Tag: work

Friday at Last

Work has been good this week. No disasters, no scary moments. I did get a call from a customer (service programmers, like me, are not supposed to get calls directly from customers) but I was able to help the guy and it actually felt pretty good. Nope, this past week was a good week at work.

It was the rest of civilization that blew chunks. My wife and I agreed when we discussed it last night that this week has been the longest six months of our lives.

I need to do something creative this weekend. I NEED TO. Photography. Let’s go out and snap some pictures! Let’s play with the new long lens I bought a few months ago. Let’s play with the 120 film camera I bought a few months ago. Let’s go to the ocean and watch the sunrise and shoot all sorts of good stuff. Of course we should check the weather first… snow and rain today and tomorrow and rain on Sunday. Well you can just bite me, mother nature.

Music it is then! Guitar! I will play guitar this weekend if it kills me! I don’t know if we’re going to have a band practice or not. I’ll post something to our messenger thread later today (when it’s not pre-8:00am so that the other three guys don’t think I am weird and obsessed or anything) and see what’s up. If not then I need to find something else to do.

I do not want this weekend to be spent doom scrolling news sites and reading stories about the collapse of american democracy that will build up inside of me until I have a stroke. No. That would be bad, even if it is more or less inevitable. I must play guitar! I! Must! Play! Guitar!

Big Red Haired Ball of Stress

Woah, boy… today… am I right, or am I right?

The stress level today has been through the roof. The contractor experience went off without a hitch, but the first half of the work day was… woah.

We caught a customer issue before the customer did and went into a mad scramble to get it straightened out for them. It took a little while to get a band aid in place but now we’re dealing with figuring out how to stop it from ever happening again while also talking the customer down from their panicked state. The code/app that my team is responsible for is downstream from the actual cause of the problem. It didn’t happen in our piece of the system, but it did present itself to people using our piece of the system. Yikes is the word of the day. Everyone involved, both on my company’s side and on the customer’s side, did a bang up job getting everything straightened out, and I bet that when the dust settles we’ll all agree it wasn’t that big of a deal… but for the moment. Yikes.

Back to the home owner situation, two more contractors are coming tomorrow. One is a plumber who will put everything that was taken apart today back together again. The other is just a routine maintenance thing. I will be in the office for both of them though. I am thinking about trying to find a way to be able to stay home for all of it. I don’t want my wife to have to deal with either thing. If I work from home tomorrow it means I will have to be in the office three days next week…….. yeah, I think I am going to work from home tomorrow. Command decision made. Three days next week.

On an unrelated note, today is the anniversary of my Uncle Johnny’s death. It’s been 17 years. He was godfather to both me and my sister. He was my father’s only sibling. He had a tough life but he overcame a lot of awful shit. He was good people and I love him and I miss him. I wish he could have known all of our kids. He would have been proud, I know it.

Okay. Back to the stress. Look out below!

Crazy Day Coming

Last night Jen and I stayed at the hotel that is hosting her company’s function. I got up at 5:30, took a shower, and drove home. It’s a little wacky, but I am working from home on a day when we aren’t actually home. Does that make sense? No? So what, it’s how it is. Heh.

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Tomorrow I will work in the office, so I’ll be driving there from the hotel instead of from home. That’s going to be weird too. I was thinking that I would bring my camera with me and wander around the city after work tonight, but if I am going straight to work in the morning I will have my work laptop with me… so I think I will be going to the hotel after work, and it will be late enough that the sun will be down by the time I get there and put my stuff away. So maybe I won’t be wandering around the city after all. Maybe I’ll just stay in the room and watch Daredevil while I wait for Jen to come back from her post-work, work-events.

We’ll see. I did tell Jen that if I happen on a music store in my wandering and said music store had a Gibson guitar for sale for under $1,000, then I am totally buying it. I should see if I can make that promise come true. Heh heh.

Anyway, time to get ready for work. There is a contractor coming this afternoon as well as a delivery that I have to open the door for. All of that on top of having a crazy busy schedule. It’s going to be a weird one today. Big time.

Almost Time to Go

I haven’t been to every city on Earth. Not even close. I love San Diego, CA. I love New York, NY (except for the fucking Yankees). I love a whole bunch of other cities as well, but if I had to pick just one as my favorite… just one city to spend the rest of my days… it would be Boston, MA. My home. Sort of. I grew up about 20 minutes north of Boston and today I live about 30 minutes north of Boston. Close enough. Boston is home. Boston is my favorite city.

For the next few nights we are going to be staying in Boston for my wife’s company event thing. She’s going to be there for the whole time while I am still going to go to work as usual. I’ll just be hanging out waiting for her work events to end each day. I could stay at home while she stays at the hotel, sure, but that would mean we would be separated for a few days and frankly I’d rather stick a railroad spike through my eye than chose to spend a few days apart from my love. Call me sentimental.

Anyway, she’s wrapping up her work day. We both have a bag packed. Yeah, I’ll be home for the work day tomorrow, but I am still bringing cameras. I expect to do some wandering around while she’s at after-hours events. I don’t know if I will have time to shoot any film, but night shooting digital is definitely a possibility. Hopefully I’ll have enough sunlight to FINALLY run a test roll through my new, ebay, Lubitel. Once that is done I can send off a whole pile of film for developing. Disney World and New York photos will be included. It’s a must, really.

Here’s hoping it’s a nice hotel room. If we’re going to be stuck there for a few days it would be helpful if it were comfy with a nice view. It’s close to Boston Common, but not close enough to see it. At least I don’t think so. I’ll probably post a few thousand pictures over the next few days. You know, like I do.

Weird Week Coming Up

Happy Monday, everyone. Mondays suck, but what can you do?

This week is gonna be a weird one for us here at the Inside the Red Head’s Head family. Yup.

First off, contractors. Yet another contractor is coming to the house today. Just routine maintenance. It’s not even 8:00am and by all rights I should be in the shower right now but I am not because the contractor just told us he’s on his way. He may even be done before I start the work day. How crazy is that?

There are two contractors on the books for tomorrow. One is coming to fix a leak in our dishwasher. I am so mad about that leak that I cannot even think straight, but fingers crossed it will be back to normal tomorrow. The question of whether I will ever trust it again is still outstanding. The other contractor scheduled for tomorrow was for the same issue. I have to cancel it, but it’s the same service that is coming today and I had this nasty feeling that if I cancelled Tuesday’s appointment they would accidentally cancel Monday’s and hijinx would ensue.

Contractor visits are just one of the weird things going on this week. The other has to do with a hotel. Jen’s company is running a conference this week in Boston. They booked rooms for their staff and that includes my beloved bride. I took a half day off of work today so that I could bring her to the hotel in time for whatever they have planned this afternoon. I am hoping that I will be able to squat at the hotel with her at night, though I have to work from home tomorrow (see above) and I have to work in the office for the rest of the week. The end result is, I am going to be doing a lot of Boston driving this week. I am okay with that… I just need to know where to go, you know? Jen has the details so it will be fine.

Other than that… my step son was here yesterday but he’s already left to go back to Vermont. He is on spring break this week but he is scheduled to work a ton. No extended visit this time but I am very happy to have seen him yesterday. I do love it when my step kids are here.

It’s now 8:00am. The contractor called about 25 minutes ago saying he was on his way. Here’s hoping he gets here soon and can wrap up the job quickly. Fingers eternally crossed.

Back to Normal?

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?

Another Screwy Day

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.

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*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.

Network Fun

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.

Stressed Out

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?

Shitty Morning Blues

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)