Turn over the Calendar

Things are certainly different now, might as well add the calendar to the list. I have a dog, the girls are gone and it's just a two man operation again. It's September now. The frenetic pace at work has slowed for a week. I welcome it. I actually should have taken the week off. A little mental refresh before the madness that is September. There is going to be Farm Show then maturity notes, silage, corn tours and then the combines start rolling. It will be a scramble to get to all the sites and record all the ratings before the combine runs through the crops. Once it goes it is generally pretty tough to be able to tell what was what in terms of ratings.  It doesn't end with the combines either, there is soil sampling, then statistical analysis, presentations to give, knowledge transfer events to show them at, and then it's into planning and prepping for the next season. It's almost a seamless cycle. I have another wedding to squeeze in there with it's associated bachelor party. It's going to be hard to remember to live when things jump off this fall. I am excited to see what happens this winter. I expect our workload is going to be a major thing this time around. We've always done what we felt was needed but with all the organizational changes it looks like we're going to have a leash now. I'm not sure how it's going to work. Speaking of those changes, it was yesterday that marked the end of an era for many of my colleagues. Several in my region experienced their last day. I wasn't in the office but I'm told it was mostly tears and sad farewells. I hear it was the same in our Western offices as well. Some people were simply expelled, others had their jobs moved elsewhere with an option to move (that generally made no sense to them). It is a tough thing to say goodbye to someone that has been there for eight or nine years, working side by each with you on various projects and challenges. It's a small enough community in my industry that we'll likely cross paths one day in the future and say an awkward hello, but really those people have been ripped out of my universe and it's a strange thing. It's alarming how many things changed when the calendar did. Such is life and the best we can do is look ahead and try to be ready for the next round of changes. And somebody remind me to stop and smell the roses this fall, I'll need the reminder. I'll bitch about work when you do but deep down I'll remember writing this and be grateful.