Marching orders have arrived

My relationship with my company's Dubai office is of the "hurry up and wait, and then hurry up" variety:

• First, I get the e-mail. "Hey, we may need you to come out and help us on a project that's coming up. We think it will start soon. Be prepared, we'll let you know."

• Then a lot of time goes by. Days, weeks, sometimes even months. Nothing happens.

• Then, finally, I get one of two follow-up e-mails. One is the "never mind, we don't need you after all" The other e-mail is "hey, can you be here by the end of the week? Oh, and we're going to need you to be out here pretty much all the time for the next three months."

Well, I got the "other" e-mail early Monday morning. It seems that not only is the project they told me about last month a go, but so is the project that was supposed to begin last fall but was then delayed for the developer for so long that I thought it had disappeared. Well, it finally reappeared. In a big way.

Both of these projects kick off on April 6th. Less than a week from today. My physical presence has been requested on that date, if at all possible. And I'll be spending most of my time in Dubai for the next three to five months, working on both of these projects (I will be able to make short trips back home from time to time).

On one hand, I'm happy. My workload here has been slowing down to the point that I was getting concerned about what I'd be doing next, and this Dubai work means billable hours for several months to come. Staying employed is always a good thing. I also like Dubai. That place is amazing and I've been ready to go back and see how much it has changed since my last trip there over a year ago.

On the other hand, it's not without its hardships. Being away from home for weeks at a time is difficult enough for me, but it's even harder on Lori because she'll have to take care of Kirby by herself. My parents will be here for most of the time I'm gone, however, and her parents, her sister, and friends and neighbors will be around as well so she'll still have a lot of people to help her out while I'm gone. But I'm sure she's going to get tired of Kirby asking "where's daddy?" all the time, because I don't think he's old enough to really understand why I'm going to be gone for several weeks at a time.

I don't know my itinerary yet, but if they truly want me there by Sunday I'll probably need to leave Houston on Thursday or Friday of this week. Which means I'm going to be frantically running around for a the next few days. I have loose ends to tie up at work, things to take care of at home, and of course I need to pack. Guess who's not going to be getting much sleep for the next several days?

At least I won't have to miss football season this time...