Tag: work from the office

Traffic is Funny

Here’s an example of why traffic in greater Boston is funny. I don’t mean funny as in hahaha, I mean funny as in I am so mad I want to claw my eyes out.

I drove about 70 miles to get to work today. It was pouring rain the whole way. It was also seriously foggy out. The fog plus the rain plus the spray coming off of everyone’s tires meant that visibility was only slightly better than zero. For almost the entire drive I was up around 70-75 miles per hour. I made excellent time.

Yesterday it was gloomy out but other than a little drizzle at the tail end of the drive it was dry. No precipitation, no fog to speak of, no road spray. It had rained the day before though. How did I do for time? There were pockets of gridlock everywhere. The drive took 30 minutes longer than it took today.

Rain today = no traffic jams.
No rain today but rain yesterday = huge traffic jams.

See what I mean about “funny”?

Anyway, here’s a picture of a guitar to try to guilt myself into playing before work tomorrow, when I will thankfully be working from home again.

102/365

Holiday: But Not For Me

Today is the day that used to be known as columbus day, before those of us who actually care about other people decided that chris columbus was a dick and giving him a holiday was in bad taste. Now it’s Indigenous Peoples Day and I much prefer the sound of that.

Unfortunately, it’s not a holiday for me. I have to work. Worse, I have to work in the office. Worse than worse, I have a 9:00 meeting. I left home super early out of fear that traffic would make me late for the meeting. I completely forgot that most of Massachusetts is off work today and there was so little traffic that I was in the parking lot over an hour early.

Oops. At least I won’t be late for the 9:00am meeting, right?

Happy Indigenous Peoples day to all who celebrate. Also, chris columbus was a dick who “discovered America” through nothing more than incompetence. Let’s not give him any more holidays.

Day Four

I wrote a post about this yesterday. I am supposed to work from the office two days each week and last week, thanks to a head cold left over from our Florida vacation, I didn’t come into the office at all. That means for the rest of the month of June I would owe two days in the office.

Well… assuming I can survive for the next 3.5 hours or so, I won’t owe any more. Today is the fourth day of the work week, and I’ve been in the office all four days.

I am exhausted.

Prior to the pandemic, four days in the office and one day at home was the norm. Thursday was my one telecommute day each week. The rest of the week I was in the office. It’s not the same office I’m in now, but that’s not important at all. Four days in, one day home. I am pretty sure this week marks the first time since Covid came to call that I will match that schedule. Well… not exactly. Friday will be my work from home day this week. That is not important either.

What is important is that I have made up the two days I missed last week. I am back on track. Next week will only have two days in the office and all will be right with the working world again.

I just can’t get over how tired I am. The commute, the noise, the stress… it’s just wearing me out, man. How did I manage this for 16 years or so before Covid? I can’t wrap my tiny little miniature brain around it.

Tomorrow I will work from home. I have to move back to the basement office because Harry is home and I won’t be able to use the desk in his room. That’s oaky with me. Who knows, maybe if the weather cooperates I might work outside for a while. Maybe I’ll give it a try at least, just to say that I’ve done it.

In other news, my House of the Dragon season one rewatch to prep for Sunday’s premier of season two continues. I’m through six out of ten episodes which is nuts given that I only thought of doing this four nights ago. I’m caught up on Star Wars: The Acolyte and loving it so far. Three episodes in and I am coming up with some crazy theories. I’m ready for part one of the two part season finale of Doctor Who which airs tomorrow night. We still don’t know who the bad guy is. I haven’t a clue. The new season of The Boys is supposed to launch today at some point. I’m not sure exactly when. There will be three episodes released at launch. I am probably going to hold off on them until I get through the last four episodes of HotD. I’m not sure though. We’ll see.

No band practice this week. No band practice next week. After that I am hopeful that we’ll be able to string together a bunch of them and start getting some of the songs back up to speed. Not to mention growing calluses on my finger tips so that playing doesn’t hurt as much. I’m really looking forward to that.

Oh good! One of the guys in my group at work submitted a bug yesterday and someone in the Dev group just picked it up off of the queue. Here’s hoping we get a quick turn around! That would be excellent. I love it when things go according to plan.

Until next time… I am so freakin’ tired!

Long Day Alert

Wow… Wednesday… am I right or am I right?

It’s a work-in-the-office day. I woke up nice and early, though about half an hour later than I was hoping. I had a lot of meetings on my work calendar today, the first of them being very early in the day. I wanted to make sure I could get through my whole morning routine, including 45 minutes of jogging (pronounced yogging) in place and making lunch and packing emergency protein snacks and all of that stuff while still leaving enough time for me to get to work a little early.

Unfortunately when I got out of bed I saw that we got a dusting of snow overnight. Not a lot, but enough to cover everything and guarantee a terrible morning commute. I was hoping to get out onto the road by 7:15. I made it by 7:20, but I had to cut my exercise in half to pull off that feat. That means I am going to have to yog tonight when I get home and I really do not want to do that. I wasn’t late to work, but it did take me an hour and a half to drive the 40 miles. 

Now that it’s about 2:30 in the afternoon, I have survived two big meetings and I have a third coming up in half an hour. I’m stressing out, big time, but once I get through today I will not have to worry about this sort of thing for a while and I am happy about that idea.

Tomorrow and Friday I will be working from home. I am optimistic that I will be able to get a lot of music done before work both days. Fingers crossed for some guitar playing and car vocals and fun stuff like that. I’m also thinking it would be nice to mix a song or two over the weekend. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

For now though, I am really tired and can’t wait to get through my next meeting so that I can relax a little. Maybe if I can get my exercise finished right after dinner tonight I might be able to go to bed early and enjoy not having to stress over a work project for the first time in a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed, right?

I Didn’t Quite Make It

I didn’t make it all the way home.

My Foxborough meeting let out at 2:00. I headed North toward home, but the traffic was building up. I have a 3:00 conference call I need to attend and I was going to be super late for it. I gave up on my dream of working from home for the last couple of hours of the day and pulled into my regular office. I am going to make the 3:00, which is good, but I am still in the office, which is not as good.

Fail. Oh well.

Work Attire

This is more a reminder to myself than anything else.

My company’s hybrid work schedule currently has us working in the office once a week, and working from home four days a week. It’s going to change to two days in the office in March, but that is not relevant today.

Part of the agreement is that if you have something important going on, like a meeting or a training or something, that requires you to be in person, then you may have to be in the office more than once for that week. That’s happening to me this week. I have a meeting tomorrow that requires me to be in the office for the full day. I have another meeting on Wednesday that will require me to be in the office at least half of the day, and I have still another meeting and a training on Thursday that will require me to be in for at least half of that day too.

The thing is… after losing 200 pounds in the last year and a half I have needed to rebuild my wardrobe and… well… I only own two work-appropriate collared shirts. Two shirts… three days… This post is a reminder to myself that I need to do laundry as soon as I get home from work tomorrow, or else I won’t have a shirt to wear on Thursday. I hang dry all of my shirts now so that they won’t shrink, and it usually takes a full day to completely dry. So I need to have tomorrow’s shirt hanging before I go to sleep tomorrow so that it will be thoroughly dry before I leave for work on Thursday.

Damn it. I suppose I could just go buy a third shirt… but I don’t wanna.

Just call me spoiled rotten, I guess.

One Hour to Go

It’s 4:30. I have one hour left in the work day. It feels like an eternity.

This has been a long one. I am in the office today and I really wish I had been able to work from home. I really miss Jen today. I always miss Jen when I am not near her, but today has felt so much worse. I just want to go home and have dinner with her and relax a little. She has a computer hardware project she wants to do tonight. I can help out a little. It will be fun.

I am not sure what the problem was today. It has just felt like an endless grind of a day. That happens sometimes. It’s actually been quiet and calm, but it’s not at home and somehow that makes quiet and calm feel stressful. Weird, eh?

53 minutes until quittin’ time. I can make it. Who knows how long the commute will be. It’s pitch dark outside already (stupid non-daylight savings time). It’s 34 degrees out. It will probably be below freezing by the time I leave. I really don’t like this time of year. Blah.

Okay, let’s make that last hour of the work day productive. What do you say. Get some work done and then go home to where you belong.

ADDENDUM: Almost immediately after publishing this post we got pulled into an escalated issue for one of our biggest customers. So much for calm and quiet.

I Don’t Wanna Go

Tomorrow is Wednesday.

Wednesday is my day in the office.

Therefore tomorrow is my day in the office.

I don’t wanna go. I wanna work from home. I don’t wanna commute. I don’t want the sun to go down an hour before I have to drive home.

I know I’m whining like a spoiled little brat but I don’t care. I’m sleepy and I don’t wanna drive 40 miles to work in the morning.

That’s just the way it is, folks.

Super Frustrating Day

Ugh, what a day.

The two hour drive to work made me half an hour late so I stayed an extra half an hour to make up for it. That got me on the road a little after 6:00pm. The drive home took an hour and 15 minutes. That’s not uncommon, but on top of the two hours and 10 minutes this morning was just painful. Sitting there stopped in traffic on route 93 North at 7:00pm? What the fuck.

That, on top of my beloved dad rock cover band officially coming apart today just made a suck day suck more.

Here’s some rehearsal recordings from a few tapes I made over the years. I’ve posted this playlist before, probably a few times. I don’t care. The three of us who remain in the band are going to start over from scratch. New singer, new songs, new name. All of that. I guess I am just feeling a little overwhelmed by stupid shit tonight.

Again I say, ugh.