CHAPTER 181 FROM THE VALLEYLOW TO THE MOUNTAIN HIGH 1999

CHAPTER 181 FROM THE VALLEY LOW TO THE MOUNTAIN HIGH 1999

 

In August we went to Vale, Colorado, to the Experian Analytix User Conference.  Somehow. Kim managed enough strength to go with us. Amazing, she had this delicate pregnancy that prevented her from coming to work to sit at a PC, but it wasn’t delicate enough to keep her off an airplane and from climbing up towers on mountaintops.  

Rick, Kim, Harry, Nathan and I went. Harry rented a van at the

Denver airport and drove up into the mountains to Vail. On the trip, I mentioned to Kim that I had had to change her password, and she went ballistic. I had no right to go into  her computer.  I was not to do that. Strange, it wasn’t her PC, it was Wilmington Trust’s PC and there was work that had to be done. What was she so sensitive about?

 I did get to do something I always wanted to do at this conference. I was able to take a white-water raft trip on the Colorado River.  Scariest part of trip is the narrative before you go explaining how to deal with  such things as capsizing or getting trapped beneath the raft. None of those things happened. It was a fun trip.

A rougher trip was when Rick and I took a Jeep trip up  the narrow
trains of 14,000 foot high Mount Vail. You really do appreciate scraping yourself in with seat belts.  (Left, Nathan Hardy, Rick having a very expensive breakfast of the first morning at th conference.  I took the photo.)

Rick and I went to dinner at the resort that night. Rick suggested we stop at the bar first and we never did get dinner. We sat at the bar until 2:00 AM. I was drinking  whisky sours with Crown Royal chasers; he had the Crown Royal with beers. He put the bill on hs expense account some how because the tab was $147 before tip.  When the bar closed we went up to his room and were drinking what ever was in the little refrigerator they supplied.  He had began to babble about some kind of fish box he was inventing. At 6:00 I excused myself and went back to my room. I told him I needed a little sleep before our classes at 8:00 in the morning. 

Somehow I got through a day of classes. I didn’t see Rick at all. I
didn’t see him again until the next day when we were flying home. 

When we returned from the conference, Kim as she left the airport was again struck by her condition and  couldn’t come to work, although it appeared she was coming in after hours to go on her PC.

  Strange.

Strange, until the day the Boss called her in for a meeting and fired her.  She wasn’t fired for her absenteeism. She was fired for doing something she shouldn’t have been involved with concerning confidential information about our custom…clients  Apparently she was making lists of client data and selling this somewhere, and what leaks was she was using  private client information to create credit cards for her own use, something discovered by postal inspectors.  She lost her job, of course,  but she avoided jail because Wilmington Trust wanted to avoid any negative publicity. Kim’s name kind of disappears from in-house conversation.

Dave Ernst was dead and nobody replaced him. It was as I he had never existed, and from that time on Kim never existed either.

Harry was getting more fidgety every day. In December Mary Murphy (women in red in photo on left) suddenly shows up for a meeting concerning the  AnalytiX problems. Where did she come from? She was manager of the Small Business Center. But she did also oversee direct mail and the direct mail clerk, one Sherry Shen, who used AnalytiX to create mailing lists.  It wasn’t long that  we realized Mary had some kind of power over us.  Finally, the Boss announced reorganization and solved the mystery.

Barry Strepko’s Section was going to relocate in the headquarter’s building and report to a Joan Sullivan (left), who was now second in command to Rita.  Harry’s section was also relocating from the Pei Building to the new Wilmington Trust Plaza into Diane Sparks Interactive Services Division, with us  in Marketing Information reporting to Mary Murphy.  Sherry Shen would join our group with her direct mail. Joyce Babiarz would be in our group.  Janet and Mawla had already posted out to other areas of the bank.  Deborah Williams would go to another section of the Plaza and report to Kim May. She would take Strong Points with her.

Larry Taylor was named Assistant to The Boss.  

The pressure was on.  It was clear something was not going to work. Harry was a Section Manager.  Mary Murphy was a Section Manager.  How could Harry be reporting to Mary?  And Sherry was getting more involved too. 

 

My oldest child, Laurel, spent Christmas of 1999 living with her
current boys friend’s family in Ireland. She had met him after. High school and  they had been 

going steady. He was somewhat older than she and his name was Dave Thomas. No, he wasn’t the owner/founder of Wendy’s.  His family lived in Dublin and Dave invited her to go with him to their home over Christmas.

She spent some time down at a local pub and had some ciders, not realizing how potent  Irish ciders could be. On the left she is in the midst of the frivolity.

This photo was taken in a chips shop not long after she left the pub
and she was now feeling the potency of Irish Cider,

She was there through New Year and had a great time exploring the town.

 

By Spring of 2000, Laurel Had been accepted as a student at
Colorado State University and she broke off with Dave.

 

She began going with a man named Mike, who worked at UPS while there and they traveled around to different sights in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.

In the photo right

she was kayaking in New Mexico as well as visiting one of the Arches National Park in Utah on right. She worked in the kitchen at the University washing dishes.