Go Figure. . .

. . .the Vick’s didn’t work! I don’t know what surprises me more – that it didn’t work or that I actually had myself convinced that it might. Brian said I coughed every 2 hours, on the hour, all night long. Doesn’t make for a very restful night so while I turned out the light around 11:30pm, I didn’t get out of bed this morning until 10am, trying to make up for it.

It is a gorgeous fall day and I just want to kick my own ass for missing out on tailgating for the ND game today. Today is our last home game until November and by then, it is just too shitty and cold to stand outside and drink beer. As I type, ND is working on giving Stanford and ass whooping so I will try and take that as my consolation prize (and hope I didn’t get just jinx them by saying that!!!).

Very little plans today – I haven’t been anywhere this week or done anything, everything was cancelled because of this damned cold. I missed 3 whole days of work, Brian and I missed a black tie event we had tickets to for Thursday night, I missed 2 breakfast board meetings this week – it was like my whole life was put on hold. Most of all, I missed valuable time with my departing boss and nothing we do Monday or Tuesday could come close to making up that training time together. She was sick too so even if I would have been 100%, she wouldn’t have been so I am not sure what we could have accomplished anyway.

I feel like I am being thrown to the wolves starting on Wednesday – I know my boss’s boss says they won’t expect me to just become my boss in a matter of days but there are certain things that will still need to get done, things I still know very little about and it will be up to me to figure out how to do it. In the past week, I have had a slew of management team meetings added to my calendar with a host of people I have never met and they will be discussing another slew of things I know nothing about. They will be looking to ME for answers to some of their questions and I won’t even have the first clue of where to look for the answers. OK – maybe the vaguest of ideas but I still have so far to go to be really effective in my job.

It is intimidating but I am trying not to think about it and just take one day at a time. This weekend, the most important thing for me is to get physically well. And then come Monday, to cram as much information in my brain as humanly possible. We are at the end of a quarter which means there is a ton more reporting due than normal, reports that I have not seen before and I know there is no way to get them all done before my boss’s last day on Tuesday. My goal by the end of the day Tuesday is to get a working list from her of all of the reports by name, when they are due, who they are due to and who I can turn to get information to complete them. That is all I can do.

I know my expectations of myself are much higher than anyone at my company but I also know that with our reorg, many people I don’t even know are competing for the positions we don’t even realize are available – I need to stand out somehow, show them how valuable I can be, despite my very limited knowledge of their particular business.

So, wish me luck – until then, I am just going to try and enjoy the gorgeous fall weekend. . .and get rid of this damn cold!