The Day that Wouldn't End
Normally I wouldn't go into this much detail of a single day, but this one seemed particularly convoluted and calls for a handy points system just because it seemed like the thing to do. Although, really, the points don't even matter (just like Drew's ab machine).
Anyway, I think this is going to be the longest post I've ever done, and I won't feel badly if you don't even read it, but my day was so very very long that I felt the need to create something equally as long in order to somehow validate it. So here goes.
6:00 AM:
-1 point - alarm clock goes off
6:04 - 6:40 AM:
-10 points - snoozes #1-10 go off
6: 41 AM:
+1 point - hold onto consciousness long enough to remain out of bed
-3 points - regret staying up until 12:30 just to catch up with Izzy, Meredith, Christina, George and Alex. They're not a very good example anyway, but surprisingly hard to ignore.
+4 points - pat self on back for managing to get up "early" for big day at work
6:45 AM:
+5 points - plenty of time to prepare yummy breakfast of apple w/ peanut butter, and an English muffin
+5 points - catch up on friends' blogs while munching
+2 points - take geography quiz (I like quizzes and puzzles!) discovered on a friend of a friend's site
-1 point - not so stellar results. Seriously, Bahrain? At least I got half of the "-stan's" right the first time around.
+8 points - check out the other quizzes and take the Brain Train; the Idiot Test for Professionals (I only got #3 right); the Like Better picture thingy, which didn't really work all that well, but it was probably 60% right in its guesses; the Intelligence Test, Part 4 (and subsequently sections 1-3 which took a little while to get to), which was my favorite even though I still didn't get them all.
8:40 AM:
-20 points - my puzzle-enjoying brain finally shook loose and looked at the time on my computer, and the whole earlier pat on the back for getting up early, having breakfast and intending to get into work early turned into good breakfast that took 5-10 minutes to eat but led to two hours of distraction in playing on the internet. So much for getting to work early.
-1 point - still have to be in to work as soon as I can manage, so have to do the fast version of getting ready instead of getting to enjoy a leisurely hot shower
-1 point - went with a ponytail just to get out of my apartment faster. Hate those days. Especially since they happen all too often. Nothing says "Hello, I'm a divisional data analyst for one of the top financial institutions in the country" quite like a ponytail and jeans on a Friday.
9:10 AM:
+1 point - made it out the door after only 30 minutes
+1 point - traffic was flowing fine and the morning show people were telling really funny relationship jokes
9:35 AM:
+1 point - got to work with 25 minutes to spare before the 2+ hour web-conference starts that I have to host. I don't have to actually present, but I have to do the technical support and switch between presenters and cues on screen and such
-3 points - have to re-upload the set of presentations to the online tool thingy that we use to display things (trust me, you don't want the full description) because one of the guys didn't seem to realize he needed to have one ahead of time, so he sent it late last night
+1 point - since I had to redo the whole thing anyway, I was able to do a favor for another person and fix a little glitch in the presentation she had sent me the day before and just upload them all at the same time
-2 points - because I hadn't gotten into the office at 8 like I had planned, I was now less than 10 minutes from the start of the meeting and people had already started logging into the online thingy, so I couldn't add them the nice, pretty way and had to just dump them on the end of what was already uploaded so it looked like all 5 people's presentations were duplicated. Hopefully I skimmed right by that part when we started the call and nobody noticed that we started the presentations a full half way down what was available. Hmm, maybe this deserves more negative points since it took so long to explain, but the morning was going so fast that I didn't have time for it to faze me more
+3 points - got my daily morning reports sent out while the first presenter was going through her section. Theoretically we weren't supposed to multitask, but I wasn't really an attendee, I was more of a technical consultant, so I chose to ignore that particular guideline, even though I was emailing the reports out to a distribution list that included most of the attendees and they'd totally know I was multitasking. Oh well, they needed to be sent and are generally time sensitive so they couldn't wait hours for the call to be done.
-10 points - I had meant to get into the office 2 hours before the call and work on some staffing analysis that was due later in the afternoon, but because I was so late I didn't get to start my "big report" at all, and it's really involved so I couldn't multitask and try to get it done during the conference call
12:30 PM:
-5 points - the call went over (do conference calls ever end on time??)
+3 points - got a call from my boss saying the calls went well and thanking me for taking care of the online things at the last minute (it was originally going to be a face to face meeting in Maryland and this was a viable alternative when they were looking to cut substantial costs)
-6 points - had to tell my boss I hadn't made any progress on my "big report", which he needed to use in something he had to submit that afternoon, but told him I'd touch base with him as I got sections done.
+4 points - FINALLY got started on the "big report"
2:08 PM:
-3 points - realized I never stopped to get lunch
-3 points - realized I was 8 minutes late for another analysis call, and this was one my boss was holding and there were only 3 of us attending so it would be so very apparent that I was late
+3 points - my boss is cool and we both knew that the other report I was working on was a higher priority, so even though I called in late, he didn't make a big deal
+5 points - the call was scheduled for an hour but only took 20 minutes so I got more time back in my afternoon to work on the "big report"
3:45 PM:
-1 point - someone stopped by my desk to ask a question, which I normally am very happy to take time to answer, but I was still working on my "big report" and had another call in 15 minutes that I couldn't avoid
+1 point - easy answer!
+10 points - he brought me a Nestle's Crunch ice cream bar from their team meeting since I helped him so quickly. Yum! (Pshaw, who needs lunch?!?!)
4:01 PM:
-1 point - was almost late for my last call of the day, but a co-worker reminded me just in time
+5 points - it was a good call and should be helpful for those of us in similar jobs across the country to leverage each others' abilities and not do so many redundant tasks
-10 points - lost an hour in working on my "big report" and only got 1.5 sections of it sent ahead to my boss, as I finished them
5:30-ish PM:
+/-3 points - can't decide if this one's good or bad. Still hadn't had anything substantial to eat, so I had the last 7 M&M's in my friend Maria's candy dish. They didn't cut it. BUT...
+/-7 points - the manager of the big department that sits across the hall from me was there and when we talked about missing lunch, she brought me back another ice cream bar. Yummy! Started feeling the sugar though...
-15 points - ...and yet, once you start on a sugar high, it's hard to stop feeding it, and I certainly hadn't had anything substantial since breakfast, and the Dunkin' Donuts from the team next to us looked SO good...they even had a chocolate covered one, although it was just the white cream filling, not the custard filling, but (shocker...) that didn't stop me...
-10 points - ...from having two. Ok, done with the sugar now.
6:00-ish PM:
-20 points - I have been stuck on one section of this stupid report for so long, it just keeps blending together and I can't figure out why it won't foot to itself (based on the 5 other reports I had to pull in and match up for all the different areas). My poor brain is talking to itself in a Yiddish voice saying "Oy vey, you give me two ice cream bars and two donuts and look what you're expecting from me!"
6:15 PM
-3 points - talk to my boss again and have to tell him I'm not done with the rest of the report
+3 points - he had to send in his report anyway and we thought the numbers would be pretty close, so he wasn't all that worried about it. He told me not to stay too late and I said I thought I could get out of there by 7. He seemed to think I should do what I could but that we could revisit it Monday too.
7:00 PM
- 5 points - Huh. Still stuck on that one part that won't foot out and for the LIFE of me I couldn't figure out why the calculations wouldn't work, or who was being listed incorrectly because everything was just going in circles. Guess I should move on and come back to this.
8:40 PM
+7 points - got most of the rest of the areas of the report done
-5 points - hit another area that had a similar problem as the other one I got stuck on, so I tried to find similarities.
-5 points - And tried.
-5 points - And re-tried.
-5 points - Changed my calculations.
-5 points - Manually matched up names. Ready to crumple the whole thing...
+15 points - yay!!! Figured out what was wrong with the first section
-5 points - that solution didn't work for the second section, so I still don't know what's wrong with it
-5 points - repeat calculation validation
-5 points - repeat manually matching up names
-5 points - clear that section of the report and start from the first step
-15 points - smack self in head when the 1st step was what I had overlooked and it still carried the number from the previous month. No wonder I couldn't get any of the following steps to work out.
9:30 PM:
+40 points - thank goodness I'm finally done with this report and it foots out to all of the various inputs and outputs that make this such a challenging analysis in the first place. One last little thing to do is match it up to the related report my boss submitted earlier today so that I just have the few differences highlighted and all ready to discuss on Monday. Because we all know that it wouldn't work for me to try to get in early next week and prep it then. Should take under 20 minutes
10:15 PM:
-15 points - dratted report. Had to add another calculation section to my other report, just to make it match up to this one, and then there were changes to almost ever area's upcoming staffing activities, so
-15 points - remember that first area that I went over and over for hours on my "big report" and couldn't find out what was wrong with it but finally got all the little calculations and exceptions to work out? Yeah. It doesn't match up with what my boss' report says and again, for the LIFE of me, I can't find out why. Going to mark this as an exception and just deal with next week because it'll just send me over the edge if I try again tonight.
10:45 PM:
+35 points - finally got the comparison of my "big report" and my boss' related report done, and with the exception of that little bitty discrepancy in the 1 area, the whole shebang matches up, down, left, right, diagonal, circular, introverted, 3-dimensionally and 6th-sensically. Stick a fork in it because it is as done as it's gonna get.
11:05 PM
+5 points - wrapped it all up in a pretty bow and emailed it to my boss. I never know what people think when they get really late emails from me at work. Most of me hopes they don't even notice the time because I don't want them feeling bad for me staying late. On one hand, yeah, I put a lot of work into it, and on the other hand, I simply can't resist a puzzle, and I couldn't have walked away from it without being bothered the whole weekend that I hadn't figured it out already.
11:10 PM:
+5 points - finally close down my desk for the day and head out the door. So much for leaving at 7. Ha!
+2 points - when I leave work late, I always try to be on my cell phone as I'm walking to my car. I know it's a weak deterrent in the event there were some Freddy Krueger-ish stalker hanging around outside the door, just waiting for the occupant of the lone car in the middle of the parking lot to exit the building. But it's some comfort at least, and I call my brother Rob at work since he gets into the office really early, and he's in the security business so if I blurted out a quick license plate number or suspect description before being abducted, at least he knows police channels and what to do to send the cavalry. Hours later. But hey, it's something.
-5 points - after the phone rang several more times than it usually does, I realized I had called my brother on his cell phone at what would be after 10 his time, and he and the wifey usually go to bed rather early since they get up so early (foreign concept to me--I'd SO much rather have it the other way around!!). Oops! I immediately hang up and hold my breath to see if he calls me back, worried about why I called his cell so late
+3 points - no call back, so maybe I didn't wake him. Called his work number and got his voicemail reminding me he took a day off. This gets better because it probably means he didn't go to bed early but is doing online gaming downstairs and didn't hear his cell phone go off upstairs and hopefully has an end game of me not having disturbed him accidentally. I'm sure I'll find out eventually.
11:25 PM
+2 points - so... dinner. Definitely don't want to go home and make something at this hour, so that leaves drive thru, and my late-night choice is always Taco Bell because they have Mt. Dew. And nachos. Yummy, crispy, gooey, delicious goodness all piled on top of itself.
+2 points - I get the portion-conscious version titled Nachos Supreme
+2 points - I get only a small Mt. Dew so I enjoy what I have but don't slurp down 32 oz. of aggrandized sugar water (plus caffeine, of course. wish it did something for me.)
-4 points - Who am I kidding--I'm eating at Taco Bell! Just the nacho cheese and the fact that I'm having pop cancels out any size selections I make. (I'm counting the sour cream as a wash, since I haven't had my dairy serving for the day, and it's important to maintain a proper food pyramid. Oh, wait. 2 ice cream bars. Pretty sure there's dairy in there somewhere.)
-10 points - as I pause in the drive thru line, it occurs to me that a conversation I had 3 days ago didn't mean what I thought it had. Considered knocking my forehead on my steering wheel to gain some sort of satisfaction (where are the M. Python monks with their perfect little wooden boards when you need them?) but decided against it, as I was drawing near to the serving window. As for the conversation that finally caught up with me, it was related to my Saturday plans. Our church is having a Family Fun Day, for which I'm not signed up for anything because I didn't attend the Thursday night planning meetings, and I never really saw any flyers or anything, so I don't even know what they're going to have there, but my friend Jennifer is manning the kiddie jumping room and I'm going to hang out with her. So the conversational confusion came in the realm that she mentioned we'd hang out for dinner. I still can't be completely certain whether she meant dinner as in supper or dinner as in lunch, but I only use dinner in the supper sense, unless it's a Big Deal meal, like Thanksgiving Dinner or Christmas Dinner, and those are lunchtime. So I assumed she meant we were hanging out not only from the 11-2 F.F.D. time, but suddenly it extended another 3 hours minimum. Not that I had a problem with that, and when she said it, I thought maybe I had misunderstood the "hanging out" conversation we'd had on Sunday, so I played along, so cleverly thinking quickly (or so I thought) and continued the conversation as if I'd known all along. Took me 3 days to remember that people use dinner in multiple contexts and we would be hanging out over lunch/dinner so supper/dinner wasn't necessarily even involved. Who knows. I certainly don't. Guess I"ll "cleverly" play it by ear tomorrow. Should be fun.
11:45 PM
+5 points - Ahh, there's no place like home. And finally some semi-legitimate food, since breakfast.
+15 points - start typing up a blog. It's really been a while, but I resolve to resolve that. Surely it will only take 15-20 minutes to blurt out the items of my day for all to see. There were so many ups and downs, it would be funny to add points to show my level of frustration. Not that they really matter. Hey, that's reminiscent of Whose Line. I should find a quote from one of the intros that isn't too obscure but also not too crude as to offend. Should only take 5-10 minutes (I have such a good sense of time management)
1:45 AM
+10 points - laughed a lot at all the hundreds of quotes I found from the show, and of course read through them all, even if they were duplicated on websites
-2 points - didn't really find any good ones to refer to, so had to start blog with a mildly lame one, which may or may not be clear to fans at the beginning, but if they make it this far, they're REALLY bored and will at least know what I was talking about at the beginning.
3:00 AM
+25 points - FINALLY pretty much done with itemizing my day and will now finally bring my meanderings to a close
+5 points - :o) :o) Just imagining the cheers of readers at the idea of this ending
-15 points - whoops. Kinda needed to do laundry before tomorrow, but it's too late now and I don't want to disturb the little old lady that lives below me. Actually, it's been about a year since I've seen her (we're not a close-knit community in this apartment complex. I see my neighbors maybe once a week, and I use the term neighbors loosely to include anyone in my building), so maybe it's not even a little old lady down there anymore. Who knows...
-25 points - ...now I'll have to set my alarm for 7 to try to get some laundry going before I have to be at church by 10. We'll see how well that goes. If today was any indication, I'll wake up at 9:20 after not even hearing my alarm, panic to get ready in 20 minutes, have to wear the wrinkly pair of jeans that's still in the dryer from the other day and that are too big but I haven't gotten around to buying more that fit, so they'll just have to do. Perhaps by reiterating the undesirable aspects of that scenario here, it will stick in my unconscious brain enough to jar me from sleep when my alarm goes off in 4 hours. Again, we'll see how well that goes.
Ahh, the sprinklers outside in my apartment complex just started up. I know it's a late night when I hear them start up.
Adieu to anyone who has made it this far and actually read all my ups and downs detailed above. It is now 3:30 AM, but I needed all that time for my brain to decompress from the innumerable hours of calculation tracking/validating/blah blah blah. Thank you for sharing my day and commiserating with my frustrations and ecstatic exclamations. You're a trooper!
What of the points, you say? I don't have the volition to make myself sum them up, so we'll call it a draw.
Anyway, I think this is going to be the longest post I've ever done, and I won't feel badly if you don't even read it, but my day was so very very long that I felt the need to create something equally as long in order to somehow validate it. So here goes.
6:00 AM:
-1 point - alarm clock goes off
6:04 - 6:40 AM:
-10 points - snoozes #1-10 go off
6: 41 AM:
+1 point - hold onto consciousness long enough to remain out of bed
-3 points - regret staying up until 12:30 just to catch up with Izzy, Meredith, Christina, George and Alex. They're not a very good example anyway, but surprisingly hard to ignore.
+4 points - pat self on back for managing to get up "early" for big day at work
6:45 AM:
+5 points - plenty of time to prepare yummy breakfast of apple w/ peanut butter, and an English muffin
+5 points - catch up on friends' blogs while munching
+2 points - take geography quiz (I like quizzes and puzzles!) discovered on a friend of a friend's site
-1 point - not so stellar results. Seriously, Bahrain? At least I got half of the "-stan's" right the first time around.
+8 points - check out the other quizzes and take the Brain Train; the Idiot Test for Professionals (I only got #3 right); the Like Better picture thingy, which didn't really work all that well, but it was probably 60% right in its guesses; the Intelligence Test, Part 4 (and subsequently sections 1-3 which took a little while to get to), which was my favorite even though I still didn't get them all.
8:40 AM:
-20 points - my puzzle-enjoying brain finally shook loose and looked at the time on my computer, and the whole earlier pat on the back for getting up early, having breakfast and intending to get into work early turned into good breakfast that took 5-10 minutes to eat but led to two hours of distraction in playing on the internet. So much for getting to work early.
-1 point - still have to be in to work as soon as I can manage, so have to do the fast version of getting ready instead of getting to enjoy a leisurely hot shower
-1 point - went with a ponytail just to get out of my apartment faster. Hate those days. Especially since they happen all too often. Nothing says "Hello, I'm a divisional data analyst for one of the top financial institutions in the country" quite like a ponytail and jeans on a Friday.
9:10 AM:
+1 point - made it out the door after only 30 minutes
+1 point - traffic was flowing fine and the morning show people were telling really funny relationship jokes
9:35 AM:
+1 point - got to work with 25 minutes to spare before the 2+ hour web-conference starts that I have to host. I don't have to actually present, but I have to do the technical support and switch between presenters and cues on screen and such
-3 points - have to re-upload the set of presentations to the online tool thingy that we use to display things (trust me, you don't want the full description) because one of the guys didn't seem to realize he needed to have one ahead of time, so he sent it late last night
+1 point - since I had to redo the whole thing anyway, I was able to do a favor for another person and fix a little glitch in the presentation she had sent me the day before and just upload them all at the same time
-2 points - because I hadn't gotten into the office at 8 like I had planned, I was now less than 10 minutes from the start of the meeting and people had already started logging into the online thingy, so I couldn't add them the nice, pretty way and had to just dump them on the end of what was already uploaded so it looked like all 5 people's presentations were duplicated. Hopefully I skimmed right by that part when we started the call and nobody noticed that we started the presentations a full half way down what was available. Hmm, maybe this deserves more negative points since it took so long to explain, but the morning was going so fast that I didn't have time for it to faze me more
+3 points - got my daily morning reports sent out while the first presenter was going through her section. Theoretically we weren't supposed to multitask, but I wasn't really an attendee, I was more of a technical consultant, so I chose to ignore that particular guideline, even though I was emailing the reports out to a distribution list that included most of the attendees and they'd totally know I was multitasking. Oh well, they needed to be sent and are generally time sensitive so they couldn't wait hours for the call to be done.
-10 points - I had meant to get into the office 2 hours before the call and work on some staffing analysis that was due later in the afternoon, but because I was so late I didn't get to start my "big report" at all, and it's really involved so I couldn't multitask and try to get it done during the conference call
12:30 PM:
-5 points - the call went over (do conference calls ever end on time??)
+3 points - got a call from my boss saying the calls went well and thanking me for taking care of the online things at the last minute (it was originally going to be a face to face meeting in Maryland and this was a viable alternative when they were looking to cut substantial costs)
-6 points - had to tell my boss I hadn't made any progress on my "big report", which he needed to use in something he had to submit that afternoon, but told him I'd touch base with him as I got sections done.
+4 points - FINALLY got started on the "big report"
2:08 PM:
-3 points - realized I never stopped to get lunch
-3 points - realized I was 8 minutes late for another analysis call, and this was one my boss was holding and there were only 3 of us attending so it would be so very apparent that I was late
+3 points - my boss is cool and we both knew that the other report I was working on was a higher priority, so even though I called in late, he didn't make a big deal
+5 points - the call was scheduled for an hour but only took 20 minutes so I got more time back in my afternoon to work on the "big report"
3:45 PM:
-1 point - someone stopped by my desk to ask a question, which I normally am very happy to take time to answer, but I was still working on my "big report" and had another call in 15 minutes that I couldn't avoid
+1 point - easy answer!
+10 points - he brought me a Nestle's Crunch ice cream bar from their team meeting since I helped him so quickly. Yum! (Pshaw, who needs lunch?!?!)
4:01 PM:
-1 point - was almost late for my last call of the day, but a co-worker reminded me just in time
+5 points - it was a good call and should be helpful for those of us in similar jobs across the country to leverage each others' abilities and not do so many redundant tasks
-10 points - lost an hour in working on my "big report" and only got 1.5 sections of it sent ahead to my boss, as I finished them
5:30-ish PM:
+/-3 points - can't decide if this one's good or bad. Still hadn't had anything substantial to eat, so I had the last 7 M&M's in my friend Maria's candy dish. They didn't cut it. BUT...
+/-7 points - the manager of the big department that sits across the hall from me was there and when we talked about missing lunch, she brought me back another ice cream bar. Yummy! Started feeling the sugar though...
-15 points - ...and yet, once you start on a sugar high, it's hard to stop feeding it, and I certainly hadn't had anything substantial since breakfast, and the Dunkin' Donuts from the team next to us looked SO good...they even had a chocolate covered one, although it was just the white cream filling, not the custard filling, but (shocker...) that didn't stop me...
-10 points - ...from having two. Ok, done with the sugar now.
6:00-ish PM:
-20 points - I have been stuck on one section of this stupid report for so long, it just keeps blending together and I can't figure out why it won't foot to itself (based on the 5 other reports I had to pull in and match up for all the different areas). My poor brain is talking to itself in a Yiddish voice saying "Oy vey, you give me two ice cream bars and two donuts and look what you're expecting from me!"
6:15 PM
-3 points - talk to my boss again and have to tell him I'm not done with the rest of the report
+3 points - he had to send in his report anyway and we thought the numbers would be pretty close, so he wasn't all that worried about it. He told me not to stay too late and I said I thought I could get out of there by 7. He seemed to think I should do what I could but that we could revisit it Monday too.
7:00 PM
- 5 points - Huh. Still stuck on that one part that won't foot out and for the LIFE of me I couldn't figure out why the calculations wouldn't work, or who was being listed incorrectly because everything was just going in circles. Guess I should move on and come back to this.
8:40 PM
+7 points - got most of the rest of the areas of the report done
-5 points - hit another area that had a similar problem as the other one I got stuck on, so I tried to find similarities.
-5 points - And tried.
-5 points - And re-tried.
-5 points - Changed my calculations.
-5 points - Manually matched up names. Ready to crumple the whole thing...
+15 points - yay!!! Figured out what was wrong with the first section
-5 points - that solution didn't work for the second section, so I still don't know what's wrong with it
-5 points - repeat calculation validation
-5 points - repeat manually matching up names
-5 points - clear that section of the report and start from the first step
-15 points - smack self in head when the 1st step was what I had overlooked and it still carried the number from the previous month. No wonder I couldn't get any of the following steps to work out.
9:30 PM:
+40 points - thank goodness I'm finally done with this report and it foots out to all of the various inputs and outputs that make this such a challenging analysis in the first place. One last little thing to do is match it up to the related report my boss submitted earlier today so that I just have the few differences highlighted and all ready to discuss on Monday. Because we all know that it wouldn't work for me to try to get in early next week and prep it then. Should take under 20 minutes
10:15 PM:
-15 points - dratted report. Had to add another calculation section to my other report, just to make it match up to this one, and then there were changes to almost ever area's upcoming staffing activities, so
-15 points - remember that first area that I went over and over for hours on my "big report" and couldn't find out what was wrong with it but finally got all the little calculations and exceptions to work out? Yeah. It doesn't match up with what my boss' report says and again, for the LIFE of me, I can't find out why. Going to mark this as an exception and just deal with next week because it'll just send me over the edge if I try again tonight.
10:45 PM:
+35 points - finally got the comparison of my "big report" and my boss' related report done, and with the exception of that little bitty discrepancy in the 1 area, the whole shebang matches up, down, left, right, diagonal, circular, introverted, 3-dimensionally and 6th-sensically. Stick a fork in it because it is as done as it's gonna get.
11:05 PM
+5 points - wrapped it all up in a pretty bow and emailed it to my boss. I never know what people think when they get really late emails from me at work. Most of me hopes they don't even notice the time because I don't want them feeling bad for me staying late. On one hand, yeah, I put a lot of work into it, and on the other hand, I simply can't resist a puzzle, and I couldn't have walked away from it without being bothered the whole weekend that I hadn't figured it out already.
11:10 PM:
+5 points - finally close down my desk for the day and head out the door. So much for leaving at 7. Ha!
+2 points - when I leave work late, I always try to be on my cell phone as I'm walking to my car. I know it's a weak deterrent in the event there were some Freddy Krueger-ish stalker hanging around outside the door, just waiting for the occupant of the lone car in the middle of the parking lot to exit the building. But it's some comfort at least, and I call my brother Rob at work since he gets into the office really early, and he's in the security business so if I blurted out a quick license plate number or suspect description before being abducted, at least he knows police channels and what to do to send the cavalry. Hours later. But hey, it's something.
-5 points - after the phone rang several more times than it usually does, I realized I had called my brother on his cell phone at what would be after 10 his time, and he and the wifey usually go to bed rather early since they get up so early (foreign concept to me--I'd SO much rather have it the other way around!!). Oops! I immediately hang up and hold my breath to see if he calls me back, worried about why I called his cell so late
+3 points - no call back, so maybe I didn't wake him. Called his work number and got his voicemail reminding me he took a day off. This gets better because it probably means he didn't go to bed early but is doing online gaming downstairs and didn't hear his cell phone go off upstairs and hopefully has an end game of me not having disturbed him accidentally. I'm sure I'll find out eventually.
11:25 PM
+2 points - so... dinner. Definitely don't want to go home and make something at this hour, so that leaves drive thru, and my late-night choice is always Taco Bell because they have Mt. Dew. And nachos. Yummy, crispy, gooey, delicious goodness all piled on top of itself.
+2 points - I get the portion-conscious version titled Nachos Supreme
+2 points - I get only a small Mt. Dew so I enjoy what I have but don't slurp down 32 oz. of aggrandized sugar water (plus caffeine, of course. wish it did something for me.)
-4 points - Who am I kidding--I'm eating at Taco Bell! Just the nacho cheese and the fact that I'm having pop cancels out any size selections I make. (I'm counting the sour cream as a wash, since I haven't had my dairy serving for the day, and it's important to maintain a proper food pyramid. Oh, wait. 2 ice cream bars. Pretty sure there's dairy in there somewhere.)
-10 points - as I pause in the drive thru line, it occurs to me that a conversation I had 3 days ago didn't mean what I thought it had. Considered knocking my forehead on my steering wheel to gain some sort of satisfaction (where are the M. Python monks with their perfect little wooden boards when you need them?) but decided against it, as I was drawing near to the serving window. As for the conversation that finally caught up with me, it was related to my Saturday plans. Our church is having a Family Fun Day, for which I'm not signed up for anything because I didn't attend the Thursday night planning meetings, and I never really saw any flyers or anything, so I don't even know what they're going to have there, but my friend Jennifer is manning the kiddie jumping room and I'm going to hang out with her. So the conversational confusion came in the realm that she mentioned we'd hang out for dinner. I still can't be completely certain whether she meant dinner as in supper or dinner as in lunch, but I only use dinner in the supper sense, unless it's a Big Deal meal, like Thanksgiving Dinner or Christmas Dinner, and those are lunchtime. So I assumed she meant we were hanging out not only from the 11-2 F.F.D. time, but suddenly it extended another 3 hours minimum. Not that I had a problem with that, and when she said it, I thought maybe I had misunderstood the "hanging out" conversation we'd had on Sunday, so I played along, so cleverly thinking quickly (or so I thought) and continued the conversation as if I'd known all along. Took me 3 days to remember that people use dinner in multiple contexts and we would be hanging out over lunch/dinner so supper/dinner wasn't necessarily even involved. Who knows. I certainly don't. Guess I"ll "cleverly" play it by ear tomorrow. Should be fun.
11:45 PM
+5 points - Ahh, there's no place like home. And finally some semi-legitimate food, since breakfast.
+15 points - start typing up a blog. It's really been a while, but I resolve to resolve that. Surely it will only take 15-20 minutes to blurt out the items of my day for all to see. There were so many ups and downs, it would be funny to add points to show my level of frustration. Not that they really matter. Hey, that's reminiscent of Whose Line. I should find a quote from one of the intros that isn't too obscure but also not too crude as to offend. Should only take 5-10 minutes (I have such a good sense of time management)
1:45 AM
+10 points - laughed a lot at all the hundreds of quotes I found from the show, and of course read through them all, even if they were duplicated on websites
-2 points - didn't really find any good ones to refer to, so had to start blog with a mildly lame one, which may or may not be clear to fans at the beginning, but if they make it this far, they're REALLY bored and will at least know what I was talking about at the beginning.
3:00 AM
+25 points - FINALLY pretty much done with itemizing my day and will now finally bring my meanderings to a close
+5 points - :o) :o) Just imagining the cheers of readers at the idea of this ending
-15 points - whoops. Kinda needed to do laundry before tomorrow, but it's too late now and I don't want to disturb the little old lady that lives below me. Actually, it's been about a year since I've seen her (we're not a close-knit community in this apartment complex. I see my neighbors maybe once a week, and I use the term neighbors loosely to include anyone in my building), so maybe it's not even a little old lady down there anymore. Who knows...
-25 points - ...now I'll have to set my alarm for 7 to try to get some laundry going before I have to be at church by 10. We'll see how well that goes. If today was any indication, I'll wake up at 9:20 after not even hearing my alarm, panic to get ready in 20 minutes, have to wear the wrinkly pair of jeans that's still in the dryer from the other day and that are too big but I haven't gotten around to buying more that fit, so they'll just have to do. Perhaps by reiterating the undesirable aspects of that scenario here, it will stick in my unconscious brain enough to jar me from sleep when my alarm goes off in 4 hours. Again, we'll see how well that goes.
Ahh, the sprinklers outside in my apartment complex just started up. I know it's a late night when I hear them start up.
Adieu to anyone who has made it this far and actually read all my ups and downs detailed above. It is now 3:30 AM, but I needed all that time for my brain to decompress from the innumerable hours of calculation tracking/validating/blah blah blah. Thank you for sharing my day and commiserating with my frustrations and ecstatic exclamations. You're a trooper!
What of the points, you say? I don't have the volition to make myself sum them up, so we'll call it a draw.
posted by Shannon at 11:54 PM
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