Corner of Bourbon & Division

I don't know if I will have the stamina to write out all the plans I'm having existential angst about. I got up at 5:30 this morning without batting an eye when my alarm went off, despite my having gone to bed ridiculously late. I took Peggy for a walk  around the neighbourhood, and we met several dog friends and saw a bunny! The bunny held very still for several minutes, and then when it took off Peggy lost her shit and screamed her silly head off. Luckily it didn't last for too long (it was 7:00 and I am quite sure none of the nice people who live in the area wanted to listen to my dog howling bloody murder at the local leporids.

I had a decently productive day at work, too. I had a couple of instances of slacking off, but one was very short-lived, and in the other I ended up playing a game on my phone while listening in on a very long meeting at work in which I didn't have much to say but needed to be at just for situational awareness. I had planned a few things that I didn't get to because two of my employees reported pay issues first thing when I got in, so I spent a fair bit of time trying to get to the bottom of both those situations. Both of them are still unresolved, but I think we can get one fixed pretty easily, and for the other the employee asked me to hold off until Wednesday, when he will get his new pay and pay stub and see if the error has already been rectified (fingers crossed that it has been!).

I spent a decent chunk of the afternoon working on a new PowerPoint presentation for the information session I need to give to prospective candidates for the job. There is a presentation that already exists, but the information on the slides is woefully out of date, and it is quite honestly one of the ugliest set of slides I've had the misfortune of seeing. It's an embarrassment, and so I am re-doing it, even though my PowerPoint skills are pretty rudimentary. I managed four slides, and they look decent to my eye. I may try and find some friends to look it over (it's a presentation for external candidates, so there's no classified information) just to confirm that I'm not overestimating my abilities.

By the time I got to the grocery store to pick up my order I had run out of energy, to the point where the nice boy who brought out my groceries asked me if I wanted to keep the bags that came with my groceries and I blanked so hard. Decision fatigue is the real deal, folks! Anyway, we figured it out (he was very understanding about my not being able to make a decision about plastic bags) and I brought all the groceries back. I actually forgot about them when I got home, but luckily remembered a few minutes after and managed to bring them all in and put them away.

Long story short: stick a fork in me, I am done. I might try a bullet point list of the things that have been trotting around in my head, kind of like a way to download them all and be able to refer back (supposing I ever refer back to this post--I am notoriously not good at doing that sort of thing). Inch'Allah I will get back to it eventually.

• Training Peggy: I'd like to do a lot more work with Peggy on her training this summer. This includes basic obedience training as well as hunting, but if she does well with the obedience I'd like to get her doing a bit of agility as well. I think she'd really enjoy it and it would be a good way for her to burn off energy.
• Veggie garden: because of the lockdown I haven't been able to go with the original plan of taking advantage of the new-to-me friend's offer of using a parcel of her unused farmland to grow veggies. It's also looking like KK and I will be living here for at least another year, so I am looking at growing at least a few fruits and vegetables in the house and maybe a couple in the garden even though there's not much room there. I'm thinking of trying to convert the basement with grow lights and heat pads and mini greenhouse covers and see what I can get going in terms of food grown at home.
• More garden stuff! This is probably insane, but I want to try a small aquaponics setup, probably in the basement again. Cost and the ability to set it all up will be the determining factor, but OTOH I could grow my own tilapia! How cool would that be?
• Clear out the garage: this one is definitely going to happen one way or another because it's the only way KK and I will both be able to have our cars parked at the house. I am considering the state of my finances and trying to determine if it's worth it to bring back the professional organizers for a single day, because I figure that's about as long as it would take to get it cleared out with the help of one or two determined professionals. It is still likely to be quite expensive, though not nearly as expensive as it was to get the upstairs cleared out (small mercies), but probably worth it in terms of actually getting it done and not having to deal with getting rid of the donations, at least (the professionals do that for you, which is great!).
• Kitting out the garage with proper storage for tools and such.
• Proper meal planning and cooking from scratch.
• Working my way back up to being able to run ~5km and doing that regularly with Peggy.

I feel like there was more, but I can't remember any of it now. Oh well. Maybe it'll come back to me later. It's now nearly 9:00 pm and I am faaaaading. Time for bed.

That subject line sounds more enthusiastic than I am currently feeling, tbh, but I'm hoping my mood will improve once the game starts. It was a bit of a rough day at work, brain-wise. A bunch of things I thought I had under control kind of blew up in my face, and I spiraled a little bit back into "Oh God I don't know what I'm doing, I am a total fraud, why did I ever agree to do this job--AUGH!"

I will try again tomorrow and see if I can put out some of the fires and pull myself together. I've done it before, so the odds are decent I can do it again. It was not a great feeling, though. 

Today's excitement at work came in the form of a renegade starling. I actually spotted it yesterday along with one of my employees, but when I tried to catch it to release it outside it managed to escape into a tiny hole in the drop ceiling and vanished. It reappeared today inside the Top Secret area and spent the entire day flapping manically around the ops floor, poor thing. It was very fast and very wily and cornered much better than the lumbering humans trying to catch it.

We called animal control, but the guy wasn't able to catch it either. Finally one of my employees was able to toss my blanket over it (I keep a blanket in my locker because it gets very cold in the office during night shifts, even though I haven't worked nights in six months or so), and he released it outside without further incident. Poor little birb, it was probably pretty traumatized, especially since it bashed itself several times against our indoor windows and against the ceiling fixtures, but it flew away without any sign of trouble, so it was a happy ending after all.

I am off to Skype with my parents, and then call it an early night. I went to bed at an okay hour yesterday but ended up going to sleep late, and therefore I am still not feeling optimal.

I suppose it might be less difficult to come up with original subject lines if my days were a little more varied. Alas, I am leading a very staid and boring life these days, at least to the outside viewer. I myself am not bored for most of the time, which is the main point. It's not to say that I am never bored, of course, because I am in possession of a human brain, and human brains get bored. I was about to say 'a normal human brain,' but that is patently not true, not to mention that there isn't really such a thing as a 'normal' brain anyway.  


Anyhoozle, I discovered today that I am NOT ready to start running. I kind of forgot that when I haven't done any proper training in a while that I get really painful inflammation in the tendons (or something?) in my ankles when I try running right off the bat. When I did the C25K thing five years ago I first started out by walking every day (it helped that I was off work for an entire summer, but I think I can still manage), and even then when I started the running I'd have to do a minimum of 30 minutes of walking to "warm up" before my ankles stopped hurting so that I could run. So I'm going to set myself the goal to "just" walk every day for two weeks. I'm also rather fatter than I was then--not by much, but at my age and weight every extra pound does take its toll--so that's bound to affect things as well. On top of that, I have crossed the threshold of 40, and like it or not, the human body does change as it ages. That doesn't mean I'm unwilling to continue, of course, it just means that I have to remember to maintain a certain amount of mental flexibility about it.

The good news is that I am finding it reasonably okay to get up early-ish in order to get some exercise these days, although I have yet to manage getting up early enough to take Peggy for an off-leash run in the fields and be on time for work. I took her with me on my walk today, though, so that's something. Maybe I will take her with me for the walks in the morning and try to get her out to the fields in the evenings after work instead. The system will require tweaking as I go.

In work news, I had a better day than Tuesday and Wednesday, so I am pleased about that. I still wasn't as productive as I could be, because I've been procrastinating on my very last employee evaluation. I did about half of it today, and I'm pretty confident I can finish it tomorrow and just have done.

I am having a lot of negative thoughts and feelings about this evaluation, because this is someone who has long been considered a "problem employee." Among other things he tends to throw temper tantrums when he feels as though he hasn't been praised enough. He can't take even the slightest criticism, and is of the opinion that he is owed "respect" by the other employees because of his seniority and experience. He keeps falling into the fallacy I saw best described in a meme online: "If you don't respect me for my position I won't respect you as a person." The other employees don't respect him because he is condescending and often rude. He's also very close to retirement (he'll be 60 next month), and over the past year especially he's been doing less and less of the regular day-to-day work, even though he has never been particularly gung-ho since I've worked with him, and his coworkers understandably find it very frustrating when they perceive him not pulling his weight. (I say "perceive" because the situation is a touch more complex than that, but still.) Every time I've had to give him feedback or do performance management with him over the past six months or so, he has pitched hissy fits that lasted for days, sometimes weeks. So my resistance to doing his year-end evaluation is 100% down to the fact that what I write will reflect his performance, which he is not going to like, and then I will have to deal with yet another tantrum. *sigh*

What I should do is do a "thought work" model (or ten) about this, in order to feel at least neutral about this whole thing. The basic principle of thought work that would apply here is that almost everything I said about him in the previous paragraph isn't a circumstance, or an objective truth of some sort, it's just a bunch of thoughts I have about him and his behaviour. So if I work on changing how I think about all of it, then I will feel less terrible about it, and if I feel less terrible about it I won't procrastinate to avoid the feelings I don't like. Maybe. Or possibly I won't feel less terrible about it, but it's also okay for it to feel terrible: I am not going to die if I write the evaluation while feeling terrible, after all. It will suck, and then it will be done.

Okay. Time for bed, I think. Tomorrow's plan is to get up early again and take Peggy for a walk before work. Then I will leave work ON TIME, DAMMIT, and take her for a run in the fields. Side note: it makes me laugh when I say "early" because after years of shift work and getting up at 4 am, it seems ridiculous to think of anything after 6 am as "early," but since I'm aiming for 6 am I think it's okay to qualify it as such. But yeah, I remember reading all sorts of articles about productivity, back in the day, and all of them would say ridiculous things like: "The most productive people are up early, so try getting up an hour before your usual time. Some people get up as early as 5 am!" and I would just lolsob because nothing on God's green earth will ever convince me to wake up at 3 am before a 12 hour shift in the name of "productivity."

 I'm still working on my thought work (lots of work in that sentence), and since today was not as good a day as yesterday, I'm reminding myself that just because things were a little meh doesn't mean that anything has gone wrong. I am just having the full human experience, which includes times that aren't all great.

I do have good news from yesterday, at least. I received a glowing evaluation from my Director. In truth, I have never received such a good evaluation in my entire life. He sang my praises and then some! I am still a sucker for external validation, so it was very nice to read. I also got confirmation that I will be getting appointed to the Acting Sergeant position I asked for back in February, and that it will be effective quite soon (exact date TBD). My manager is actually returning in September and not at the end of July the way I originally thought, so I won't be taking on the duties of the new position until then, but as soon as the transfer is done in the computer system I will be getting a nice little bump in salary, which will definitely not go amiss.

Today was a bit of an exercise in frustration. Yesterday I had a whole plan for getting the last of my employee evaluations done (I had two left), and of course the shared drive on which they're stored went down for half the day and scuttled those plans right quick. I got one done today, and then other stuff landed in my lap and I didn't get the other one done in time. I will have to get it done tomorrow, and that means it will be past due.

That being said, I looked over my day today, and I can see where things took a wrong turn. I ended up giving priority to something that, in retrospect, was not a priority. Not only that, but under different circumstances I could have delegated it. In this instance it's good I didn't, because the person I would have delegated it to demonstrated that he did NOT understand the possible risks and all the implications of the thing. Still, I am pleased about the indication that I am learning (albeit in hindsight) how to better prioritise and how to recognise what needs to be delegated. It's a process!

Anyway, time for bed. I have been getting to sleep around 11pm lately, and I want to scale that back to closer to 10:30 or even 10:00 if I can.

I got Peggy out for another run, and then took her to PetSmart for daycare for the day, so I could continue decluttering the upstairs without having to shut her in her crate. She hates being in the crate when I'm home, and I am none too thrilled about it either, but the whole point of decluttering the upstairs is to make it Peggy-proof so that she CAN have the run of the house. We are not there yet, alas.

The house is in much worse shape than I deluded myself into thinking it is. That is what happens when you basically ignore your housekeeping for years on end apart from doing the bare minimum. I did it to myself, so I can't complain. That being said, I am making good progress. I actually took apart the little fan on my night table and washed all the individual parts, because it had gotten so dusty that I couldn't just wipe it down. It was pretty gross. Now it is really white and clean and I can already feel the difference in the air quality, which is pretty exciting.

I've moved the dresser in my room, and the next step is to move my bed and my night table. I'm hoping that some judicious rearranging of the furniture will clear some space for me to set up a home office in here, so that I can clear the small room that is currently serving as my office in anticipation of when KK moves in. That little room is going to be turned into a combination library and cat refuge. I have my bookcases in there, and they're going to stay there (although I am planning to get rid of many of the books), but the desk and filing cabinet will come out and be replaced by cat trees and cat beds and the like. We're going to put up a baby gate to keep Peggy out, and that way my cats and KK's cat will have one safe place where they can always go that the dog can't.

I'm hoping there will be enough room in my bedroom for the mini office I have in mind. I think there will, but it may be something of a tight squeeze. I will know more later, I think, when I've had time to shift things around and consider them. There's a difference between knowing the measurements of furniture and actually having it in place--at least, that's been my experience. I'm sure some people are better able to intuit that sort of thing, but I'm the kind of person who has to live it to truly understand it.

Tonight is D&D night, and I still have to go get Peggy from daycare, so it's entirely possible I will have to wait until tomorrow to move the rest of the furniture. I was hoping to get it all done today, but I have consistently overestimated how much I can manage every single day this week, so I don't know why today should prove to be an exception to that rule. ;)

I also need to do some actual work tomorrow morning, by way of employee evaluations. I didn't get all of them done before I left, so I have to do it this week, and tomorrow is the most logical time to do it. Given that it's a D&D night, I am a little worried I won't be able to pry myself out of bed at a decent hour in the morning, and that it will throw off my day. I DID win the "I told you so" game today, however, because I woke up early AND took out the recycling and the compost, so I am feeling pretty chuffed about that. Maybe I can do it twice in a row! Stranger things have happened, after all.

On that note, it is time to go pick up the puppy. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

I'd say "stick a fork in me, I'm done," except I have lost count of the forks, at this point.

I forgot about a meeting I have tomorrow afternoon that requires a lot of time to prep, and now I have to mentally rearrange my morning in order to account for it, and just blech.

I still have five employee evaluations to do. Well, four and a half, I guess, since I've worked through one already (it's not finished). At least I've finished the really time sensitive one, and I'm almost completely through the two that require me to use the [expletive deleted] online portal that deletes everything you've written when you hit the "save" button if you've been logged in for more than five minutes (such a useful feature!). The rest I can all do on the blessed pdf forms that I can save whenever I damned well please and won't delete my information.

On that note, bedtime. I am really, really looking forward to my vacation next week. I am so tired.

 I know, we are all shocked, SHOCKED that I didn't get to the rest of the recycling this morning.

 I had an appointment this morning with my audiologist, but when I got there it turned out they had me booked for 4pm instead. They had an opening at exactly the time I got there, though, so they saw me then anyway. Thank goodness, because my day was already halfway shot by then, and having to go back would have really thrown everything else off.

I think I solved our scheduling problem--well, ONE of our scheduling problems--with a bit of creative thinking. Unfortunately, all the other attempts to fix our short-staffing issues by my current boss and others have fallen flat. As it turns out, no one wants to come work for us, not that I can blame them. The pay isn't great compared to what you can get elsewhere, and our scheduling needs are not what most people are looking for. So for now it looks like we won't be getting any part-timers. *sigh*

I put out a bunch of recycling to the curb tonight, but it's not all of it. I'm going to make an attempt to get up early to get the rest of it out tomorrow. Yes, we are playing the "I told you so" game again. Let's see if I win it this time! ;)

I got nothing done out of what I had planned, but I procrastinated in a productive way, so I am taking the win! I completely cleaned out my refrigerator and scrubbed it to within an inch of its life. It was very overdue, and now it is super white and pretty and nothing in it is expired or going bad or developing sentience.

I also washed a bunch of dishes, scrubbed the sink, and wiped down the kitchen cabinets.

I am very pleased, tbh. I slept SUPER badly last night, and dragged myself out of bed quite late this morning, and I kind of worried that I wouldn't get anything done at all, so this is definitely going in the "win" column.

I'm not sure why I slept so poorly. I kind of pushed myself to stay up instead of napping, and maybe I pushed over into overtired. Either way, I was pretty restless, and I woke up around 2am and actually worried about work? Specifically a scheduling issue combined with the fact that we're now super short-staffed. I was half-asleep the whole time, and kind of dreamed that I talked through the issue with some co-workers, and we came up with a solution in my dreams! A solution which I think can actually be applied IRL and wasn't just the result of dream logic (thank goodness). Unfortunately since I didn't actually talk to anyone I now have to talk to them and get everyone's buy-in, but I think it can work. I have rarely been the kind of person who lies awake at night and worries about work, so I hope this isn't going to be a new trend.

I am heading to bed soonish. Daylight Savings Time starts tonight, and I am NOT looking forward to losing that hour of sleep. I don't know why we've kept that ridiculous practice going. There's very little evidence to suggest it saves on energy, and the week after DST kicks in the number of accidents skyrockets because the whole population is jet-lagged. *grumblemutter*

Tomorrow I will make another attempt at getting errands run and some of the chores I had originally planned done. Tally ho!