Tag: work from home

Big Red Haired Ball of Stress

Woah, boy… today… am I right, or am I right?

The stress level today has been through the roof. The contractor experience went off without a hitch, but the first half of the work day was… woah.

We caught a customer issue before the customer did and went into a mad scramble to get it straightened out for them. It took a little while to get a band aid in place but now we’re dealing with figuring out how to stop it from ever happening again while also talking the customer down from their panicked state. The code/app that my team is responsible for is downstream from the actual cause of the problem. It didn’t happen in our piece of the system, but it did present itself to people using our piece of the system. Yikes is the word of the day. Everyone involved, both on my company’s side and on the customer’s side, did a bang up job getting everything straightened out, and I bet that when the dust settles we’ll all agree it wasn’t that big of a deal… but for the moment. Yikes.

Back to the home owner situation, two more contractors are coming tomorrow. One is a plumber who will put everything that was taken apart today back together again. The other is just a routine maintenance thing. I will be in the office for both of them though. I am thinking about trying to find a way to be able to stay home for all of it. I don’t want my wife to have to deal with either thing. If I work from home tomorrow it means I will have to be in the office three days next week…….. yeah, I think I am going to work from home tomorrow. Command decision made. Three days next week.

On an unrelated note, today is the anniversary of my Uncle Johnny’s death. It’s been 17 years. He was godfather to both me and my sister. He was my father’s only sibling. He had a tough life but he overcame a lot of awful shit. He was good people and I love him and I miss him. I wish he could have known all of our kids. He would have been proud, I know it.

Okay. Back to the stress. Look out below!

Crazy Day Coming

Last night Jen and I stayed at the hotel that is hosting her company’s function. I got up at 5:30, took a shower, and drove home. It’s a little wacky, but I am working from home on a day when we aren’t actually home. Does that make sense? No? So what, it’s how it is. Heh.

192/365

Tomorrow I will work in the office, so I’ll be driving there from the hotel instead of from home. That’s going to be weird too. I was thinking that I would bring my camera with me and wander around the city after work tonight, but if I am going straight to work in the morning I will have my work laptop with me… so I think I will be going to the hotel after work, and it will be late enough that the sun will be down by the time I get there and put my stuff away. So maybe I won’t be wandering around the city after all. Maybe I’ll just stay in the room and watch Daredevil while I wait for Jen to come back from her post-work, work-events.

We’ll see. I did tell Jen that if I happen on a music store in my wandering and said music store had a Gibson guitar for sale for under $1,000, then I am totally buying it. I should see if I can make that promise come true. Heh heh.

Anyway, time to get ready for work. There is a contractor coming this afternoon as well as a delivery that I have to open the door for. All of that on top of having a crazy busy schedule. It’s going to be a weird one today. Big time.

Two More Days

We are down to the holiday wire and, somehow, I wrapped the final present this morning. We had a few things delivered yesterday and today before work I took them to my wrapping station in the cellar and cranked them out.

The Wrapping Is Complete.

I still need to go out and pick up one or two little things that are fun but not required. I will do that either tonight after work or tomorrow. I am off work tomorrow. Actually, I am off work until Friday. I was going to work in the office today but I am still sick so in order to not screw up anyone else’s holiday I stayed home. I am well enough to work, but not well enough to be in public guilt free. If I do go out at some point tonight I will wear a mask.

One more work day to go and then I am off for xmas eve, xmas, and Boxing Day… even though the US doesn’t celebrate Boxing Day. Whatevs, right? HoHoHo.

Cellar Dweller

My step son, Harry, is home! He was here when I got home from work last night and it was wonderful having him around. Having kids here makes me happy.

Him being home today means that I am working from the office desk in the cellar instead of the desk in his room. I am a cellar dweller again while he’s home. Today is Friday and I am working from home. Next week I will be in the office on Monday and then I am off for xmas eve, xmas day, and I took a vacation day for the day after xmas. So one day working in the cellar is all I need. I can handle it. Not that there’s any difficulty working in the cellar, I just like being upstairs more. That’s all.

I do have one thing planned for my lunch break down here in the cellar where no one can see me…

I setup a gift wrapping station. Let’s see how much of the remaining pile of presents I can get through while I eat my chicken patty and fries. Bring on the work day so I can get to it. Two working days left before Santa comes. Still much to do in that little amount of time. Let’s do this thing!

I Foresee a Bad Day Ahead

I don’t know what’s going on with me today, but I have a bad feeling about this. About everything.

I am working from home for the first time this week and it feels glorious. I have a deadline today that I should be able to meet easily. Why then do I feel this sense of impending doom? I went through all of the email from my half day out of the office yesterday and I just sense that I am going to be pecked to death by the universe today.

We are going to Vermont tomorrow to see the kids. Maybe that’s the reason I feel off today. Maybe my heart is already driving North and as a result the rest of me is just pissed off that we still have a full day to go. I don’t know. We’re going to meet up with the kids for an NCAA hockey game. UMass Lowell (both my and my wife’s alma mater) at University of Vermont (my step daughter’s alma mater and employer, and my step son’s current school). It’s going to be fun, assuming Lowell cleans Vermont’s clock. Both teams are doing well in the early going. I am hoping for a fun game. Unlike the Bruins game last night where they lost in Dallas 7-2. I am just going to make pretend that game didn’t happen, m’kay?

I don’t know about this sense of impending doom. Hopefully I work myself out of it. Wish me luck.

Connectivity

I am having system connectivity issues at work today. Working from home is being a jerk. Who knew?

I’m pulling my hair out of my head a little. I can do 90% of my job fine, but that last 10% is frustrating as all hell.

Come on, system. Let’s get our virtual head out of our virtual ass, huh? How about it?

Busy

The last few days at work have been busy and a little stressful. Lots of putting out fires. Not literal fires of course. I don’t drive a red truck for a living.

Anyway, as is usually the case when I am working in the office, I feel like I would be in a better mindset if I were working from home. If nothing else, I would have furry little critters hanging around and cheering me on*.

I took this picture just before I left this morning, just for some moral support or something. You know how it is.

*Are they cheering me on or are they making fun of me? I can’t tell. It’s like the Cheers and Jeers section of the old TV Guide except you don’t get to know what category you’re in until it’s all over.

Get Out of It

The last couple of days I’ve had this pain in my eye. I feel like I got punched in my right eye. It hurts and it feels a little swollen and it’s itchy and sometimes it’s watery.

My question is…. Can I use this eye thing to get out of working in the office tomorrow and the day after?

Can I? Huh?

Yeah, I didn’t think so. Oh well.

Empty Nesters… Again

Bellana is back in Vermont. She left last night and stayed over one of her friends’ house in order to cut down on her morning commute today. At our house she was three hours away from work, and today is a work day for her. I get it. It makes me sad to see her go, but I am also really happy we had her for a few days. Even more so as we had Harry for a few days before that, and their visits overlapped so we had them both for a day. That made me really happy. That was an extra good night.

Jen is working from the office today. I am working from home. That means I am here by my lonesome, just me and the cats. I have a podcast playing on my MacBook and it’s streaming to Home Pods scattered all over the house. I don’t have to pause the podcast if I need to get up and leave the room. Heh heh. Technology is cool. When Jen comes home I’ll shut off any streams that are anywhere other than Harry’s room/my office space.

The Great Heatwave of 2024 is going to become official today. The forecast calls for the temperature in my little city to hit 99 degrees. That will be three days over 90. Heatwave: Confirmed. It is 9:10am right now and it’s already 83 degrees. It’s going to be fun.

The forecast for the rest of the week? Rain and clouds and awful. Back to normal, I guess.

After complaining about crappy sleep for the last week or so, I finally topped six hours last night. In fact, I topped 7.5 hours. It was broken though. I fell asleep at 9:30pm. Not by choice. I just couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore and zonked out. Normally I try to eat something before I go to sleep out of fear that my stomach will get so empty over night that it will hurt. A snack at bedtime avoids that problem, but I didn’t have one last night. My last bite to eat last night was at 7:49pm. I woke up with a bit of a stomach ache at 2:30am. I had a little snack and felt better, but I couldn’t fall back to sleep until well after 3:00. Oh well. I felt really tired when I woke up today (almost an hour later than I had planned) but I feel okay now. Here’s hoping I won’t be totally exhausted today.

Okay, red head. Back to work.