So it’s been a month since I posted anything here. Had to go back and read a few posts to see what’s happened. In spite of the huge number of faithful followers, that’s really the reason I type into these things: so I can remind *myself* of what happens in my life.
The featured image for today, if I can ever get it edited enough to upload, is of the boys (Chamberlain and Joshua) being boys – a week after their first birthday. I’d given them a couple of plastic tubes filled with catnip (or maybe Jenny gave them those), and they were having a blast with them. I still stumble upon those toys occasionally, so I guess they still enjoy them today – a week past their third birthday. It’s really hard to believe that it’s only been about two and a half years since they came home. Seems like a lifetime ago. I guess that, in many ways, it has been.
The job, while still failing to make me leap out of bed in eager anticipation, is becoming more of something that I do without actually despising it. I’m closing 6-8 tickets a day, have actually started using the phone (instead of trying to do everything via email, which is incredibly difficult), and have settled into a quasi routine of getting up earlier (5:15), taking a short walk, forgoing any “rest time” in the morning, and hitting the road by 6:30. That gets me to work at around 7:00 – traffic is just starting to ramp up at that time. I’ve discovered that, for every 5 minutes that I dawdle, my commute time increases by 5 minutes. So if I leave at 7:00, it takes an hour.
My 30-minute commute normally includes a stop at McD’s, where I get two biscuits and a cup of coffee. One biscuit is eaten during the drive. The other serves as my late-morning snack. Lunch no longer occurs, though I’ll sometimes eat a pack of crackers at my desk in the afternoon. By skipping lunch, I can leave the office between 3:00 and 3:30, making my drive home take anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes – much much much faster than I’d be able to do it if I were to leave at 4:00 or 5:00.
There are still things that bug me about the gig. Oddly, the work itself is not one of them. I’ve gotten along pretty well with the clients that I’ve helped, and I’m learning some of the quirks and tricks of working in a cloud-first environment. The kids working there, though….it’s jarring at times. True story: nearly everyone has their own Nerf gun, which shoots little Nerf darts; and at any given time, there are darts whizzing around the office. This activity includes not only the level 1 consultants like myself, but also the managers, level 2’s, project people, engineers…I think the only three people who DON’T indulge in this behavior are the CEO, the receptionist, and myself – though I’ve been known to get ticked off and simply throw an errant dart back at a shooter by hand.
Turns out, I’m still a pretty good dart thrower.
For people who are out of Nerf bullets, there is also a huge ball of blue rubber bands. I don’t know where this came from, but it’s literally bigger than a soccer ball, bounces like a super ball, and weighs about 30 pounds. I’ve dribbled it a few times, and it’s like playing basketball with a medicine ball.
Lots of “balls” in that paragraph. Please keep your tittering to a minimum.
At any rate, the children in the office regularly take rubber bands from the ball and shoot THEM around the office when they’re out of Nerfies. At the end of each day, I dutifully collect the 8 or 9 bands that have managed to collect on and around my desk and return them to a central location. To their credit, the other people in the office appear to pick up those toys on a daily basis and put them back on the mother ball. It has not shrunk since the day I started.
Regarding the desk (and the phone): THAT’S another problem that I’m working through. Not since the mid-90’s have I been stuck at a desk all day. Starting with my consulting gig at Compaid, I’ve always been able to combine working at my computer with other activities, from crawling under desks (or floors) to climbing ladders to running cable to walking around doing physical inventories. Sitting for so long at my advanced age has led to a few, shall we say, delicate annoyances. To be a tad more indelicate….hemorrhoids and testicular zits.
Oh sure. You have your laughs. Just discount my suffering.
While I can’t completely get away from sitting at my workstation, I did buy a new set of wireless headphones yesterday that will at least allow me to stand up when I’m on the phone. The headset that the company provided has about a three-foot cord that doesn’t allow much movement. Most of the people in the office have opted, as have I, to purchase their own gaming headsets and gain some mobility. I do not in any way fault the company for this. Good headsets aren’t cheap, and The X Company provides a lot of perks that, frankly, I am not used to seeing. Free drinks. Free snacks. And, as I pointed out earlier, a pretty loose working schedule. Seriously, though, I’ve got probably 20 years on the next-oldest person in the office, and my body can’t deal with sitting down for 8-9 hours at a stretch every damned day. I do take a couple of 10-minute walks around the outside of the building each day, but that doesn’t really undo the damage that’s being done to my lower anatomy.
I did indeed receive my severance check from AT&T in mid-February, which was nice. As expected, I got raped in taxes, but it came in in time for me to pay my mortgage and car payment, which I couldn’t have done with my first paycheck from The X Company. Now having received my second, I should be back on track to be able to pay all of the bills going forward – having also reworked my budget.
Not eating lunches is helping.
Also helping is the fact that Mary (and Princess) completed their move in on Saturday (Feb 25th), and I’ve received her first month’s rent. The first few days were a bit hectic. Mary is a weepy thing and there were scheduling problems with her movers, so she was not a joy to be around. Adding to the stress was the fact that, due to our schedules, we really couldn’t let the cats run around freely. Princess was ensconced in the second guestroom for a couple of days while Mary moved things in and out. I locked my guys in my room on Tuesday, with a bit of shelving covering the cat hole in my door, so that Princess could run around the house and, if she chose to, sniff noses with my kids while Mary and I were both at work.
Got a text from Mary in mid-afternoon Tuesday asking me if I’d been home, because all of the cats were running around the house. Turns out that my three had managed to work together long enough to break from their shackles and escape. No bloodshed that we could find. Josh and Chamberlain have been getting along fine with Princess (who is TINY. 6 pounds soaking wet), but Boo still has reservations, as I assumed she would. Princess herself appears to be the instigator of most of the stress. I know it’s all new for her, but she’s a weird little thing. She’ll let me pet her and purr and be a happy cat for about 30 seconds. Then she’ll start hissing and taking swipes at me. She appears to do the same thing with the boys – though they could care less. Boo just avoids her. Truth be told, I think Princess is grandstanding a bit. When she thinks that no human is looking, she’s perfectly fine hanging out with J or C; but as soon as she catches one of us in the corner of her eye, she hisses and runs away from whichever cat has been hanging out with her.
She’ll get over it eventually, I’m sure.
On the music scene: I’ve got a concert with the Gwinnett Symphony Wind Orchestra this afternoon. Not quite as ambitious as the four we had last year – I think Dr. Wubbenhorst is beginning to realize that he’s not directing a bunch of A-listers at this point – but some pretty nice stuff. While not incredibly musically satisfying for me, it does give me a chance to dust of the tuba chops, which is nice. Next weekend, the GBB will be performing at Kennesaw State’s Brass Blast for the third or fourth time. That’s going to be a concert comprised of movie themes, and it should be pretty good. The GBB is also finalizing plans for a mini-tour in May, during which we’ll be presenting concerts at Jacksonville State (Alabama), Huntsville, AL, and Chattanooga; and then we’ll return to Roswell, GA, for a ticketed event that, I think, closes out the season. The board is considering taking the band to the Gettysburg Brass Festival in 2018, which would be a blast.
Always assuming that I can get time off from work, of course.
I’d hoped to go to the woods with Brett this weekend or next, having completely forgotten about the concerts. Maybe we can do it in two weeks instead. I really need some woods time.
Having received the severance check, and in anticipation of getting my final bonus check from AT&T sometime this month, I’ve re-opened my negotiations with my landscaper buddy, and he and his crew have started mauling the growth in the lower forty. He came out last week and decimated a row of privet that has been the bane of my existence since buying the house, and within the next few weeks they’re also going to take down all but two trees back there, clear out all the brush, take down the two trees by my chimney (and the hideous little bush that I’ve always hated…I can’t remember what it’s called), and, later in the year, help me get grass growing in the lower forty again. It should transform the place and I’m looking forward to getting it done. At some point, after the initial tree harvesting is done, I’ll also get Chamblee Fence back there to replace the existing, decrepit, fence. Not going to be cheap, but it’s got to be done and should more than pay for itself in increased property value should I ever get nerve enough to put the house on the market and hit the road.
Oh! I also got a thing from AT&T last week about a pension fund that I didn’t know I had. So there’s an extra $100K available to me at some point. Herb thinks I should roll it, and my 401, into a Roth. I’m like, “Do you really think I’m going to live long enough to take advantage of that?”
I guess I’ve probably bored everyone enough for one morning, and I think I covered pretty much everything of substance for the last month, so I’ll wrap things up here with a shout-out to the one who gave me life. Yesterday marked 7 years since Mom moved on, and it was the first March 4th since 2010 that I actually didn’t think about it until I saw Facebook posts from Dianne and Dad. It’s not that I don’t miss her – I do think about her fairly often, particularly when I’m feeling lonely or frustrated and just want somebody to cry to – but I’m sure she’d be happy that I’m far enough along to – nearly – pass that anniversary without thinking about it.
One thing I’ll always wonder, though: What would she have thought about Trump? You and I might have to discuss that at some point, Dad.
