A full recap of our zany weekend a bit later. Suffice it to say that I'm completely exhausted today.

I did receive some troubling news on Friday, though. I work for a small consulting firm. There are five of us techie-types who do the actual consulting, two owners, two administrative sorts and one woman who does our marketing. Business has been, well, slow as of late. We're doing pretty good now (or at least that's my impression) but we went for several months at the beginning of 2003 without a lot of projects. We (the "guys") were a bit concerned but nothing was said to us. On Thursday one of the consultants was let go. He'd been there almost seven years. The two administrators were both cut back to 20 hours a week and the marketing woman was told that she should plan on us needing her "a couple of times a month."

On first blush this seems very, very scary but we're being assured that it's not. There are some projects on the horizon and this is a one-time financial decision. The consultants that they've kept all have parts in the upcoming gigs and we're "safe." It's still incredibly unnerving. My role at the company is pretty secure, I think. I do things that the programmers don't want to do and I think they'd keep me around unless they decided to shut the place down (which I don't see happening in the near future). In addition, one of my co-workers happened to get his pre-approval for a home loan on Thursday. He asked them about it and they told him to go ahead and buy a house.

I'll talk to them tomorrow and I'm really, really trying not to freak out. I'm not really succeeding...