I'm back!

Well, I know it's been quite a while since I last posted, but we had some bad news so I didn't much feel like writing about it. Back at the beginning of the month our dog Jessie was hit and killed by a car. :-( Needless to say we were pretty sad for a while. We're trying to decide now if we want to get another dog or just hold off for a while. We'd only had her for 3 weeks!

Except for that things have been going pretty well. I've been put into a group of young folks at work known as Early Career High Potential (ECHP). We're apparently supposed to be the people with the most potential for success in the future. Rolls-Royce wants to give us lots of help & advice in advancing our career. Today I got to meet the president of Rolls-Royce Indianapolis, Steve Dwyer. He was quite a fantastic guy, very inspirational & easy to talk to. He explained the program and told us what will be going on.

As part of the ECHP thing, next month I'm going to start a "special project" that will broaden my experience. It won't have anything to do with my current job and it will only last for a couple months. I don't know what it is yet though. I'll let you know.

To top it all off, the 16 of us in the program get to go to Washington DC at the end of October. It's a huge deal! We get to meet all of the Chief's of the various Rolls-Royce North America sites (I think there are 8 or 9 all together). We get a tour of Capitol hill, complete with discussions about our Lobbyists there in Washington & how that all works. Then, the next day we go to the Pentagon for a big tour. Apparently we're going to be surrounded by big-wigs for two days. It's a fantastic opportunity (a little intimidating) and it should be a lot of fun. Especially since I've never been to DC.

Besides the ECHP thing, I've also got another neat career opportunity playing out. I was nominated to apply for a position as Technical Assistant to the Director of Engineering & Technology for Rolls-Royce (global). I would be working direclty for one of the highest level people in the company, worldwide! How neat is that? It would mean leaving Jen here for 6 months while I go to the UK, but we talked it over and think it'll be just fine. Not that it won't be hard. Anyway, I applied last week and I found out yesterday that I made the downselect to 10 people (from I don't know how many applicants world-wide). I have a video-conference interview on Monday. After that they'll downselect again to 3 people and those 3 will fly to the UK for face-to-face interviews with Mike Howse (the big wig). I'm a little nervous but it's quite an honor to even make the first cut. Wish me luck in my interview!

Well, I guess that's it for now. Jen and I get free dinner tonight from her hospital. Gotta love those doctor perks! See ya everybody!