Tag: traffic

Lunch Break Post

I have made it to my lunch break on this the last day before a few days off for a long weekend in Florida. Is my motivation draining as my vacation gets closer and closer? Yes, yes it is. Will I remain productive through the second half of the day despite the obstacles? Yes, yes I will.

Our bags are packed. Jen has a few items she uses for work that still need to go into a suitcase or a backpack, but other than that we’re all set. I took two cameras, my digital Nikon Z5 and my 35mm Nikon FG-20. I have four rolls of film besides the one that’s already in the camera. I am going to follow the same workflow as the last Disney trip back in January. Use the film camera when I get to a park until I finish a roll, then switch to digital. That worked pretty well last time.

I get out of work at 5:30. We are hoping to be at the airport by 6:30-6:45 or so. Traffic will be worse than usual as it’s raining (again) today. The heavy traffic will be going away from the city though, so we should be able to get in to Boston with time to spare.

Our flight is pretty late this evening so we won’t be getting to the hotel until the wee hours of the morning. I think we’re getting a meal on the flight though. I expect to use some protein bars to get myself to my 80 gram daily protein goal before I leave the house, and then just grab some sugar free snacks at the airport to eat on the plane. I don’t trust airline food to be gastric bypass friendly. I don’t want to have stomach issues on the plane. That would be annoying. My redesigned stomach and I need to be extra careful today.

What else… I have a meeting at 3:00. That’s the only thing left on my work schedule. I will sneak upstairs and put the bags into the car after Jen finishes her work day so that the minute I punch out we can leave. I made a checklist in Google Keep to track things we need to do today. The only things left for me are to finish the laundry, put the freshly washed sheets onto the bed so that when we come home we’ll have happy clean sheets, and then make sure the cats food and water bowls are topped off. Harry will be here soon to cat sit, but I want to make sure we’re in the best position possible before we leave. I put fresh litter into the litter boxes this morning. That plus full food and water bowls will mean the cats don’t have anything to complain about. We have to keep the ladies happy, you know?

Okay, lunch break is winding down. Time to get back to reality. I’ll try to post a cat pic or two before we leave. No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.

Traffic Nightmare

40 mile drive today took about 130 minutes. Yeah, that fucking makes sense. Must have been the first day back in the office after Labor Day. Gridlock nightmare from hell, right on fucking queue. Suffice to say if I were working from home today I would not have wasted over two hours of my life sitting in fucking traffic.

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Commute

The traffic on this morning’s commute was pretty good. It’s the day after a national holiday so I wasn’t expecting any problems. There were two accidents. Waze called the second one major and tried to route me around it, but it took me so long to get to it that it was cleared by the time I arrived, and the traffic on the Waze detour was so bad that it re-routed me back to my normal route. I did get a pic of the first accident, which was very minor:

The weird part of this drive was all the breakdowns. There must have been about 20 cars pulled over during my 40 mile drive. That’s an insane number. No clue why there were so many people having so many problems. I don’t get it, but the Waze community was losing it’s shit reporting pulled over vehicles. There were very few moments during the entire drive when I wasn’t getting a warning of some sort.

Just Like the Bad Old Days

This is why I hate working in the office. Well, it’s one of the many reasons why working at home is infinitely preferable.

I drove for an hour this morning on both route 93 South and route 128 South without coming anywhere near the speed limit. From Methuen, MA to Waltham, MA at an average of probably 20 miles per hour. My 40 mile commute should have taken me about 40 minutes on the highway. Instead it took about 95 minutes.

No reason for it, just volume and gridlock. It’s infuriating. The best part is that I get to do it again tonight at around 5:30pm. Hoo-friggin’-ray.

Turkey? No. Traffic Jam? Yes

Well that was a kick in the scrotum.

No turkey for me. They closed down the gift distribution system at 2:00 without ever telling us whether the small turkeys had arrived or not. I take that to mean they did not. If they tell us to come in another day to pick up our turkeys I am going to blow it off. Any unclaimed gifts get donated to a shelter, so that works for me. I really love me some xmas turkey though. I’m a little ticked off. Hooray.

What was even better? I left the office at 2:00pm. Waze told me I would be home by 2:45. Well, 2:58 is what it ended up being. You see, I hit me a traffic jam on route 93 North. Yup, pre-3:00pm traffic jams. Oh yeah. The accident I was stuck behind wasn’t the cause of the traffic, it was a symptom of it. Hooray.

I tried blindly taking a picture for my photo a day thing as I was crossing the Merrimack River. All I got was the upper left corner of my passenger door frame. Oh well. Hooray.

That was Fun

I drove to Cambridge and back tonight. Three hours. I lost count of how many accidents I got stuck behind. Two of them temporarily closed the road I was on. One of those roads was Storrow Drive. Another was route 93. Hooray.

I took pictures from the car while I was stopped. They are kinda funny.

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There were more, but they were even more awfuller. Oh well. At least I’m home. It’s 9:23 and now I can eat dinner. Hooray.

I Don’t Wanna Go

I have to go to the office tomorrow. Ugh. I don’t wanna go. I know I say that every time I go into the office, but it’s true. One epic side effect of the Covid-19 pandemic is me being a full on work-from-home guy. I need to pack up my computer, pack a lunch, get my shit together, get up early, do my exercises, and leave early enough to get there even through an hour or so of gridlocked traffic.

Yeah, I am a telecommuter to the core now. I don’t wanna go to the office.