Tag: work

Less Than Nine Hours to Go

It’s just after 8:30am on the Friday before Labor Day weekend and I haven’t punched in to work yet. I had a few things to do first. I went with Harry to the garage to drop off his rental car and pick up his car. It’s all set and it looks as good as new. He just left to go back to Burlington. He’s going to miss his first class this morning, but that’s about the only downside to this visit. All is well again.

I’m less than nine hours away from a three day weekend. I just finished season 11 of the new Doctor Who. I have 20 episodes over two seasons left to go and then I’ll be all caught up. I’m on episode 17 of season seven of the original show. Eight episodes left in this season and something like 2346123472572 episodes left in the full series. I don’t expect to finish either series this weekend, but I can pretty much guarantee I’ll be done with the new show in a week or so which means I will be 100% caught up before the next episode airs in November.

What about the music project? I have 27 songs finished and 39 total in progress. I have four more songs ready to mix and I hope to crank them all out tonight. I have 30 days left, including today, and a ton of work still to go, but I think I am more or less on pace to finish on time. I’ll have a few days at Disney World where it will be tough to make progress, but I think I will be okay. I should note that even though I took over two weeks off in August, I still managed to finish an RPM Challenge Rules album in a month as I started and finished 12 songs within the calendar month. I started and finished 10 in July too. In order to hit 50 songs over all I will need to start and finish 11 songs in September. Three album in a months in a row isn’t a bad place to be. I think once this project is finished I will try to get back into the last re-recording project which has been left hanging for a little more than a year now.

I mentioned in the last post that my stomach has been a little less than 100% this morning. I had some trouble with water early on and had to deal with a minor bout of The Foamies after taking my vitamins. I only got eight ounces of water in during my exercise, but afterwards I was okay for breakfast and I am feeling much better now. I’ve managed another eight ounces since I came home from Harry’s auto shop. I think we’re back on track today. I might have a hamburger on the grill for lunch today. We’ll see how it goes.

Okay, it’s 8:50am now and I have to be punched into work by 9:00. I think I’ll hit publish on this masterpiece of an update and get my work day started. Lots to do today, lots to do. Eight hours and 40 minutes to go until the long weekend.

You can do it, Robbie! You can do it!

Office Day

My work schedule these days includes one day working in the office and four working from home. This week is an exception to the rule. This week has two days in the office and three at home. Today is the bonus day. I am in Foxborough, which is about 70 miles from home. It’s not my favorite place to be, to say the least. It’s okay though.

When I went outside this morning I saw something unusual. The sky had blue in it. It wasn’t an awful grey color the way it has been almost every day this summer. It actually looked kinda nice. I took a picture for today’s photo a day challenge entry:

356/365
356/365

The little Casio point and shoot from 2008 is nice and all, but it’s nowhere near as good as the now-broken Nikon point and shoot from 2015. I need to replace the Nikon, I think. Unfortunately, Nikon doesn’t sell any pocket sized point and shoots anymore. I may have to consider going with another brand. That feels like being unfaithful. Bummer.

I am in a meeting at work right now. It’s a training, actually. We’re on a 10 minute break which is going to end in a couple of minute. I can tell by the look on your face how fascinated you are.

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!