Welcome to Spooky Season, everyone. Didn't think I'd be continuing these posts this long, but I also didn't think our country would handle a pandemic so poorly either, nor did I think that 2020 would be anywhere near as awful overall as it has been. So, let's march onward, and save a few bags of Butterfingers for ya boy for the end of the month.
Thursday, October 1:
Working from home, day 117.
It is a cold start to the month, with overnight temperatures in the 40s. The lows tonight are supposed to be in the 30s, by the way, so apparently fall is here and is going to stick around. I have the next four days in a row off, and by all accounts it'll be nice weather for it.
I put in PTO for November 24, 25, and 29 last night -- the Tuesday and Wednesday before as well as the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I have no idea what our overall plans are yet and likely there won't really be any unless we get a magic cure for Covid-19 between now and then. I only know that I do not want to be in the office during that time, and by then I have a feeling I will really need the time off.
With those days submitted and my upcoming next two extra days off this weekend, I still have 26 hours of PTO in my bank right now. That's more than three days' worth of time, and I'll likely get another 2-3 days worth accrued between now and the Christmas season.
The night at work isn't bad; I am able to get a fair amount of stuff accomplished, and though I stick around an extra half hour late to get stuff done, it feels really good to put my OOO message up on my phone and on my email and just be done for four days.
Friday, October 2:
Day off.
TRUMP HAS COVID-19! Bahahahahahahah!
Sorrry, I just had to get that out of my system.
I weigh in for the month and I am up a few pounds from where I was in mid-September. Part of it is diet, of course, and part of it is sedentarianism (is that a word? Fuck it, it is now). I'm sure a large part of it is stress and lack of quality sleep as well, not to attempt to make excuses, or anything. It simply is what it is, so to speak.
When I get off work in the morning, I join the wife in bed (eventually). Why? Because she took the day off a few weeks ago (and took Monday too) so that we could have some downtime together. I eventually do pass out and sleep, and she gets up and runs errands most of the day. When she returns home, I'm awake again and she makes fettuccine alfredo -- vegan, of course -- and fresh garlic bread for dinner. We watch through the majority of two episodes of Married at First Sight before I get so sleepy again that we have to turn it off.
The next thing I know, it is almost 3am, I am laying on the couch with the cats (I don't remember laying down), and the wife has been in bed for hours. I have no memory of falling asleep, I have no memory of her going upstairs; I have no memory of even turning off the TV, really. I get up, feed the cats and make sure they have sufficient water and treats, and fill my 48oz water bottle from the fridge with ice and fresh water, then put grape Mio in it, before coming upstairs. And so ends my Friday.
Saturday, October 3:
Day off.
As mentioned previously, October has started really coldly. And the first Saturday of the month starts with not only cold, but rain too.
In the overnight hours, I wake myself up a little more (oh, sweet irony) and continue working through batch 17, which is almost complete. It is my goal to finish it in the morning hours so that the rest of the weekend can be spent taking care of more pressing chores around the house and the like. I have two extra days off this weekend, so it's like a double weekend -- and I intend to maximize that time in any and all ways possible.
When I woke up yesterday afternoon I felt that familiar gout-like pain in my foot again -- yes, that's right, the left foot, the normal one. This is also part of why I filled the water bottle in the night as mentioned above. I immediately took my pills and ibuprofen, and the pain subsided for the most part, but this is telling me I'm not drinking enough water or being active enough. If I don't rectify that, the pain will keep coming back over and over and I'll be caught in an endless cycle of why-does-this-shit-have-to-happen-to-me again. Obviously I do not want that.
My active day begins with the archiving of batch 17, and continues with the first of several loads of laundry to run, starting with my own, then a shower, then breakfast. I let Daisy sleep as it's not like we have anything pressing to do today -- we're both off for the next three days and two of them will be heavily punctuated with football, including today, as WVU plays at 11am on national television against Baylor. WVU wins that game (in double overtime, I might add) and we venture over to the parents' to spend some time with them in a socially-distanced fashion. Rough plans are made for Monday, though they will rely heavily on energy levels and Mama's mobility.
In the evening, we return home and watch more Married at First Sight. I fall asleep on the couch, again, but the wife stays up most of the night and binge-watches an entire series on Netflix before going to bed around 5-ish. I don't know, exactly, how late I stay up -- but I do finish batch 17. From it, I obtain 48 albums and 657 tracks total. I will let this end the archiving for 2020, which (for a grand total) is 59.2 gigabytes of music and close to 17,000 individual tracks....and a bunch of physical discs that I have shuffled off to the great recycler in the sky.
Sunday, October 4:
Day off (PTO).
My sleep schedule is completely out of whack because of my longer weekend than usual. I find myself sleeping at weird hours, disjointedly, usually in the chair or on the couch -- more often than not with my earbuds in my ears listening to Joe Rogan. My attempts to rectify this have been mostly fruitless over the course of the past two nights -- when I awaken today, it's after 1PM. The wife and I don't do anything of note today, really. We eat together and watch more Married at First Sight, and in the later night hours (11-12ish) I am so tired I can barely stand upright. I force myself to finish the laundry I started before I collapse in my chair and sleep a good chunk of the night time hours...again.
Monday, October 5:
Day off (PTO).
Mama's birthday.
I awaken around 6am and I'm already feeling weird. Like, I'm enjoying the downtime, the time off, but my body hasn't been incredibly cooperative with me during that time and I have been really cloudy, lethargic, slow, out of sorts, achy...etc. I know I don't have the Covid -- or at least I really, really hope I don't -- but this long weekend has been weird on multiple levels.
The wife confirms with me by around 10ish that she has spoken to her mother and that Mama wants to go through a forest/wildlife preserve about 20 miles south of us. This is fine with me, of course; this was sort of the plan all along if Mama was able to do it (she is old, and she has mobility issues on the best of days). There's also the logistics of getting into the same vehicle with Daisy's parents -- not just fitting us all comfortably but also the same breathing space even when all four of us are masked.
We get a late start, as is customary, and by around noon or so we are in the forest (with $11 each for admission to have the privilege to walk on nature trails). I've put on a brave face and have caffeinated myself enough for the journey, but even with that I still (secretly) feel pretty bad.
The walk along the boardwalk trail that takes you through the entire forest is something like 1.2 miles. it is not a hard walk -- ups and downs are minimal, no stairs, beautiful scenery, and fresh, clean air. And throughout it, brave face I may have (though masked) I start feeling worse and worse.
Pictured: said masked, brave face. Yes, that's one of my many wolf shirts I'm wearing under that hoodie. I also haven't shaved for well over a week and I'm wearing the frumpiest glasses in my collection. If you look closely, you can see all the gray in my hair now too.
About 2/3 of the way through the walk, I begin having...trouble. I start feeling really dizzy and out of it, and I have to grip the handrails to steady myself. I'm having trouble breathing, my heart begins pounding, and I begin thinking to myself is this what a heart attack feels like? If so, it's pretty here, I don't mind dying in the forest...
Daisy hangs back with me a bit while I collect myself. I have to take it very slowly. I don't know if it's just exhaustion and my allergies fucking with me or if I'm having a genuine medical emergency, but I do everything I can to soldier on and downplay it as to not ruin the trip we put together for Mom's birthday.
By the time we get to the end of the trail and enter the "raptor sanctuary" or whatever it's called, where they have owls, falcons, hawks, and eagles in a zoo-like setting, I'm feeling a little better, but am still weak and out of sorts. I tell Daisy, when we go to get the car, that I really need to go home and lay down -- I don't know why I feel so bad, but I can't be upright and mobile anymore. We had originally planned to cook dinner for the parents and spend the evening with them too, but I just...couldn't. My sleep schedule is way out of whack and I felt more nauseated by the minute.
Daisy agrees, somewhat reluctantly, to take me home. I apologize profusely but I just feel horrible. I am also beginning to get like, coldsweats, feeling dizzy and clammy. I do not tell Daisy or the parents, but it really does feel like I have a doctor-worthy medical condition happening. Instead, I tell Daisy that I probably just need something to eat and to lay down/take a nap, as I'm pretty out of it, and she drops me off at home.
I eat something -- I honestly can't remember what -- and I lay down on the couch. The Chiefs/Patriots game is supposed to start at 7, so I figure if nothing else, I can nap and then wake up with that on at a low volume in the background. I do feel a lot better once I eat something. Very quickly afterwards, I pass out. When I awaken, and awaken fully, the game is at halftime and Daisy is sitting on the couch with me. I feel...weird, but mostly okay.
I really don't remember much of the rest of the night -- I do eventually come upstairs, though I don't remember why or what I do. I remember Daisy going to bed, I remember backing up my hard drives (including batches 15, 16, and 17) and eventually going back downstairs to get a little food in the night. After that I fall asleep in my chair and move to the bed around 7am.
And so ends my long weekend.
Tuesday, October 6:
Working from home, day 118.
I wake up shortly after 1PM, having basically reset my sleep schedule (hopefully, fingers crossed and the like). I feel...mostly okay. I'm still a little out of it, and don't know why. I'd like to hope it's stress and allergies, but at this point I don't really know. I'm not depressed -- well, not at the moment anyway -- I'm not feeling sleep-deprived, I'm not hungry, and I'm really not feeling "sick," but I do feel off. Weird. Unwell. I described this feeling in previous post(s?) as malaise, and eh, it could be that, I dunno.
I get food, come back upstairs to wash the bedsheets and blankets, switch out the laundry currently in the dryer and put it away, take a quick shower and re-dress myself for the night, and take the garbage can down to the road (it's garbage night), make coffee, and generally prepare myself for a return to work for the next three days. I want to play my game and listen to my podcasts, but I do not have the time; by the time I finish with all of the above, it's after 6, and the wife arrives home shortly thereafter -- after stopping by Lowe's to get a lopper and saw to cut up the branches she trimmed off the tree a few weeks ago -- we've gotta get those taken care of, chopped up, and put out at the curb as yard waste as soon as we have the time and energy. I asked her to look at hatchets too, but as they were more expensive at Lowe's than they are on Amazon, I'll probably just get one on Amazon.
Plus, I've always wanted a hatchet.
Apparently, by all accounts, work has been a shitshow without me there the past two nights. I've fielded all sorts of questions about dumb shit via text, things that I should not be dealing with when I'm out of the office on PTO. Then again, as it seems I'm one of about four people in the entire organization who actually cares about the job being done right, I probably should have expected that shit would mostly collapse without me there for a few nights. I can't wait to see what happens when I'm out most of the week of Thanksgiving next month -- because, yeah, I already put that PTO in as well, about a week ago. I'm using my time; I've earned it and I'm not going to feel guilty about taking it. I've worked in that place for going on seven years now, so they can't exactly ever claim that I'm not necessary. The best part about being a long-time employee and the best job security in the world is seeing everything go to hell when you're out of the office. It proves your worth. If those in power in leadership in whatever place you work, not just my workplace, can't see that...then they're fools.
Almost as soon as the wife arrives home, even though it's almost dark, she begins chopping up the branches. I ask her how she can see, and she stubbornly replies "I can see just fine." I somehow doubt that as Daisy has much worse eyesight than I do (even though she says she doesn't), and mine is getting progressively worse over the years. I do not join her outside in cutting up the branches as I not only have already showered for the night, but I also have a nine-hour shift ahead of me in the overnight hours. Also, yeah, I can't see in the dark any more than she can.
Wednesday, October 7:
Working from home, day 119.
Payday for the wife.
I barely touch my computer and don't write here. The VP debate happens, and the wife and I watch the entire thing.
Thursday, October 8:
Working from home, day 120.
The overnight at work last night was...interesting.
I start my shift at 10pm now, as most of you know. At 10:05, all of Omaha dropped off the VPN. We were all able to reconnect quickly, but when we did, nothing worked correctly, and for most people, nothing worked at all. What followed was a two hour major incident bridge call, where I found out that we were but one of six sites that were hard down following a planned maintenance on a major internet-carrying circuit...somewhere. I never found out where, actually. Once that circuit was turned back on, everything came back up and we had full functionality again.
The rest of the night was playing catchup on the issues we couldn't work while we were down. I ended up working a half hour late just to make sure everything was in a good place, and went to bed normally.
Tonight, almost the exact same thing happened again. Except this time, I was the only person online for either site that had full functionality of everything. My escalation manager colleague got the mass outage ticket open and joined the incident bridge, and I called my executive director to tell him what was going on.
His decree? "Take care of everything going on until everything comes back up, and call me in 20-30 mins if it's not fixed."
"Aye, cap'n," I responded, and then....that's what I did.
As the only one with full functionality on a team of approximately...ehhhh...maybe 15 people in the office, all of them with their own issues/tickets to work, straddling two different shifts, watching two inboxes and three different ticketing systems as well as two different ticketing assignment systems...this is not an easy task. To say that it is stressful is an understatement. But, as I've got almost seven years of experience with work stress in this place and know how every single system works, I'm like Neo in the Matrix, man.
The outage is restored in half an hour or so, and business returns to usual. I text our executive director to let him know, so that I don't have to call and wake him again.
The rest of the night is fine, but tiring; on my lunch hour, when I feel secure enough in the workload to take one, I legit lay down on the couch and pass out for an hour and use my phone's alarm to wake me. This is after I had a can of Rockstar with 240mg caffeine in it. I think I'm just getting really burnt-out and am suffering from some major exhaustion, exhaustion I cannot shake no matter what, and I look forward to the weekend for a chance at some actual rest and relaxation.
Friday, October 9:
Day off. Payday for me.
I sleep, mostly. I've been sleeping really hard, as I've mentioned before in these posts. It's near-impossible to wake me during the day; I can't remember the last time that something woke me up during the daytime. I know at least some of it is attributable to allergies, but not all of it, of course.
I tell the wife that I have a massive Amazon order I need to make for around-the-house stuff, as we've not done any shopping for that stuff recently and I haven't ordered any necessities from Amazon for at least 2-3 weeks now. I get her go-ahead to just do it so that we can be well-stocked in stuff for what we are sure will be a second wave of Covid-19 this fall, so I do -- between two different orders on Amazon, here's what I got:
6 packs of flushable butt wipes (yeah, I'm fancy, eat me)
4 packs of 4 cans tuna for the cats (16 cans total)
4 packs of 4 cans tuna for the cats (16 cans total)
24-pack of Rockstar Sugar Free
50 matchbooks
12-pound bag of 9 Lives cat food
7-pound bag of Purina ONE cat food
150-count bottle of my daily men's multivitamins
32-count box of Starbucks Veranda Blend K-cups (my new personal favorite)
3 18.25oz cans of lightly salted cashews
30-pack of cold brew coffee filter bags
2 cases Friskies Pate Wet Cat Food, Chicken & Tuna Dinner (48 cans total)
4oz bottle of orange essential oil for the diffuser
2 40oz bottles of lavender laundry detergent
The cats will now have food to last them the entire winter. I will now have coffee for a few months (with what I've already got added to the above). I will have vitamins to last me throughout the entire winter and into the spring. I will not need energy drinks for many months -- I don't drink one every day, it's more like one every 3-5 days, and only when I need one. Adding to the three cases of toilet paper we already have, I now also have enough wet wipes to probably last through next summer (which is good, because they keep selling out on Amazon and I'd rather avoid going to Walmart if I can avoid it). And, thankfully/finally, the wife will now have enough laundry detergent to easily last through the new year.
In addition to the above, my braided leather belt I love dropped in price by like $25, so I bought another one of those to keep at the ready for when my current one wears out, and I bought the moose shirt I've been wanting for months as well:
I'm not even a little sorry.
Saturday, October 10:
Day off.
Last night, Daisy told me that two people in her office have been exposed to Covid-19, and that she wants to get tested as she has, well, possibly been exposed as well.
My thoughts on it are ehhhhh, I don't think that's necessary at this juncture, but if you want to do it, okay.
"Do you want to get tested too?" she asked me.
"Psh, no," I replied. "I never leave the house. Also, if you do have it, guaranteed I'll get it, so..."
It's time to die together, wife!
Anyway.
Some of you won't find that anywhere near as funny as I do, and if you don't, sorry not sorry.
Nebraska has a program called "TestNebraska"; I'm sure your state has something similar as well. It's a program where you go to their website, answer a few questions, and then they direct you to someplace where you can get drive-thru Covid-19 testing (by appointment only, apparently). It's free, they don't require insurance info to be given, etc. So, Daisy jumped through the hoops and made an appointment for 2:30 PM. We got in the car and away we went.
Daisy said that nasal swab test was one of the most horrible, uncomfortable things she'd ever been through.
"Yeah," I said, "apparently they do it far further back into the nasal cavity compared to a normal flu test."
She agreed.
The test results are available in 48-72 hours, roughly. As Monday is a bank/state holiday (Columbus Day) I'm not sure how much we can rely on those results arriving before Tuesday or Wednesday, but we'll see.
Fully masked and disinfected, we then proceeded to get our groceries for the next two weeks and I got my flu shot. I don't know what needles they're using these days for flu shots, but I remember them being painful/awful in the past, and for the past few years I've barely felt the needle at all. Interestingly enough, though, since my tattoo I am no longer really affected by needles. I don't mind getting shots anymore. I only mind getting blood drawn about half as much as I used to.
However, about half the time -- and I dunno why -- I seem to have a mild allergic reaction to the flu shot, insomuch as that the injection site swells up into a knot and is sore/warm to the touch for a day or two afterwards. This year that is very mild, probably more mild than any other year. Some years it's swollen up large, like 50-cent-piece-sized, and left a big, sore knot on my arm for several days. I'm lucky that's not the case this time around.
Returning home, we ate dinner and watched some TV, before Daisy began feeling like her blood sugars were off. I needed to take a nap anyway, so we both went to bed before 8pm. I set my alarm to wake me at 12, got back up, and spent the majority of the night awake and decompressing/mentally preparing for my first five day week in a while. I eventually passed out in my chair again sometime later in the night.
Sunday, October 11:
Working from home, day 121.
My arm is still sore, but I'll manage. I get up around noon and eat. Noon is a bit early for me to be awake on a Sunday, but it's fine, it's manageable -- Sunday nights are rapidly becoming my favorite night of the week to work because they're generally really quiet, and even more so on "holiday" weekends (read: days where banks/state/government offices are closed the next day). Unless something metaphorically explodes, Sunday nights are the nights where I can have a zen-like work experience, punctuated by catching up on my podcasts and taking care of administrative tasks like team emails, one-on-ones, policy updates, and workload audits. Sundays I actually feel like I can do my job without stupid bullshit getting in the way.
Adding to my zen-like calm expected tonight is two other things:
1) the wife does not have to work tomorrow (the aforementioned Columbus Day), so she can stay up a little later and help keep me company, annnnnnnnd
2) heavy/possibly severe storms are predicted tonight -- probably for the last time this year.
Few things produce more calm in me than a good thunderstorm, unless, say, said storm is doing property damage or the like. Unfortunately, fast moving storm fronts also generally trigger allergy attacks in me, and today is no exception. Allergies + rainy weather = sleepy Brandon as well, so let's hope the caffeine in my system works well for me.
Having the wife home for an extra day this week is indeed a treat and something I don't normally get to experience. I feel so much calmer with her in the house while I work and sleep; I'm not sure how to describe it. My wife is my safe space, she is able to instantly put me at ease, and just knowing she's there instantly makes me calmer. The thought of being able to go to bed in the morning to curl up with her long before she'll get up for the day (psh, like Daisy's gonna get up before noon if she doesn't have to) puts me at great ease. I've been so tired recently and have been longing for a day where when I get off work for the morning, Daisy is still in bed and I can go to sleep with her.
Monday, October 12:
Working from home, day 122.
Canadian Thanksgiving/Indigenous Peoples' Day.
I get up late in the afternoon and go directly downstairs to spend time with the wife, who has the day off. I do not write here.
Tuesday, October 13:
Working from home, day 123.
Prime Day, day one.
I have had some major issues writing here as of late. It's not that I don't want to, it's that I either don't have the time, don't have anything to say, or am too burnt out to try to gather my thoughts together. Or, on the days when I do have the time and want to sit down to update everyone on what's been happening, I am almost immediately interrupted or sidetracked by something else pressing I have to do immediately, at that exact moment -- go go go, do do do. I'm so frazzled from stress and lack of real quality sleep or downtime that in the rare opportunities I have to not be doing something at a particular moment, I slink back into my proverbial hole and just want to be left alone, like a bear trying to hibernate in a cave.
It's also not helping that three of the past four nights I've worked, my team has been forced to deal with major outages. No, not the widespread kind for the clients we support, but outages for us -- as in, all of our VPNs will drop or all of our systems will stop working. This results in what is usually a 1-2 hour bridge call, while the IT teams fumblefuck around trying to figure out what the issue is, during which the issue either resolves on its own or we're told "it should be fixed now, try it now" with little more explanation than that. And it almost always happens right as I'm getting into the office for the night.
It couldn't happen a few hours beforehand, and it couldn't happen around, say, 8am after I've finished for the night, no -- it has to happen right as I get in.
Needless to say, this has been a large cause of stress for the past several nights. It's almost as if I can feel my hair going grayer. It also prompted me to call out my boss for talking down to me and acting as if I'm stupid, especially when he very much knows that I'm not. He didn't exactly apologize, and only about halfway acknowledged that he's been a prick, and told me to point it out in the moment when/if he does it again, so he can work on his stress reactions. In a roundabout way, of course.
Today and tomorrow are "Prime Day" on Amazon. It's supposed to function as a miniature version of Black Friday for Prime members, I guess. I've been a Prime member for ten years, and most Prime Days are really disappointing. This year's is no exception. I got some K-Cups and some Perrier that were both Prime Day deals, in addition to a few other little things and a possible small Christmas gift for the wife, some vitamins we needed and some more toilet paper (because, believe me, the second wave of this Covid bullshit is coming, and I'm preparing now) and a knife sharpener that I've needed forever. It's unlikely I'll pick anything else up.
Tonight is trash/recycling night, and as such the wife came home and immediately went into the backyard to cut up some of the branches she trimmed off the trees and hacked down a few weeks ago, in order to put them in yard bags to sit by the curb. City of Omaha statutes are that we can put out two bags of yard waste per week, no more. I already took the rest of the trash and recycling down to the curb earlier, and in it were what was left from batches 15, 16, and 17.
Today I also put my ballot in the mail, proudly, to be counted. Daisy still has to complete and mail hers. I do this knowing with no small irony that tonight was supposed to be the night of the second debate, until Trump got the 'rona and decided to take his ball and go home instead of doing a virtual debate. I do have some hope, just for entertainment value, that they go forth with the third debate next week, because I can't imagine the shitshow it's going to be.
Wednesday, October 14:
Working from home, day 124.
Prime Day, day two.
When I awaken in the afternoon, it is bright, beautiful, sunny and warm -- the neighborhood kids are playing on the street, birds are chirping, there's a good breeze. It looks more like a May or June day than it does a mid-October one.
By the time I get done showering and getting dressed less than an hour later, it is dark and gray, ready to open up the skies to pour rain, and there is nary a neighborhood kid to be seen outside. It was as if I stepped into the shower one day and stepped out of it on a completely different day.
I have purchased nothing on day two of Prime Day, though I have been tempted a few times. The best deals I've seen, by far, have been K-cups from all sorts of different companies -- and some of them are really, really cheap. But, I legitimately have four boxes of K-cups I've gotten recently, and have several more coming in the mail. I don't need any more coffee. I won't for a long, long time (possibly, like, next summer -- and that's no joke). I need to drink what I have first.
The only item I was truly tempted on was a Sodastream machine for $47. However, it was sold out by the time I got up this afternoon, and I would not have gotten it anyway -- the wife and her parents both know I/we want a Sodastream for the house, and it's easily in the top five "probable" Christmas gift possibilities we'll get from the parents (or I'll get from the wife) this year. I'm not going to ruin that. Other things on that top five list are as follows:
1. A large, non-plastic, open-bowl/open-mechanism air fryer
2. An electric self-stirring popcorn popper machine
3. A Cuisinart Griddler with extra waffle plates
4. A Shark rechargeable stick vacuum (the parents have one, and it's awesome)
I also must correct myself from yesterday's entry -- the second debate wasn't scheduled for last night, it was originally scheduled for tomorrow night, and this morning came the announcement that there will be TWO different town-hall Q&As televised tomorrow night to make up for it -- one with Biden on ABC and the other with Trump on NBC. Unfortunately, they are both happening at the same time. Why they couldn't do them one after the other is beyond me; don't people want to watch both of them?
While I am happy with this because it shows that the spirit of American discourse is alive and well, it does frustrate me that they're not going head-to-head again. The more they go head-to-head, the more it makes Trump look like a horrific, drug-addled maniac and the more it makes Biden look 100% presidential.
I will say that I was not initially a Biden supporter. Most of you know that I have always been a very staunch Bernie Sanders supporter, and have followed Sanders throughout most of my adult life, backing him at every opportunity. The man is not perfect, but he was the best shot we had at someone truly progressive throughout the past two different election cycles -- and I do mean truly progressive. I have his face on t-shirts and hoodies. The man wants to wipe out all student debt and provide everyone universal healthcare, and tax the shit out of the mega-rich to create social programs to make sure people aren't hungry, homeless, or jobless. Despite how centrists and conservatives paint him as the "radical left," he's not; this is just simply left. Now, radical left would be instigating coups and burning down rich people's homes and lynching them in the streets, etc. Sanders is left, and progressive left at that -- there is a difference.
When Biden became the clear frontrunner anyone who was going to vote blue anyway knew it was going to happen. The DNC made a clear judgment call and backed the candidate who had the highest probability of beating Donald Trump in a general election. I understand that and accept it; I don't necessarily have to like it, but it is what it is. Under Obama, Biden always seemed to be levelheaded and intelligent. Presidential. Fit for the role he was in and able to fulfill it adequately, if not admirably.
But, he is old. And he has some issues. It was never going to stop me from voting for him, but my enthusiasm levels were always going to be based on who he picked as his VP candidate. My dream ticket candidate was AOC, of course -- that was never going to happen no matter how much I wanted it to. When he picked Kamala Harris, I was actually quite relieved on a number of levels. Those feelings did not waver after last week's VP debate, either. It also sets the stage for her to run for President in 2024 as well, because I would imagine that Biden will either die in office near the end of his term (don't look at me like that, you know it's possible) or he will declare himself too old to seek a second term and the DNC will select Kamala Harris as a shoo-in candidate. So, you have to look at it from that perspective -- no matter who Biden picked as VP, they will be president in 2024. So, yes, without a doubt, we will see a President Kamala Harris. And goddamn do I hope she picks AOC as her running mate.
I also make this bold prediction because I have spent the last four years watching the Republican party systematically dismantle itself, abandoning its core values and platforms to become nothing more than a group of bullies backing Donald Trump, no matter how ridiculous his policies are. Once he's defeated (and, hopefully, arrested, charged, and imprisoned), the party has nothing to hold onto, and no one left who could be a true contender for future elections at this juncture -- not to mention that most of its supporters are Boomers and a good chunk of them will continue to die as expected of old age over the next several years.
Anyway.
The night at work last night was relatively quiet, and thankfully without incident or major debilitating outage. I'm hoping that the next two nights are the same so I can coast gracefully into the weekend and be another week closer to Thanksgiving.
Interestingly enough, even though other mail has arrived normally, I don't think I've received any new comics in the mail for the past week or so. This is odd, as I'll normally get a book or two every two or three days most weeks (all of my comics are on different publishing schedules, so when they're shipping normally, they arrive pretty consistently with a few new ones every week). There don't appear to be any real delays at the moment, so meh.
Thursday, October 15:
Working from home, day 125.
Friday, October 16:
Saturday, October 17:
I take the weekend off, essentially.
I do very little aside from a trip to Whole Foods and Asian Market with the wife on Saturday afternoon. Functionally I am very tired and low-energy; the weather this weekend has changed drastically and has gotten far colder, and there's a chance for up to an inch of snow tonight. Snow! In October! What horseshittery.
This is generally the time of year that I'm getting into Halloween things, and getting into preparations for Gravy Season. This year, because of the pandemic, because of everything terrible going on, I'm just...not really into it. I'm more prepping for doom, prepping for the aftermath of the election in two weeks, prepping for the crest of the second wave of Coronavirus, because Omaha is now well into the second wave and cases are spiking like crazy. It also doesn't help that people are stupid -- I saw more people out at Whole Foods today than I've ever seen in that store at the same time. We literally had to dodge throngs of folks while we just got the 5-10 things we needed and got the hell out. A good chunk of them weren't even covering their noses with their masks. WTF. I mean seriously.
I'm just going to start ordering absolutely everything I can online in an attempt to keep the wife and myself from going out in public any more than we have to until there's a vaccine, and have several different styles of masks in my shopping list on Amazon too. Perhaps I should step it up to a full gas mask. And to think, I thought all I'd need on Amazon for the next few weeks would be some dryer sheets and some new underwear.
I've gotten back into Twitter a lot more recently, after not really using it at all for multiple years, and now find myself needing to pull away from it, the whole "doomscrolling" thing taking over my mind for hours at a time if I let it.
"I really hope," I told Daisy in the car this afternoon, "that it really is as big of a landslide win for Biden as people are projecting, solely because he really won't be able to contest it in any sort of legitimate fashion if it is."
"He'll still contest it," she grimly replied. "You know he will."
And that's the saddest part of it all. I do know he will. Regardless of of much or how little he loses by, if it happens. We all know it's coming.
I have fantasies about the military and police and possible torch-carrying mobs bursting into the White House to drag him out on January 20, if he tries to stay in power. I have visions of him foaming at the mouth, his fake hair and red tie flailing in the winter wind, as he's thrown unceremoniously into the back of a waiting van.
My weekend ended as it usually does -- with an evening nap to help reset my sleep schedule for the week. I started it at 7pm and set my alarm for 11 -- a good four hours -- but ended up waking shortly beforehand and reset it for 12 to get a little more rest. No rest is ever enough, it seems. When I got up I spent over an hour reading five or six new comics from my stack (I actually did get one or two more books this week), and savored every one of them. If we get full-on second and third waves, or if the country gets plunged into anarchy or civil war or who knows what after the election, pretty sure all of my subscriptions will go on hold again.
Saturday overnights give me some much needed decompression time -- it's the one night of the week I'm home and off and don't have to pay attention to work stuff, the one night of the week where I know that Daisy will sleep peacefully to reset her own sleeping schedule, and the one night where I get peace and silence in the overnight hours. I generally spend it reading, listening to podcasts I need to catch up on, and/or playing on my phone in my chair. It's sort of a reset for my body and my spirit.
Sunday, October 18:
Working from home, day 126.
Today is "payroll Sunday," which comes every other week. I have to finalize my team's work hours and submit them to payroll for processing. Mind you, nobody ever has to do this for me, since I'm salaried and always make the same amount. The most my boss ever has to do for me is approve PTO and know when I'm not going to be there. I don't have any PTO on the schedule right now outside of Thanksgiving week, where I took the Tuesday, Wednesday, and following Sunday off (Thanksgiving Day is a paid holiday, and as such I do not have to submit PTO for it).
Thanksgiving is coming up quickly, too. No matter what President is going to be inaugurated on January 20, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years are still things. And they are still things I do not work during.
I neglected to mention that one of my best agents got a new job last week; he's moving to tech support for another company. I asked him to send me the application as well so I could look into it and apply (said company he's moving to is Union), which I did. I received a phone call two days later telling me that the starting pay is $4 less per hour than what I make now, but over the course of two years, I would get guaranteed raises that would lift my salary up to a full dollar less than what I make now. I declined.
I later found that it was not fully work-from-home indefinitely, as I was led to believe, and that eventually all of their staff is indeed expected to move back to site (downtown Omaha, with no free parking) to work in-person again. That made my decision to decline that much stronger.
I'm not sure I can ever work another job that's not a work at home position ever again. I have gotten too used to being able to wear whatever I want, to listen to my podcasts all night at my desk, to vape indiscriminately whenever I need to, and having access to my own bathroom, my own kitchen, and my cats (who sleep with me either on my feet or on the couch next to me every single night when I work). I never want to see people in person again. I don't crave the social interaction, and I hate being watched, questioned, and office-politic'ed into misery. As soon as the holidays are over, and possibly even sooner if we get a vaccine before then (we won't, but a man can dream), 2021 becomes the year Brandon gets a new goddamn job that he does from home and enjoys/gets paid more to do.
For all the criticisms I have of my current job, the toxic work environment that it is, and the stress that it induces in me -- it is not, overall, horrific. Make no mistake, there are horrific parts of it, but at the end of the day I sit in front of a computer in my living room for eight hours a night with my cats, podcasts, and vapes, and get paid a decent salary for doing so. Not a great salary, but a decent one. I have had multiple jobs that were far worse over the years. I consider myself lucky in many senses. But I need something I can work on my own schedule from home -- something like a writing/editing job, something that I don't have a lot of oversight or am forced to talk/work with the public or a customer/client to do. Something with almost zero accountability except for the work I produce. Something where, if I want to take 2-3 days off and not touch my workload, I can come back to it and work for an 18-hour day or what have you, finish it, and then go back to another 2-3 days off if I need or want to. That, friends, is what I'm looking for. It's why I always wanted to be a writer, why I always enjoyed teaching -- there's so much downtime for decompression. I don't mind responsibility. I don't mind having a task list of things I need to take care of one-by-one. What I mind is feeling like a slave to a schedule, being forced to work with other people, and having constant oversight and constant expectations of do this now now now, go go go.
I actually have a really good conversation with my director in the overnight hours, via phone. Daisy is in the room for it (though, of course, he didn't know that). We discussed where the program is possibly going and/or the possibility that we'll either be completely overwhelmed by the beginning of the new year or that the program itself may be non-existent, and any variables in-between. Basically, it was a "pep talk" to tell me to be on guard and to make sure my team does the best work possible at all times. This is and always has been my goal, by the way -- but now it's even more dire as if we can show that we actually know what we're doing, competing teams/competitors for our contract will (in theory) look so much worse. I tell him that it's really four of us -- me, him, my second shift counterpart, and our escalation manager -- who are fighting off the proverbial horde, and basically that talk is cheap; it's a lot harder in practice to reign in all of the idiots and make sure the ones on our side are doing their jobs correctly, and to make sure the ones on the client's side are placated. It is not an insurmountable task, but it can be and frequently is a very difficult, very exhausting one.
Monday, October 19:
Working from home, day 127.
I awaken in the afternoon to find that a friend and colleague who worked with us five years ago (and who really wants to come back) had her scheduled interview canceled today by our site director. I told her that if she is really interested in coming back to us, reach back out to him and tell him I'm losing a member of my team on on the 21st -- site director knows this -- and tell him that she'd be willing to be his much-needed replacement... as well as relay that she has my blessing as well as the blessing of my director (which she does).
We'll see what happens.
It is cold and snowy/rainy again today; I guess Nebraska got the memo to almost completely skip fall, as we had about three weeks of fall before the snow started. As such, my allergies are awful and I'm really tired. I showered in the middle of the night last night (the lunch hour power shower) to be able to sleep longer today, and I'm glad I did. I feel so tired that it's hard to get up and moving around.
With a simple tracking request this afternoon, I confirm that my ballot has been received and counted, which puts me at ease. I also learn there's another dude in my county (Omaha is a big place) with the same name as me, with a different middle name -- so whew, at least it's not exactly the same. Daisy just finished her ballot last night and will drop it off this week (or I'll mail it, if she tells me where the damn thing is).
My work email has less than 40 items in it on a Monday for (probably) the first time in history. I ponder, while doing laundry, if that means it'll be a quiet night or if everything will goddamned explode after 10pm. The place ebbs and flows; Mondays, generally, really suck -- I don't have escalation support and the second-shift teams are, well...let's be frank here, next to useless. However, in the event that it's super-quiet, I make sure my phone is charged and that my mp3 player is also reloaded and recharged -- I've been able to catch up on a lot of older episodes of No Agenda and The Adam Carolla Show recently, and that's a trend I'd like to continue.
For dinner, the wife makes us (vegan) buffalo chicken sandwiches on fresh-baked rolls, and salad. I have been eating relatively little recently, to be honest -- I've not been incredibly hungry, even in the mornings when I get off work, and have been more tired than anything else, falling asleep before 9am on most days. They say stress makes you lose your appetite, but my stress levels haven't really changed that much over the course of the past few weeks. It's always there in the background as a running constant, a nagging pull.
Tuesday, October 20:
Working from home, day 128.
I tally up my PTO for the holidays and create a rough schedule, for the bosses and my colleagues, of when I will not be in the office between basically now and January 1:
Tues 11/24
Wed 11/25
Thurs 11/26 (Thanksgiving)
Sun 11/29
Sun 12/20
Wed 12/23
Thurs 12/24
Christmas (no PTO needed, also I don't work Fridays anyway)
Sun 12/27
Mon 12/28
Thurs 12/31
It is a beautiful schedule of many days off. Not all of them connected, but many of them.
As you know, I've been deep planning for this ever since we went to work-from-home -- saving every possible hour of PTO, calculating what I'd need to have available to submit and by when. Our PTO system at work allows you to request time two full months in advance plus a full pay period, so effectively 2.5 months. I immediately put in the time and let everyone know.
There are still days I work during these time frames, as you can see there are gaps. I'll still work Sunday and Monday, 11/22 and 11/23, for example. I'll still work Monday and Tuesday, 12/21 and 12/22, and Tuesday and Wednesday 12/29 and 12/30. At least right now, anyway. I have another three pay periods to accrue time between now and my birthday -- if anything, I may just black out that entire week of Christmas, from my birthday forward, if I have the time to do so. Or the week following it; I'm undecided at this juncture.
For now, I have 13 hours left (which I told my Director I'm saving in the event I get the 'Rona); more feasibly, I'm saving it in the event something happens and I need to take a night off for emergency circumstances or the like. Like most people, I only work 8 hour shifts, but in the event I get #thepoops or something else in the middle of the night and have to leave early, or if I have to rush the wife to the hospital, etc, having a little more than a day and a half as a cushion of wiggle room is a bonus.
This also may be the first year...well, ever, that I will not work New Year's Day. It's on a Friday this year, and I don't work Fridays. If I'm asked to cover it, I can...but I am not going to just up and volunteer to do it for no reason. Truthfully, I don't really want to, and I'd rather people like my Team Leads (who are still hourly and get time-and-a-half holiday pay) be able to work it and get the cash. I get paid the same whether I'm there or not -- PTO are just numbers on a webpage for salaried people; it doesn't directly affect my paycheck like it does for the hourly.
Wednesday, October 21:
Working from home, day 129.
As we round the corner into the end of my week (blessedly so) I was hoping that we'd have a nice, slow evening at work.
Ten minutes into my shift I am contacted by a sales guy (how he got my information I'll never know, as he was currently already working with two other managers on shift) and I get engaged on an issue that takes until 6:45 AM to come to a stopping point on. I did not get a lunch hour, and barely left my desk for anything other than a cup of coffee or to pee.
Adding to this, we had a network change in the overnight hours that dropped us all from the VPN, and after it was done and all of the techs were hands-off, my own connection -- which has been very stable in an uncharacteristic fashion for weeks on end now, barring the few large outages we've had -- dropped me three more times over the course of five hours or so.
It's all just so very tiresome, man. Yes, I understand all jobs are tiresome in one fashion or another, but I'm getting so very burnt out. Knowing that I'm a full month away from getting a break (the aforementioned Thanksgiving PTO) isn't helping much either -- it just makes time drag on that much more, and makes me bitter and jaded. I have to put on a bright, smiling face and be "customer service Brandon" basically the entire time I'm working, and tout the power of positive thinking to my agents while I myself secretly ponder how long the wife and I could survive on the money we have were I to just say "yeah, I'm done" and quit.
I won't quit, of course, but the thought of doing so is my number one fantasy most nights. I have seriously considered just disconnecting the VPN and saying "oops, my connection dropped, I'm trying to get back on, will be on when I can" and just taking a nap on the couch or watching some Netflix for three hours or so. I haven't done this, but some of these nights have seriously had me considering it.
Thursday, October 22:
Working from home, day 130.
Payday for the wife.
Night of the final Presidential Debate.
I awaken and check my work email to see that the issue I worked on all night last night is still goddamn going on and now has two directors working it in tandem. 3-2-1-not it, not fucking it.
The wife finally gets paid today, and I get paid tomorrow. She stops by Natural Grocers to get some lunch and picks me up some carob-based energy bites (one of my favorite snacks for when I'm working all night). In turn, I order two packs of underwear off Amazon, underwear that I desperately need as most of my older collection has decided to disintegrate all at the same time.
I'm not one of those guys who wears underwear until it's three threads and an elastic band -- I 100% buy new ones and rotate out batches of the old ones (usually to the trash can) about every 2-3 years or so. When the wife and I were in Colorado last fall, I came across some underwear in a local Walmart out there that I have never been able to find anywhere else since -- super-comfortable, long-leg boxer briefs -- and I absolutely should have purchased more of them when I had the chance. For the past ten years or so, in case you were wondering, I have been a boxer briefs guy; I used to wear normal boxers (they got uncomfortable after some time and tended to bunch up or wear out quickly) and I haven't worn "tighty-whities" since I was in elementary school. Boxer briefs have always been my go-to since I was able to find a few styles that I really liked.
In the time since, I've become a sort of connoisseur; I know what works and what doesn't, which brands fall apart or get uncomfortable and which ones don't, and plan/purchase accordingly. When they wear out or the elastic fails catastrophically (yes, this does happen on occasion), I toss them and get new ones. This is probably far more than you ever needed to know about my underwear habits, but hey -- nobody's forcing you to read this blog.
I also ordered more face wash and tissues off Amazon too, but that's nowhere near as interesting to talk about.
Tonight is the night of the final debate. I've made it no secret that I look forward to the debates -- I greatly look forward to them, in fact. I find them immensely exciting and entertaining. Perhaps this is because I already know how they turn out, or at least know how they're going to go -- one man looking 100% presidential and reserved, rational, and logical, and the other one being our current president -- a jibbering, lying, foaming-at-the-mouth mess poured into a suit and spray-tanned orange. These debates are a blast, folks. I don't understand why folks are so bored or uninterested by them. Daisy has said in the past that they're "triggering" and "traumatic" at times for her. Well, we live in a triggering, traumatic country right now, and goddammit do we need some fucking hope for the future. As always, I hope that there will be swearing on live television; it is my deepest hope that Biden just snaps and tells Trump to go fuck himself or say that he's a fucking liar in front of the entire world. I hope for drama, I hope for amazing soundbites, I hope for the white old man to put the old orange one in his place. The memes alone are worth watching the debates for.
However.
We must never forget that the future of our country is at stake, this isn't all just a joke, it's not all just for laughs and good times. It is my deepest hope that during these debates, some of Trump's supporters realize what a drugged-up lunatic he really is, and how horrific he has been for this country for the past four years. I cannot fathom how people support him. As opposed as my viewpoints were to George W. Bush, and as much as I disliked him during his presidency, he was at least presidential and I understood why, and how, he was supported as he was. I just didn't agree. Post-presidency, the man was right when he said he'd be looked upon better in history's eyes -- he has. Not by a lot yet, but he has. I've forgiven a lot of Bush's deeds, or at least I understand them much more clearly now. With Trump, I not only disagree with him but vehemently oppose him and the mockery he's made of our country, and I do not understand why people like him or support him.
Friday, October 23:
Day off. Payday for me.
I barely touch my computer and do not write here.
Saturday, October 24:
Day off.
With a week before Halloween you'd think I'd be more into the spirit of the season -- it is, really, and always has been, my favorite holiday. Instead I find myself basically indifferent to most of it. Part of that is that we got about three solid weeks of moderately nice fall temperatures and then were plunged violently into winter -- going from sunny and high 50s/low 60s temperatures to cold, dark, gray and rainy days with highs in the 40s. Last weekend we got snow on Sunday morning. This weekend the local weather folks are predicting the first major snowstorm of the year hitting between tonight and Monday morning, with the possibility of 2-5 inches. Right now, as I type this, it's a balmy 26 degrees outside, which is, ahem, putting a bit of a damper on the yard work the wife wanted to do today.
Update: they have updated the forecast --
Because this really puts me in the Halloween spirit, right?
Aside from a brief high of 41 this afternoon, the actual outside temperature isn't supposed to be above freezing again at any time of day for the next several days. Fuck this, man. It's October; this shit shouldn't be happening until December.
It's all so tiresome.
Upon waking up this morning, the wife sends me a link to a $300 snowblower she wants us to get. This coming from the woman who tells me that she wants to limit our Christmas shopping this year (probably also including my birthday) to $100 for each of us -- $60 of which I already spent on her "big" gift back in...I dunno, probably July-ish, before she issued this edict.
I almost can't fathom a $300 snowblower. She just paid her bills last night and the mortgage and I'm barely going to have enough to cover my own bills between now and when we get paid next. I'm feeling pretty destitute at the moment.
Ironically, I'm normally pretty close to done with Christmas shopping before or around Halloween. Even on a slow year it's rare that I even use Black Friday to my advantage because I'm usually well done already by then.
This year? I've barely even thought about it. I've been so burnt out on my days off that said burnout has consumed me, and the mere thought of Christmas makes me weary. Not to mention that it won't be a normal Christmas anyway, not when we're still breaking Covid infection records daily not just in Omaha, but nationwide. It is, as many have said, going to be a long, dark, scary winter for this country.
Sunday, October 25:
Working from home, day 131.
Feeling defeated in general, I told the wife last night that, because she always asks me, if she wants ideas for Christmas or for my birthday, just get me a Sodastream kit so I can make my own seltzer. And/or find me a working and in good condition PlayStation 2. TWO. Not newer, not older, so that I can order used copies of the original Star Wars Battlefront games and play them again.
Soon afterwards, while we're looking for PS2s (together) and I'm griping about how expensive they are, even used, as the system is literally twenty years old, I stumble across a listing on Ebay for a professionally refurbished system for $45. Normally they're selling for over $100.
"Just get it," she said.
So, with her greenlight, I did.
The system is just that -- just the box. No cords, no cables, no controllers, memory cards, or games. But for $45 for a refurb system that's been cleaned, tested, and works well (or so says the seller), that's an outlandish deal. I paid more for my NES when I bought it used/refurb back in the 90s.
I immediately went on Amazon and purchased two aftermarket controllers, two aftermarket memory cards, the A/V cables and power cables, and the original Star Wars Battlefront games themselves.
"Why did you get two controllers and two memory cards?" Daisy asked.
"The controllers are different manufacturers," I said. "I'll use whichever one I like more and keep the second as a backup. The memory cards are the same; you do not want a memory card to fail. If one does, or starts to, I have the second one."
She rolled her eyes.
I double-up on everything.
Also, I may eventually purchase a game she wants to play too, and a second controller is useful for that.
The two Star Wars Battlefront games cost more together than the actual system did; they were $22-25 each. But they're the reason I wanted the system in the first place. I had them both for my original Xboxes, both of which died on me in spectacular fashions between 2009-2014 (yes, I had two different original Xboxes die on me -- one was a motherboard issue, the second was more than likely the power supply). Since then I've sold all of the old Xbox stuff, including those games and the systems (for parts) when we bought the house.
The grand total for everything altogether, including the $16 shipping for the PS2 itself (it's Ebay, there's no way around that) was something like $175. More than I wanted to spend to be sure, but this is something I've also wanted for years on end, something I consider important. Everything will arrive piece-by-piece (literally) between tomorrow and Saturday. It's going to be a long, dark winter and I have a lot of PTO coming up in the next two months -- this will give me something to de-stress and decompress with. And, for the first time ever, I'll get to play these games on a 55-inch flatscreen instead of a 20-inch CRT TV. I'm looking forward to it.
Anyway.
In the evening hours, before it even gets dark, the snow starts. By the time it's dark, there's a thin dusting on everything. By the time I start work, and even by the time Daisy goes to bed, it's stopped, and there's barely anything on the ground.
"How anticlimactic," she mused.
"Not even enough to shovel," I said. "Which is good, because it's cold."
The temperature was in the low 20s. Daisy had already stripped everything out of the garden (leaving the two large raised beds empty aside from the dirt) and had moved the remaining dirt from our driveway -- where it had been under a tarp since May -- to those beds earlier in the weekend. I should've mowed the grass one more time before the snow hit, but never got around to it. Oh well, right?
By around 2am the snow started again, and was coming down hard. There was at least an inch on the driveway at that point and it was piling up. I told the boys at work that as it was a Sunday night (and a particularly slow one at that) I'd wait to take my lunch hour until around 5, when it was expected to stop, so that I could go out and shovel off the driveway and walks for the wife for the morning.
As expected, it stopped snowing around 4:30ish. After a trip to the bathroom and a trip upstairs to get warm clothing (again, temperature was in the low 20s), I crept outside and spent my entire lunch hour shoveling everything. It was that heavy, wet snow that is easy to push with the shovel when there's not a ton of it, but breaks your back when there's more than a few inches.
Ironically my back was sore for hours after doing it, but would I rather do it and clear a path for the wife so that she can get in and out easily than not.
Daisy was super-surprised and very grateful when she awoke and saw that I'd done it -- truthfully, shoveling is so loud (shovel against pavement) that I don't know how she didn't hear me doing it and wake up. I also don't know how she slept through the garage door opening and closing twice, either.
The night ended quietly, as Sundays do a lot these days, and I was in bed shortly after the wife left for work.
Monday, October 26:
Working from home, day 132.
Most of the PS2 components arrived in the mail today -- all that's left is Star Wars Battlefront II and the actual PS2 itself. I got a message from the seller this afternoon telling me that it had been shipped, and should arrive on Thursday. I thanked him, and immediately set up active tracking of the package so I can plot its trajectory and arrival -- I'm leaving nothing up to chance, and would rather the PS2 not sit outside in the rain or snow when it arrives if that could be avoided.
I will note that the model I got wasn't the original large, fat model, but the second-release slim PS2. I did this on purpose; for one, I don't have room on the TV stand for the full-size fat model. For two, the slim PS2 (also referred to as the "slimline PS2") addressed and corrected some hardware faults with the original unit as well as made it quieter and less prone to overheating. The slim PS2s are also, apparently, much harder to kill and are pretty ubiquitous everywhere -- so if mine dies eventually I should be able to go snag another one fairly easily, swap out the memory cards, and be good to go. Doesn't mean they're cheap, but eh. You win some, you lose some, I guess.
By the time I awaken in the afternoon, about half of the snow has melted off. This is odd because the temperature didn't break the freezing point today, and the low tonight is projected to be in the teens before everything slowly warms back up into the 50s and 60s for pretty much the remainder of the week. So...normal fall weather again.
The night at work is very hectic and filled with annoyances, and as I'm trying to do my work, all I want to do is be left alone -- which, of course, doesn't happen. As the night continues I become more bitter and tired and it's all I can do to stay awake, take care of things as they come in, and look forward to the arrival of the PS2. It's legit the one thing I'm looking forward to at the moment other than hopefully seeing Trump get kicked out of office. On my lunch hour, which isn't even a full hour because of all the stuff I have to work on, I unload and reload the dishwasher and scrub out the cats' godawful dirty water fountain to refill it for them.
By the time the night ends, I've done what I could on all my team's issues and log off relatively on time.
Tuesday, October 27:
Working from home, day 133.
Star Wars Battlefront II arrives in the mail today. I now have legitimately everything I need except for the PS2 itself. Its shipment is on schedule; I am tracking it across the country from its shipping location in Virginia to here in Omaha. It should arrive as expected on Thursday, hopefully.
I also pulled the trigger last night and ordered the Mega Man X Collection and the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection. Because why not, really?
Tonight is garbage/recycling night, so after a shower in the afternoon, getting all of that hauled to the curb is my primary focus of the early evening hours. Daisy arrives home, grabs her ballot, and officially votes by putting it in the local drop box at one of the locations close to us. This comes after I saw several news stories today that if you haven't mailed your ballot by today, it's probably not going to make it there by Election Day (one week from tonight) given current mail volumes. Mine, of course, went in the mail weeks ago and I tracked it -- it was indeed received and counted, and my civic duty is thus fulfilled.
I'm hoping that the rest of the week is a slow coast into quietness; last night was not fun, primarily because I don't have escalation support on Mondays, and because all issues I had to engage on were all legitimate trainwrecks. I do not hate my job -- I want to make that clear -- but as always I do long for the day where I can get the fuck away from it and do something I want to do with my life.
Wednesday, October 28: Working from home, day 134
Thursday, October 29: Working from home, day 135
Friday, October 30: Working from home, day 136
Saturday, October 31: Working from home, day 137
Yes, you read all of that correctly.
Due to a planned power outage on Friday and Saturday nights (yes, both nights) at my job's sister site in El Paso, my entire weekend team went dark. Our leadership, including myself, had about 90 minutes' notice on Friday night that this was going to happen, so as I was playing the PS2 (more on this later) before bed, I had just turned it off when I saw that I had three missed calls on my phone, all from the past 5-10 minutes: one from my executive director, one from my escalation manager colleague, and one from the director on shift in El Paso.
What followed was me and the volunteers who could (our escalation manager, two of my agents, and my executive director for a good chunk of time) running the show by ourselves. Half an hour after I got online, we found out that the planned power outage wasn't just that night -- it was going to happen again Saturday night too. My executive director about lost his shit as we could handle it just fine (well, mostly) with all of us jumping in on a Friday night, but good luck getting anyone up here in Omaha to work overtime on a Saturday, not to mention on Halloween night. Even in a pandemic, the last thing people want to do on a Saturday night, on Halloween, is work.
I worked from around 2:30 Friday night until after 10am. On Saturday night, I got three of my agents to volunteer for the OT, thankfully, and they worked with me and our escalation manager all night long. I worked from roughly 11pm to around 8:20am on Saturday night/Sunday morning -- essentially, taking away my entire real weekend with the wife.
Look, y'all, it is what it is. I'm a 24/7 employee, so when I'm needed in scenarios like this, it's my job to dive in and regluate. I'm not mad about it. I'm not even really frustrated about it -- when you're in leadership at a company, sometimes you have to roll up your sleeves and dive in at inopportune times. I would have been furiously angry about it were we still working onsite and not all working at home, as I would've had to drive down to the building at 2am, work until 10, drive home, and then do it all again the next night.
We did nothing special for Halloween. We watched Halloweentown on Disney+. I didn't get an actual weekend.
And so ends October.
As I write this, it is November 2. Election day is tomorrow. This may be the most important election of our lives. VOTE.
