Cutting it close for an early conference call

I had to wake up early yesterday for a 7 am conference call. We had a couple of months off from it, but it's back.

I had two alarms set up. I sleep with earbuds. I typically set my watch that I wear to buzz, but I forgot to.

Luckily, I heard my phone's alarm at 6:53 am. It was enough time to boot up my laptop and sound sort of coherent for the first ten minutes of the call where I needed to speak.

It's never a dull day. The good news was that I ended my day at 3:30 pm. Yay!

Transfering music from Google Music to YouTube Music

Plans for Google Music to become YouTube music have been in the works for at least a year. I have been a fan of the former for a while and have a subscription. I like that I can upload my entire iTunes library to Google Music and storage is free.

Yesterday, I got word to transfer my music from Google Music over to YouTube Music. I have a lot of music. It has been transferring for over six hours. It's down to the last task, which is to transfer uploads and purchases. This final task also happens to be the largest.

I started this task on my work laptop. I stopped it and it's now running on my Mac mini. I'll have it run overnight and see how it's doing when I wake up.

My Tuesday started early. I had a conference call at 7 am that lasted four hours. It was nice calling it a day just past 3:30 pm.

The downside is that I'm ready for bed now.

Waking up early for a work call

It has been a while since I got up at 6:45 am for work. I needed to be on a conference call at 7 am. I haven't had to take this call in nearly two months. This call lasts for four hours.

I oddly woke up just fine. It's amazing how solid my sleep has been for the past week. I haven't had any foot pain since I've reintroduced exercise into my life. I am still eating a banana a day. I need to get it down to half of a banana a day and see how that goes.

The best part about starting my workday early is ending it early. I was so happy to call it quits just after 3:40 pm.

The drawer exercise continues. I only do fifteen minutes of reorganization a day. I have realized that I have more white socks than I had anticipated. I don't wear them to work. I'll need to wear more of them when I work out.

Trying a conference number out and removing a favourite from my phone contacts

On Monday, I was testing out calling my company's teleconference phone number. It's interesting that it only accepts phone numbers that aren't blocked. I decided to test blocking my number and the call disconnected immediately. Interesting!

I normally do conference calls through wifi. However, when I am working from home, the network connection isn't great. I have a meeting later on today, so I tried doing something different.

I don't call folks all that often. I opened my phone app and noticed that my ex-guy is still flagged as a favourite. I wasn't expecting to tear up, but I did. Tearing up was needed.

I loved him. It's sad that he ended our relationship.

After briefly tearing up, I removed him as a favourite. It was difficult. I did it, though. It's another small step towards healing.

A compliment from my manager

I worked from home on Tuesday. I had a conference call with my manager. As usual, he was running late.

I decided to review a video that my student had redone while waiting for him. When he got on the call, he heard part of it.

"Is that our student?" he asked me.
"Yes, it's a video that she did for our new application," I replied.
"She sounds professional," he complimented.
"She does. She's the only person on my team who is professional," I noted, hinting at the clueless woman in yesterday's post.
"There's you, too. Don't forget to include you. You count as 1.5 people on the professional scale, which makes up for her deficiency," he said.

It was a nice compliment to hear. I paid it forward and shared the compliment that my student got from our manager with her.

Foot and muscle pain sucks when you want to sleep

Now and again, I get muscle spasms in my right foot. It was pretty bad last night. I woke up at nearly 4 am to pain.

I can't recall how many ibuprofen pills I managed to take. It was strange, but I had a mini panic attack. My bedroom was getting hot, mainly because of my tossing and turning in bed along with the heating kicking in. I had to drink some water and eat a protein bar to ease things for me. I also took long breaths, which helped.

I didn't go back to bed, but I had a conference call at 7 am. I said hi at the beginning and actually fell asleep for nearly two hours. Hopefully, I wasn't called upon to say anything. This meeting call ended up being just under four hours.

Part of me wanted to call in sick. However, I took it easy working from home, as the muscle pain lasted all day, with it dying off right about now.

Some days are rough. Here's hoping that tomorrow will be much better.

A compliment that came out of nowhere

The other day, I got a compliment from my manager that was completely unexpected. It happened during a conference call.

To make an extremely long story short, we have a group of employees in another country that had questions. A handful of us in Toronto were on this call. They want to set up a similar structure that we have here.

The problem is that these folks want to have a team leader, but none of us in Toronto feel that any of them can handle this position. One of the tasks would be training new employees.

"You would have to train every new employee that joins us. Frankly, I think Cutiebootie and her team should continue training new folks. Cutiebootie is the best trainer that we have," my manager said.

Wow. I'll take it.

The network is down - a perfect storm

It all started on Friday. Our content management system to author content was down just before lunch. We got database errors. My department seems paralyzed when such incidents take place. I got one of my students to report the problem.

Unfortunately, our helpdesk support is halfway around the world and doesn't look at off-hour issues. Ugh!

On the weekend, I had to do some preparation work. My team needed to create two documentation projects and requires all folks to not be working. I planned on doing this work on Saturday. Sure enough, I tried doing some copying work and database errors took place.

There errors were intermittent, though. I logged in using my regular account and I got tons of errors. I tried copying smaller sections with another administrative account and that worked. Weird.

Yesterday, I had my regularly scheduled 8 am meeting. I drive to work on the call. This meeting was delayed by half an hour. I called in about fifteen minutes from work. I couldn't connect to the network.

I walked into a meeting room that I had booked for my little team. My students told me that every network connection was down. It now made sense why I couldn't connect to my conference call. 

I walked over to the lunch room to get some hot water for my tea. I found out that there was a Canada-wide outage. Nice.

I headed back to my students to relay the news. I found out later that it was a global problem.

E-mail was down. I loved it. I didn't have any distractions. I didn't have to respond immediately to my manager's questions due to his incompetence.

Slowly, the network came back up. My team was able to log in to most of our applications and continue with our content projects. Others on my team weren't that lucky.

It was a trying day. My team handled it with grace and humour. We are good with teamwork, fuelled by cookies.

Productive day with a new laptop

Monday was quite a busy workday. It was nice that my manager was away, which should be the norm!

I had a conference call on my way to work. There are three of us on this call. Two of us have something meaningful to contribute each week. Our third colleague has little to contribute that is of value on any given week.

At the office, I spent my first half an hour on the phone with my cell phone provider. I got my employee discount applied and got reimbursed $32 CAD for the difference this month. Yay!

Moments later, I spent time collecting money towards a farewell gift for a colleague who is leaving the company. I find that if I don't organize such events, no one does it within our department.

Twenty minutes later, I received an e-mail indicating that my replacement laptop had arrived. I went to turn in my old Windows 7 laptop for a new Windows 10 one. The IT folks were helpful and pleasant under the circumstances. Every employee is getting a new laptop, so to orchestrate such a massive change takes a ton of patience.

Naturally, my configuring everything ran into bumps. I needed a new cable to connect one of my existing monitors to the new HDMI port on my laptop. The folks who had those cables were unavailable. Luckily, I bumped into my colleague in the washroom who had an extra cable. It made a huge difference trying to do work on a 14" screen for most of the day to a larger 32" one!

Of course, I couldn't download all the software applications that I needed from our company portal. I spent some time with an IT person over the phone to troubleshoot the issue. Ah, fun!

Tonight, I let my laptop run, sync, and sort itself out at home. Magically, everything works now. I can download the software programs that I need. My connection to the company's intranet works. I'm almost shocked.

I also managed to spend an hour late this morning reviewing documents and answering questions that my students had. We also had a relaxing lunch together with good conversation.

I love a productive day, especially when I chat with so many different folks.

Teleconference vs. my guy's call

Every Monday, I have a conference call at 08:00. This past Monday, I had a different meeting, but at the same bat time. I drove into work on the call.

I had about ten minutes left of this conference call. My guy called me on my cell phone. I had to decline it. He was determined to reach me, so he called me again. I had to take it.

"Hey, do you realize that you are interrupting my conference call?" I said.
"I'm sorry. I'm driving into work. Are you there?" he asked me.
"Yes, I am. Can I call you back in five minutes or so?" I asked.
"Sure. Take your time," he replied.

Well, I ended our call and tried to resume my conference call. I couldn't reconnect. It was frustrating, as I didn't know what the final outcome was. I called my guy back.

"I couldn't get back into the call, so it's a mystery to me what was decided," I noted.
"I'm sorry, sweetie. I just wanted to hear you voice and see you before I fly off," he said.
"Where are you going?" I asked him.
"Cairo," he replied.
"That's pretty short notice," I indicated.
"Yes. I just found out about it on Friday. I'm gone for nearly three weeks. Did you want to do breakfast?" he asked.
"That's a long time. I already ate, but thanks," I replied.
"I'll call you when I fetch some breakfast and take it upstairs," he said.
"Sounds good. Drive safely and I'll see you soon," I replied.
"See you," he said.

Mondays are generally blah. Seeing him always perks me up, even though things weren't exactly smooth on this particular morning.

Monday surprise - eye candy

Every Monday, I drive to work and participate in a conference call. The one this past Monday was pleasant and productive. We finished the call in half an hour.

I had fifteen more minutes to get to work. I finally made it.

The parking lot at work requires a bit of care. There is a pedestrian crossing, so you are expected to yield. Sure enough, a good-looking guy started crossing the lot. He looked at me. I waved at him. He smiled. I reciprocated.

I pressed the button to roll down my car window.

"Oh, my gosh, you're early!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, I am," my guy turned back and smiled.
"I'm super impressed," I admitted.
"Me, too," he chuckled.

I wish that all Monday mornings started off with eye candy.

Highways, tolls, conference calls, and sleep

I have been using highway 407, which is a toll highway, for over seven years. I am perfectly fine shelling out a bit more to save some time to get to work.

When I first started my current job, I took highway 401. It was a top-and-go commute to and from work. Somedays, it would take me two hours to get home. These days were clear and free of snow.

Traffic in the greater Toronto area is horrific. The infrastructure cannot support the volume of cars on the road.

Taking a toll highway saves my brakes and makes me less fatigued. These days, I take the 407 to work. Coming home, I take a backroad, which is still faster than taking the 401.

Highway 407 rarely has accidents. An accident on Monday morning impacted my drive to work. It was the third accident that I have ever seen on it. It didn't look like anyone was hurt, thankfully.

I was late to work by about twenty minutes. I was also on two consecutive conference calls that I take through my Bluetooth car speaker while I was stuck in traffic.

I am fortunate to be able to work from home at least once a week. It helps a ton.

I get to sleep in a bit today. Yep, I have yet another conference call to take. Ah, what fun!

Spying and spanking

My guy and I have fun conversations.

"I saw you on the conference call this morning," he said to me.
"How come you didn't message me and say hi? Were you spying on me?" I teased.
"No, I would never spy on you. You need a good spanking for calling me a spy," he reasoned.

It's fun being good at being his bad girl.

Fifty Shades Darker - the day is here to buy the unrated DVD!

I am working from home today, which is now Tuesday. I have a conference call at 07:00. It just screams fun, especially when it lasts for four hours.

I shouldn't complain. It's nice to be in my pyjamas while doing work. It's not a video conference, thankfully!

Today is a big day for me. After I am done with work, I am heading out to get my copy of Fifty Shades Darker. Yes, I am snatching my physical DVD copy that is unrated.

I can't wait!

Home, travel, and cuteness

I arrived home a couple of hours ago. My time in Los Angeles and Anaheim was wonderful. Oddly, both cities are going through May Grey, meaning that the day starts off cloudy and may eventually lift. In other words, it was a slightly warmer version of Toronto, but with traffic that flows better.

Anyway, the conference went well and I learned a ton. The unfortunate part was that I was still doing work while attending. I managed to even see a couple of friends that I haven't seen in ages.

My guy and I missed each other on Saturday, like two ships sailing in the night, as the cliche goes. I got back just before 22:00. He left at around 19:00 to fly off to Istanbul.

Before I left for my conference, we were driving over to our favourite restaurant for lunch. He asked me about my team-building event, which happened to be bowling.

"We went bowling and I was protective of my back," I explained to my guy.
"That's good. We can't have you travelling with a sore back," he reasoned.
"That's true. I got to wear men's bowling shoes, as I have big feet. They were red, white, and black," I said to him.
"You know, those are the colours of the Egyptian flag," he indicated.
"Cool. I don't think that I could pass as an Egyptian girl with those shoes on," I noted.
"You'd be a very cute Egyptian girl," he said, smiling at me.

My guy is away for three weeks. He is in Mexico for two, so the time difference will be a bit easier for us to chat once he's there.

Things are good, but busy

All is well. Things are simply busy on my end.

My team at work went bowling as a team-building exercise. My right arm is a bit sore right now, but it doesn't prevent me from writing this post.

I am getting ready for a conference. I fly out to Los Angeles on Saturday, so I have been busy packing and getting as much as I can get done before I leave.

My guy and I have been having lunch dates practically all week. It's nice. I'll elaborate more on them later.

Driving (his) stick shift

Good news! My manager fought hard with his boss to approve my going to a conference in May. He won. I won. Yay!

My guy is thrilled for me. He continues to miss me a lot.

"I want to drive your stick shift car," I told him, teasing him about his precious manual transmission car.
"I would rather have you here to drive my personal stick shift," he replied.
"Can I put it in sixth gear?" I asked him.
"You can put it in any gear you want," he replied.

We may need a room once he arrives at the airport in less than two weeks!

Intimate time in a conference room

Last Monday, I moved a number of personal items from my desk into some canvas bags and placed them in my car. We're moving offices by the end of this month, so I decided to get a head start while my guy was working on Civic Holiday.

As agreed, I met him in a conference room on the seventh floor just after 16:30. The floor was completely deserted, as expected. I had brought my short grey skirt. I decided to change out of my three-quarter-length jeans and into my skirt in this room.

I waited. I was in front of my laptop, surfing. Moments later, my guy came into the conference room and closed the door.

"Hey, you made it," I said. "Where's your laptop bag?"
"I left it in the training room," he responded. "I couldn't wait to see you."

My guy wrapped his arms around me from behind and groped my breasts. I love when he does that. He kissed the right side of my neck. It was both affectionate and passionate.

I swivelled my chair around to see him. He bend down to kiss me. The kisses were long and loving. He has the softest lips. They are wonderful to kiss. I felt like melting while gently holding his face in the palms of my hands.

My guy sat down in another office chair. We embraced for a good five minutes. It felt good. He gives the best hugs and I love being in them.

He wanted to feel my bare legs, so my right one rested across his lap. My thighs eventually parted while my guy was feeling me up, ultimately rubbing against the crotch of my lacy black panties. He caressed my right hip, noting how smooth my skin was. He had enough room to grope my right buttock, which made me instantly wet.

Moments later, I reached orgasm and came. I rested in my chair and hugged him. He was standing next to me. I reached over and put my hand on his crotch. His member was hard in his pants.

He let his hard cock out of his pants by unzipping just his pants and taking it out from his briefs. I started giving him a handjob while groping his right butt cheek, which turns me on as much as it does him.

"Can you kiss and suck me?" he asked.
"Are you sure?" I asked him, as there is a reason why I needed to make sure that he wanted it.
"Yes," he insisted.

I kissed his erect penis from the shaft all the way to its tip. I then licked the tip for a bit before I started sucking him. I could tell that he was enjoying it.

Then, the unexpected happened. His cell phone rang. It was one of his guests from his seminar. He felt obligated to answer the phone. It was funny, but the guy on the other end was asking about the other restaurant that we had recommended at lunch. I could tell that my guy wanted to get rid of that guy on the phone.

"I thought that it was something urgent," he explained, after he had hung up the phone.
"He wanted the name of the Afghani restaurant that we love?" I asked him.
"Yes. I had to quickly end the call. He was interrupting a perfectly good blowjob!"

I continued on. He was enjoying every moment of it. Normally, my guy is either lying down or reclining when I give him a blowjob. His standing up was a first.

I could tell that he was about to ejaculate. I pulled his fully erect penis out of my mouth and jerked him off. He came all over my chest and his juices oozed down the right cup of my black bra. We were both happy and dopey. We both sat down. His cock was still jutting out of his pants. I was there with cum all over me.

We went to wipe ourselves off. We talked for a bit, which my guy marvelled over the fact that I could remember when he had bought his car and his first business trip in it to Montreal.

When we decided to call it a day, he sweetly kissed me on his forehead. We both went to freshen up before we headed to our cars. My guy showed me his Magic Mount Window for his cell phone. I asked him if he could get me one. He agreed.

We both kissed. I caressed his head, which we both love. We then blew each other kisses as he drove off and I headed back to my car.

Being at the office on a holiday isn't bad at all.