Tag: work

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.

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.

Hanging in There

My second day back in the office is about half over. Lunch will be wrapping up shortly. Once again there are not many people around today, but there are more than I feel comfortable with. We are all safely distanced from each other and everyone here is vaccinated. We’re about as safe from the dreaded One Nine as we can be. Still… I’d feel more comfortable working from home. Part of me wants to book a conference room and hide there for the rest of the day. No, I will put my trust in the two vaccine shots and the one booster shot. Hang in there, kiddos!

Speaking of not feeling comfortable, this chair sucks. I have been seriously spoiled. Not only is the chair at my desk at home 1000 times better than the chair at my desk at work, but the chairs at the building we worked out of for the five years or so prior to the pandemic were also 1000 times better. My back is killing me in ways that my back usually doesn’t kill me. Normally my back issues are in my lower back, but today it’s up between my shoulder blades. I blame this sub-par chair and I wanna go home.

I also forgot to open the blinds on the bedroom window that gives Bertha the plant clipping all of her sunlight. I am such a terrible plant dad. Bertha may never forgive me. I’m sorry Bertha.

Here in One Piece

Another day in the office for me. Traffic was okay. It took about an hour to get here. I shouldn’t complain. things tied up pretty bad on route 3, and then again for a little while on route 128. Neither jam was as bad as pre-Covid, but still… It’s just frustrating to go through it after working from home for two years and not worrying about traffic at all.

I took a rapid Covid test before I left. I had thoughts of doing that every time I come into the office and then last week when I came in for the first time I completely forgot to do it. We’re supposed to do a little self assessment before we leave the house. Any symptoms? Nope, come on in. My thought was to add a home test to that process. Not sure if I will keep doing that, but I’m negative today so life is good.

Jen told me that she saw a news report of a shooting in my general neighborhood. That’s a happy story to wake up to. I don’t know the details. I’ll have to see if I can learn anything. Just a little icing on the Thursday cake, right?

Happy work day, everyone.

Office Tomorrow

I’m going into the office tomorrow. My second time since they reopened the building. I need to make a lunch, I need to wear a collared shirt. I need to not forget my freakin wireless headphones again.

I’m nervous about Covid, of course, but I guess I need to just put some faith in the two vaccine shots and the booster shot and just suck it up and deal with it.

Patches agrees.