Tag: work

Three Hours to Go

Three hours left in the work week.

180 minutes.

10800 seconds.

It’s a long weekend for me too. The company I work for puts a cap on how much personal time you can accrue and as your bank builds up you have to take time off to stay below the cap. It’s not as bad as the Boston Bruins salary cap woes right now, but it will get there if I don’t use time regularly. Because of that, I took two days off next week. Monday and Tuesday. That all means that ol’ Robbie has himself a four day weekend coming up.

Sadly, Jen was not able to take the two days off too, so that means I am on my own for the second half of my super long weekend. That means there will be lots of personal creative project type stuff. I checked the weather at the ocean for the next few days and both Sunday and Monday are looking like good candidates for sunrise photos. At least one of those mornings will be Photography Day where I will grab some sunrise at the beach and then hit a few places on the way home. Film and Digital. Bank on it (weather permitting).

There will also be a lot of music. As much as I can stomach. I plan on making gigantic progress on the 50 songs in 90 days challenge. That includes guitar tracking, vocal tracking in the car (because I have a weird mental block that won’t let me sing when people can hear me unless I am playing guitar with a very loud band), and mixing songs as I finish recording them.

There will also be progress on the current Doctor Who series binge watches. I finished season one of the original show this morning, and I am almost done with season four of the current show. So very many more seasons of each show to go. Progress will be made. I fully expect to move from the 10th doctor to the 11th doctor in the new show but I expect to still be on the first doctor in the old show. Like I said… so much Who to watch.

I am also thinking that I will be back on the couch to 5k wagon next week. It’s been a couple of weeks since I stopped. I want to get back into it, even though I am very doubtful I will ever run that mythical 5k. It’s still a goal, I just don’t know if it’s an achievable goal for me.

I have two days off booked in August too. They are for a weekend trip to Maine for a wedding. Bellana will be joining us for that and I expect lots of photos from Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor. Again, film and digital. That include Cadillac Mountain, which is the first spot in the continental United States that sees the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. It would require a SUPER early wake up to see, but I want very much to see it and photograph it. Now that I think of it, I should replace my broken tripod before we leave for that trip. The broken guy is good enough for this weekend, but for Cadillac Mountain? I’m going to need something that works. I’ll take care of it.

Okay, my late lunch break is over now. Time to get back to work and finish off this work week on a high note.

Stressing

I am stressing out in a major way today. I’m in the office again (like every Wednesday) and I have meetings on top of meetings on top of meetings and even have to building hop for a couple of them. I’m sitting in the cafe trying to sneak in some lunch before the next meeting and I think I tried to eat too fast. My stomach is protesting a little. Hopefully I stopped in time or else I am going to have a really bad afternoon.

Wish me luck!

Work Anniversary

I almost forgot about this one. Fortunately I am a nerd and added it as a recurring date on my Google calendar many years ago. Today is a noteworthy day, but this date next year will be a much more important occasion.

On this date, July 12, in the year 2004 I started a new job. 19 years later, I’m still here. 19 years, one promotion, countless reorganizations, one wedding, one house purchase, two high school graduations, one college graduation (and counting), one ridiculously invasive stomach surgery, and one continuing global pandemic later, and I am still here.

My 19th workaversary is a big deal, but my 20th next year… that will be a big deal. We’ll see what happens in the meantime. For now at least, go have a piece of cake or something to celebrate for me. You know, have the kind of sugary thing that I can’t eat anymore in honor of me not getting sacked at all over the last 19 years.

Bad Vibes on a Bad Monday

I am not going to go into details but there was something in the track record of the company I’ve worked for for almost 19 years that made me very happy. As of this afternoon, that something is no longer in our track record.

It doesn’t affect me or anyone that I work with directly, but I really feel let down. I was proud of this little factoid and I can’t be proud of it anymore. It sucks.

Also, it’s gloomy and rainy out and I had a crappy night’s sleep last night and I don’t feel like I’ve physically recovered from this morning’s exercise. I guess I am just not having a terribly good day today and I am bummed out.

On Call

Back in the olden days of this here blog I used to regularly complain about having to be on call for work. There were a bunch of different varieties of on call-ness and I didn’t enjoy any of them. They all stressed me out. The good part though is that they usually come with some form of compensation. That was something I could get behind, and that was why I took the on call shifts when they were available to me.

When I was promoted, almost 10 years ago, I made the decision to make the on call shifts available to my staff whenever possible. I wanted them to receive the compensation and I pledged to myself that I would only take shifts when my entire staff were unavailable. As it turns out, I haven’t had to take many on call shifts since. There was one where I was covering a customer’s catastrophic system failure and I knew I was going to be working around the clock for a whole weekend. I took that one to protect my staff. That was a, “the buck stops here” kinda thing. It was awful, but I handled it. Every other on call shift, and the pay/comp time/whatever compensation was involved went to them. I feel pretty good about that track record.

Well… looks like I am on call this weekend. Sort of. Not exactly, but close. I’ve been the go to contact for the last couple of weeks anyway. It just seems easier to have me be the off hours contact too.

Yeah… I’m starting to remember why I didn’t like being on call. Memories, am I right?

Rough Night

It started a little after 4:00. Migraine. Shit. Usually my vision goes weird, then the headache comes a little while later. Today it was the other way around. The headache hit out of nowhere and it was bad. Then my vision went all screwy.

After about an hour and a half my vision was okay but the headache was hanging on. Not nearly as bad as it was at the start, but it was lingering. Jen made chicken in the air fryer for dinner and it was fabulous. Unfortunately I had one bite too many and the foamies hit. Worse than that? It’s been two hours and my stomach still feels blocked up. I have another 15 grams of protein to go to hit today’s goal so I have to have something to eat.

One last annoying thing. I am friggin’ exhausted. Is it the couch to 5k’s fault? I don’t think so. I just don’t sleep enough and sometimes it catches up with me and kicks my ass. Yippee.

Tomorrow is going to suck out loud. It’s an in-the-office day and I have meetings almost all day. Worse, I am running all of those meetings. I hate when that happens. Before work though I will need to watch the series premier of Marvel’s Secret Invasion. I’ll also have to play some guitar. I have four songs leftover from May that need rhythm guitars. Only two are ready to go though. Hopefully I’ll be able to sneak one of them in before I have to pack up and get ready for the commute. That means I am going to have to get up early.

Yeah, tomorrow is going to be a tough one. Tonight has already been a tough one. It’s going to be the old one-two punch of suck.

Wish me luck.

Two Hours to Go

The weekend is about two hours away. 123 minutes, to be exact. I’m finding motivation a little tough to come by this afternoon but I will get everything that needs to be done today done today as far as work goes.

Jen is planning on spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. How good does that sound, right? I will go grocery shopping afterward. I’m a little behind on my protein intake for today so I may need to eat something substantial after I get home. I am ahead of the game on hydration though. My post-lunch one hour pause before having anything to drink will end in about three minutes and I’ve got a 20 ounce bottle of Gatorade Zero upstairs in the fridge with my name on it. After that my daily liquid intake goal will be obliterated nicely.

I put out four mouse traps in the cellar. The cats don’t come down here so it should be okay. Let me rephrase, the cats are not allowed down cellar. They very much want to come down here, I just don’t let them. One trap went off but I think that was due to a ghost, or an Earthquake or something. No mice were involved. I did see one running past the base of the stairs. I was upstairs and opened the door to come down and there it was. Asshole. Was it the same mouse I saw earlier? How the hell should I know, it was a mouse. I wasn’t checking for identifying details. Sheesh.

Reminder to myself: Write lyrics tonight. Record vocals in some random empty parking lot tomorrow morning. Maybe take the cameras to the ocean for sunrise on Sunday. The forecast at Salisbury Beach looks promising. We’ll see. Sunrise would be great, but music is what’s important. I also need to clean the kitchen and do a little work straightening out the kids rooms this weekend. That’s important too, but a different kind of important, you know? Health and well being and happiness vs musical mental health. Simple. Speaking of, when’s the next band practice?

Okay, Robert. Go get that Gatorade Zero and finish your work projects. You’ve got this, red head. No problem. 110 minutes until the weekend.

Post script: There was just a blast of thunder outside that was loud enough to shake the walls a little. It didn’t set off any of the mouse traps though. That’s good.

Cinco de Stress-o

Looks like Cinco de Mayo is going to be a painful experience at work. More like Cinco de Stress-o. Two customers with huge issues popping up at the same time. Lots of conference calls, all booked at the same time, and all right in the middle of my lunch break. Looks like a protein bar kinda day for ol’ Robbie.

Happy Friday!

Don’t Do it Again

The last time I was in the office I sat at the same desk I’m sitting at right now. When I left for the day I forgot my laptop charger and had to drive back in the next day to get it.

Robert… moron… whatever you do… don’t forget the damn charger again, m’kay? Forgetting your laptop charger is bad.

On a mostly unrelated note, all of this extra working from the office stuff has thrown my personal, internal calendar into complete chaos. I have been 100% convinced all day today that today is Friday. Guess what. It’s not Friday. Not even close. Tomorrow is Friday. It’s just plain old Thursday.

I was hoping this weekend could be a total downtime weekend. I don’t think that’s possible. I want to finish hanging the blinds and curtains and make the last couple of changes to the bed room setup. I also want to put together the tent/shed thing we bought for the back yard. Unfortunately it’s going to rain all weekend so that’s out. I have four songs that need to be finished by the end of the weekend, so there will be music in the car and at home. I still have to finish writing two of those four songs. Way to wait for the last minute, Robert. Dope. Next month’s music plan is a full 10 song album in a month deal using my new King of Tone overdrive pedal which I haven’t even plugged in yet. Dope.

It’s looking more and more like I will be able to work from home for the second half of the day. Fingers are still very much crossed. My stomach started acting up about half an hour ago but it was just one of those, hey dope you are hungry stomach aches. I ate a snack and now I am fine. I won’t get home until well after 2:00pm so I am not sure what to do about eating lunch. I’m hoping for some chicken and maybe some french fries, but I don’t want to ruin dinner. It’s crazy how reliant I have become on being able to cook lunch and dinner at decent, routine times, and how shuffling those times even a little bit messes me up.

I am hoping I’ll be leaving the office at about 1:45. Fingers intensely crossed. I wanna go home. Just don’t forget your charger, you dope.