"I'll Have the Shrimp."

Caryl, myself, and another coworker took Michael, whose last day here at The Company is today, out to lunch. We chose The Cheesecake Factory at the Inner Harbor because it's somewhat opulent (for lunch, anyway)and because I hadn't had good cheesecake in a long, long time.

Before the meal, Caryl and I trekked over to Barnes & Noble to pick up a couple of thank you gifts for Michael, who carpooled us to and from work for the last month and a half (and of course me for significantly longer than that).

On other fronts, I asked for some recognition at the workplace... nominal as opposed to monetary. After being the one permanent employee to occupy my specific role, the higher-ups are bringing on other staff. I asked for a title change to reflect/indicate my setting the precedence for many of the initiatives we now have in place.

My immediate manager understood my concern and said she would talk it over with her boss. The thing is, I had the idea to do this months ago, long before I even knew others would be brought on board...but I decided to wait until after the review period.

The increase I was given this year was a very generous one, so I'm content with that for now, but really believe I deserve the nod of a change in title. We'll see what happens... I struggled with feeling that maybe I was being a glory hound, but the feeling that I should ask now kept nagging me, so I decided to listen to my instincts.