This week has been all about switching gears. Last week was all about family, the holidays and travel. I prefer last week’s itinerary over this week’s, it was certainly more fun, but it was also rather tiring and its frenetic pace reminded me of my own mortality. The biological clock always keeps ticking. This week is about work and wrapping up things for this year. I started a new assignment at work, which is a good thing. New is always a good thing there. I also had my annual performance review today. It was rather a non-event. I got my usual C, which in these dark times at Spacely Sprockets, is just fine with me. I almost always got a C, except when I was being groomed for a promotion. Now, my former success seems to be catching up with me. In the last couple of layoffs, management seems to be targeting us more senior engineers. In the past, they tended to cut from the bottom, maintaining the more experienced employees, but twenty-five years of that practice really screwed up the demographic. They are now unwilling to repeat that mistake. So, I had my performance review today. Will it be my last? We’ll see. I wouldn’t mind the time off to hike the Appalachian Trail, with my wife of course. Maybe we could do Rio too?