Welcome back

News travels slowly, sometimes. The Secretary of Defense authorized a return to work for most of the civilians, which is a minor dent in the impact of the ongoing government shutdown, so it wasn’t exactly something the morning radio programs were leading with. So I was a bit surprised when I got to work this morning to see most of my colleagues arriving for the day as well. Yet here they are! I’m happy for them, to a certain extent, by which I mean I kind of feel sorry for them because they all have to sit at their desks and earn their paychecks, as opposed to the majority of the people who are still furloughed but now effectively earning paychecks while sleeping in at home due to some appeasement legislation passed over the weekend. But to the extent that my co-workers are all industrious and conscientious public servants and would be really stressed out about how far behind they had fallen if they were forbidden to return to their duties until the shutdown ended, whenever that might turn out to be, then sure, I’m happy that things are looking up for them.

It does, of course, beg the question of where exactly the budget authority comes from for one cabinet member to simply fiat that their workforce is back in play. I suspect a lot of people think it’s all just imaginary bookkeeping trickery at any rate, the shutdown, the debt ceiling, Obamacare, Social Security, the IRS, all of it. And stunts like this certainly don’t help. Ah well.

For my part, I’ve had about all I can take of sequestration and continuing resolutions and contract option year funding &c. &c. &c. I spent most of last week fantasizing about politely sidestepping out of the way of the barrage of outrageous slings and arrows inherent to government contracting (and possibly doing a little bit more than merely fantasizing about it). Of course I neither want to jinx anything which may or may not be in the offing, nor tempt fate for a brutal comeuppance by finally proving that my job-preserving blogonymity is in fact not as foolproof as I had hoped. So I will simply leave it at that, with my frustration and thorough over-it-ness self-evident. But stay tuned for potential updates.