I need to book my tickets while I can still get to the wee Flint, MI, airport and back for under $300. Thanks for the reminder, ND. I hope your flight goes smoothly.

He's dealing with conflicting paradigms of what it means to be a successful adult and a good person.

And those conflicting paradigms of being caught between two cultures, which is a huge part of what I'm assuming you mean by being a good person Fay, can be such a bitch.

I was monumentally lucky in that my mother, for all her craziness, was very progressive for a Cuban-bred, convent-educated woman of her era. When she and my father moved to the U.S., she wanted all of us kids to become assimilated and consider ourselves American first. Thank goodness she's such a force of nature, too, because she got my father to go along with that mindset, and it wasn't until they divorced that I discovered just exactly what his expectations for me as a woman were. When he was confronted about falling behind on the child-support and college fund payments, his response was, "What does she need to go to college for? She's just going to get pregnant in the next couple of years anyhow."

I was fourteen at the time. Quite the shock that.

Which, of course, makes the fact that she's dating him again beyond my ken and my Barbies too, but that's a whole other psychiatrist's couch.

At any rate, that being trapped between two cultures-- I saw how so many of my contemporaries struggled with it and was always grateful it wasn't something that was a big thing for me.

And as usual, I was responding before reading that the whole thing had been more or less resolved.

Not enough coffee for me yet.

Sorry. Move along. Nothing to see here.

I don't think you were remiss in posting that, Barb. I think it's quite interesting learning about the dichotomy.

I'm supposed to leave for Nashville for Easter in the next few hours. There are severe thunderstorm warnings between here and there all day. I'm wondering whether I should just plan for early tomorrow and come back Monday.

I might have missed it mentioned earlier, but this month's Wired magazine has a multiple page article on how Settlers of Catan is the Best Game Ever and not once in the entire article did the writer mention the game's seminal statement "I have wood for your sheep." Just sayin.

Barb, I found what you said interesting. It offers both an insight into who you are, and an insight into the challenges that P-C is facing, that so many of us do not understand in a first-hand way.

layoffma, billytea. I'm glad you're there and not here and don't (I assume) have to worry about losing your insurance five minutes before you have a baby.

This is true. Such health insurance as I have (Medicare and private cover) is not employer-related in any way. (Lowercase tea's heritage will be full coverage. This I swear!)

When I got fired they snuck into my office to turn off my computer when I was called into the Weasel!Boss's office. When you make eye contact with the IT people the look like dogs that have shit in the corner.

See, that just sucks. This is not the lay-off of the new Millennium. Bad IT guys! No biscuit!

Best possible outcome -ma! I hope it's lucrative, involves a lot of free time, a lot of less boss and possibly some echidna skulls. Btw, billytea, where do you keep your echidna skull?

That is actually an excellent question. We still have a couple of boxes that we haven't unpacked yet, I suspect it's in there.

Its got to be a stressful situation for you.

It really has been, but honestly that's coming more from the realisation that I don't have any sort of future in this company than from the lay-off prospect. Or at least after Wallybee and I worked through our options.

So I have a question: what is more important, a good work environment or advancing your career?

Coming late to this party, but still. I have historically gone for career advancement over the work environment. I don't regret anything with it, and it opened up some excellent opportunities (most notably the four years in Philadelphia); however, if I had it to do over I'd probably swing the balance further towards the work environment. I have a few thoughts.

It'll rarely be either/or. The work enviroment will have flies in the ointment or silver linings; it can also change, for better or for worse, when key people leave or the firm changes direction. And any position gives you the chance to improve your working skills, especially the generic skills.

Planning is good. Just don't expect things to go according to it. But they'll still let you keep track of where you're going, maintain momentum and have a frame of reference to consider changes in direction.

Happiness comes in different varieties. Look for the kind that lasts.

Having a career is good, or at least it could be. But, listen to yourself. If it sounds like a goal because you can really connect it to you being satisfied with your place in the world, then it's a goal worth pursuing. If it's there because there's a voice in your head built up from the expectations of people around you saying this is what you should want, then there's a good chance it'll take you into a life of quiet desperation.

You have time. If you take a chance, and it doesn't work out the way you hoped, you have time to try something else. If you stay put, you haven't given up being able to try something a little later.

Whichever way you go, do your homework, and be prepared.

I might have missed it mentioned earlier, but this month's Wired magazine has a multiple page article on how Settlers of Catan is the Best Game Ever and not once in the entire article did the writer mention the game's seminal statement "I have wood for your sheep." Just sayin.

Even aside from missing the obvious comment, the writer is on crack. I feel like this is a golden age of sorts for board games, and Settlers has an important place in heralding its arrival; but there are simply better games available now for almost any criteria you're looking for.

Though I've heard the Cities and Knights expansion gives it a boost.

Billytea's words were very, very wise.

I'd like to add that work environment is very important. Having spent too many years working for bosses that would make Michael Scott look good, I can vouch that a bad work environment is very damaging to career advancement.

But I don't think that's what P-C's asking. He's asking whether he should stay on the track he's on or try to shift to what he really wants to do.

(And P-C's uncle is tangential to that issue. While I have definite opinions on P-C's family issues, I've expressed them before, and they aren't central enough to this question for me to repeat them now.)

It sounds like the drug safety niche is something you can live with but not what you really prefer. In this economy, having a job that pays the bills and that you can live with is nothing to look down on. It also sounds like you have options to make the job closer to what you want -- look into them. Re-assess when the economy picks up and the option of going elsewhere becomes realistic.