I bought a nice little monitor stand for my desk at work. I’ll be bringing it there tomorrow.
Just after it was delivered we found out we are probably going to be giving up assigned desks in the name of working remotely.
Figures.
Monitor Stand
Tag: work
Tuesday
Today’s the second day back post-vacation and it already feels like there never was a vacation. How is that possible?
I slept a little late today and after all of the morning errands and the morning routine I feel like I’m going straight from the shower to work. I hate that. It’s still better than driving to the office, but I always like a little brain-free downtime before I punch in. Not today.
That’s okay. I’m planning on going to the office on Thursday this week, again. I’ll have plenty of brain-free downtime then. Ugh. The company is trying to incentivize the return to the office. Come in more often and we’ll give you a perk. They haven’t mentioned anything that is enough to make me feel like commuting every day is worth it yet, but they are trying.
Okay. Time to punch in. I have a couple of meetings this morning and one in the afternoon. The contractor will be here again during that one so I hopefully will remember to stay muted. Zoom meetings, ya know?
Good day.
The Worst Monday in Ages
Oh no… it’s Monday. Oh no.
This is the first time in two years that I have to come back after a full week’s vacation. The last time was a week in Orlando visiting the Mouse. That was followed almost immediately by Covid. Yippee. Let’s hope for less post-vacation drama this time.
I peaked at my email on Saturday. I was actually peaking at my calendar for this week, but I looked at my inbox too. There were about 250 unread messages. It will be a little higher than that when I punch in today, in a little less than an hour.
As wonderful as a week away can be, and in this case was, that first day back is such a kick in the sack that it can almost feel like it’s not worth it. Almost.
Welcome to the most emotionally painful work day I’ve experienced in just over two years. Hooray.
I am an Idiot and I Want to Kick My Own Ass
I am in the office today. Last night I prepared completely. I packed up my laptop and charger, I packed up my Air Pods Max (which I forgot on one of these recent trips in). I filled up a water bottle. I made my lunch. Lunch was PB&J, a little bag of grapes, and a couple of granola bars. Delicious. I left the lunch bag in the fridge, but had everything else waiting for me on my desk.
You can see where this is going, right?
I am at my desk at work.
My lunch bag is still in the fridge.
Seriously… if I could contort myself in such a way as to do it, I would literally kick my own ass.
Idiot.
Looking like a Snickers bar for lunch for me today.
Poor Planning
Why did I do that? I guess I wasn’t thinking. I scheduled my one day in the office this week for the day season two of Star Trek Picard is released. I won’t be able to watch it until I get home.
Bad job, Robert. Seriously poor planning.
Woah, Really?
I knew this, and I was aware of it, and it wasn’t actually a surprise, but I just looked at my work calendar for next week and saw that I have the entire week off and it sort of just hit me… Wow! Really? I am off all next week? Kick ass!
I have two hours and fifteen minutes left in the work day. After that I am cooking dinner for my love. Chicken and quinoa and broccoli. Broccoli is like a special occasion thing. I just steam it, but it is so good. Maybe we should have it every day. After that, I am going to mix the last two songs. It’s a moral imperative. I’ve had enough music finished to declare RPM a success for over 24 hours now, but I’m not done until every note of every song is mixed and that means two more songs.
There are currently six songs on the A List, meaning they are definitely on the final album, and eight songs on the B List, meaning they might make the album but also might not, and four songs on the C List, meaning they suck too much to share even by my low standards. I would like to end up with 10 songs on the album and 10 songs on a not-album. A leftovers, or outtakes album if you will. I might go with more than 10 on the submission though, but I want to make sure only the better stuff gets submitted, even though in all honesty they all suck pretty bad. I should really hire a singer next year. Yeah, right.
My watch has been blowing up all afternoon. After all of these years of RPMing, I follow a lot of RPM Challenge participants on alonetone.com. They are all uploading songs in batches today and I am getting email notifications for all of them. It’s pretty funny. I would like to apologize to anyone who follows me on alonetone because of the consistent, steady bomb of notifications they got yesterday as I was uploading songs all day long. Sorry about that, folks.
Back to work now. Just get through these last two hours and you can get back to the tunes, Robert. You can do it.
Not Double Booked
Turns out I was not double booked. The doctors appointment is in fact tomorrow and not today. The electricians are here and for the first time in ages the lights in the kitchen and the dining room are going to work correctly. If they are done by 10:30, or even if they just don’t turn off the internets, then I may be able to attend that work meeting. I’m on vacation though, so I’ll be all incognito like. Hi everyone, I’m not actually here. Ha! I’m so professionally funny.
The best part of all of this is that I have 24 hours left before I have to lose my head being afraid of another doctors appointment. Hooray and all that happy crappy*.
*That’s a Stephen King reference, from too many books to count. I think. Maybe he only used it in one book and I just read that book more than once. Who knows.
Still Quiet
Lunch time post. There are a few more people here than there were the last time I posted. One other member of my group is here too but we don’t sit anywhere near each other. If we yell we can talk to each other, but we’re not being rude like that. I feel a lot more Covid-safe than I did the last two times I was here, and by no means did I feel Covid-unsafe before. Whatevs.
I have vacation time booked for the next two days. There are things going on that I want to take care of, but right now I am so looking forward to what amounts to a mid-week weekend. I have a doctors appointment but I don’t know when. They sent me Zoom meeting invites for both days. They are closed today for the holiday (Presidents Day) so I have to figure it out first thing tomorrow. We also have an electrician coming for another kitchen/dining room fix quote. I am really nervous that the doctors appointment was actually moved to tomorrow (I booked it for Wednesday and no one asked me to change it) and it’s going to happen while our power is off and internet is down. That would suck. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that.
The Bruins are celebrating Presidents day with an afternoon match up with the overpowering Colorado Avalanche. It’s halfway through the second period and the Bruins are up 2-0. The next couple of games are on the West coast. A win today could be a nice little treat considering I won’t be able to listen to the West games.
Okay, back at it. Three hours and three minutes to go.
The Deer Show
I’m trying my hand at working in the office on a Monday. It’s still early, but as of right now I nearly have the building to myself. There are two people in view in front of me but they are as far away as you can get and still be in my line of site. There’s no one in site behind me. The traffic was non-existent too. I zipped in without any problem.
Now having written all of that, it just dawned on me that today is a state holiday. It’s actually the first time in my 17+ years with the company that we don’t have today off. So… maybe my Monday experience is somewhat less than typical. Oh well.
That’s not what I want to write about this time though. I want to write about Deer. Again.
This morning, as I was doing my normal morning routine, I happened to look out the window and see a single deer. She (I assume it’s a she, but I think the males would have all shed their antlers by now so who knows) was in the yard, not the woods, and perfectly framed in the window. She was just hanging out, but then she looked sort of startled. She was looking off into the woods on the left side of the house. She dipped her head and stomped her front hooves. Then she took a single step backwards and did it again. Then another step backward and repeat.
Clearly she was confronting something. I couldn’t see anything in the woods but the angle was really bad so there could have been an AT-AT* out there and I would have missed it. She was clearly worked up and nervous about something. After a few minutes she turned to face the woods and did another startled little jump. There was nothing back there though.
After a few more minutes something did come out of the woods from where she was originally looking. It was 5-6 more deer. They hung out with her for a few minutes and then something spooked them all and they ran off to the right. Two more deer came across from the left at full speed, which is awesome, and then a couple of stragglers wandered in after that. They were in the woods though, so they were taking their sweet time.
And that, my readers and only friends** is the story of the scared deer.
May your Monday be less scary.
*Star Wars reference. AKA Imperial Walkers. Use your harpoons and tow cables and go for the legs.
**Clockwork Orange reference, my droogies.
Stormy
I knew it was supposed to be warm and raining today. Did we know it was supposed to be stormy? It’s like a hurricane out there. Our Poland Spring delivery is today so I put out our empty bottles. I have to believe that once the wind gets hold of them they are going to end up in Maine*. I’m glad I drove to work yesterday and not today. It’s nuts out there.
When I came home from work yesterday there was a new wireless Apple keyboard on my desk. Santa came early! The one I was using was old and well loved and whatever coating they put on the keys was long gone. This one actually feels knew under my fingers. Sweet. It also has a finger print scanner and that’s pretty cool too. Welcome to the 2020’s babie!
I’m hoping for a quiet day at work today. I doubt I’ll get it. One of our buildings has a power outage already. I think some of our Inhouse environments live in that building. It might be weird for a while. Hold on to your butts.
Happy Friday.
*I live in Massachusetts and the New Hampshire border is in the woods behind my house. I wrote Maine as an exaggeration. Had I said New Hampshire it would have been because it is a literal possibility.
Inside the Red Head's Head 