The day is coming, not like we have much choice. I was easing into it as I got an early call on the cell phone. Dawn was creeping in around the building, flanking the shadows that hang down long from the towering flat roof. I hide from the first light on the west side, by the pool, and watch it illuminate the crenelated tower of the Culpepper Gardens Assisted Living Facility where I vote and may wind up someday if I don’t play my cards right.
The dawn’s early light is something on which I can take a pass, though it is gratifying that the darkness is giving way to light, earlier and earlier.
The call was one of distant early warning about business. I try to avoid talking about work in these tired chronicles, but there is something that is looming, and has been for a long time. It has been sitting on my shoulder like a drunken parrot, or the surly elephant in the corner who would really like another load of peanuts.
Here is the deal: we submitted a big proposal for a ginormous government contract last October. We did pretty well on the predecessor vehicle, so I have been cautiously optimistic that we would secure a place on the follow-on contract. It has been so long since we submitted- almost six months- that the whole thing has assumed a sort of surreal aspect. Like when my firs born was late by a couple weeks, and I just assumed that the pregnancy had become some sort of permanent condition. I would hate to think the Government has no idea what it is doing, and that the whole enterprise is creaking to a halt.
That could be no more possible than stopping the dawn, right
This week, the birds have been chirping that it might be Der Tag- the day of award.
There are several practical and personal implications of the binary choice the government will make. We either win a place at the table, or we dont. I cant really get beyond the branches-and-sequels of the decision.
If it is the former, life is going to be exciting. The chance to bid on work will come with intense pressure, short turn-around responses, and the thrills and chills of capitalism. Also, an end to weekends-off for the foreseeable future, just as it was for more than a year when we won a Prime role on the original contract.
If it is the latter, wellthere could be much more time off than anyone wishes.
Regardless of what happens, someone will have bruised feelings and there will be a formal protest that will hang things up. At least we will know what we are confronting.
I dont, at the moment, and have to go on planning for success, since doing the reverse- not planning will ensure failure. Consequently, I have a presentation to give out in the wilds of Fairfax County and will strap on the leg brace and try to navigate out there with the hairs standing up on the back of my neck.
Before succumbing to the pleasures of the working day, I attempted to digest what may (or may not) have happened in front of the Supremes in Day Three of the oral arguments about the health care train-wreck.
The note from AG Ken this morning said it appeared to be a skeptical bench in the morning session (impact of severing the Individual Mandate on the Act as a whole), and pro-Administration in the precedent of the Congress being able to bludgeon the several states with the withholding of grant money.
We wont know the answer until June, which is when all things will be revealed, and with luck, I will know about the outcome of the Ginormous Contract. Maybe even today.
It is a week filled with wonders, and it is not even close to being over.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com