Author: Owiella

Busy week it was,
Head barely left the keyboard,
Except for pillow time.

I decided to not bore you all with the dole-drum busy week I just had, well, Monday to Thursday at least. There was the major program happening at work, documents to sign for the house sale, and further nit-picking on the house buy side too. By Thursday night, I was ready to just give it all up and run for my peaceful sanctuary—except I’m still negotiating with the sellers. Damn! No escape yet! This, for me, is the hard part. I’m actually looking forward to moving in with all my shit in boxes. I’ll immediately set up the bed, and put a few hygiene items in the bathroom (I’ve begun hoarding toilet-paper—got a whole 6 rolls stashed away in my car), and then hibernate for at least a week.

I did have some good phone conversations with good friends during the week, which helped keep me on the sane side of life by providing a much needed break from all the negotiating, working, head-buried-in-code, and conference calls that consumed that was all consuming of every active brain cell. Well, maybe not all, but it was mostly very dull and frustrating. Next week at work will be much easier, but I fear the negotiation battles will continue. It’s beginning to feel like the sellers don’t actually want to sell as they keep coming up with tactics that delays the whole process. I did put an end date on everything, so if they don’t get their butts in gear, they’ll loose the sale and have a nasty lawsuit on their hands (yes, I’ll get my deposit back, but I’ll be wanting the costs associated with the inspection, appraisal, pain and suffering, and perhaps a lost opportunity on starting the process with a different property), but I’m still holding out hope that it won’t come to that.

Anyways …. I survived these days, and Friday is moving along better. Check back tomorrow to see how that went.

Busy, busy, as a bee,
A great time killer for me,
Where does the time go?

Days 16 and 17: Take day 15, rinse, wash, and repeat! At least I was able to get some steps in, although I didn’t quite hit my goal. Time for a very, very long nap!

A bus’ling work day,
Busy as beavers we be,
Day’s done way too soon.

This day flew by with the blink of an eye. I haven’t been this busy for work in a very long time: started at 8:30 a.m., and in spite of my best effort, didn’t finish until 10:30 p.m. Sometimes it’s good to be busy. But because of this, I don’t have much to write about, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want the blow-by-blow of web development (unless you’re looking for a sleep aid!). So short and sweet this post will remain. I will, however, leave you with a cute picture that’s sure to bring a smile to your face. Enjoy!

Welcome to Tuesday,
Another workday at home
Same as yesterday.

From a work perspective, this was a very busy day. It was so busy that it was the type of day where you force yourself to find breaks, even if just to clear the head. The short of it: my “on” was in 9th gear (on an 8-gear box), and my “off” was comfortably numb, without the drug assist. Here’s an example of one of the “off” modes:

All fun aside, the moment to tame the wild and crazy hair came shortly after.

So that was pretty much what the whole day was like—Intense work, and silly play. A nice balance for a Tuesday.

Welcome to week six,
Working from home has its perks,
Saving the planet.

Yesterday was a well-rested day, enough so that the typical Monday blues were cancelled. It’s a chipper day indeed! No pressing tasks due this morning, no fire drills, no rushing, no stressing, no angst, just a nice relaxing morning.

While the morning was relaxed, the afternoon not so much. A trend has emerged amongst my coworkers—a trend I have noticed happening pretty much everywhere—where the “work” portion of the day is shifting later and later as time working at home ticks on. So I try to revel in the quiet mornings knowing that come 3 p.m. my email box will not stop dinging! And that’s when the stress will begin this week’s run. But I’ve started to set parameters in an effort to remain sane and even keeled: I have a deadline to be off the computer by, and that time is by 7 p.m. I find if I don’t set this limit, I’ll be working until the wee hours of the morning, and that’s no good for anyone! But even I started to shift to getting up later in the day, and now I’m making an effort to restore my pre-pandemic routine but just working from home. I hope that 6-weeks in to working from home, I can encourage, or inspire, others to do the same.

On the whole, a pretty good day!

Stay safe, stay healthy!

To work or to play,
Saturday’s indecision,
I’ll decide later.

Yay, the weekend has arrived. Applause, applaus, plaus, … moment’s over. And, literally, that’s about how long the excitement lasted before I ran a list of chores through my head, and then plotted out all the ways I could procrastinate into not doing them. The problem is then I just spend all day thinking about what needs to be done and how to not do them. But alas, I do them so that I can start to think about other things.

Stress is funny that way, and sometimes can be paralyzing. Today’s major task was writing a report, and a report that someone else should have written, so that added additional layers of anger to the whole thing! Yes, I procrastinated most of the day, choosing instead to watch a movie, play a few rounds of Uno on the xbox, but I did finally manage to begin the task, and 4 hours later (at about 11 pm) the job was done and the email sent. Stress unloaded.

Well, that consumed the entire day. Sunday should be better.

T.G.I. Friday!
Not much different than Thursday,
Tomorrow we play.

At last, it’s Friday. Although the excitement usually felt on the 5th day of the week is strangely missing. Well, not really “strangely” as we all know why Friday’s in April this year are no big deal as tomorrow the only difference is I won’t have to … err, after another reflection, I revise that to “there is no difference between Friday and Saturday this week: I’ll still get up at the same time, still face the same limited breakfast choices, will still check in on work email, will still try to get in some exercise….

Yup. Absolutely nothing different. Anything different for me these days involves “planning” with the bonus agony of not being able to set start dates, so I’m going to have to stop that depressing activity. I’m now playing around with the idea of pulling out one of those adult coloring books that has become popular over the last decade. Mindless creativity at its finest. I am inspired to do this because I saw my sister working on one with my niece the other day. Yes, my sister—the one that would not be caught dead with a crayon in her hands just two months ago is thoroughly engaged in mastering her mad adult-coloring-book skills, and enjoying every moment of it. The world has truly ended!

Joking aside, my need to be creative has been stifled lately. In part because I lack adequate space to let loose, and part because my focus has been on selling one house, buying another house, and making both my personal and work life co-exist in the same room of someone else’s house. Oye! It’s moments like these when I just want to play games on the xbox and allow the real world to just disappear for a few hours. But this, too, shall pass. I just hate the waiting.

So tomorrow is Saturday. I’m going to try and force myself out of a routine and try something different.

A working Thursday,
Shuf’ling my way to my desk,
Still in my slippers.

It’s a temporarily typical Thursday, same as other more recent Thursdays: I wake later than normal, brew coffee in a French Press, make a home-cooked breakfast that is either egg or oatmeal based, and then take a leisurely stroll over to my new workstation that happens to share space with my bedroom. While I am tempted to say “I could get used to this,” the space is really too small and cramped. I pulled a very nice, very expensive, but very small desk out of storage for the temporary fix, but this desk was never meant to be used as a workstation. It’s more of a writing desk in the true sense of writing. It may be comfortable working on a laptop from, but my work requires a full-on workstation complete with multiple large monitors and enormous RAM and memory requirements. So I squeeze myself between the desk and the bed (at least a standard office chair fits between them), with a shelving unit to the right and a bureau to the left. At least the desk is up against a wall and under a window, but my room is on the top floor so the wall is only perpendicular to the floor for about 4 feet, then slants in with the roof line. And then there is the wallpaper. Ugg the wallpaper, which was most likely put up in the 1940s!

Not much else happened today. This day felt dull compared with all the excitement and emotions from yesterday (review: final walk-through and memory reflections in the home that is being sold). But as with everything else, this balancing is a good thing.

Until tomorrow (and beyond): Stay healthy!