Tag: work

Back at it Tonight

I am going to be back at my parents house tonight. I’m trying to be optimistic and keep my head together but there are a couple of things going on at work that are seriously getting under my skin. I’m trying to be helpful but it’s just not working. I don’t know why or how, I just know that I’m about to take a nutty off the deep end of life.

I’m trying to eat my lunch but the universe just won’t let me. To make matters worse, I just dropped a pretzel on the floor. What a sad waste of a delicious snack food.

Oh, and the Red Sox are playing the Yankees right now and the Yankees are up 2-0 after two innings. Yippee.

On the up side, another small step toward a solution to the parent health care problem is scheduled to happen later today. It’ll be wrapped up before I get there so I will be sending red head vibes and crossed fingers from home.

I don’t want to be in a perpetual state of freak out, or an endless state of annoyed. I just want things to be manageable, you know?

Okay, I am going to finish my lunch now. Wish me luck.

I Love My Family

I love my family. They are the best. You will never meet finer people.

Knowing that I am going to be at my parents’ for two whole days and that I won’t see them at all during that time, they asked me if I wanted to play a game of Ticket to Ride Online with them. We all have it on our iPads and figured it would be a nice thing to do together even when we aren’t together. Look me in the eye and tell me that isn’t the nicest thing anyone has ever done. I mean, seriously. How wonderful are Jen and Harry? I know Bellana’s not a big fan of that game, but maybe we can find something we can all play, assuming we can sneak it in around her work schedule as she is working up a storm in the final weeks before school starts.

I’m not sure who setup the network at my parents house, but I am pretty sure they have a firewall of some kind that is blocking online games. I’ve mentioned my troubles with World of Warcraft in the past, and tonight I had to switch from the wifi to my iPhone’s hotspot in order to connect to the game. I know my sister’s kids were doing some of their remote school here last year. I wonder if they put something in to keep them honest.

Speaking of online games, Jen and I have been playing World of Warcraft for the last month or so. WoW is owned and operated by a company called Blizzard. Blizzard has been getting demolished with charges of various kinds of sexual misconduct in the work place. I believe their CEO resigned over it recently. Karmically speaking (I do not believe in Karma, but the principal still applies) we are both starting to feel uncomfortable supporting the company so we’re looking for something else to play. Jen was looking into Star Wars: The Old Republic today. She won’t have to twist my arm to play that one. A game where I can be a Jedi? Sure! A game where I can get in touch with my dark side and be a Sith? Sure! I’ll have to download that one when I finally get home from this nana/papa sitting shift, sometimes in 2043 or so.

Last time I was here I mentioned that the only place I feel comfortable doing my “exercise” is in the cellar, and I don’t like going down there and leaving my parents alone without having a legitimate reason to go down stairs. There is laundry to do tonight, so I have my reason. I didn’t have a chance to start it until a little after 9:00, and only had five out of 30 minutes done, but I think I can close the ring. I have been down stairs once and I got my time up to 15 minutes. I think I will have two legitimate reasons to go into the cellar before midnight and I think I can get in the 15 remaining minutes. We’ll see. It’s really hot here and the humidity is unreal. We’ll see.

I left work for the day at 3:30 today so that I could spend some time with Harry before I came to my parents house. We watched the first episode of What If…? It was really good. I can’t wait for more! While we were busy with the Marvel fun, an email was sent to the whole company saying that our return to the office policy was changing again. Our requirement to come in approximate once a week has been temporarily put on hold due to the increasing Covid-19 numbers (which reminds me, I haven’t updated my spreadsheets yet). My boss called me a little while ago to make sure we were all on the same page. It’s looking like going into the office is off the table until (probably) mid-October. Obviously that could change at any time, but I feel much safer. It was pretty uncomfortable being there the last couple of times. I didn’t feel unsafe per se, I just didn’t feel comfortable. Tonight’s announcement was like a sigh of relief.

Okay, I need to update my MA and US Covid-19 numbers spreadsheets, and then I need to mix a song. All of that sandwiched around laundry and “exercising” and actually going to sleep and stuff. Here’s hoping the quiet night stays quiet. Fingers crossed.

I’m freaking Out

Dad is being discharged at 3:00. The home health aid is coming at 2:30. I am freaking out. Totally freaking out.

Shit has been going on all day at work. None of it is freak-out-worthy, but all of it is freaking me out. I tried to go to lunch at 1:00 but I had 45 minutes solid where I got call after call after call and couldn’t stop.

I am totally fucking freaking out.

Lunch Break

I’m in the office today. I need to come in four times this month and today makes three. I have Thursday penciled in as the fourth visit.

Last time I came in everything on my desk had been moved around. I assume it was the cleaning staff. This time everything was where I left it. That’s nice to see. I told myself that I had to get a mouse pad before I came back and then completely forgot. The desk is arranged in such a way that there is a seam right where my mouse wants to be. It’s annoying. A mouse pad will fix it… if I can just not forget to grab a mouse pad. I ordered one on Amazon today. Read the first paragraph and then try to guess what day it’s scheduled for delivery… go on… guess. (Thursday)

I had no traffic this morning. Well, almost no traffic. There was a slow down at the junction between routes 93 and 128. Other than that, and one lady who was tailgating me at 70 miles per hour (asshole), the commute was easy as can be. Here’s hoping the same thing happens on the way home. Fingers crossed.

I didn’t forget my lunch today! Will wonders never cease? I did buy a bag of Peanut M&M’s from the vending machine though. Not my finest hour.

Last week my sister was unable to cover shifts at my parents house, so my brother and I just alternated days. There was a whole week where I slept at my house one day and at theirs the next. Today is the first day since that started that I won’t appear at the house in Tewksbury at all. I love my parents. I really do. I’m also very happy to have a day where I am not there. It’s such a stress relief. I’ll be there tomorrow night and all day Wednesday though, so let’s not get all kumbaya and shit.

This morning, before work, I looked at posts on this page made on July 26ths in past years. Last year there was a post talking about my progress in the 50/90 challenge. I had six songs finished and 17 songs in the pipeline. I am crushing that pace right now. Today I have 13 songs finished and 23 in the pipeline. Winning. I wonder how far along I was in 2014 (the other year I completed the full 50 songs)? Who cares.

This weekend is a Harry weekend. This is a good thing. That is a happy thing.

Okay, back to work.

Friday

Lunchtime on Friday. This is about where the last couple of Fridays have blown up in our faces. It’s been very quiet today (too, too quiet) and I am optimistic that the quiet trend will continue for another three hours and 45 minutes or so (I hope).

It really hasn’t been a long day, but somehow it sort of feels like a long day. I might just be overly tired but I can’t quite put my finger on whatever it is I am talking about. I think I need a weekend. Preferably a long weekend, but I don’t have one of those on the books until September. I’ll have to settle for a normal weekend.

I think I have four more cans of Diet Pepsi flavored caffeine in this house. That should be more than enough to get me through the work day. I have a meeting at 2:00, and the next round of meds is also at 2:00… so I guess she’s getting her meds a couple of minutes early.

I’m here at my parents today. I will be home around 7:00. Then tomorrow evening I come back here and stay until Sunday evening. Then I am working in the office on Monday. Then I come back here on Tuesday evening. Shit, man. I need this to end. I have a doctors appointment on Tuesday, but that falls squarely in the none-of-your-business file for now. Maybe someday I’ll mention that again. Nothing bad, just not shareable at this time. It’s all part of needing my father to be well enough to come home and then figuring out how to move forward from there. Plans are being fabricated. Actions are being researched. You know, the whole drill.

I wanna go home.

Lunchtime Post

I haven’t done a lunchtime post in a while because I’ve been too busy to stop working during lunch. The last few work days have been insane. Today is nuts but slightly less nuts so I’ve got a minute.

Usually work slows down a bit during the summer. That’s not the case this year. Is that due to the pandemic? Summer is meaningless when you’ve been locked down for a year and a half? Maybe. More likely it’s just bad luck.

I need things to change. I can’t keep doing this staying at my parents house for much longer. I feel like I’m coming unglued. We need things to change. I feel like Glen after Negan hit him the first time. Read the first 100 issues of The Walking Dead comic. You’ll understand.

Hold on, I have to give mom her pills….

….okay, I’m back. What was I talking about? Mom is watching soap operas. That’s new.

Spoke too soon. She just changed the channel back to a game show. That’s a whole lot better than the catholic channel she had on this morning, and it’s astronomical units better than Jerry Springer. Where did I put my headphones?

Do you own a pair of Apple AirPods Pro or AirPods Max? Turn on transparency mode and then have a fan blow into your face. The noise is incredible.

Eight minutes left in my lunch break. I have two meetings this afternoon. I want to take a nap, but that’s not unusual for 2:00pm on a Wednesday.

Wait a second… am I feeling out of whack today because it’s the first Wednesday in six weeks that didn’t have a new Marvel episode? Loki ended last week and What If doesn’t start until next month. Not sure how much interest I have in What If. Animated Star Wars is acceptable to me for some reason, but I am not sure if animated Marvel is also acceptable. We’ll see.

Okay, now it’s back to work. Have a good afternoon, everyone!

What the Hell?

I took a half day off yesterday to take my mother to the doctor. I sign in to work today and it’s like I’ve been out for a week. Everything that could have happened happened in that four hour time off block yesterday. Then I was on a meeting with my boss to catch me up on everything I missed and we both got hit with urgent issues at the same time and had to drop off the call.

What the hell?

17 Years

17 years ago today I, along with about 20 other people, showed up to my first day of work at the company I still work for. I was 33 years old and was pretty sure I was the oldest person in the group. I sat in the back and kept to myself and learned as much as I could to make myself ready for my first real job. Months later I learned that the rest of the group thought of me as the old guy. If they thought I was old then, what must they think of me now? Woah!

Nothing else to really say about it. I’m having a busy and frustrating day at work. I wish I was at home instead of at my parents house. That’s neither here nor there though (see what I did there? Geography puns are where it’s at).

It is currently 1:44pm and I am kinda ready for bed. I want to go home but I can’t and maybe that’s why I am extra fatigued. Mental stress on top of physical fatigue? Something like that.

Anyway, happy workaversary to the few folks from my new hire group who are still around. Thumbs up, folks.