Itchin' to be free

[darkemeralds]

It's patch season at work. We apply updates to the financial system, and it takes many, many person-hours to accomplish a set of assiduous and detailed testing tasks, a disproportionate number of them labeled with my name.

So I've been putting in the extra hours as required, arriving before 9:00 and not getting home till near 8:00 p.m., and it's driving me CRAZY. I'm a detail-oriented person, but nobody has this much focus. The work structure is full of interruptions and conflicting demands. Yesterday I managed a whole two hours of focus on a particularly heinous test (involving, of all the dire things, taxation), but only at the expense of being rude to some people.

In the win column: a wonderful new healthcare provider has assured me that my recent brain fog is definitely not a disease state, and almost certainly the result of hormonal imbalance. So I'm now on a hormone regimen and reorganizing myself around restored mental capacity, and it's pretty fantastic.

Now if I could just get some time--time to myself, time to think, time to knit, time to write, time to work on my kitchen soffit project--the world would be awesome.

Comments

[writerscramp]

You have my wholehearted sympathy on the work front. This time of year, as wonderful as it is and as much as I love it, marks the annual Contemplate-Taking-Up-Drinking-As-A-New-Hobby time for me at work, in which I prepare the billing system for the next year. This year, granted, is not the wholesale takedown and rebuild that it was two years ago, and relative to other years, there are fewer structural changes to be done, so I feel less on the verge of a freak out than years past. But there remain some pretty scary work, including pulling out and putting back together again some key pieces, and adding (read: designing, programming, and building from scratch) a whole new revenue module. Good times! So this is the time of year I become Dory and repeat to just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.

So my hope for you is that it passes swiftly, and that you're able to carve out some time to yourself wherever you can in the meantime.

Speaking of which...maybe we could meet for dinner at Sal's school one of these weekday evenings? It could give you a good excuse to duck out of the office early (well, earlier than 8 PM, at any rate) and get some time away from computers and numbers and the low-grade anxiety of having way too much work to get done. Dinner seatings are @ 7 PM (and usually require a reservation), include a 4 course meal of seasonal dishes for $18, and they offer a nice selection beer, wine, and liquor (whiskey with dessert, perhaps...?). If you're interested, toss out some weekday evenings that might be a possibility on your calendar and I'll see that we have a table reserved.

[darkemeralds]

That is the best idea ever! Yes! Let's eat at Sal's school. Thursday the 10th is open. Tuesday the 15th, Thursday the 17th, Friday the 18th...anything there work for you?

I honestly didn't realize that there was a restaurant at the school, but of course there is! Yay!

Oh, how fun. Let me know if we can work one of those evenings in. I am so up for that.

[writerscramp]

Excellent! Let's tentatively shoot for Thursday the 10th and I'll check with Sal to be sure they're open (a new session just started and I'm not sure when the new classes start doing service again). I'll let you know once I've confirmed with him.

[darkemeralds]

Perfect!

[writerscramp]

Reservations for Thursday the 10th at 7 PM are confirmed. Reservations are under my name; if you happen to get there before me, there's a bar are right at the entrance or you can just go to the table, whichever you prefer. It's not a huge place so no worry that we won't see each other right away. :)

So looking forward to it!!

[darkemeralds]

It's on my calendar! Whee! This will be fun!

Thanks for taking care of the details. I'm really looking forward to seeing you and getting caught up.