Tag: work

Friday at Last

I couldn’t figure out why this week seemed to be so long. This week has been endless, why?

Then I realized, it was the first time in something like four weeks that I didn’t have at least a half day off. A 40 hour week? What the hell is that?

I need to put a big push on music this weekend. I need to write a shit load of lyrics, I need to do a shit load of car music, I need to play a shit load of guitar, and I need to start finishing off songs. This is the way. I have spoken.

It’s going to be a busy day at work. The weekend is Eight hours and 39 minutes away. Let’s get to it!

Cheap Soda

My company has soda machines all over the place. The cans of soda are nearly free for staff. We have to pay the $0.05 state deposit and that’s it. Picture it; me, a lifelong dedicated fanatical soda drinker working in a building where cans of soda cost a nickel. Basically heaven.

Except that I can’t drink soda anymore. Shit.

I am in a new building now. Did I mention that? Probably. We were in Waltham, which was closer to home for me than any other company building, but they sold the Waltham building during the pandemic. We were moved to Westwood, which is further away than Waltham but was the next closest building to home. When we had our brief return to office experiment over the summer we had to setup our new desks and get used to the new place. Now it’s just where we go. No big whoop, right?

There was a point in time during our Waltham stay where I was trying to eliminate caffeine in the afternoon. I started bringing a water bottle and filling it up from the water cooler in the kitchenette. It tasted really bad. If I added a ton of ice it would get cold enough that the bad taste was sort of masked, but even if I put my go-to grape flavoring stuff in it, the taste was still crappy.

Now I am under doctor’s orders to no longer drink soda (Robert wipes away a single tear) so I’m back to the water bottle. There’s a little cooler in the kitchenette here too. I just filled up… nervous that this water would be bad too…

It isn’t. It sure ain’t the Poland Springs wonder that is our cooler at home, but it’s okay. I can live with it.

That sound you heard all over the surface of the Earth was my emphatic sigh of relief.

Half Way There

My lunch break is coming to an end. I am halfway through the work day. Halfway through my first day back in the office.

I had planned to bring my AirPods Max with me. I forgot to pack them. I’ve been using air buds like some kind of caveman. I also forgot that they centralized the trash barrels. Instead of having a barrel at every desk they have one in the middle of the room. My lunch trash is just sitting on my desk. I’ll chuck it out the next time I get up, but when will that be?

It’s sunny and 50 degrees out. Practically Spring, right? I made sure to open the blinds in the bedroom so the plant clipping can get good light today. I’m hoping there will be a new leaf opening up when I get home. Fingers crossed.

There are more people here now than there were the last time I posted. Still no one close enough to make me nervous, but still. I’m Covid safe, but not as Covid safe as I’d be if I were working from home. Sigh in frustration.

I got a phone call from the weight loss clinic. They confirmed my appointment for Monday. Yet another teeny tiny hurdle crossed. Monday should be a huge hurdle crossed. I’m nervous, but I am okay with it for now. That’ll probably change once I see a doctor holding a knife above my guts. Crap.

Okay. Back to work.

Back to the Office Again

I’m in the office today. I’m not terribly happy about it but I’ll live. The commute was better than most days pre-Covid, but given that I’ve only made this drive a few times over the last two years it was infuriating. I drove about 200 yards before I hit traffic. It was just a school bus, but it was still traffic. The highways were slow and annoying. Again, not quite pre-pandemic, but definitely bad enough to imply that the pandemic is over… even though it’s not.

There is no one sitting at any desk near me. I think the closest person is probably 30 yards away. Much more than six feet. I am plenty Covid/Omicron safe at my desk, but I will still need to go to the bathroom and the kitchen and such. I feel good about my elevator skills. I expertly avoided having anyone in the car with me as I went up to the third floor. My people avoidance skills are still very sharp in that respect.

My desk is still here. It’s nice and clean and all. My keyboard is shit compared to the one I use at home. My monitor is double shit compared to the one I use at home too. Oh well. It’s just going to average out to one day each week. I can survive that. Sure, I would prefer not to be here, after nearly two years of only working at home.

Funny, remember back in March of 2020 when all of my posts were how working at home was abnormal and how I had to get used to everything being different? Deja-Vu, right?

Wow, is it Early

I mentioned over the weekend that we were planning on trying to do a little electrical work in the dining room but once we opened things up it was more involved than we expected so we punted. There are a handful of other electrical things we want to do around the house as well so we put out a call for quotes from electricians. One is coming today and they said they’d be here between 7:00 and 9:00… 7:00am? Really? Most days I don’t wake up until after 7:00am. Okay, whatever. I got up at 5:30 and was dressed and ready to go by 6:30. The electrician said he’d text when he was on his way. It’s 6:56… no text yet. Oh well.

The sad thing is, I am going to do it again tomorrow. My company is back into in-the-office-once-a-week mode again like we were during the summer. I’ve decided that tomorrow is the day this week. I really don’t want to. I don’t want to run the Covid risk, I don’t want to spend a chunk of the day wearing a mask, I don’t want to find out how my back is going to feel when I walk from the parking lot to my desk, I don’t want to use the shitty little monitor on my desk when I have a massively gigantic monitor on my home desk. Mostly, and this cannot be overstated, I don’t want the friggin’ commute.

We have to do it though, it’s the law now, so tomorrow is going to be my first day back. I will have to get up a ton earlier than the work-from-home normal, though not quite as early as today. I can do it. It’s okay. I just don’t really want to.

It’ll be okay. I can hack it.

Happy Bonus Day

My company gives an annual bonus when they can and today is the day for this year. Happy Happy Bonus Day, co-workers!

That’s one way to make Monday a little more palatable. I had one of those internal calendar confusion moments last night. Jen and I were in the living room watching a Bravo show about ladies screaming a lot. I was doing a little Twitter doom scroll and I saw something about the cold open from Saturday Night Live. Wait, I thought. It’s only like 8:00pm… why is someone sharing the open from SNL if it doesn’t happen for another few hours? Pause while my brain struggles with math. Shit, because today is Sunday, not Saturday. Shit. I have to work tomorrow.

12 hours later, here we are.

I have a lot of meetings today but they should be okay. Hopefully it will be a quiet yet productive day. May your days be productive and quiet as well. It’s Monday, folks. Let’s all duck and cover and get through it together.

Goodnight

The Bruins lost tonight. I didn’t get any music done. I’m not planning on car music tomorrow. I got a chunk of my work project done but not enough to feel comfortable.

I’m going to bed. I can’t keep my eyes open.

Good night, universe. Talk to you tomorrow.

I Don’t Like Mondays

Raise your hand if you like Mondays. I’ll wait.

I suppose there are folks who work weekends and have Mondays off who might like Mondays. For the rest of the working world? Mondays suck.

I am about to have a tough couple of days. I am not going to say I left a project until the last minute, but I may have left a project to the second to last minute and now the clock is close to running out. Shit. I had been doing so much better with planning and scheduling and not letting myself get tied up in things that keep me from what I need to do. Things have been weird this month. Let’s blame it on that, m’kay?

There’s not much else going on today. Here’s hoping for a burst of professional productivity. Happy Monday, everyone.

Hit it, Max.

Lazy Sunday

It’s Sunday and Jen and I are just hanging out in the office. We’re in the midst of a grande experiment to improve one facet of our existence. It’s something incredibly important that everyone deals with every day……..

Pillows.

We’re trying to up our pillow game, big time. Jen ordered some pillows the other day and we used them last night. They were very firm. Much firmer than we’ve ever used before. Jen didn’t like them. I haven’t really decided yet. Too firm? Maybe. Too firm to use? I don’t know. We are trying another set of pillows next that are a little squishier. I expect they will be Goldilox: just right.

What else is going on? I am going to have a painful week at work this week, so I’m enjoying the calm today. I’ll pay for it later. I have another day off this week too. Wednesday. That’s three consecutive Wednesdays I’ve been out of work. The other two had actual reasons. This week is just because I had to burn eight hours of vacation time in order to avoid maxing out at the end of the month. I will likely have to do a couple of days in February too, but at least I can use the RPM Challenge as my excuse.

I am a little sad today. A few weeks ago I ordered a pile of new clothes. Two t-shirts didn’t come quickly, but they finally came at the end of last week. The two shirts came from the Rush Backstage store. Yup. I’m wearing my fav band on a t-shirt. Unfortunately, the first of the two that I’ve tried on is really small. It has made me sad. I guess I am going to have to go through a weight loss surgery process in order to get smaller so the shirt will fit. I’m guessing the second band shirt is going to be small too, but I haven’t tried it on yet.

I can’t think of anything else to write about. Jen picked up a copy of NHL ’22 and I started playing it yesterday. Maybe I’ll sneak in another game tonight. I’m playing through the Spengler Cup. I have no idea how that tournament works, but I haven’t lost a game yet. I have it on the lowest difficulty level though, so if I lose a game it means I royally suck.

Okay. Ms Patches just came into the room and she’s meowing for attention. I think I’ll post this and go pet her. Bye for now.