2 things to rant and rave about

My brain hurts. I haven't felt this down in ages. Things are just on top of me and I can't get myself out of it. I'm really looking forward to my UK trip this week, even though it's really for business. Be prepared for a long one.

First - home. You know we've been having issues with our builders. It's getting worse. For ourselves, while we're involved and may end up parting with craploads of money, it's nothing compared to some of our neighbours. We have walls down, excessive mold, ceilings damaged etc etc. We have enlisted a structural engineer and tomorrow we get an assessment. Comments I've heard so far are "I can't believe this passed inspection" (to the fact that there are gaps in the flashing on the roof), "I'm amazed the damage isn't worse", "I wonder what else is done"....the list goes on. It's sooo depressing. I love our place and I just don't know what this means. It's something we just don't need. Last night we had another emergency meeting in the guy's apartment upstairs - they're great, we all get on so well. One thing the four of us are finding is that the other members of the building are a little immature in dealing with serious issues like this. Here's an email that one of them sent yesterday to the guy who's owning this issue for us:

"I'm back from vacation. Where are we with the assessment of the property from the new contractor. Both Mikes were very accurate in saying that TCB did nothing but waste our time and take our money. Why did you let this happen? How do you recommend this situation gets remedied. Please provide us with a time line of assessments and scope of work that needs to be completed. Who is the new contractor? When will you and they be on site at our property with the new contractor/engineer to complete the assessment. It may be in your best interest to do this sooner then later...that's if you would like to satisfy the urgent needs of your clients?"

Now, this is to the guy on our side......not sure what you think - but this in my mind is just nuts. What an idiot. Luckily the guys upstairs got hold of this and sorted it out. We had a productive meeting and I'm looking forward to hearing what the engineer says. It's just additional headache we don't need.

Second. Work. I don't even know where to start here. At least with home it's a single thing that's bugging my ass. For work I'm just burnt out. I lose. I cannot manage 60 people. I've had meetings with all of them in groups the past week or so and they are just such a whiny bunch. They spew up on you and complain and don't ever want to try and fix it. I don't ever ever ever remember being like that. I've fed up expending all my effort trying to get them what they want - when they don't even realize. I want to be a project manager again - it's easy and straight forward. I'm also really fed up because everyone's fed up that the bonus is crap this year. For me personally I'm losing about $15k in bonuses just because the structure is crap. For others in my team it's about $17k....and quite frankly I have a manager who works for me who does nothing but incessantly complain about it. Not that I blame her, but as a manager int he group you always must have the "half full" approach. I can't do it all on my own. And I want a change. I'm looking at the job postings daily and have feelers out. I like working for my boss and I'm really hoping that my trip to London where we're looking at the overall structure of the groups will really help. I have a vision - I want 4 managers in my team team, responsible for about 15 people each. I think that the specialists should be in the sales team - and driven by them. I'm fed up - i want can do people. I just can't imagine whining that much to my boss or my bosses boss - I would be embarrassed.

Man, I'm done. Off to pilates - hopefully I'll feel better.