Not the vacation from which I just returned, though it had a couple of ups and downs. Sorry I didn't put a "gone fishing" sign here to explain my lack of posting.

I got a call from my soup-ervisor on my cell phone when we were just out of Tallahassee last night.

Seems there was a lay-off (also called a staff reduction) Thursday afternoon. Among the 16 victims of the staff reduction were Office Stalker, Uncle Chuckie - and Yours Truly.

Business has been bad. Very bad. The daily sales reports have been in the tank for some time (thanks a lot, Enron). So this wasn't a total shock. However I thought I had some time to find a new gig on my own before the ship started to sink.

Now, I'm a low-level marketing functionary, but Uncle Chuckie is an engineer extraordinare - it's weird that they let him (and another engineer with the same job, different division) go. At least I'm in good company. There were cuts in every department.

We are all getting a severance package, which I've never had before, and I'll have insurance until the end of April.

Apparently Soup was frantic to reach me, because she didn't want me to find out about the lay-off via the Fed Ex envelope they sent me with all the fun details when I returned home. (Cell phone was out of range, not to mention out of charge.) But if she had reached me, she would have totally trashed my vacation - Friday was the best day, and that's when she called!

So I have to go in to clean out my cube later this morning. I'm not devastated, but I am worried about finding another job, what with war and the economy sucking and all.

The weirdest thing is, I think I'm actually going to miss Uncle Chuck.