NY was fun!

Award trip to NY ended up being fun, even with it's shaky start. I left here around 2:00, and found that the head of global corporate trust was on the same flight. There are only two people above him in the whole international bank, and he was the one I (and 7 of my fellow award winners) were supposed to have dinner with that night. He asked me why I was leaving so late, since he thought people would go early to do some sight-seeing or visit the NYC offices (we've got two, one on Wall St and one on Barclay). I explained that I was told to book my flight late so I could work in the morning. He looked at me like I'd grown a second head. He asked if we were really that busy that they couldn't do without me for a couple hours. I shrugged and said I wasn't positive on the volumes we were getting, but that my manager thought we were busy enough to remind me today that I was still expected to try to work 3-4 hours of overtime this week too. He said he thought I was more on special projects and data management (wow, he knows what I do!), which shouldn't require such rigidly scheduled overtime... or required overtime at all. Before I could say anything he said he'd look into it, because he wanted me on a couple of bank-wide projects he was working on. That'd be good for me as he believes in the management style that if you can't do it in the 8 hours, you're doing it wrong. Let's hope he actually follows up Besides that, the dinner was nice. It was a little restaurant, but fancy and right around the corner from the Millenium Hilton. The hotel was extremely ritzy, and had a tv the size of the wall. It was directly across the street from the Ground Zero World Trade Center site, so there was some construction noise but nothing horrible. Though it was eerie to look down from my 35th floor and just stare at the site of where the tower was. The luncheon the next day wasn't as horrible as we thought. They webcast the things to the whole bank. During past ones, sitting in conference rooms staring at a phone on speaker, I and many of my co-workers usually nodded off. It's very different sitting at a table, actually there. When it came time to present the awards the head of global trust described me as "our 'Fixer,' she handles all the problems. She's like the Michael Clayton of bondholder relations." Now I have to see Michael Clayton to know what he was talking about. In other news, I had my follow up visit to the doctor about the fainting incident. According to him all my tests are too normal so it makes it hard to diagnose what happened. So now I have to do a bunch of other tests to widen the sample to see if any irregularities pop up. This week is blood testing for sugars. I have to prick my finger twice a day and use a testing machine to record the results. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. Let's see how I feel after the week of testing is up. I feel fine, so I think we're going to find at the end of this it was just the dehydration and nothing else.

Going to NYC...

Trip to NYC is actually happening. Got the OK from my doctor, and so plans progress. Of course, my manager is so afraid to do without me that instead of getting the day off like everyone else who won this award and traveling to NYC this morning, I'm here at work. For three hours (almost up in the next 30 minutes), then I fly off to NYC to have dinner with the head of global operations tonight and then the award luncheon tomorrow. Of course, everyone else gets to have a day in NYC to sight-see, but I'm so very necessary that I have to work just long enough to make it completely impossible to do anything today, and they booked my flight back right after the awards luncheon so no chance to do anything tomorrow either. I wasn't too upset by this until I got a reminder email from my manager today reminding me that we're still trying for 4 hours of overtime each week...and I still need to make up most of it even if I am out of town for two days of the week. For goodness sake! The place will not shut down if I'm not here!