need of specific skills) can use. As an example, Papa Bear's ability to deal with Government relations is hard to replicate. If you are trying to get a deal done and a Congressman somewhere is threatening to make your life miserable because there is a plant in his district that may be closed...well, the big guy can deal with that problem for you. He probably doesn't have the personal phone numbers of all three remaining Presidential candidates...but he could track them down pretty quickly.

The other Partners' talents are a little less dramatic, but all qualify as extremely valuable people. So, more than most buyout firms, we participate in and consult on other people's deals in addition to leading some of our own. My guess is that our level of fee income is way, way higher than other, similar firms. And that consulting work has kept us very, very busy lately. While there aren't a ton of new deals, there are a lot of existing ones that are not going exactly as planned.

Slowly, I get to do more and more on these projects. Like...I am allowed to talk in meetings sometimes now...lol. OK, I was always allowed, I just now have things to say. Occasionally. And that is fun. One of the things I love about my job is that I learn so much all the time. The #1 thing I love is still that I am WAAAY overpaid for my actual skills and experience, but learning a lot is in the running for #2;-).

We have hired another entry-level person, which means hopefully some of the purely grunt shit will go to him and I can do a little more of the slightly more advanced stuff instead. That would be nice:-) Of course, the new guy, who starts in like two months, is a super-achiever type from Harvard...so he is likely way smarter than me and will pick up everything I have learned in about a month. At least I won't be the baby of the office anymore;-)

Wow...this turned into a long and (for you, likely) very boring post. But since I have been diligently slaving over my laptop since 8:00, I happen to be thinking about work. And there you have a totally useless update of my life at work...lol.

The good news? As busy as I am, I still had time to go to Munchkin's baseball game:-)