vixalicious | Entries tagged with work woes

So when last I left you, I was annoyed about the coming of December. It actually turned out pretty well!

a) I have a new nephew!!!! His name is Vaughn, and he is super cute. I will get to meet him next Wednesday.

b) I didn't have to go to St. Louis.

c) I only have one more workday left in the year, so nothing really looks that bad to me right now.

I did have to work with a site in Mexico, which was annoying because my counterpart had a tendency to wander off, but I got it done and I didn't have to go anywhere.

I've spent most of my free time working on scraping all the flaking paint/rust off my back patio railings, and trying to get a quote for installing a new railing back there because my insurance company now insists I need one. I think I've gotten it to be under $500, so I'm happy about that. Well, I'd be happier if I didn't have to do it, but oh well.

Also, there was a small fence kerfuffle, in that I took my old ghetto fence down, and then the house next to mine that had been vacant for two years sold and they wondered where the fence was. But it ended well, and the new owner seems nice and he is looking for good renters so hopefully it won't be too bad. Although I think he's set the rent too high, given that he's asking for more than I pay on my mortgage, and my house is at least half again the size of that one, if not double.

Speaking of mortgages, I wonder if I could refinance mine again. I just did it about a year ago, but who knows, maybe I could lower it again. I should look into that.

I have also been crafting, but haven't taken the time to post my Pinteresting to tumblr. Ought to get on that! I also made Vaughn's Christmas gift, which is a sock monkey.

And in my spare time, I've been working on my 1D big bang. Uuuuuuuuuuugh. Why so hard, writing? I've hit the minimum word count, but it's not done, and I've hit that stretch where it feels like it never will be. I wanted to have it finished before I went to New Hampshire, but I'm not sure if it will be. I have a couple of days off before I go, so there's hope yet.

OOOOOOOOOh! And I'm going to buy myself an iPad for Christmas! In New Hampster, where they don't believe in sales tax.

Well, today sucked.

To start off, I made a poor plan for arriving at this hotel. It was a good plan when I made it. I booked a 10pm flight two weeks, knowing that this would get me to the hotel between 12:30 and 1 AM, because I knew I'd need to be available on my tennis team roster. We generally play from noon to 6 or 7pm, depending on which line, and I wanted to have plenty of time to get home and get cleaned up. So it was a good plan, but then we moved the match up (yay! earlier = less hot, which is always a good thing in Atlanta in the summer) so then I had a whole day in between. So I could have gotten in at a decent time, but I had no way of knowing that two weeks ago, and since I've lost status on Delta, I can't change flights same day anymore without paying a whopping amount of fees out of my own pocket.

Then when I got here, I realized that I left my prescription Pepcid at home. So after my five hours of sleep, I woke up with the now unmistakable feeling of having had acid reflux in the night. Sorry, gross, I know. I never noticed that that's what was happening before, but now I can tell.

All of this before I even get to work, which then started off with a bang. Suffice it to say that the client is not happy, and my chances of making them happy are slim. So stress all day long, and now I seem to have heartburn? Or an ulcer, idk. Then my kidneys started hurting and I thought I might be getting a UTI, which. Awesome. I did dehydrate over the weekend, so it's entirely possible.

Then I went to dinner, and my site this week features two of my all-time least favorite things:
1) Conference dining! Because the chance to sit at a table with complete strangers is fun!
2) Buffet as the ONLY choice. Buffets are a dieting nightmare - so easy to go overboard, and you end up eating bizarre combinations of food. For example, tonight for dinner I had Swedish meatballs and a pretzel covered jalapeno popper. Bwuh?

To top it off, all day my email was popping up autoreminders for me of stuff I needed to do, but didn't have time for. Like the $3K worth of expense reports I needed to figure out and submit so I can get my money back.

I've gotten a handle on the stress now, I think - I went to Walmart and bought OTC Pepcid which looks like what the doctor gave me, just without the insurance coverage, but whatever, it was $5 for 8 pills, which will cover me til I get home. I got all my expense reports submitted and reconciled, and tomorrow I'll need to find time to send in the receipts but whatever. My kidneys feel less like they're going to fall out, so maybe that was just panic? IDK.

I really wanted to write tonight, but I think whatever creativity I might have had in me has been squashed today. *sigh* I was really hoping for an easy week, but it is not going to happen.

Ugh. Training takes so much out of me! Eight hours a day on your feet, then I spent another three hours tonight sorting out my expense reports. I sort of skipped doing them for, oh. Six months. Oops. So I'll probably get reprimanded for that, and they might not pay the December one. Guess I'll see! I really thought I'd done them in March but I guess not. I've set an auto reminder now so I won't miss again.

So now it's 10:30, and I'm going to read and then go to bed. I have zero mental energy right now.

I saw this guy in concert last week. Mucho enjoyed! Graham Colton: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lih2DDDuzSc

Back on another airplane.

I got home Saturday morning at around 11 am, then crashed until about 1:30 because I only slept a couple of hours on the plane. Ugh, I hate red-eyes. I only took it because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have gotten home until 6 or 7 pm. When you're only home for a day, those few hours count. Not that I did that much with them - cuddled with the cat, updated my iTunes playlists and bought some new albums because Amazon was having a sale, put pictures on songs that didn't have them because I am anal-retentive and shit like that bugs me. I was going to go to bed at 10, but then my sister called me right then and we ended up talking til 11 or so, and then I stayed up til 1 reading fic. I fail at going to bed early, even when I'm tired!

But I still got good sleep for at least 9 hours, and then I snoozed a bit more after that. I was so tired, I just wanted to sleep. The cats were not down with that though, so eventually I got up and fed them. I had a list of stuff to do around the house, and I got it all done. Including putting nail caps on Cinnamon and giving her her monthly flea treatment. Needless to say, she is now happy to see me go. Poor thing. I have learned to do it during the day, and not the night before I leave, because I lose out on kitty cuddles if I do it at night.

Then I went to yoga class, which was good because I hadn't done anything athletic since Monday. I think I actually fell asleep during the last corpse pose meditation though. Whoops, jet lag. It made me really disoriented when I got up.

Last week was a bit of an eye-opener for me at work. When I learned our new product this spring, I think I was laboring under the delusion that I wouldn't have to train it very often or from scratch, and that is not true. I need to start working on reviewing the product and studying in my off-hours. Sigh. Actually, if I buckle down and do more during my down time at work, I probably won't have to work on it that much after-hours. Must be more strict with myself. It's hard to make it a priority, given that it's about 20% of my workload, but when that 20% is going on, I need to know 100% of the information. So. Yeah, gotta get on that.

So last week I published my first One Direction fic, and subsequently my first AO3 (Archive of Our Own) fic. I've been reading things over there for some time, because I like the simple layout, and there's less posting restrictions character-wise (ie less splitting up of things into multiple posts.) I like the kudos feature, and the statistics tracking (although I'm wondering if I count into that if I open the page too - hope not!) So now I'm thinking I'll go post my old stories over there too. It's not like I have that many, it shouldn't take too terribly long. Yay for not being prolific? \o?

Both 15 year old kid next to me and whoever's in the seat in front of me have iPads. I am super, super jealous. Must lose weight faster! Speaking of, I'm down another pound, which puts me basically where I was in February before I went travelling for 5 weeks and lost my mind thinking I could not exercise and eat whatever I wanted to. My goal for the week is to go to the gym Monday and Wednesday while I'm onsite.

Note for

harriet_vane and anyone else who cares about One Direction these days: Listen to 'In the Shadows' by The Rasmus. I think this is what Harry will sound like when he grows up. Oh, and apparently I'm accidentally following them around on their tour. Last week, San Diego and tonight we are both in Phoenix. If they show up in Columbus next week, it's just going to get creepy.

So I got called away on Tuesday to take a colleague's place on site. That hasn't happened in a while, but it's nice to know that I still have the skill to get a phone call saying 'We need you here' and I can walk out of my house within an hour with a flight booked and a suitcase packed.

The site is in San Diego. One Direction are in San Diego. I am not going to see them, obviously, because I am not actually 14. Instead, I am afraid I will bump into them somehow and totally fail to pretend to my colleague and clients that I don't know who they are. It's not as unlikely as it sounds - I'm at a golf resort and all they've been doing for a week is tweeting pictures of themselves playing golf.

And now I'm going to bed because I worked from 8am to 10pm on this site's work, and then another hour catching up on email and prepping for next week, and I am DONE.

Hopefully next week I can think about things not work related and start thinking about the next fic I'm writing. I'm excited about this new fandom, and it's so nice to be writing again!

Oh, so tired. I don't know how everyone else commutes every day and starts the day so early. I am spoiled.

This time of year is always rough at work - we're racing to make budget & they squeeze a lot in. For me, that means I end up training instead of my usual interfaces which is stressful because I don't do it all the time. Next week won't be so bad - interface onsite, which means I have to travel to Orlando but at least it'll be in my comfort zone. The next week will be hell though. Currently I'm scheduled to work with 4 different clients, a new one each day, each in a different time zone. This will also mean 4 sets of paperwork. Ugh. I'm tired just thinking about it.

My roommate should be back this weekend, she's been on a 3-week vacation. I've been taking care of her cat while she's gone, which I don't mind doing, but. Her cat is kind of a pain in the ass. Normally, she stays in M's room and I don't see much of her, but now that I'm feeding her she wants to be where I am. Which wouldn't be a problem except for she's mean to my cat. Like tried to bite her three times last night mean. So if she's near me, Cinnamon stays away. I'll be happy when M gets home so I don't have to deal with the whole thing any more.

Also, I haven't gotten Scott's xmas gift yet and I can't think of a single thing he'd want.

I really just want to spend a few days holed up in bed, doing cross-stitch and watching hulu. Is that too much to ask?

I think I just found my first gray hair! It's kind of hard to tell because I color my hair, I haven't washed it today, and my hair has a lot of metallic colored strands, but I'm pretty sure one of them is silver instead of gold. I actually think it looks sort of cool, in a 'but you say that now' kind of way that I'm sure I will regret one day.

I have been meaning to come post more, but I actually haven't been doing anything. I'm working Pacific time this week - 1pm to 9pm for me - which I hate. On the surface, it seems like a good deal; I'm a night owl, this should let me sleep in. The reality is that I end up getting up, turning on my computer around 10, and then getting sucked in. And the next thing you know, I've worked a ten hour day, done nothing, and it's time for bed. :(

So that's about it for me.

*Actually the song I'm listening to right now. I promise!

Weekend
Last night I went to a karaoke place with my friends from tennis. This was the first time I'd really done to karaoke - except one time when I lived in Las Vegas that totally doesn't count because I was too drunk to remember it. Anyway....

OMG I LOVE KARAOKE.

I want to go again. Like, now. They had private rooms so you aren't singing in front of strangers, just your friends, and it wasn't very expensive. This is totally what I want to do for my birthday this year. Hopefully I can get people together before then too, because August is a long way away. There are videos up on my facebook if you want to see. I look fat. :(

Work
Totally sucked last week. I worked three 12 hour days, including Friday when I didn't get done with work until 10:30pm. Ugh. Fingers crossed that this week is better. Oh, and I might be going to someplace that's near Chicago in a couple of weeks. And I actually got my cost-of-living raise this year, it started with Friday's check. Not much, but every little bit helps these days.

Home
I need to clean like whoa. Last week dust clumps started flying off the ceiling fan in the living room. Time for spring cleaning! Prepare to see more about this in the following days and weeks - I am planning to set goals for myself each day. I am going to start in my bedroom, as it needs the least work - just curtains, windows, dusting, and baseboards. Oh, and I'd like to clean the carpet but I could wait on that. Then I will do the living room and hallway, the kitchen, the two upstairs bedrooms, then move to the basement last. Whee.

Oh, and I had to crawl under the house again today, because the hose for the sump pump that pumps the standing water from the foundation had fallen back inside, so it was just pumping continuously and not going anywhere. I need to get something to go around the hose to keep it from being able to do that this week, and I need to buy two more shelves for the bathroom so I can finish that project.

And now I'm going to go have a snack and read my book that's due back to the library on Tuesday. Have a good night!

I am sooooo over this week. My site that should have been easy kept having delays, and I hate delays. I hate waiting on other people, when I can't do anything. It's done now, but ugh.

Anyway, I've been pretty productive this week, doing laundry, making appointments, going to yoga, working on my photo album. I still feel like there's SO MUCH to be done. I'm trying to keep up my New Year's resolution to procrastinate less, but I'm having to figure out how to balance that with wanting to do all the things.

So my goal for tonight is to do two things:
1. One hour of yoga
2. Organizing my October photos.

And no beating myself up for not doing all the other things.

One of the reasons I haven't really updated my journal lately is because I've been feeling pretty overwhelmed by life lately. It's silly, because this is a great outlet for frustrations, but I haven't felt up to using it. I'm going to try to be better about that.

Some of the reasons I am feeling overwhelmed:

My family:
This has not been a great year for my family. My mom had a stroke. My aunt had a lumpectomy, which led to a mastectomy, which then led - I'm still not sure how - to a ruptured colon. My oldest brother had a bicycle accident that collapsed his lung. My other brother has had some unknown virus that caused him to lose 25 pounds (which he didn't have to lose; I asked how I could get this virus, as I could stand to lose it easily.) Everyone is healing from their calamities nicely, but it's been one thing after another, with a lot of worrying and feeling helpless. And I've spent a lot on flowers.

My job:
I've had a lot of problem sites, with challenging installations, lots of overtime. It's been a rough summer.

My weight:
I've gained about 25 pounds in the last year. I am super unhappy about this - I feel fat and gross and ugly. I know these things aren't true when I look in the mirror, but it doesn't stop from me from feeling them. Luckily I'm not carrying it the way I did last time I was this heavy, because I am a more active person now, but I do not want to stay this way. I'm trying to diet, but I'll do good for a few days then blow it (usually on the weekends.) I play tennis two or three times a week, but I need to supplement that with the Wii and with the treadmill, and I haven't been able to motivate myself to do so.

My house:
Well, really the yard. After I had that horrid bout of poison ivy, I got kind of scared to go out there. It turned into a jungle. This is one area where I've made some progress recently. I had let the house get dirty, and I've been cleaning. I finally got the yard mowed today - I was going to give up and call someone to do it, but the weather was under 90 today with a breeze, so I sucked it up and spent about 4 hours mowing, weed-eating, and leaf-blowing. I still need to spray for the poison ivy and weeds. I want to buy some sort of sprayer that will be easier to use than the Round Up I've been buying - the squeezy thing hurts my hand.

So these are my woes. They're not the worst in the world, and trust me, I know there's a lot of people that have it worse than me. But they are mine, and they have been making me sad. I'm still getting out, playing tennis, meeting up with friends, etc, but I don't feel like myself.

No, I haven't given up on this. I will complete it! Even though I've spread it out over 3 months now.

Day 26: Your week, in great detail

Monday, March 1:
Woke up feeling not so great, with a bad headache. Worked all day, nothing too exciting. Then I skipped tennis practice since I was feeling not so good. I ran over to Michaels to buy paper for my photo album, and then went grocery shopping. I was going to get myself dinner at Moe's, but I missed their operating hours by about ten minutes. Came home, fixed myself dinner, worked on my photo album.

Tuesday, March 2:
Woke up feeling feverish and clammy. I took my temperature, and it was at 99. I was actually relieved, because that explains why I'd been in such a bad mood; I'm always rage-y when I'm getting sick. Finished up work early, so I worked on my photo album. Made myself some soup.

Wednesday, March 3:
Still tired, but feeling better. Worked - did some support call work, held my two training sessions for the week. Found out that Bob Bryar really has left MCR, very sad. Worked captions for my photo album. Stayed up far too late faffing about on the internet, re-tagging old journal entries.

Thursday, March 4:
Got up and ran to my physical therapy appointment for my carpal tunnel. Last appointment, yay! Grabbed lunch from Willy's, and came home. Worked on support calls all afternoon. Completed the embellishments on the photo album. Was safety person for my friend Katherine for her first eHarmony date; she was not kidnapped, yay!

Friday, March 5:
Worked on support calls in the morning; annoyingly I have 5 going right now (this is not my actual job, just helping out another department) which are basically resolved but am waiting to hear back from the client to confirm that what I've told them actually worked. Then did my actual job in the afternoon, four hours of conference calls, an hour and a half of paperwork. Took a super quick shower, and ran to tennis drills. Went out to dinner afterward with Katherine, our regular Tennis and Tequila outing at a local Mexican place. Came home after and put the photo album together, finished, yay!

Saturday, March 6:
I took a day for myself. Slept in til noon, didn't really get up at that point. Worked on tagging old LJ entries, read a blog by a woman who gave up her career to move to Hong Kong with her boyfriend, did laundry, cuddled cat. K came down after work, and we went over to my friends' house for an awesome vegetarian dinner (fake chicken cordon bleu, rudabega (sp?), asparagus, and homemade rolls, with pears and caramel ice cream for dessert, plus yummy lemonade cocktails!) and a movie - Girls Will Be Girls - which should totally be a cult classic, it's hilarious. Hint: none of the girls are actually girls. Came home really late.

Sunday, March 7:
K got up to leave for his parents' house in Florida for spring break early. After he left, I went back to bed until noon. Still tired, but not so hungover as I probably should have been (yummy cocktails were yummy) thanks to copious amounts of water ingested throughout the night. Personal computer wouldn't start; took battery out, started up. Had to restore, screen is not working right (flickers, goes dark, etc). Backed up files in case of premature death; will probably take it in to Best Buy sometime this week. Ran to play tennis, sort of won - I won the first set 7-6, and then half way through the second set, when the score was 3-3, my opponent forfeited due to fatigue (she has had a cold this week.) I am happy to have the points, but it was a bit of a let down. One of the girls on my team was playing a match at the same time, so I stuck around to watch the end of her match, and then we went to dinner. I came home, and have planted myself on the couch, and that pretty much brings us up to date.

( Future Days )

Day 25: Your day, in great detail

I woke up with the cat on top of me, as per usual. Then I hit snooze three times. Then I reset my alarm to get up an hour later, but only made it half an hour before the guilt (and the sound of my cell phone ringing) got me up. I had my usual breakfast of oatmeal and chocolate milk while watching an episode of Supernatural on TNT (Heart, one of my favorites).

Then I made my way down to my office to start up my laptop and do my one assigned task of the day, an interface preparation call for a client that I'd prepped last week but then figured out we hadn't done everything needed. Afterward, I chatted with my team lead on IM, then my cat decided to chat with him, then I yelled at her to get off my keyboard.

I came back upstairs and had lunch, two mango & black bean quesadillas, yummy! I watched a little bit of the Olympics - women's curling, Switzerland vs China I think. Back to work, I started watching our support queue to help them out, and grabbed a couple of cases. One I emailed the instructions to, the other I called and left a message. He never called back. Odds he will call on Monday when I'm actually busy, 100%. Gave up on pretending to work around 4pm.

Went into my craft room and worked on my photo album from my month in Toulouse. I have it all lined out, but wasn't happy with the paper I'm using. It's lovely, almost too pretty to use! But there are too many patterns too close together. I tried to find some neutral papers in my overly large paper selection, but everything was either too busy or the wrong shade. :(

Began the Friday night texting marathon of 'what are you/we doing' between K and my tennis friends. Discovered that my tennis partner for tomorrow had called to cancel; arranged another match in its place. Took shower (you thought I'd left that out? No, I'm just a lazy slob.) Then I put on my tennis clothes, checked my work email one more time before shutting the computer down for the weekend, gave the cat a treat, and then headed into town to go to tennis drills.

Chatted with my tennis coach for twenty minutes before he decided that really, no one else was coming to drills and so they were cancelled. Texted my friend who was planning to come, and we made plans to meet later for dinner instead. Headed back to the house, changed clothes, took another look at the photo album. Realized I had time, so I headed to Michaels Craft store. Picked out a nice neutral beige that will be an offset to the pattern frenzy, 25 sheets for $6. Lusted over a beautiful set of textured neutral paper, but since it was $20 I decided not to. My hobby, it is expensive. Also, on the way to the checkout, saw a two pack of Reeses Easter eggs. Cannot resist! They are the perfect ratio of peanut butter to chocolate!

Drove back into town, headed for Wahoo Grill. Ate 1 of the Easter eggs on the way. Arrived to discover that there was no parking and an hour wait. We went to Figo instead, an Atlanta chain of Italian restaurants. Had bruschetta, a spinach salad, and a really lovely ravioli with marscapone (sp) and Vidalia onions. And a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, yay!

Came home, toyed briefly with the idea of working more on the photo album but abandoned it after clearing off my work area. Fed the cat, scooped the litter box. Poured myself a glass of milk and set down to watch the Olympics and eat the second Reeses Egg. Started sorting songs on my ipod into playlists. Watched Apollo Ohno get disqualified and be kind of pissy about it.

And now, I'm thinking bed time.

( Future Days )

Current Mood: quixotic

Today I have:

Gone to the doctor about my carpal tunnel. Now have RX strength Aleve (to bring me up to "theraputic levels" of anti-inflammatories) and the option to do more physical therapy if I feel I need it.

Had Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast! I deserved it for getting up so early, and the "Hot & Fresh" sign was on.

Walked for an hour.

Did laundry.

Got my prescription filled.

Set up my Wii Fit, failed to balance. Apparently it's a miracle I don't fall down constantly.

Folded laundry.

Note the lack of actual working? It's been one of those days where everything's at a standstill and the deadline is looming, and there's nothing I can do. Am considering starting to organize the mess in my second bedroom.

Also, I need to redo my mood theme... I never switched it over after I deleted my Geocities account. Laaaaaaaaazy.

Current Mood: contemplative

Ok, so as I'm nearing the end of a 12 hour day in which we accomplished a solid hour, hour and a half of work, I look down into my lower level and what do I see?

Water. All over the floor.

*sigh*

Now there are those who will say I should have seen this coming (chiefly me, and probably my mother when I tell her)... the same thing happened last Thankgiving. There are roots growing into my pipes, and I had to have them roto-rooted out, as some of you may recall. I had noticed a little backup this weekend, and figured it was due to having guests last weekend and needing to have the roots re-done so I'd put it on my to - do list ( and

marny_h96,

zillah975, if this happened while y'all were here and you just didn't want to say, I am so, so sorry). We had a thunderstorm today, and got a lot of rain in a short amount of time, and then I did one last load of laundry to wash my red towels, which, if one is to judge by the red-tinted mess I just mopped up, was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Ugh. So now my downstairs bath smells vaguely of sewage, and I have to call both a roto-rooter service and my handy man service tomorrow. I think I should just go ahead and get the pipes fixed, as long as it's under $1000. Plus I might as well have them tear up the yard before I start working on it this fall.

I just didn't need this this week, is all. The allergy problems and the work issues were really enough, thanks.

So tired, omg. Going to bed soon even though it's only 10pm here.

Today was an exercise in why it's a bad idea to have someone try to work when everyone else in the company is taking a holiday. We hit an issue at install that required escalation and everyone was off barbecueing (cuing? cuying? idk). The bright side was that we got to call it a day around 3pm, because there was no point in pretending we could get anything done.

This gave me plenty of time to go shopping, which I needed to do because I had a packing failure. Always fun to unpack at the hotel and go 'Um. Where's that shirt?' Still not as bad as my all-time favorite: the time I forgot to pack my shoes. \o/ I rule! I asked the concierge about the mall, and he said it was 12 blocks away, and then sent me down to Granville Street. A) It wasn't 12 blocks. More like 20. But whatever, it was a nice day. People were out walking their dogs and their kids and stuff, so. Nice. But still mah feets hurt. B) Granville Street is under construction. Not like, ooh, 'there's a pothole, let's fix it' construction, but 'oh my god they've take out the entire street AND the sidewalks and left this giant gravel road that feels like walking in the Old West' construction. Seriously no road. None. In related news, Chucks and gravel, two tastes that taste great SEPARATELY.

I got to the mall, and had sort of lost my will to shop, but I persevered. I found a top at The Bay for $20! It's a bit too hot pink, but it'll go well with the pants that I actually did bring to go with the top that I only thought I brought. And I bought two baseball caps to wear for tennis this summer so I don't sunburn my scalp - one Converse, one Puma. They were... not $20. I possibly overspent on hats. But I'll save on not getting skin cancer, so there's that!

The rest of my evening I've spent watching Adam Lambert do various things - hi, new obsession, hi! - and lounging. Now I'm listening to Queen and thinking about how much I want shoes. LOTS OF SHOES. And a cool messenger bag that I can cover with pins and patches.

I feel like I haven't updated in forever, even though I know I tweet everyday so you probably know what I'm up to anyway. Weird how twitter can make you feel so connected and so disconnected at the same time. Then again, twitter arouses a lot of conflicting thoughts in me, but that's for another day.

I'm flying home from Vancouver, and it's been a long, long day. My plane lands in Atlanta at midnight, which means if I'm lucky I'll be home by 1:30. I connected through Los Angeles, and I had forgotten that LAX is of the devil. To get from the terminal that I landed in to the one I was flying out of, I had to go outside, through 3 parking structures, across 2 sky bridges, down an elevator and an escalator, then back outside and down a sidewalk about 500 feet. Then I had to go through security again, of course, because I was outside - bad planning! Plus I had to throw away half a diet coke because I couldn't take it through security. :((( Fail, LAX, fail.

And now I'm on the plane, and I'm tired and I have a headache, and I really should be working because I have a million documents I need to be updating but I just can't do it right now. Monday is another day. I don't know that I ever said why I was in Vancouver for so long - my company is integrating with a new front office vendor, and this was meant to be end-to-end testing and a corporate consultation for the client who has agreed to roll it out first. The testing I was observing, and then doing the consultation. Unfortunately, the testing didn't go so great, so we're pushing the roll out for a bit. I did my part with the consultation, so that's as done as it can be til we have the final answers on some of the problems that were discovered, but now I have a ton of documentation to update.

It would have helped more if my health was better. I am mostly over the flu, just an occasional cough now, but it took a lot out of me and we were working some really long days. The last couple of days I've been losing my voice. I'm hoping that will go away soon and am dousing myself in vitamin C daily. In some ways, I feel like I've lost a month. Between getting sick and travelling, it's been nothing but work and sleep. I have some photos from the weekend, from my brief excursions around Stanley Park and Granville Island. If my battery holds out, I'll go through them now and try to post them when I get home.

Hope your lives are more exciting than mine! Also, whoever picked Marley & Me as the inflight movie is a sadist who likes to watch me people cry in public.

*Actually a song in the playlist I'm listening to right now. What are the odds?

ETA: Home at ten til 2. Not bad considering there were tornadoes in the Atlanta area tonight.

Current Mood: tired

Still in Canada.
Still sick, though not so bad. General consensus amongst co-workers today is that my cough sounds slightly less close to death, except for when I get cold air in my lungs.
There's a lot of cold air in Canada right now. At least in this part.
Basically, my day goes like this: Get up, get ready for work, go to work, sit around and basically do nothing all day except try not to cough and take notes about our test lab, come home, eat, sit for two hours, go to bed.

My life is not really blog-worthy right now. Maybe at the weekend.

So I'm out and about in Decatur today, trying to find a suitable location for those days when I attempt to work at an internet cafe. This has been harder to do than I thought it would be, just in general.

Places I've tried:

Joe's Coffee Shop in East Atlanta
Love, love this place! So you would think this would be a short list, right? No. It's funky, it's busy, it's reasonably quiet. Tons of comfy seating, tons of plug ins. UNFORTUNATELY... their wi-fi is iffy. Sometimes it works perfectly, sometimes I can't stay on it at all. It's not just me - the last time I was in there everyone was having trouble. The building is old and so is the wiring, and it's next door to a bank, so between the vault wall and the brick building, there's not much cell reception.

Panera Bread in... um. Tucker, maybe? Off LaVista.
This was my go to place until Tuesday. Lots of plug ins, good cell reception, quiet atmosphere, decent food, and then a couple of comfy chairs in the back if you're fast enough to grab one. The problem? They've instituted a couple of new wi-fi policies - 1) only 30 minutes of access between 11:30 and 1:30 - which I get, and doesn't actually bother me. I'm usually eating at this time, and I get that it's their peak business time. I didn't get there til 12:45, so it wasn't a big deal. 2) And this is the showstopper - they time out your connection every 30 minutes. So when I'm all dialed into my customer's site? Yeah, that's a problem.

Atlanta Bread Company, Downtown Decatur
Wifi is good, but... atmosphere sucks, chairs are uncomfortable, there is as far as I can tell only one outlet in the whole joint, and it's too hard to park.

Next up on my list to try: Java Monkey (next door to ABC), Caribou Coffee (Edgewood Plaza)
Any locals on my flist have any other suggestions?

ETA: Java Monkey, also a no-go. I might try it again another day, but I just wasn't feeling the vibe, plus they let people smoke on their patio and it stunk the whole place up.

Hi.

How are y'all doing tonight? I'm tired and a little tipsy and a little sad. Bad combo, and I should probably just go to bed, but I'm still winding down from work. I'm working West Coast hours, and that always throws me off a bit. Especially because it almost always turns out that I end up working from 10 am to 9pm, instead of 1pm to 9pm like I'm supposed to. So that never puts you in a good frame of mind anyway.

I'm cleaning my house up a bit, which is good. I was starting to feel kind of pig-sty-ish. It wasn't that bad, just a lot of clutter, which I'm picking up. I need to really clean though. That's not happening tonight though.

I tried calling my sister, but she's not answering. She's probably just at the movies or with her boyfriend. Or asleep. I haven't talked to her since Saturday, I think. She had a car accident on Friday - she's fine, somebody pulled out in front of her and did some damage to her brand new car, but she was just shook up and sore. She has bad car luck - she's been in five accidents that I can think of off the top of my head, and one when I was in high school that was serious. You want to be convinced to always wear your seatbelt? Go take a look at a scrunched-up car that has the indent of your sister's head in the front windshield. That'll do it.

On Sunday, I went to Home Depot and bought the shed that I've been talking about for ages. It comes on Thursday, and my dad's going to help me assemble it next week. They get here Sunday or Monday, and my sister comes on Wednesday night. I still need to find a restaurant for Thanksgiving lunch, but I have our tickets to the art museum on Friday sorted out, so that should be fun.

And that's about it for goings on around here.

For those of you that like these sorts of things, there is a fantastic Panic at the Disco Pride & Prejudice AU here, and a fic that I swear will make you like Ashlee Simpson-Wentz here.

Current Mood: sad

Eesh, I'm having a bad technology day.

First of all, I woke up this morning to discover that my phones weren't working. I have voIP, and normally it works really well. I think the problem was with the equipment, not the service. I got one of my three phones working, and a second one that the speaker phone works but the handset doesn't. This happened once before, and I let the handsets completely run down and then recharged them. Hopefully that will work this time too.

Then, halfway through my training session, my laptop got the blue screen of death. Ugh, ugh, ugh. It rebooted, but I feel this signals the beginning of the end.

So then this evening I went to back everything up to my networked NAS drive, and I can't connect to it! I cannot win for losing computer-wise today!

ETA: so my drive's IP address spontaneously changed. Awesome.

Son of ETA: Why is iTunes pink now, and how can I get it to stooooooooop? >:(((

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how do you live so happily while i am sad and broken down?

Where Does the Good Go? - Tegan & Sara

Entries tagged with work woes

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Tired

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