Tag: work

One Down, Two to Go

I am home after a long day at work in the office. I drove the 13513533752 miles to our Foxborough building this morning (actually, it’s 73 miles, it just feels like a zillion and a half) for our group’s holiday party/meeting. Yankee swap and then lunch. After that I drove about half way home and finished the day in my regular building in Westwood.

Tomorrow is day two of three straight Foxborough days. This time it’s for my manager’s monthly meeting with his staff. Since I only have to be in the office one day each week, when this meeting ends at around noon I will probably be able to drive home and finish the day here. That only works if nothing pressing comes up tomorrow morning. Finger crossed.

Thursday brings me back to Foxborough for a third straight day. This time for a training in the morning, followed by my manager taking his direct reports out to lunch. I didn’t check everyone’s calendars to see if there was a reason why the group meeting and the group lunch aren’t both happening on the same day, because I am sure there is something going on to keep everyone from being available. It’s not a big deal, really. I have three long morning commutes in a row, but that’s still better than going in to my usual, closer to home, office five days a week, right? Again, if nothing goes wrong I will be able to head home for the second half of the day following the group lunch. Fingers crossed again.

In reference to a post from yesterday, the collared shirt I wore to the office today has been washed and hung up to dry. It should be ready to go on Thursday. That will do for today.

I Don’t Wanna

Sorry, gentle readers, but this is going to be a running theme over the next few days.

I don’t wanna go to the office tomorrow… or the next day… or the next day. I just want to work from home. Even worse, all three in the office days require me to work in a building that is 70-something miles from home, instead of the usual 40 miles.

I said it before and I will say it again (and again and again)…

I. Don’t. Wanna!!!

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.

Home Office

Back story: When the pandemic first hit and we all started to work from home, Jen and I both had a desk in the same home office. Quickly we realized that we were in each other’s way and I moved my desk to our bedroom. We stayed like that until I had a minor covid scare in September of 2021. At that point I moved into my step son’s bedroom to quarantine. I slept and worked there for a few weeks and then moved back to the bedroom.

In the spring of 2022 we had our cellar redone and in April I moved my desk downstairs. I’m still there. Over the course of this working from home journey, both of my step kids have moved into apartments in Burlington, VT. I promised them that they would always have a place in our house if they needed it, and that includes a place to sleep when they come to visit. Due to that, their bedrooms will remain their bedrooms forever.

When my step daughter moved out she left most of her furniture here. When my step son moved out he took all of his furniture with him. Jen and I have been trying to figure out a way to re-furnish his room. So far we’ve only put a day bed in there. He used it when he was home for a visit last week. That worked out well. What else can we do though?

The next move is going to be adding a computer desk to his room. In fact, I think I am going to move my work from home office in there. My plan is to work from the desk in his room when he’s not here, and work at my current desk in the cellar when he is. That means I am literally going to have two home office spaces. I will keep my music nook setup in the cellar as well. I make all of my guitar noise there as well as doing all of my morning exercise. That’s too much ruckus for upstairs next to Jen’s workspace, so that clearly stays downstairs. Everything for my work space though is going to be duplicated upstairs.

We found a desk online that looks like it will be perfect. We have a couple of monitors we’re not using that will be perfect. Jen has a keyboard and a laptop stand I can use. We ordered a wireless mouse and a webcam and a USB hub today. It’s going to take a week or two to put all of this together so I will keep working from the cellar for now, and then right about the time it will all be setup my step son will be on Christmas break so he’ll be coming home for part of it. While he’s home he can use the desk too. I might even look to put a cheap desktop machine there for him to use and for me to use for any non-work stuff that might come up while I’m in there. That seems like a decent plan.

Now we just have to make it all happen.

Impending Doom

The last post talked about trusting my instincts. A big part of me is wishing I hadn’t written that because for most of this morning my instinct has been telling me that today is going to be a really shitty day.

Why?

I don’t know.

It’s the day before Thanksgiving and I am working in the office. The office alone sort of points to a bad day, but it’s more than that. In the United States, the day before Thanksgiving is traditionally the busiest travel day of the year. Everyone in the country hits the road on this day each year. I expected my morning commute to be an absolute nightmare. Add to the expected gridlock that it was pouring rain outside and it would be safe to assume that the traffic would be a gridlocked nightmare times 10. Nope. There was no traffic at all. Everyone drove a little slower than the speed limit thanks to the rain, but I never had to hit the breaks once over the entire 40-something mile drive. You would think that would ease my sense of impending doom, but nope. Somehow it made it worse.

Today should be a quiet day at work. If the office is anything to go by, it’s dead as can be here. I only see two other people and they both work for me. Weird. I should be feeling optimistic and excited about the coming holiday weekend, but instead I am just dreading everything. Once I get home tonight and see my beloved bride again, I will start feeling really good about the weekend, but until then?

It’s going to be a long, sucky, painful day.

83/365
83/365

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.

Hybrid Work Environment

We had an announcement at work today. Starting in March our hybrid work environment is going to be slightly less than the current hybrid. Something like that, at least.

We’re going from four days at home and one day in the office each week to three days at home and two days in the office.

None of us are happy. We’ve been seeing the writing on the wall for a while, but now that the announcement has been made, it’s a huge bummer. We have plenty of time to work out the details (I’m thankful for that, at least) but I would much rather not have to deal with it. If it were up to me we’d be 100% remote.

Oh well.

Tuesday Morning

Wednesdays are my commute to the office days, but this week I have an in-person meeting on Tuesday as well. Here I sit, in the office.

The commute was okay, but a little exciting. My car told me my gas tank had about 97 miles worth of gas left in it. My GPS told me the office was 73 miles away (today’s meeting is not in my regular building, it’s much farther away). I did the complex math in my head and decided not to stop for gas.

All through the drive I kept updating that very complicated mathematical equation to make sure I was still going to get to the building without running out of gas, and hopefully also have enough gas left over to get me to a gas station when I leave. Everything worked out. My car was yelling at me to fill-‘er-up by the time I parked, but outside of that… success.

The only downside of the trip is that I gave myself a couple of errands to run before I left the house, and I got them all done… but I forgot it’s Tuesday and not Wednesday and I forgot to put the trash barrel out on the street. Ugh. It’s okay, there wasn’t much in it this week, but who knows how it will look next week. Wish me luck, 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.