Burning a hole in my pocket

Yesterday I received a "High Five" award at work. Basically it is a recognition program. When one of the guys in the Product Line Management group was on vacation for a couple of weeks, I responded to requests for information from our account teams. Anyway, the Director of PLM was quite happy with the help I was able to provide. So, I got a phone call asking me to come to my Director's office and found my Director and the Director of PLM sitting there. They gave me a nice card and informed me that there would be a cash bonus on my next pay cheque.

Today was pay day, and Karen gave me the go ahead to spend the money, so I placed an order with CBD. The big item was a 4 volume theology by Norman Geisler. I also ordered a couple of books by John Piper.

There was also a nice surprise on Tuesday. I was off work on Monday with a cold, and went into work on Tuesday to find an invitation to a meeting with a patent lawyer. I knew I had an idea floating around in Alcatel, but I didn't know it had been approved. So on Thursday I sat down with the lawyer and we started working on the filing. It will take a couple of weeks, but I should see the cash bonus before Christmas. This is patent number 4, which is a reasonable achievement. However, to put things in perspective, some friends at church told me that his father has over a hundred patents. Basically they are something that looks good on my resume and puts some extra cash in my pocket.