A few days ago I received a memo from our head office in Portland re: conversion to career-conditional status. Know what that means? Well, I had no idea either. So I headed over to my helpful HR coordinator, Larry, who explained that this means I am no longer a term employee, but an actual PERMANENT employee with the Service! Woo hoo! So now they can’t just toss me out on my arse for any old reason. This, I think, is good news and will be particularly important when I decide that I want to dye my hair bright purple. The “conditional” part of the status will drop off after my probationary year (during which time there will be no extreme hair dying), and after two years I’ll be fully vested in all my retirement benefits (which have been accumulating this past year anyway). It’s all very confusing, but the main point is that after a year, all bets on the appropriate color of my hair are off.

Coming up next: my fabulous term-to-permanent office makeover!!!