the sun'll come out

I found out Monday that my contract will end early, at the end of December. Two more weeks of sitting in front of a computer in a modern glass building on the edge of a man-made lake in a Portland suburb.

My manager, Tom, came to tell me, saying that he had known for two weeks. The entire time I've been here I've heard about the budget shortage, but I've never seen real evidence of it; well, now I have.

The story goes that some department made a grave budget error, discovered it recently, and the burden has been pushed down. I don't understand if the group that made the error is part of the our department, or perhaps a department above the one I'm in. What I do know is that my smaller team is terminating its ETWs, which is some crazy acronym for contractors. As far as I know, that's only Chris-- a clown from Texas-- and me.

I have to say I wasn't particularly surprised. The whole gig just seemed to good-- the people too nice, the environment too beautiful, the work too straightforward-- to last long for me. I've had the song "I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here" from the 1982 movie version of Annie stuck in my head for the past three months. Like Little Orphan Annie, I'm out of place in Daddy Warbuck's mansion. Luckily I'll return to the streets instead of Miss Hannigan's orphanage, but there's a chance that the millionaire will take me back. His secretary, Grace, seems to have taken a liking to me even though I'm only a scrappy little orphan.