work

Where did I go?

Leave a Comment

Blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah-blah blah blah.  Blah blah.  Blah blah?  Blah.  Blah-blah blah blah blahblahblah blah.

Really, that’s all I heard today.  Behind it, my to-do list ran on an endless loop in my head.  Finish the test scripts, pack for the wedding, drop the dogs at the kennel, buy a wedding present, where are they registered?, finish the test scripts, leave work a little early to get the dogs to the kennel before they close, don’t forget clothes for Saturday in case we spend the day wandering in the city, make-up – where’s my make-up?, get out of some meetings at work so I can finish the test scripts, get off the internet and do some work, what else do I need to pack?, and so on.  Yeah, I’m relaxed.  I’m SO close to being able to leave work at work again.  Thisclose.  The end is in sight.  And then I can be myself again.  I hope.

I got a new hat!

6 Comments

I had to go downtown today to teach a training class for the first time in five months (unexpectedly – I’m the LAST backup for that, which means that the other six people were all either sick or still out of town for the holiday, so I found out at 6:15 this morning), and I’m comPLETEly worn out.  I’d forgotten how much that takes out of me.  I love to talk, I’ll never deny that, but talking for eight hours straight while standing up and fielding questions is exhausting. And then I came home and worked, since I didn’t get any of MY work done today.

So.  Short.  Almost done and going to bed (hoping that the guy I was subbing for today feels better when he wakes up in the morning).

I bought a hat!

And then I got a haircut, but I’m not ready to show it yet.  I need to remember how to use a hair dryer first.

What’s with today today?

6 Comments
  1. I’m allergic to work.  Like the physical building, not the work itself.  I got in this morning and my head exploded.  I felt fine (not achy or sick or anything), but I couldn’t stop sneezing, my eyes wouldn’t stop watering, and my head stuffed up.  I left around one to go home and take Benadryl, and as soon as I got in the car, I dried up.  Just like that.  I didn’t take anything when I got home, and I’ve been fine since then.  We’ll see what happens tomorrow.
  2. The dogs stole a tupperware lid out of the sink.  Did they chew on it?  No.  They just stole it.  They must do it for the thrill ’cause they never eat what they steal, even when it’s food.
  3. I slammed the very tip of my finger in the car door.  Hurt SO much.  I shouted some not nice words and then called my mommy.  Not to shout not nice things at her, though.  She distracted me long enough for the pain to fade.  Thanks, Mom.
  4. John is on the phone with his dad, and I think he’s forgotten that we haven’t had birthday cake yet.  (It’s his birthday.  We had pancakes for dinner.  Can’t complain.)  We’re not having birthday cake, but he doesn’t know that.  (I didn’t buy him a cake.  Or make him one.  Yes, I know how.  Out of a box.  🙂  Not the point.  I got a mini peanut butter cream pie for him.  Which we may or may not eat tonight.)

Time for pie!  Gotta go.

Can’t stay away any longer

3 Comments

Not that I was trying to.  I was able to slow down around mid-morning today.  I can breathe again at work, I don’t have to rush anymore – everything is under control.  Mine.  As it should be.  I’ve  hardly slept in two days, though, so this’ll be a short visit.  I need rest.

Riley flipped out tonight.  I took them to the vet for routine exams and shots, and he went nuts the second we walked in the door.  He’s usually a little nervous (he pants a little, gets extra slobbery, stays under my feet), but tonight he whined and cried, paced and drooled, tried to get into my lap and then back out the door – he was a wreck.  I tried to calm him down, but nothing I did was working.  Roxy pretended she didn’t know us.  She stretched out on the floor at the very end of her leash, facing away from us.  Riley didn’t calm down until we were checking out, and from then on, he was back to normal.  I don’t know why this visit was so traumatic for him.  We were the only ones there, but maybe he was reacting to a lingering odor of fear from some other animals.  Or something.  Who knows.  He’s crashed out on his dog bed now, like nothing ever happened.  So’s Roxy.  And they’re making me tired.

I’ll continue my re-introduction to the Internet tomorrow, hopefully, with some visits to my blog friends.

Must. Tell. Someone.

5 Comments

I’m bursting with news, but it’s all about work, so a) the Internet at large doesn’t care (not that the Internet at large cares about anything I write, reads me regularly (or at all), or even knows I’m here (Goodness.  Pity party much?  Move along, please.)), and 2) I will NOT go into detail about work stuff here.

Also, with a little perspective, it’s just not that exciting.

So.  Other stuff to talk about.  Thanksgiving plans?  Don’t have any yet.  All we’ve decided for sure is that we don’t want to have a big gathering (last year took a lot out of us), and traveling for the holiday may be difficult since John doesn’t automatically get the day after Thanksgiving off from work.  And we’re saving vacation days.  Big trip coming up.  And we like running that 5K on Thanksgiving morning.  That’s the extent of the discussion so far.

The band is practicing tonight, so I let the dogs come upstairs with me.  Roxy curled up on the floor next to my side of the bed.  She either fell asleep immediately or she’s faking it so I won’t make her go downstairs once the guys leave.  She might really be that tired.  She had two seizures yesterday, one around noon and one around 11 last night.  She’s fine now, but I think she could use a little extra love.  We may try letting the two of them sleep up here tonight.  I’m sure they’ll only make it an hour or so before one of them decides to stick a cold nose in my face.  That’s when I’ll shoo them back downstairs.  Happens every time.

It’s time for another list

2 Comments

Things I want to make time for:

  1. Catch up on six months of Runner’s World issues
  2. De-clutter the house.  It’s an endless cycle, I know, but I want to be ahead of the clutter for once.  Just for a while.
  3. Exercise.  Like real exercise.  I haven’t been getting out of bed early enough to do more than a couple of miles (occasionally three) before work, and I need to have time for four or five.  Or six, once I work my way back to handling that long of a run.  And what about other stuff, like lunges, squats, push-ups, crunches?  When am I supposed to fit those in?  Maybe I can try to make room for those at night.  Before dinner, before bed.  I’d like to do them right after the run, but I don’t think that’s realistic.  Not when I need to be out the door by 8:30.  The days are already getting shorter, sunrise is later, and just how early do I think I’m going to get up?
  4. Find an affordable place to live.  With jobs.  Or find jobs that’ll let us work from anywhere.  Yes, I know our current jobs could technically be done from home, but the hard part is finding the employer who will let us do that.  So maybe that’s the next thing on the list.
  5. Find jobs/employers who will allow, even encourage, us to work from home.  This list is changing directions a little.  It’s not like we’re looking for new jobs.  ‘Cause we’re not.  ‘Cause I certainly wouldn’t be announcing that here.  That would be dumb.  Let me rephrase.  Find a way to convince our current employers that we’re much more effective working from home.  There.  For real, despite my recent schedule, I like my job.  Now that I’ve (hopefully) convinced my current employer that I’m not looking for a way out, let’s move on.
  6. Play with the dogs!  This should move up the list.  I feel like I’m neglecting them a bit.  They get lots of love, and I take them on my morning jog every other day or so, but I don’t run them around the yard or really play with them outside as much as I should.
  7. See friends.  Again, this should move higher up the list.  Almost all of our friends live too far away.  Seeing them always means making plans, which sometimes is just too exhausting to think about.  We have so little free time during the week and we spend all weekend doing chores and running errands, so the free time we have on the weekends tends to be spent enjoying the quiet and the knowledge that we don’t have to run around for an hour or two.  We are trying to figure out a better way to live.  This is nuts.  And that leads me back to what I was saying a couple of months ago.  Neither of us wants to live like this.  We don’t want the conventional jobs, with conventional work hours and conventional commutes and conventional bosses.  But how do we get out?

What is up with this week?

Leave a Comment

Honestly, I can’t remember ever putting this many hours into my job.  EVER.  Not even when I was in the navy, ’cause I did a hell of a lot of NOT working when I was at sea.  On the one hand, it’s okay.  I like what I’m doing, I know what I’m doing, and I’m good at it.  And I’m responsible for a lot, so I have deadlines and expectations, and if I have to work a little longer to meet them when things are a little crazy at work, then that’s what I’ll do.

On the other hand, DUDE.  Not okay.  Home is home, work is work, and they SHOULD NOT OVERLAP.  For real.

The End.

I will never be a workaholic

1 Comment

If this is what working from home is like, I could get used to it.  No unwanted interruptions, dogs hanging out by my feet, I can wear whatever I want, work wherever I want (dining room table, couch, bed).  I prefer to restrict it to weekdays, though.  Today was a repeat of yesterday, minus the frustrating trip to Dunkin Donuts.  In fact, I didn’t leave the house at all today.  Not a good precedent to set.

I want my weekend back!

Not the best Saturday ever

8 Comments

For a number of reasons, today kinda sucks.  It could be worse (it could be SO much worse), but it’s not what I wish for when I look forward to my weekends.  I’m working, John’s working, we’ve been camped out at the dining room table for most of the day, sitting across from each other with our heads buried in our laptops, and that’s not really the part that kinda sucks.  Mostly, it’s exhaustion. Roxy had another seizure last night, around 11pm, and this time, neither of us could go back to sleep until after 1am.  Out the window went our plans (my plan, anyway – not sure if that was John’s plan, too) to run this morning.  Instead, we slept until nearly ten.  Not good sleep.  Woke up feeling like we hadn’t slept at all, and since we have no milk in the house,  I went to Dunkin Donuts to pick up breakfast.  (Yes, no milk = bagels.  And Starbucks.  It does not equal go to the store and buy milk since you have to leave the house either way, dumbass.)  The Dunkin Donuts in our tiny town is the WORST Dunkin Donuts.  This morning was it – I’m never going to that one again.  This time, before ten am on a Saturday, they were out of plain bagels, out of plain cream cheese, and they didn’t give me the hash browns I paid for, even though they repeated the order back to me three times AND they’re on the receipt.  They’ve screwed up our order lots of times, they make terrible coffee, and they even manage to screw up iced chai.  John tells me (and I know this – I’ve been to others) that this Dunkin Donuts is not representative of the whole company, but still.  This one?  Dead to me.  That, on top of no sleep, on top of the half-hour wait at Starbucks (It may have only been 10 minutes, but it felt longer.  At least they got my order right.), all BEFORE breakfast, with no run to clear my head or make me feel virtuous for exercising when I’m eating a not-healthy breakfast, followed by WORKING makes today not the greatest Saturday.

Also, my head hurts.

Also also, I might feel better if I’d showered this morning.  I swear, that’s happening soon.

Also also also, I didn’t like the book I just finished (finally), The Emperor’s Children, so that may have been contributing to this mood.  I couldn’t even escape into my book!

I hear birdies and their wheels are bare

4 Comments

I haven’t pointed you guys here in a while, but hopefully you’ve found your own way.  In case you need a nudge, check out today’s post.  Level 3 makes me laugh and cringe at the same time, particularly near the end of the section.

I solved my focus problem at work today (answer: work closely with someone else), but I’m totally worn out.  So for now, for tonight, no internet, no TV.

Wait – almost forgot.  Roxy had a seizure last night around 11pm (which might explain some of the tiredness).  She’s fine now, and the seizure itself was pretty normal.  Just one, no cluster.  Her last one was somewhere  between 10 days and two weeks ago, I think.  I’m not sure because I didn’t write it down or call the vet to let them know.  I don’t know why I didn’t.  I just let it slip.  ‘Cause, you know, I don’t care about my dog.  Clearly.  Poor puppy.

An aversion to work

3 Comments

Not work of all kinds, just the kind of work that’s paying my salary right now.  I haven’t been able to focus on work for two days straight.  And I know it’s not a general inability to concentrate since I’m perfectly capable of concentrating on just about anything that isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing from nine to five.  I do have a solution for tomorrow, though, so I’m not really worried about it.  Deadlines help, too.

You know what doesn’t help my powers of concentration?  The band.  They’re rehearsing (their next gig is this Sunday), and I can’t seem to finish a thought.

I was able to finish my book.  That was last night, though, so it doesn’t count.  (No band to compete for my attention.)  Holly sent it to me (Thanks, Holly!).  I liked it, and I plan to look for more from him (I read Breath, by Tim Winton), but the ending felt a little…off.  He brought up and quickly glossed over a lot of things right at the end that didn’t seem to be directly related to the majority of the book.  I can see how maybe everything could be pulled together, but it would take another book.  For the end to work, I felt like I needed more information about that part of his life.  And that’s what got glossed over.  But that was just the very end.

This is going to be a busy weekend

Leave a Comment

Good busy, I think.  I have a long to-do list, but it’s all stuff I want to do (and a couple of things I’m excited about doing), and on Sunday (maybe Saturday – depends) I’ll spend some time working.  I really need to.  I’ll feel much better about next week if I feel like I finished everything I needed to do this week, which certainly didn’t happen at work today.  However busy I plan to be, though, I can get a little extra sleep in the morning, go for a run, and then start my day.  I think having my mornings to myself, with only self-imposed deadlines, is a major reason I’d like to work from home.  When I drive to work every morning, I see all these people out walking, jogging, biking, with their dogs and their kids and their friends.  Why don’t they have to go to work?  Are they all on vacation?  Do they all work later shifts?  Could they all be stay-at-home parents or work from home?  And why can’t I do that?  Besides company policy, I mean (because they do have a company policy about it – don’t).  So I’m working on that.  In the back of my mind.  Every day.

I’d be more productive if I worked from home because I wouldn’t have to go to any meetings

4 Comments

Today was not a bad day.  It was just like every other day this week, though, with a breakneck pace and no actual work that got done.  By me, anyway.  Other people might be having better luck.  And I get it, kind of.  I’m managing a process now, and I have other people (will someday have other people – that’s part of what we’ve been having meetings about this week) who have to do the stuff that needs to get done, so I’m not as hands on as I’m used to being, but deadlines are looming and I feel like I need to say I’ve accomplished something!  I’m a little worn out.  A little frazzled.  A little (a lot) in need of extra hours in the day with no meetings.  Except who wants more hours at work?  Also, who wants to keep talking about work once they’re at home?  Not me.

John called to tell me he was  just leaving the office and to apologize for how late it is.  I’m feeling weak-willed because I have no energy and my head is pounding (and not just the part that’s still tender from my encounter with the window yesterday), so I asked him to be the voice of reason and say “No, we can’t order Chinese food.  We’re having ravioli or stir fry or something that’s already in the house and is relatively good for us.”  But since it’s so late, and neither of us wants to deal with cooking and cleaning up, he failed in his duty (as the voice of reason) and told me that if Chinese food is the only thing that will make me feel better, then that’s what we should have for dinner.  And I gave in.  Because I’m weak.  Our local Chinese place should hang our picture on the wall.  (This hasn’t been a good week for healthy dinners.)

Totally not a vacation post

2 Comments

I do want to tell some stories about this vacation, but that would involve adding pictures, and have I mentioned how draining it is to upload pictures to this site?  I don’t have that kind of energy.  Some people at work were giving me a hard time for coming back from vacation on a Thursday (why not take the rest of the week off and come back on Monday?), and while I see their point, it’s totally awesome to go back to work on a Thursday.  Two-day work week!  The weekend is right around the corner.  And as fun as that vacation was (it was totally fun), I’m very glad to be home.  I love my bed.  And my dogs.  And my kitchen.  Well, I don’t love my kitchen, but it’s bigger than what we were working with in Georgia.  Not that I spent much time in it.

Okay, maybe this is going to be a little bit of a vacation post.  I was reading The Bloggess just now, and of course I’m laughing hysterically at today’s post (that should totally go without saying), and I had a similar experience over the weekend, and then I started writing the story in my head, so here it is.

Background: My family (Mom, Dad, brother, sister, me, assorted spouses, and one almost 5-year-old) decided to stay in a cabin in the mountains in northwest Georgia for a few days.  In the mountains.  In the woods.  Not in a clearing in the woods.  In the woods.  With me?  Okay.  ‘Cause this will become important.  John and I were supposed to arrive just before midnight Friday night (fly into Atlanta, rent a car, drive an hour and a half), but our flight was delayed (a lot) and then, only about 7 miles from the place, the road was blocked by a police cruiser because the power company was removing a tree from the power lines.  After about 20 minutes of sitting there (no map, no Internet connection to find a map), I finally asked the cop if there was another way to get where we were going.  There was, of course, and we finally got to the house.  In the woods.  At about 2:30 in the morning.  Oh, after we pulled into the wrong driveway.  ‘Cause it was a gravel road that was more of a track up the mountain.  In the very deepest dark.  Because it was in the woods!  And the power was out.  Dad met us at the right driveway with a flashlight and helped us get inside (where there were no lights, because the power was out) and find our bedroom.  With a flashlight.  Because there was no power.  Being up the mountain meant we were using well water, which gets into the house via pump.  Which totally doesn’t work when there’s no power.  So, you know, no flushing.  And bottled water for brushing teeth and washing faces and hands.  NO POWER!  But we were ready to collapse into bed (a bed we never collapsed into again after that night – I promise I’m getting to the point) when the power came back on, and so did every light in the house.  Anyway, most of that background was not really necessary, but let’s just say it illustrates how tired and ready for bed we were the next night, having only gotten about 5 hours of sleep the night before.

I was washing my face in the bathroom when I heard a very loud, somewhat shocked “JESUS CHRIST!” from the bedroom.  I came running and found John standing about three feet away from the foot of the bed, kinda pointing towards the pillow.  “There’s a scorpion.  IN the bed.”  “Can’t be.  Scorpions don’t live in Georgia, they live in Texas and New Mexico and deserts and stuff.”  “Zannah, it was a scorpion.  Go look.”  “Um, no.”  He twitched the covers a little and I saw something scurry under his pillow.  I got a little closer and saw it come out from under the pillow and go upside down under the mattress.  Kinda looked like a scorpion to me, but I wasn’t about to get close enough to really look.  Besides, it couldn’t be.  Either way, though, I didn’t want it in the bed.  John was pretty freaked out, and I wasn’t brave enough to get it, so I ran upstairs and grabbed Corey before he disappeared into his room.  Normally, I’m the one who finds the big ugly bug, and I’m the one who completely freaks out.  John walks into the situation knowing what to expect (I’ve already shrieked about the bug), so he’s usually able to handle it fairly calmly.  This time,  he was the one who found it after nearly LAYING DOWN ON TOP OF IT, so I think he was well within his rights to be a little less than rational.  Anyway, big brother came down, we both grabbed shoes, and I helped him lift up the mattress so he could WHACK the damn thing dead.  And then he put it in a plastic bag to show every person who came to the house over the next few days.  ‘Cause he’s a boy.  Thanks, Cor, for killing the scorpion!  After Corey left (with the scorpion, which he left on the table for everyone to find at breakfast), John and I discussed whether or not we’d be able to sleep in that bed.  I was actually fairly okay with it, I think because I’m not the one who found it, whereas all those other times I have been the one surprised by the spider or the centipede, I can’t sleep because of all the creepy-crawly nightmares.  According to John, that kind of inconsistency is one of my most endearing (or is that infuriating?) qualities.  Anyway, we did a thorough search of the room and the bed, checked all of the blankets, all of the sheets, took the pillows out of the pillowcases so we could shake them out, lifted up the mattress again, looked under the bed with the flashlight, then checked the drooping fabric underneath the box spring just in case they were nesting (isn’t that something you’ve heard of?  A nest of scorpions?  Maybe that’s vipers…), and when we didn’t find anything, we decided it was time to go to bed.  Gingerly.  And without much sleep.  Every night after that, we did the same bed check.

After the scorpion IN THE BED, the spiderwebs that apparently only took 10 minutes to string up across every doorway and sidewalk, and the millipede on the wall over our bed the last night (I called Dad to rescue us from that one), John and I have decided that although we like the idea of having a house in the woods, the woods will totally have to keep their distance.  Nature (the buggy part, at least) is not for me.

(I counted six, which I totally (seven) put in on purpose.  For reals.  Think I can go higher next time?)

Pre-vacation brain drain

3 Comments

My brain is starting to shut down.  Work was hard today, and tomorrow I’m going to be mostly useless.  You know why?  I’m going on vacation!  Woo!  Not a long one, but it should be nice and relaxing.  The worst part (and I’m telling you this in advance to try and prepare you for this traumatic experience) is that there is NO INTERNET CONNECTION where I’m going.  I will have to skip updating this here blog for several days IN A ROW.  Blog aside, what am I going to do without the Internet?  Here’s where I realize I may have a problem.  Do I really think I’m going to be scarred for life if I can’t google the lyrics to that song on the radio or find out what weather.com says the temperature is rightnow for a couple of days?  I think I’ll manage somehow.  And when I come back, I’ll have lots of pictures.

But hey, the withdrawal doesn’t have to start just yet.  My vacation doesn’t start until the weekend.  According to my brain, however, it started around lunchtime today.  Ooh, that reminds me of breakfast today.  A guy on my project won breakfast for the office from Chick-fil-A!  That place might have the best fast food breakfast in the world.  They certainly have the best fast food chicken sandwiches in the world.  And since that’s basically what goes on their breakfast menu, I think they’ve got the breakfast trophy all sewn up.  Which reminds me…I used the phrase “hungry as all get out” the other day, and that made me wonder where “as all get out” came from.  I was driving just then, so I couldn’t google it, and I’ve only just remembered.

[Pause for googling]

Okay, according to one forum, the OED says it was first used in Huckleberry Finn in 1884.  I couldn’t find any other references to the origin of that phrase, and I don’t have access to an OED myself (and I don’t subscribe to OED Online, although maybe I should – mm, no, $30 a month), so I can’t check.  That’s not very helpful.  Maybe I’ll be just fine after a few days without Google.  (Look!  I can tie things together!  (Oh, is it not cool to point that kind of thing out?  Better to be subtle and let others notice on their own?  Oops.  Guess I’m not cool.))

My hero

1 Comment

I bought wasp killer (and crabgrass killer – we’re don’t believe in nature in this house) and after rehearsal, John humored me by putting on long pants, a sweatshirt, safety glasses, and leather gloves, and then he went out in the dark, sprayed the hell out of the wasp nest, and sprinted around the side of the house when he saw something drop to the ground.  I think I freaked him out with my speculations about swarms of angry flying venomous insects.  But they’re dead!  He went back out after a couple of minutes with a flashlight to check out the carnage.  I’m thrilled they’re dead.  He feels kinda bad.

Today was the first day of my new job.  Same company, new boss, loads of new (and higher) responsibilities, and I think I’m in a little over my head.  It’s a good thing (right?), and I certainly won’t be bored.  The best part is the complete and utter lack of anything resembling travel.  Or even a commute.  I’ll have the occasional meeting in DC, and there may be a time in the fall when I have to spend a few days in a row down there, but the majority of my time will be spent in the office that’s only 20 minutes (max) from my house.  SO much better.

Enough about work.  I performed my adjunct-to-the-band duties tonight and put their set list together for them.  They’ve got a 4th of July gig nearby, and tonight was their last rehearsal before the big day.

Ricky Gervais is doing stand-up in the other room and I can’t concentrate anymore, so I’m off.

Trying not to make a snap judgement about Duluth

2 Comments

I am not in the mood to appreciate Duluth.  I got to my hotel last night right around midnight (central time, so it felt like 1am).  I was a little lucky getting in, though.  The rental car counter closes at 11:30, and that’s when my flight was supposed to land, so I thought I was going to have to take a cab to the hotel, then a cab to work (since the rental car counter doesn’t open again until 7:30 in the morning, which was when I was supposed to be at work), then a cab to the airport to pick up the car after work.  I wasn’t looking forward to that.  Fortunately, my flight landed ten minutes early and the rental car counter is less than 10 feet from the baggage carousel.  The one baggage carousel.  Duluth is tiny.  So, lucky me, I got my rental car.  Small yay.  Anyway, midnight at the check-in desk and thankfully, no one else was in the lobby, ’cause the check-in guy took it upon himself to bellow my room number to the space at large rather than just point to where he wrote it down for me like most hotels.  It was 1am before I could turn off my light, and all I wanted to do was sleep for hours and hours, but 1) it wasn’t dark in my room, and 2) I had to get up 5:45 to get to work on time.  Why wasn’t it dark in my room?  Because the Holiday Inn in downtown Duluth doesn’t believe in blackout curtains.  All I had were sheers, and my room faced the bright green Holiday Inn sign.  Still, I was tired, so I didn’t notice as much as I might have on a normal night.  5:45 came too early, but I made it to work okay and then through the day without falling over.  The day itself could have been better (I forgot to buy candy to bribe my students, so they were less enthusiastic than I was used to, and the lights in the room we were in were either too bright to see the projector screen or too dark to keep anyone awake), but it went well enough.  I headed back to my room thinking I might take a walk down the lakefront to find dinner, but it was raining, so that idea went out the window.  Speaking of the window, I was going to change clothes, but I saw a rope dangling from an upper floor.  I took a closer look and found a guy on one of those window-washing platforms about three feet down and three feet to the right of my window.  I could see him, and if he looked to his right, he could see into my room.  Not okay when I only have sheers on my windows.  On top of that, about 30 seconds after I noticed him, he started drilling into the wall outside my room.  SO loud.  I was on the phone with John, and he could hear it, too.  That eventually stopped (around six), but when I called the front desk to ask about it, they said it’ll be going on all week.  Shortly after that, the fire alarm went off.  The front desk made an announcement asking us to stay in our rooms while they investigate to find out if it’s a false alarm.  The alarm went off again, and then I heard the announcement of the false alarm.  Except that then the alarm went off again.  And again.  And again.  All in all, it went off about six times before I gave up and found a new hotel.  So now I’m somewhere else, in a hotel that has a really nice lobby and really nice employees (the check-in guy was great – upgraded my room while keeping me on the rate I’m supposed to be on for work) and HEAVY CURTAINS ON THE WINDOWS.  I never knew how important that was to me until the last few weeks.  In NC, the hotel only had sheers, but it wasn’t downtown or anything, so it got fairly dark at night.  In RI, the B&B had shutters that didn’t completely block out the light, but they were so cute and I was so relaxed that, while I would have preferred a darker room, it didn’t really bother me.  When I don’t have to wake up to an alarm clock, I enjoy waking up to sunlight streaming in my window.  But for work?  While traveling?  I want a dark room and real curtains.  Especially when there are men working outside my window.

Anyway, Duluth is not winning me over.  I’m sure it’s fine, and maybe I’ll like it better when the sun is shining and I’ve had a good night’s sleep, but I’m not seeing its charm at the moment.

SO much walking

1 Comment

We got up early this morning (5-ish) to run in the fog (which was really cool), and then John drove me to work on his way to spend the day visiting houses he used to live in and old high school haunts.  Work was not bad, and the day didn’t go nearly as slow as expected, mainly because I had a very lively class.  Lots of good-natured heckling.  I’ll take that over a zombie class any day.

Once we got back to Newport (work was in Narragansett – and I’m done for the week! Yay!), we went for a walk, planning on going to the Redwood Library to look around.  Got distracted by the giant stone tower thing in Touro Park, and John said he remembered a plaque or sign or something saying it was built by vikings or something, but we couldn’t find the sign.  On our way back up to the library, we passed the Newport Tower Museum.  We were looking at the pictures and posters in the window, and I noticed a guy on the inside coming towards that window.  Before I knew it, he’d bounced outside to come talk to us.  It’s his museum, and he’s done research and written books on that tower, all while trying to figure out who really built it.  Apparently, there are a bunch of theories, but most don’t hold water (according to him).  Anyway, he took us back over to it and pointed out all kinds of interesting things about it.  Long story short: he got us interested in it and we’re going to visit his museum tomorrow and let him tell us all the stuff he found out.  And probably end up buying his book (or books).  It really was cool, and the guy was SO enthusiastic.

After that, though, we decided to put off the Redwood Library until tomorrow, and we headed down to Thames Street to the Brick Alley Pub for dinner.  Very good, just like we remembered, and then we walked.  And walked.  And walked.  Just because.  It felt like forever, and we both wanted to turn around and head back to our inn, but for some reason we kept going.  And when we finally turned around, it felt like we’d never get back.  Of course, we did, eventually, and I just mapped it.  It was only 2.5 miles.  So we’re wimps.  It’s not even that late, but we’re both really tired.  John says that’s because it’s been 40 hours since we got up this morning.  He’s probably right.

Go check out Curiosity.  She’s hilarious on the subject of her hearing loss (which I’m very sorry to hear about, but am delighted to read a post about).  (Does that make me insensitive?)

It should go without saying, since I link to practically all of her posts, but The Bloggess is one of the funniest people on the Internet.  Truly and consistently funny.  She made me laugh at almost every sentence of her post today, so, you know, go read.  And laugh.  I’m going to put my walked-out feet up and go to bed.

Not a great start

Leave a Comment

Today didn’t start as planned.  For one thing, my alarm didn’t go off.  This wasn’t the disaster it could have been.  I’d set it absurdly early because I planned to run.  I woke up when the sun came up, about an hour later.  No time to run, but I still had plenty of time to get ready.  Ate breakfast, showered, dressed, and I was out the door about 8 minutes before I was supposed to be there to meet the guy who would let me in the building.  My hotel is only about three minutes from the place, so I got there with plenty of time.  Except it didn’t look like the right place.  The building had the right address on it, and it had a sign for the right agency, but it looked more like a warehouse than an office building.  And nobody was there.  I called my boss to make sure I had the right address.  I had the same one she did.  I called the guy who was supposed to meet me to let him know I was outside, but I only got his voicemail.  After about ten minutes, a couple of guys showed up, and I asked them if they knew anything about a training class.  One of them remembered the books being delivered and told me the class was being held at another site.  He was going there anyway, so I followed him.  Turns out the warehouse is where everything is shipped, which explains why we had that address, but all the office, all the classes, all the nice pretty landscaped grounds are a couple of miles away.  I still don’t know where I am (by address, anyway), but I’m pretty sure I can find my way here tomorrow morning.  It was about 8am when I got here (I was supposed to meet the guy at 7:30), but class didn’t start until 8:30, so everything turned out fine.  Except for my exceptionally slow internet connection.  That was a little annoying.  It’s hard to demonstrate things when your screen won’t load. 

Anyway, it’s lunch time and I’m hungry.  I need fuel to get me through an afternoon full of unhappy users.  (The types of users in this next session are notorious for hating this system.)