‘No rest for the wary’ is right. I’ve been back from the cruise for 16 days and back to work for about 14. I haven’t even had time to update this blog. I have lots of pictures to upload from both the cruise and New Years at the Braintree House. I have a couple of video, too. Lots and lots to get done over the next couple of weeks.
Its a new year. New goals to meet, new desires to strive for and new bad habits to break.
Time’s a-tickin’!
So about a month ago, my best friend asked me if I was interested in some discounted Celtics tickets. I said sure. The last Celtics game I had been to featured Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, and Larry Bird. A couple weeks ago, my friend asked me for the money and I handed it over without much thought. He had the dates, but not in any form I could take with me. I had to have him email them to me. I had remembered that there weren’t any games in October so I didn’t worry about it since I was heavily involved in making my costume for Halloween.
Today, November 1st, I got a text around 2 or 3pm saying that my friend would be at Boston Beer Works with the tickets. I panicked. I checked the spreadsheet and sure enough today was the first game. Not only that, but Red Auerback died on Saturday (possibly the most well known coach in Boston sports history) and there was going to be a big tribute to him before the game. I was certainly not going to miss this. I responded saying that I had to get a T pass first, but I’d see him there at 6pm. As soon as 5pm came, I left work and headed straight for the Back Bay station to get my monthly T pass. I then proceeded to walk all the way to Fenway Park (a decent walk) with my laptop bag in tow since I am working from home tomorrow. I got there about 5:35-ish. Gave my friend a call and let him know that I was there early, that there was noone there and that I was going to sit at the bar. After a series of text messages were exchanged between 6 and 6:15pm. One of my other friends called me. He was obviously with my other friend and asked if I was at the Boston Beer Works and I replied yes. He then asked if I was at the Boston Beer Works across from the Fleet Center. To which I responded, “There’s more than one?” I really just wanted to cry at that point. I’m not an emotional person, but I was having a stressful day at work and this was just utterly embarassing. I hung up on my friend after I heard laughing in the background.
I finished my beer and got on the Green Line to North Station. Twenty minutes later when I got there, I called my friend and he said they were still at the bar. I am at the Fleet Center already so he tried to give me directions from where I was to get to the Boston Beer Works nearby. He clearly did not know where I was, because that led me in the opposite direction. I called him again and just told him to meet me at the Fleet Center. He told me that they wouldn’t be there for about another twenty minutes. I pretty much said I didn’t care and I’d meet them there. It didn’t really matter since I spent nearly the entire twenty minutes in line to use the bathroom. Needless to say, the fury within was rising and quickly. When they finally got there, I got my ticket from my friend and we all went up to the turnstiles. As soon as I was through, I was immediately stopped and told I couldn’t go any further with my bag. My LAPTOP BAG. This is not something I can dispose of readily or just put somewhere. My job is not just at risk if something happens to this laptop, I will be fired. There is no question about it. I pretty much just turned around and went home in a furious rage. An hour and a half later, I finally got to my T stop and walked home from there and here I am, ready to tear someone’s head off.
Its noones fault really. I keep blaming people in my head, but its just a series of unfortunate events that just kept falling down a slippery slope.
Thank goodness this day is almost over.
So my company’s lease expires on August 31 for the office space we occupy. I should really say occupied, but I’ll get to that. We have a new office space all lined up across the street. Unfortunately, due to the heavy layers of beauracracy and red tape, leases and contracts needed approval after approval until every pencil pusher under the impression he has the power to make a decision had seen our contract/lease and waited a week or two to sign it. This means our new office space will not be ready for occupancy until mid-October. Thats a month and a half after our current lease expires, for those non-math majors out there.
Last week, we had to pack up and leave our office. We are temporarily renting some shared space on a couple of floors right below where we used to occupy. Since its shared space though, there isn’t enough room for the entire team. In fact, there’s really only room for about half the team. So at any given time, about half of the team is working from home. This, fortunately, includes me. It has been mandated that we need to be in the office at least 2 days a week. Which means for the next month and a half, I will be working from home 3 days a week.
I am excited about this, but not in the way you probably expect. While its definitely a more relaxing atmosphere at home, this won’t be a big party or anything. When I work from home, I am able to get a significant amount of work done. Moreso, than I am able to get done at work. So this will actually be an opportunity for me to get my work done and work on the side projects I actually enjoy working on for work. That and I won’t have to spend a small fortune on lunches in the Prudential Food Court.
Today is my birthday.
I am officially 26 years old.
Outside of the Nintendo DS from last weekend and the giant bear hug from my roommate (thanks Nat!) this morning, its been fairly uneventful. I’ll be heading back to Braintree this evening for our weekly Uno’s gathering, but I don’t envision that being anything out of the ordinary. Ordinary pretty much describes the day so far. Noone even wanted to get McDonald’s or Wendy’s for lunch to celebrate this joyous holiday. As the kids say, “It was pretty whack.”
Now, I’m going to pass out from food coma and try to get some work done when I wake up.
Maybe I’ll open some toys when I get home.
Happy Birthday, Me.
My workplace is in a cubicle setting. Our inner sea of cubicles is surrounded by an outter wall of offices. Many of the occupants of said offices have a tendency to use a common feature of their phone called, speakerphone. And by use I mean abuse to the point where often times someone will walk over to their door and shut it for them while their on the call. There is only one person who you can really still hear through the door, but you can hear him through the walls as well, taking out his frustration on whomever is the victim of his dialing that day. Needless to say, his office is in a secluded part of the floor.
A new part-time worker started a couple months back in a cube that is on the next aisle and diagonal from my own cube. I did not notice until the past month or so, but he uses his speakerphone to dial phone numbers. Basically, he just turns the speaker on so you can hear the dial-tone and then searches for the phone number for what seems like an eternity while that piercing dial-tone rages through my ears and then dials the number slowly so I can hear each number being pressed and can nearly tell what number is being dialed by level of fury each sound causes me. This has gotten so under my skin that anytime I hear a dial-tone on a speakerphone, like Pavlov’s dog, I relate that sound to anger and get really angry when I hear that sound. Actually, I’m not sure anger really expresses the state well enough. Its more like fury or rage. When I hear that accursed sound, I feel as though I could grow 3 feet, rip apart my clothes and go on a rampage downtown. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.
Now, it just so happens that I was on the elevator, leaving work the other day when this guy hopped on and introduced himself and asked me some questions about what I do and the like. So I now have what some people refer to as a ‘rapport’ with this man. I had many scenarios all thought up in my head that I would just leave a note on his desk one morning before he got in, asking him to stop using speakerphone. Some versions may have mentioned something about stabbing and tracheas, but we don’t need to delve into the details. Now that this ‘rapport’ existed I felt more compelled to physically confront this man.
Last Friday, after hearing that shrill tone of the beast, I was so enraged I walked over and put on my nicest expression and said, “(Insert name here), Sorry to bother you if your busy, but could you stop using your speakerphone?” He asked if it was bothering me and I responded that “I can hear it through my headphones.” He gave me a bit of an embarassed look and his phone rang. I walked away while he answered it and enjoyed an afternoon of blissful silence.
He started using it again yesterday and today. He seemed to misunderstand that when I said it was bothering me, I didn’t mean just Friday, but actually, the past month and a half. I feel like I need to run into a wall as fast as I can and just hope to knock myself unconscious.
No wonder I get more work done from home.
I had a dream last night that something went wrong at work and I got blamed for it. In response, I got transfered to another division of my colossal corporation. At some point I had come to the realization that my new division was actually in fact a gas station in an underground parking lot across the street. The sudden loss of job security made me so worried and anxious in the dream that I actually woke up all neurotic about what I was going to do about my job.
Good to see my dreams are still as strange as ever.
As I sat this morning, in the weekly workflow meeting, I watched Ken pick up a bundled cable of ethernet cord and unwrap it. He then proceeded to tie one end to the handle of the door to the conference room we were in. As he sat back down, he was unraveling the rest of the cord and pulled really hard on it. The heavy glass door didn’t budge.
This might seem like a weird thing to do but one must understand that, there are 4 poeple on conference call that have to get through their workflow first and then the senior team members come in and go over their workflow. We are the last to go, so we pretty much sit there for close to an hour with nothing to do. I normally bring in the daily Metro paper, read it and then do the sudoku and crossword puzzles. Ken often plays with anything within arms reach.
When the door didn’t move, I figured it was because he was sitting in an angle to the door. Naturally I took the cord and pulled on it since I was at a better angle, but all I managed to do was pull my chair a lot closer to the door. Once I rolled back to the table, I braced my feet and pulled really hard as though I were in a tug-o-war. Sadly, my effort had no effect. One of the senior programmers looked over at us, shaking his head, laughing, and said, “You two stooges do realize that door opens outward, right?” Ken and I looked at each other in surprise and he got up to check. Sure enough, he pushed on the door and it opened easily.
I went to the bathroom this afternoon just before I left work. As I was finishing up at the urinal, one of my coworkers sidled up to the other urinal and went about his business. I zipped up my fly and my fingers went to feel for the button to button up the top, but as I did this I hear a clink in the urinal. I looked down and there is the button of my brand new pants sitting in this porcelain urinary track we call a urinal. I muttered some obscenity and my coworker laughed, turned his head and said, “Time to go fishin’!” -_-
I managed to get the button out and furiously washed it in the sink (and washed my hands three times!). This was the third time I had worn these pants. What a kick in the junk!
Pictures have been taken and smuggled out. Brace yourselves men, there is a lounge in the womens’ bathroom! After weeks of hearing rumors and being a naysayer, I have come into possession of conclusive evidence that, there is in fact a lounge area in the womens’ bathroom here at work. I refused to believe, even after camera phone pictures were taken to ease my doubt. Displayed below is the conclusive proof of this area’s existence. Its purpose, one can only suspect. It may have something to do with the herd-like behavior women manifest when on the way to the lavatory. They enter in groups and leave in groups. One can only deduce that they also go to the bathroom and, in this case, wait in line in groups. Such peculiar rituals have not been seen since the creation of the Discovery Channel.
There are few things that motivate me to change old habits.
I have found a new one in the form of the Lunch Coma.
I do not have the most exciting of jobs, but I do like it and wish to be better in it. Everyday at lunch, I normally have a large meal. Its rivals the size of my dinners and often times trumps it. Eating all this food, however, and then going back to my cubicle to stare at a monitor for another 6 hours is a trial. With the exception of a single day, I have gotten lunch coma everyday I have worked here and nearly everyday at my last job as well.
The past couple days I have tried modifying my eating habits in the hope it would help. So far, it has little to no effect, though I have found a few other methods to try and keep myself awake including brushing my teeth. I’m trying just about anything at this point.
As a sidenote, the only day I outwitted the lunch coma was on free ice cream scoop day at Ben & Jerry’s. I got the Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz. I think that had caffeine in the caffeine.