Musings on a Small Life

Yesterday my boss asked me to schedule a 1-hour Teams meeting with six "top" people in various departments. It's been a long time since I've had to do this, thank goodness, and it was a struggle to find a time to meet with all the their admin staff...just so we all can find a time for the actual meeting. (Nine days. Nine days to find a time to meet with all the admins.) 🙄  This is what work has come to! Anyway, if I haven't been around to your blog to leave a comment lately, I'm not ignoring you, I'm mired in work, thanks to a massive process failure on the part of another department. I'm grateful for my sweet Derry-Bear; I'm not sure I'd stay sane (haha, no comments on that !) without him! ♥

I was awake around 2:15 AM today, thinking specifically about about our "return" to campus in the fall. My thinking has flipped from going in 1 or 2 days a week to working from home 100% and going in only for a bi-weekly collaboration day, or any other time that I feel like it, if there is a "hotel" desk and computer I can book. All five of the staff seem to be on the same page, and our Exec Director is trying to work out the kinks to make that happen. I don't know how she'll manage that, but that's why she gets paid the big bucks. So I was lying in bed in the wee hours, trying to picture in my mind what personal possessions I still have left in my cubicle. I realized I have more than I thought and will need a couple of boxes to bring the remaining items home. Maybe a third box if I'm bringing binders or other files, desk organizers, etc. (My boss kindly will play chauffeur when she's back on campus.) And I admittedly felt a bit sad, because I ac...

I spied these mushrooms this morning, while heading out on a couple of errands. It's been so wet that there were almost as many as there were blades of ground cover (whatever the city has planted along that path). They look so delicate and pretty to me that they reminded me of parasols. I don't know what's growing on the side of the hill created by the still-new overpass, but it's pretty to see. I was half-way along the path before I even noticed the grey of the fungi along with the green of the new ground cover. (Not visible in the pic above, obviously.) Last Sunday or Monday night we had an intense thunderstorm, the likes of which I haven't seen in the city in a few years or more. We got 53 mm of rain in a very short time, which was crazy. However, late last week we had another deluge, and when I got up in the morning I did find a few small pools of water in the (unfinished) basement. They were under and near one of the litterboxes and even though Derry had peed I...

I thought I was just buying a little hand vac, but it appears that I was buying a kitty shark too.  :-)  "Pet Perfect?" He probably would say so. Now, if he'd actually use the hand vac to clean up after himself, then maybe I'd think he was "pet perfect" as well. I found this at Walmart early this morning, last one on the shelf. I love my full-sized (but very heavy) Shark vacuum, just wanted something easier to manage for quick pick-ups. I've already tried it out upstairs, on both carpet and bare floor, and it seems to work well. I've had a couple of different hand vacuums over the years, and not liked them (different brand and not cordless), so I hope this will do the job of picking up stray litter and cat hair in between regular vacuuming. Derry : C'mon, just let me sleep, lady. As for this past week, it seems to have passed in blur. I helped our boss decorate the office--last weekend I'd bought pretty garland and a ...

The sun this morning, fuzzy but still amazing The revolving door isn't in our office today; we just got notice that another AVP has left suddenly, effective this past Wednesday. No idea whether that was voluntary or involuntary. I knew the person to say hi and make idle chitchat; some years ago that person and their staff shared this suite with us. Gees, it's a revolving door around this organization. Oh, I knew there was something I meant to post yesterday but forgot about, which is rather appropriate given what happened. I keep a reusable water bottle by my bedside at night, as I take meds first thing in the morning when I wake up. On Wednesday morning I woke, no water bottle. No big deal, I realized I had left it on the bathroom counter, where it sits (empty and drying out) during the days. So I got up and shuffled to the bathroom, found the water bottle, but no lid. No lid anywhere, in fact. No lid stored in the bathroom cabinet, or under the vanity s...

A lot was packed into last week: our former director's official retirement on the 23rd, plus an informal get-together on the 27th after work at a downtown pub (just his immediate staff and our new director), two hours in the dentist's chair for me last Tuesday, getting a temporary crown (I don't freeze properly, it took a lot of needles), plus a doctor's appointment last Thursday. The work week in itself was emotionally exhausting, and I was very surprised, when I got home on Friday, to have a sudden outpouring of anger over how things had gone over the past six+ years since our department merged with the other. I guess that, subconsciously, I wouldn't allow myself to experience the depth of emotion while he still was here. And in the end, he's human, he did the best he could under the circumstances, and I know this intellectually. However, I think it will take a bit of time for me process my negative emotions and forgive my former boss, to make peace wit...

Nothing to do with horse racing, or even cats, in fact. It's "down the stretch they come" for our outgoing director, and for this part of our work lives for us all. One more week and he retires, his last day is the 27th. Monday the 23rd is his work retirement reception and his staff (us) have done their best to prepare a little speech and presentation. Three of the four of us (the women) have spent the week running around gift-buying too, with the funds collected, and coordinating decorations, etc. Funny (no, it's frustrating ) how that seems to fall into the domain of those with more estrogen. Estrogen in theory, because let's face, there's not a lot of estrogen left at our end! We'll do something private, within just our sub-group, on his last day.  Craft beer at a pub sounds about right.  Wherever did 17.5 years of our lives go? For me, most of it has been spent treading water (or trying to). Strange how life waits for no one, how life ...

OMG, I'm so far out of the loop when it comes to technology today. My new director (two full weeks now, into her third) asked me earlier today if I could build a web interface that would feed the (excessively) complicated calculations needed for all the university budget projections, etc. I could barely grasp what she was asking me...and the answer was no, that's way over my head! She mentioned a software program and after she left I had to Google it...it's a platform for coding apps, games, web sites, etc. Completely Greek to me, not a clue. (I'm checking with our IT department, though, to see what, if any, options we might have.) Then I had someone apply for a survey platform account (the university has a license with a third-party for a product which is used to create and deploy surveys), and on the application, under the source of the data sample, he had listed " Mechanical Turk ." Huh?! I had to Google that too, to find out what it was. Who kne...

It's been really busy this past week, work-wise, and as my mind is scattered, this post will be a medley of pics and updates. Aren't the baby cones neat? I snapped this last week while waiting for my bus. First, I can hardly believe we've already got the first week of June under our belts. Soon the Solstice will be here, after which we'll start losing daylight again and start the too-quick slide into fall and...shudder...winter. I try hard not think about that very often -- lol! Evening sky snapped from one of my upstairs windows. Second, my "big" boss asked to speak with me last Wednesday afternoon. She never asks to speak with me, I'm sure you can imagine my trepidation. Anyhow, it turned out that there will be some changes/additions in the office that will allow me to drop the extra admin work that was added onto to my role about six years ago when we all merged, and which will permit me to focus on my project work, with 100% of my time...