The last two weekends have been super crazy busy with home improvement stuff. Work is going to go through something new and it starts today and the potential for insanity is very high.
Still… for some reason today (Monday) feels sort of like a back to normal moment. It’s not, not even close… but it sort of feels like it.
I mean, the crazy is definitely coming for me. I am centered squarely in its crosshairs. Yet… normality feels sort of restored. For now. Weird, right?
Today is Thursday and much like yesterday and the day before it is turning out to be a screwy day. Fun.
I overslept this morning. I had a bunch of things I wanted to do before the work day started and then I overslept and screwed up all of my plans. I did get the big things in, my day’s worth of goofy exercise, breakfast, routine stuff like that, and I managed to sneak in a little bit of guitar playing. I put rhythm guitars onto one RPM Challenge song. Not much but better than nothing.
We got a little snow last night. Probably less than an inch. The snow turned into rain and now we have a driveway covered in a nightmare of slush. At some point later today the temperature is going to drop and that nightmare of slush is going to turn into a nightmare of ice and I don’t know if I am going to have time to clear any of it before it freezes. I am super happy about that. Really. There’s not an ounce of sarcasm here. I am thrilled to the teeth by this potential outcome*.
It’s not even noon yet and the work day has been just as crazy as yesterday. Not bad, but a weird combination of hectic and frustrating. It’s looking like tomorrow will be similar, but after that things should settle again. Here’s hoping at least.
In closing, here’s a few guitar pictures from this morning because I am insane.
*Contrary to the above statement, I was in fact being sarcastic. Extremely sarcastic. My words were dripping with venomous sarcasm. Just call me a sarcasm machine.
I had 15 minutes to go until a meeting with a customer. Not just any meeting, but a meeting where I was going to have to present something to them. Now I don’t talk to customers directly. It’s not in my job description. That being said, we’re all in this together and we are all one big happy team, and if the folks who usually do talk to the customers directly are tied up in other things I am happy to pitch in. Happy yes, stress free? Hell no.
The information I needed to present would, best case scenario, involve two, maybe three sentences and that was it. If they asked me questions I told the people I was covering for that I would panic quietly and then mumble responses until they stopped asking. I was kidding, of course. I didn’t expect any questions. I expected my speaking time to be wrapped up in a manner of seconds. Still… yikes.
Then that happy moment, about 15 minutes before the meeting… when our entire network went down. Oh… no… now what do we do??
I wasn’t going to be able to join the call… potentially neither was any of the other 50-70 or so people who were scheduled to represent my company… and we had no way of letting each other know, and no way of letting the customer know. What do we do?
One guy in my building who fortunately sits near me found a work around and yelled it out. Everyone else yelled it out too. I got onto the call with seconds to spare, then waited about 20 minutes for my turn to speak, then spoke my two sentences and asked for questions and there were none.
Oh, what a relief that was. Over and done.
After that I spent two hours on another meeting and now I am going to spend the next 90 minutes on yet another meeting. What a thrill! I just want to go home and go to bed.
Yesterday I was a bundle of stressed out, frayed nerves because the morning commute was such a disaster it spoiled my brain for the whole day. Today I am a bundle of stressed out, frayed nerves because of all the meetings I have to go to today. I am flat out all day long. I’m kinda scared for my stomach. It took me a full week to recover from our trip to Florida* and further along than that, yesterday was the first day since that I almost went the whole day without any problems (almost) and now today I am in meetings all day and may not be able to stop for lunch. I am at risk of a bad stomach day.**
*Florida will henceforth be known as MoonPieTown due to this post.
**I am referring to post-gastric bypass side effects and various related issues. Food/diet/digestion-wise I need to be a creature of habit and routine to succeed without weird problems and I am going to get bounced out of my routine today. I’m not happy about it, but what can you do?
It’s 9:08am and this day is already an epic pile of suck.
I overslept a little. Just a little. It was enough to screw up my whole routine though. I managed to get all of the trash out to the street and get some semblance of my morning exercise in with enough time left over to have me outside in the car by 7:30. I would have preferred 7:15, but 7:30 usually gets the job done.
Usually.
Not today though.
I had construction traffic on my street, I had gridlock on route 213 and gridlock on route 93. Google Maps told me to exit route 93 and take route 495. There was gridlock getting on to 495. It was about 8:15 when Google Maps started telling me I wouldn’t be at my destination until after 9:20, 20 minutes late for work, when I said screw it and turned around. I got on route 495 North instead of South, which is one of two main highways that get me home, and of course there was gridlock on 495 North as well. I was home by 9:40 and immediately punched in to work.
I have to work from the office three times this week. One of them has to be Wednesday. I already worked from the office on Monday and I fully expected to do it today (Tuesday) too, which would put me at home for Thursday and Friday. Now I have to work from the office on one of those days to make up for today. It will probably be Friday.
I am so pissed off and frustrated right now, I can’t even think straight. I ate breakfast in the car and was so stressed out that it affected my stomach and now I feel all blocked up and bloated and gross (it’s a gastric bypass thing, you probably wouldn’t understand unless you’ve had the surgery too).
9:15am and it’s already a Grade A Shitty Day. Fucking traffic!
(insert the sound of a frustrated scream here)
I am tired today. I’m wrapping up my lunch break on this fine(?) Monday afternoon and I am tired. Over night last night I woke up at about 1:00am with hunger pains. Lovely. I had a bite to eat and felt better and fortunately it held me over until morning. I overslept a little and thought I was going to be late to work but fortunately the morning after the super bowl (superb owl) lead to light traffic and I got to my desk with plenty of time to spare.
I had no interest in the super bowl (superb owl) at all yesterday. Knowing that the fat nazi fuck face of a president was going to be in the stands meant that you couldn’t have paid me to watch. Not in a million, billion years. Fuck that fat nazi fuck. I read an article today that reported the US TV broadcasts included audio of applauding crowds as the scumbag was introduced, while the same moment on foreign TV broadcasts could clearly hear a resounding round of boos. Thanks, fascist collaborating TV networks. Fuck you too. I swear, the entire US media industry is currently made up of a bunch of fucking Neville Chamberlains. Fuck them all.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, I am tired. It’s 2:30pm. I have three hours left in my work day. I wanna go home. I wanna go home, give my wife a great big hug and a great big smooch and then fall asleep until morning. That would really hit the spot.
In closing, fuck that fat stupid nazi loser fucking fuck.
I’m going to be in the office today… and tomorrow… and the next day. Sigh of sadness and frustration.
No guitar playing today, but here’s a guitar pic for the photo a day thing. Hooray.
It is about 7:30am. My work day starts at 9:00am. My vacation kicks off 8.5 hours later at 5:30pm.
It is going to be a long day. A really… really… long… day.
After that? I have to pack. I have to make a stash of protein bars to get me through the first couple of days in Florida. I have to figure out the camera situation… charge up the Z5 and put on the 40mm lens, fill up a bag with rolls of film, load a roll into Dad’s Pentax K1000. I’ve decided that Dad’s camera is coming with me this time. Normally I would take my Nikon FG-20, but this time I think I want to take the camera that hurled me down the film rabbit hole a few years ago. Yeah. I am weird.
Anyway. Yesterday I bitched about how the Bruins suck now. Last night they beat Ottawa and jumped three places in the standings. Not only are they back in a playoff spot, but they above the wild card spots and back into third in the division. What a world, huh? We’ll see how long this lasts. The standings are pretty tight these days.
Okay. Time to get the ball rolling on this Friday. Vacation is less than 10 hours away.
We’re doing the conference call shuffle around here today.
I have a meeting at 12:30. I’ll be there. But wait, now I have a second meeting at the same time. You go to this one and I’ll go to the other one. But wait, the first meeting is cancelled. Good, I’ll go to the other meeting. But wait, that meeting is moving and another meeting is taking its place.
Monday, Monday. Can’t trust that day. Just don’t do what they did on Friday. Don’t book me into a meeting at 1:00pm. That’s my lunch time. Pretty please don’t mess with my lunch time.
It is Monday again. Blah.
I have two full work weeks (counting today) left before we go on vacation. Today is the start of what I expect will be a long two weeks. It’s weird how we just got through the holidays and their frequent days off, and yet after just one full week back at work I am already stressing out and needing to go away again. Does this mean I’m kinda spoiled rotten?
Yes. Yes it does.
Here’s a moody looking cat to lighten the moody:
Happy Monday, everyone. Blah, blah.
Inside the Red Head's Head 