In which I rejoin the workforce!

Last night I took myself out for dinner and drank a lot of wine (because that’s what you do when you’re damn near broke and the check you’ve been expecting for weeks still hasn’t shown up, right? RIGHT?), which means I was still in bed at 10:30 this morning when G’ma called up the stairs, “Shelly! There’s a man from BMI here to see you!”

A what from what? Did she say BMI? “Um, okay. I’m not dressed! Tell him I’ll be down in a minute!”

I grabbed some clothes from the floor and put them on, found my glasses, put my messy hair up in a pony tail and stumbled downstairs.

The man turned out to be RB, my old boss from BMI… with a job offer! Their network engineer has taken a position elsewhere, and since they really weren’t excited at the prospect of running ads and doing interviews and background checks and calling references and finding someone with the right personality for their small office, they thought of me! (I left because I wanted more responsibility and there was, at the time, no room for growth.) Then they checked my blog and saw the job hunting post, realized I was still available, and started trying to hunt me down. Since I hadn’t answered my phone, RB decided to jump in his car and come find me.

Which he did. Right there in my front room! He told me MR was leaving and offered me his job right then and there, before I’d even had coffee. “You do weird things,” RB said, “but you always got the job done. We think you’d be perfect and that you’d really like it.”

Of course I accepted! It’s ideal! I’ll have root on mail servers again! And since I’ve already worked for these people for two years, I know most of their infrastructure anyway and I know it’s a comfortable environment. And — double bonus! — they already know I’m weird.

I’ll be doing network administration, hardware testing, router configuration, and tech support. I get an office with a window. I get a freshly-installed workstation and two huge flat panel monitors! There’s a monitor riser, a work bench, and a Linux box. It’s wonderful.

I don’t have to move to Portland, or work at the Halloween store! I don’t have to go on emergency-tier UI with the four-job-search-items per week and humiliating mandatory job search meetings!

“This is great! We’re very pleased you were available. I’ll be back in an hour to pick you up,” RB said, and left.

I showered and dressed, and he came back to get me. He bought me a celebratory iced coffee and took me back to the old office where I got to feel all nostalgic and say hello to everybody. RB started giving me passwords. MR said no, I couldn’t keep the toy car on his desk because he’ll be taking it with him.

I start next Monday at nine. I can ride my bike to the office! This company survived the recession! I AM SO HAPPY!