Tag: work

Crappy Sleep and Personal Time

My CPAP machine pissed me right off last night. I went to bed at 11:00 and then woke up a little before 2:00am with the mask sliding all over my damn face and leaking like a… like a… like a something that leaks a lot, I don’t know. I sat up and screwed around with all of the harness straps and stuff and eventually was able to get back to sleep.

How much does it suck when the thing that is supposed to help you sleep stops you from sleeping? It sucks a lot.

Change of subject…

When the hell am I going to use all of this time off? My company changed the way they dish out time off, including taking a bunch of holidays that we used to have off and turning them into floating holidays and rolling that together with the couple of personal days and the huge pile of vacation days and renaming it all Personal Time Off. We accrue x number of hours each month and there is a cap on how much we can carry before we stop accruing more.

The good news is that we get a shit load of personal time off. The bad news is we actually have to use it if we want to keep getting more. Oh, the webs we weave. I am about a minute below the cap right now so I have to use some time this month… and next month… and every month. That’s a good thing, but it’s also a logistical struggle, you know? Times are tough. Anyway, what I really need to do is take a week off and get the accrual down a bit so I have some breathing room. Good idea! But when? The best time would be a time when kids are here. Bellana won’t be home for months because she’s going to be in Europe for the next semester. Harry will come home on breaks. Good idea! When is the next break? March 7-11! I’ll put in for that week!

I love it when a plan comes together.

I Don’t Want to Work Tomorrow

It’s getting nearer and nearer to bedtime on Sunday January 2nd. When today ends, the holiday season ends with it. You know what that means, right? That means we go back to work tomorrow. Ugh.

I don’t want to go back to work tomorrow. I should have taken this whole upcoming week off. I have so much vacation time banked that I am going to stop accruing more if I don’t start using it. I have one day off booked already mid-month, but I really should have taken January 3-7 off.

Change of subject…

Homework assignment for myself: Research Maastricht University, including the city it lives in, and everything about The Netherlands that relates to it that I can find.

Get to work, fat boy.

Seventy-Nine Minutes

I have seventy-nine minutes to go until the long weekend. New Years is so close I can practically smell Times Square.

Two unrelated things come together in this post. First, I am curious how many of my loyal readers and only friends are planning on going out for New Years Eve. By going out I mean going someplace where more than 10 people will be present. Doesn’t matter if it’s inside or outside, I just want to know if you are going to an actual party. Second, WordPress.com has just given us access to a third party plug in/embed thing that lets us add polls and surveys and stuff like that to our posts. I add ’em and no one response to ’em, but I keep adding ’em!

I posted one of these polls the other day before I knew how to see the results without actually adding a response. Once I figured it out I found there were seven responses. Six of them were me. Wheeeee!

73 minutes to go.

What percentage of the work day is left? It’s 4:18pm. I work from 9:00am to 5:30pm. I have worked (7 * 60) + 18 = 438 minutes. There are (8 * 60) + 30 = 510 minutes in the day. I have worked ((7*60)+18)/((8*60)+30) * 100 = 85.88% of the work day. Fuck yeah, math.

Answer the poll! Polls are fun! Specifically, polls are fun when you’re a lame blog poster like me so let me have fun!

The Long Weekend Awaits

Today is going to be rough. Mostly because I convinced myself that yesterday was Friday when it was only Wednesday.

I put up a post yesterday listing off all of the things that were going well at that moment and wondering what was coming along to spoil the vibe. Nothing did. I was worrying about work, but it stayed quiet and all was well. Only my brain trying to skip over today was less than happy.

Today’s a little different. Nothing bad going on, just not quite as 100% positive as yesterday. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. I know I got a lot more than the 4.5 hours my watch registered, but still not a lot. I think I was a little under six hours. Okay, but not great. I woke up with a bit of an upset stomach. I feel a lot better now, but it is sort of like getting off on the wrong foot.

Now there is just a single 8.5 hour work day standing between me and a long weekend. New Years Day is a holiday for us and since it falls on Saturday this year we “celebrate” it on Friday, which means we get New Years Eve off. I love it when the calendar works out that way. It’s like a nice little bonus. The downside is that our holiday schedule is changing as of 1/1/22 and we don’t have another holiday until Memorial Day in May. Yikes! We have floating holidays now in place of the non-national holidays we used to have, so we don’t lose any time off. We just don’t automatically get the non-national days off anymore.

Okay so in summation, yesterday started as a good day and stayed that way all day. Today hasn’t been quite as good but it’s already starting to look up.

Oh, and both kids are here. So it’s going to be a good day no matter what.

55 minutes until I have to punch in to work.
Nine hours and 55 minutes until the long weekend.

Hang in there, boys and girls. We can get through this day together.

Today is Not Friday

Today is the first time since Bellana finished her Fall semester at school (apart from a few hours of miracle on Christmas Day) that both kids are home. They will both be here until Monday morning and I am as happy as a middle aged red head gets.

We were supposed to have a fancy dinner on Christmas Day but we didn’t due to all of the various circumstances. We are having the dinner that we had planned for Christmas tonight. Jen is in the kitchen right now while I watch the clock inch through the last 36 minutes of the work day.

New Years Day is this weekend.

All of these things together have combined to convince my tiny, teeny, tiny little brain that today is Friday. No. Today is not Friday. Today is Wednesday. Wednesday, not Friday. I still have a full day of work tomorrow that I have to get through before the holiday weekend starts.

My brain is broken. My brain cannot process the fact that today is not Friday. I feel like I’m losing my mind!

Back to Reality

Show me an American adult who isn’t day dreaming about week long Christmas vacations and I will show you someone who is either lying or took this week off because they were day dreaming about week long Christmas vacations at some other point in the recent past.

Damn it. As it turned out I could not have taken any time off this week. There are too many pressing things at work. Still… I really wish I had.

Back to work at 9:00. Until then I am moving some of my desk back to the bed room from the office. I think we’ll keep the extra desk in the office for weekends and stuff. I don’t want to try to work in there while Jen is working. We did that at the start of the pandemic and we just distracted each other all day. Nope. Separate rooms is professionally good. Outside of work though, I really liked being in the same room with her even when we weren’t actually doing anything together.

So that’s my first post-Christmas workday morning. I can see how fascinated you all are. Have a good first day back, folks. Hopefully everyone’s jobs are nice and quiet today. HoHoHopefully.

Coming Home Tomorrow

My step son is coming home tomorrow. Have I mentioned that? Do you/they know it’s christmas time at all?

Jen just came into my bedroom/office/work nook and said that to her, today feels like Friday. It was a great minds think alike moment because I had been thinking the same thing all day. It’s only Wednesday but it totally feels like Friday. That’s going to make the next two days suck. I checked my work schedule tomorrow and it’s blank. I don’t have any meetings booked at all. It’s almost creepy.

My christmas wrapping is almost done. Did I mention that? I’ve still got a couple of things on the way (package delivery, a symptom of ‘Covid Christmas Too’) but as of now, everything I have to wrap is wrapped… and there are still 10 days left until christmas. That is also almost creepy.

I was going to do car music this morning, but I didn’t. I did a couple of errands instead. I snaked the drain like a faux plumber. As it turned out, I was able to sneak in everything I had left to do during lunch. You may have noticed that there wasn’t a lunch break blog post (no you didn’t. No one did. No one should). Two songs need both rhythm and lead guitar parts. Four just need lead guitar. Two more are already ready to mix. Music, ya know?

Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden has a podcast. World class fencer, airline pilot, novelist, metal god. The dude has range. It’s called Psycho Schizo Espresso. It’s Bruce and a psychologist talking about stuff. Okay, I’ll give it a spin.

Four minutes until the work day ends. Fingers crossed nothing comes my way during those four minutes, because I am cooking dinner tonight and the oven is already pre-heated. Chicken and Quinoa. They should call Chicken and Quinoa, ‘The Robert’ because it’s pretty much the only dish I am capable of making.

Three minutes to go…

Okay, clicking Publish now.

Sleep Failure

Did I have a crummy night’s sleep last night or what?

I went to bed at midnight. Woke up at 1:00. Woke up again at 2:00. Woke up at 3:50 and could not get back to sleep. I bet I dozed off a little at a time without realizing it, but I know I saw the clock hit 4:40 before I really went under again.

My back was really sore and I couldn’t get comfortable. My arms kept going numb from laying on my side. I mean, my arms were just showing off. Look, jerk, we can go to sleep. Why can’t the rest of you? Ugh.

My CPAP mask kept feeling like it was losing it’s seal. I don’t think it actually was, but during the rare times when I was asleep I was drooling like a fooling and the mask was sliding around all over the place and it was driving me nuts.

At about 6:30 I gave up and got up. I took the trash to the street and I did my whole morning routine and I did car music. Just two songs. The one song I have for Record Every Month, and the last song I had for Quarantine volume 5.

I’m leaving work a couple of hours early today, but I have meetings pretty much for the whole rest of the day. It’s going to be a busy Tuesday. I expect by the time the day ends I am going to be wishing I had a good night’s sleep, right?

Sigh

Yesterday was Monday and somehow I was feeling optimistic about the state of the universe. Today is Tuesday and… sigh. Something about tomorrow being the start of December is messing me up today. I’m not sure exactly why, but it’s probably Covid-19 and holiday related. We’re not getting a normal Christmas for the second year in a row, which implies that our Covid Christmas is actually now the normal. Shit.

I had three projects to do at work in less than two weeks. I picked off one of them yesterday and was feeling pretty good about the state of things. Now, simply because it’s the next day, I am feeling a little defeatist about the remaining two. Why? Where is my rational brain hiding? Come out and play, brain. Pretty please?

I took the barrels out to the street this morning. The barrels are full to bursting, partly with Thanksgiving detritus, but they’ve spent the whole week in the new little shed thing so the squirrels weren’t able to get at them. 10 minutes after I took the barrels to the street I looked out the window and saw a squirrel sitting on the barrel snacking on some stuff. Sigh.

Okay. Time to punch in to work. Here’s hoping the state of the universe improves a little. Fingers crossed, folks.

Busy Monday

I watered the plants, watered the christmas tree, did some laundry, took out the trash, determined that my November music thing is definitely over 30 minutes without adding another song (it’s actually over 40 minutes!), and then I started work.

It’s been a busy day at work too. It’s becoming a trend that halfway through my lunch break things blow up. Four days in a row now. That’s fun.

Nothing else to report on today on this chilly Monday. Just hanging in there, trying to get to 5:30pm, when I’ll make dinner for my love and me and then… I don’t know what. I’ve got seven songs to mix before December 1st, so I will want to do a chunk of that before bed. Other than that? No clue. Mostly, I’m just looking forward to a little time with the love of my life. I kinda like making dinner for her. Is that nerdy? Is it romantically nerdy? You be the judge.