My wedding anniversary - reflections

Today would have been my wedding anniversary. Although the marriage didn't work out, this date is firmly in my head forever.

It was a week before my undergraduate convocation. That month of June was crazy. I got married, graduated, and moved to a different province.

If I could do things differently, I would have taken my time getting married. I knew him for nearly three years at this point. I needed to know him better. It was a long-distance relationship, so I didn't pick up on some of his quirks that were red flags.

I suppose that's what happens when you are young and in love. You overlook red flags. You then spend time trying to muster the strength and finances to get out of the relationship.

I look back and I've learned a lot from my marriage. No regrets.

Rules and guidelines on masking in the US

The hotel in which I stayed in the United States is a part of a large chain. The official wording on its clean policy is that for guests staying at its US hotels, you do not need to wear a mask at the hotel if you are fully vaccinated. Staff are required to wear face masks.

As a cautious Canadian, I threw that guest policy out the window. I am fully vaccinated. I got my booster shot on Thursday. All is well. I have a sore arm. That's it. I'm boring that way. I'll take boring any day!

Whether I was heading downstairs to the kitchen area to fetch breakfast to take up to my room or doing laundry, I wore a mask. Heading to and from my room? I had a mask on.

As for staff, housekeeping never had masks on. When I headed to my room to check in back in late November of last year, I had to walk by two housekeeping staff without their masks. Luckily, I had mine on.

I'd say that 50% of the time, staff at this hotel had face masks on. The front desk was much better at it.

What I am trying to get at is that there are rules and guidelines on wearing masks, but they aren't enforced. We are still in a pandemic. Not wearing a mask in a public area is ridiculous these days, vaccinated or not.

The moral of this story is to mask up, to protect yourself and others from the various COVID-19 variants that are out there.

Ten-year work anniversary on a Sunday

Yesterday marked my ten-year work anniversary. It was quite the unexpected milestone.

I used to be the person who held a job for two to three years. At this company, there have been many ups and downs that I have experienced and that I continue to endure. I am still kicking around.

I feel that I have stayed on for this long because my role seems to change every year or two. I also have established myself as a competent, reliable employee that I'm comfortable and my manager feels the same way about me. I also continue to pick up new skills and my job is still interesting to me.

Reaching this mark makes me look forward to a week more of vacation.

Taking a break from social media and news

Watching coverage of protests, looting, outrage over racism, and more on television and social media is a double-edged sword. 

On the one hand, it's good that we are discussing how wrong racism is. It's not cool for a police officer to kneel on a black man's neck for nearly nine minutes and ignoring his request to breathe like a human being. On the other hand, the coverage of windows being broken and idiots stealing merchandise and more is way too much for my liking.

I've decided to take a break from tuning into the news or reading my social feeds. It's way too much sensory information to absorb.

I spent some time reorganizing things at home. I stopped briefly due to the craziness happening at work for the last two weeks. It was nice to unwind by getting rid of items that I had kept for a while.

Dating a worrywart

My new love interest is a worrywart. He was trying to secure his first contract with a customer. He got so stressed out that when we were chatting on Tuesday night, he said that he couldn't have dinner and needed time to think.

Wow. That's all I can say.

Meanwhile, I had a lapse in my cold on Tuesday. My congestion went through the roof. I told him on three separate times that I was taking an early evening. Thank goodness for my humidifier.

Did he take any of what I said into consideration? Nope. Stress does weird things to him.

He texted me at 1 am my time to say that he can't sleep. Really? I said that I'm not feeling well once again. He apologized. I proceeded to switch my phone to do not disturb. I'm so glad that I did. He texted me at 6:30 am and beyond. I was sleeping in till 8 am.

The good news is that he got the contract. His very first one. I was so proud of him.

I am also thrilled that I don't have to deal with his crazy, worried text messages. I, too, can sleep well tonight.

CPR and a cosmo

I completed two parts of a first aid and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) course this month. I did my test today and I am certified. Yay!

I haven't done a CPR course since I was in grade 8, which seems like eons ago. I'm glad that I went through this program, despite things being rather crazy at work.

My staycation continues. To celebrate this fine milestone, I had dinner at the restaurant attached to the hotel. It makes a decent raspberry blood orange cosmo. Yum!

Deadlines and Christmas market - yay, weekend!

It has been a crazy week. My team got our documentation packaged and uploaded. There are a few issues that need helpdesk support. However, we worked so hard to get our deliverables out the door.

I'm glad that it's the weekend. I am seeing a couple of friends tomorrow at a Christmas market. I am looking forward to seeing them again and what's at the market.

Busy day dealing with incompetent colleagues

It was a crazy day at work. I'm exhausted.

I lost count after 43. This number represents how many e-mails ended up in my inbox from roughly 10:00 till 17:00. My guess is that I hit 60 e-mails easily.

I find e-mail to be a distraction. Today was a heavy inbox day. It was full of self-absorbed folks who think that my small team is there twiddling our thumbs, waiting for work. We have a ton of work to do, on the contrary.

One software developer provided two documents to us late on Monday. He asked me on Wednesday whether they were ready for him to share for his final review meeting on Thursday.

I took exception to this comment. First, my team isn't so free that we jump on his late guides and complete them. Second, we didn't know about his meeting. His expectation that we would edit them in time for his meeting was a tall order. Third, it seems ridiculous to send us what was dubbed final documents when he is having a final review meeting days later. Technically, these documents are not final. My team has another stab at making these not-so-final documents final.

I also take exception to the assigned project manager. She can't do her job. I have been doing most of her work by making sure documents get to me on specified dates and following up. Most deliverables have been late. I chase after folks because this project manager doesn't.

I have informed her that she needs to chase after folks. She should not be asking me two weeks in advance for documents. I flat out told her that I am not her problem. She needs to focus on other folks who are late with theirs. I don't see her chasing after them that way.

Then, there was another document that came two weeks late on Monday. I was not informed that this document would change. So wrong. Again, I spoke up.

I am sure that these folks do not enjoy dealing with me. Frankly, I don't care. They are not making my working life easy and are not respecting established deadlines. They are causing grief for my team.

I decided to call it a day just before 17:00. Luckily, today is my final workday this week. I am looking forward to my well-deserved mini vacation.

Crazy Rich Asians

I finally saw Crazy Rich Asians. I loved it.

Although I can never relate to being in a rich family, I get being on the receiving end of prejudice and unfair judgement. I also relate to how dysfunctional families can get and how unreasonable family members can be.

I may go back and see it again. The other movie that I want to see is A Star is Born. I have a feeling that I may have difficulties getting tickets, but I'll try.

My guy is still going through back pain. It sucks.

Dr. Death podcast

I love listening to podcasts. I have probably been listening to them since 2005.

I am currently listening to Dr. Death. It deals with Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a neurosurgeon who operated on 33 patients and eventually murdered three of them. He was an incompetent medical practitioner and the Texas medical board didn't act promptly when the first wave of complains came in.

It's a six-part podcast. I am listening to the fifth episode and can't wait for the final one. I feel for his patients who were operated on by this crazy doctor.

Travel and training

My guy is flying off to another business trip on Saturday. The good news is that I get to have a bite to eat with him before he leaves.

He's gone for a week. It's unfortunate that I can't join him.

Work is still crazy. I'm training. I barely have time to do my regular work. Thankfully, I have one more workday before the weekend is back.

Crazy travel plans and a lovetap for being bad

Geez, it has been a while. I will post about all the craziness that happened last week in a bit. I'm exhausted.

I made it to my European destination today on a couple of hours of sleep. It was painful transferring from one method of transportation to the next. I'll explain what actually happened versus what was supposed to happen in a future post.

On a good note, I took my guy to the airport on Friday. I helped roll a couple of his luggage pieces from his side of his car (he had taken them all out of his trunk) over to my car at work.

"Don't touch anything!" he said to me, looking at my rolling his computer bag over.
"You don't let me touch anything," I protested, caressing his perfectly uniform head.
"You can touch my head. Just don't do any heavy lifting," he said, passing by me and smacking my left buttock.
"That hurt! You're mean!" I replied.

It was fun. He loves when I caress his cleanly shaved head. I like getting a lovetap for being his bad girl.

Incompetent manager and craziness at work

This week is already shaping up to be super crazy!

At work, we have a major software release. It isn't going as well as we had hoped. At least our part of the exercise isn't too bad.

It's my mini me's last week with the company. I will miss her. My manager finally got around to booking her farewell lunch. Unfortunately, he can't get his act together collecting money from the team and buying a gift. He asked me to do it. I am a good organizer, but this week is not good for me I declined and asked my intern to help me out.

As a manager, if you can't organize something as simple as getting a farewell gift, you have issues. I am also trying to wrap up my work, ensure that my intern is okay while I am way with work, get tasks that my mini me has left, and prepare for my business trip next week.

I've started to pack. I have a ways to go. My guy is also doing training this week and flies off a day before I do.

On top of all this madness, my intern and I have to train a new employee this week. So, no, I do not have time to do a task that my manager should be able to handle.

I'm glad that I put my foot down. He made the argument that I would need to get a gift for my intern, so I might as well get both gifts. First, we have never got parting gifts for interns -- only a farewell lunch. Second, I said that I couldn't do the gift-buying this week, but could when I am back. He finally accepted.

Sometimes, I feel like I am the manager and my boss is the incompetent one.

Feeling exhausted from work and not hearing my alarm go off

It has been a crazy few days at work. We have been working towards a major software release.

My small team of three finished our work on Monday. So we thought.

I was so exhausted that I didn't hear my first alarm go off at 07:45 on Tuesday morning. It's unusual for me to not hear my alarm. My second alarm at 08:00 went off. Thankfully, I heard that one.

I had a teleconference at 08:00. I logged on using my phone, rather than taking ten minutes to log in on my laptop. Thank goodness this teleconference was rescheduled.

Anyway, there was a pressing issue with broken links in our content. I don't own this content. Another writer, who was up at the same hour and is responsible for said content, was on a conference call. She isn't as pick-up-and-go as my team is. I just did the update. My mini-me helped with the other part of the task, which took up most of the morning.

My team rocks. We are also exhausted.

We just got word an hour ago that the software release was successful. Yay!

Now, I simply need to get through this week. My going on vacation is within reach.

My right eye is back to normal... yay!

Last Wednesday, I went to my ophthalmologist for an appointment. I used to go monthly. This appointment was the first one in two months, which is good news. It simply means that my right eye is making good progress.

To recap, I had an eye stroke back in late March. I had no idea what was going on. All I knew was that I was constantly looking through a water droplet and was getting dizzy.

I didn't think that I would make a fully recovery. Just reading up on various studies saying that it was rare wasn't the best news. My guy felt that if anyone could make a full recovery, it would be me. I didn't want to set my standards so high. He understood.

He was right. On Wednesday, I went in and did my eye test. I could read even the tiniest print during the eye test. I was shocked!

My doctor said that my right eye is 20/20, meaning that the blood splats have disappeared from my central vision. I am now seeing him every three months for my eye injections. There is still a chance that fluid will seep out.

I am thankful that my sight has been restored. It also helps that I have kept my stress and blood pressure controlled. My ophthalmologist cites bad luck as the cause. He also indicated that I am young to have this condition happen to me, so my recovery was easier. Handling a crazy workload at work back then didn't help. I am glad that things are much better these days.

Staying calm in traffic after a mixup

It has been a long week.

On Friday, while driving home from my various shopping excursions, my cell phone rang. It was my resource manager from the employment agency. I took the call.

He broke the bad news. He explained that the hiring manager who liked my skills during my first interview decided to go with another candidate who was more qualified. I was actually okay with the news. I explained that I hadn't been interviewed in over seven years and was simply pleased that I have a decent set of skills that gets noticed.

It was a cordial call. We hung up.

Five minutes later, my phone rang again. It was the same person. I was still stuck in traffic.

He indicated that he had made a mistake. He is working with two different hiring managers with the same first name. Mine is still interested in conducting a second interview.

It was an odd mixup. My resource manager apologized. I indicated that it has been such a crazy week that mistakes happen.

It's a good thing that I am a calm person stuck in traffic.

Packed with parting gifts

I am all packed. I am ready for my Labour Day weekend staycation to begin!

Friday was a good day. It was my two students' last day with the company. We went out of a casual lunch. It was nice spending nearly two hours away from the workplace.

They are incredibly thoughtful, creative folks. They gave me thank-you gifts, which consisted of chocolate and tea. I love both.

The quieter one of the two drew M&M's characters that I love on the gift tag. She also made sure that the gift tag's string was purple, which happens to be my favourite colour.

It was great working with them. I get to start the entire process again, but with a single student who starts next week.

It's simply nice to have a long weekend. I get to rest up before the craziness begins!

Being contacted by my manager while on vacation... really?

My manager is in worry mode, as my guy had predicted.

I received a long e-mail message from my boss, asking me to prepare a list of who, out of my three students, will be handling a number of tasks while I am away.

I dislike when my manager gets in this mode. He only asks this task from me. It does not happen to anyone else on the team.

The kicker is this last request:

In case of emergency, how to contact you with a minimum (not maximum) 24-hour response time.

What? I am on vacation. There is a reason why I am on vacation. I am not doing work.

I don't think that the mandatory course that we all took about work-life balance has properly register in his head. As someone who has worked from home for years, I am pretty good at distinguishing between doing work and then stopping to focus on my life.

How would you handle such a request? I am inclined to say that I am on vacation. I need to de-stress and recharge. Being contacted by my manager on vacation is not ideal. I should not be checking work e-mail or picking up work calls.

Last September, I took a Friday off as a vacation day. A contractor had quit after three days. My manager sent me two e-mails about this contractor's departure and then left me a voice message on my home phone. To me, this situation is not an emergency that warrants contacting me at home. I foresee a repeat, but amplified in a negative way.

Fifty Shades Darker... it's almost here!

Just over two weeks from now, Fifty Shades Darker will be in theatres. I can't wait!
I typically don't go a movie on its opening day. The lineups can be crazy. However, the various trailers look enticing to me.

My guy won't be travelling the first weekend that the movie is out. It'll be a fun movie date!

Work frustrations, but Friday ended on a positive note

The last 2.5 days at work have been crazy. It ended nicely on Friday, though.

Late Wednesday morning, I got an instant message from a co-op student, who happens to be a software developer. He asked me whether I have time to do some documentation updates. He isn't good at explaining himself.

It turns out that this particular team of developers has been working on a major software enhancement and failed to let me look at the design document, let alone tell me in advance that I would have to write something about it. I was livid.

I asked him to demo the enhancements. He told me to come see him. I told him that I work from home on Wednesdays and that an online session was needed. After much reluctance, he agreed. It also took some nudging to get the design document from him.

I flat out said after I had completed two parts of this enhancement (there are ten in total) that there was no way that I would be done by Friday, which is the deadline. That raised a lot of eyebrows. Good.

For several months, I tend to scramble to get my work done for this particular team, because they cannot communicate that I have work to do. They don't bother telling me what they are working on. I can only ask so much as to whether their work impacts mine.

I have raised this issue a number of times to both my manager and the project manager responsible for this team.

Technically, I work at a decent clip and understand things fairly quickly that I could make the Friday deadline. I wanted to make my point that I should not be killing myself because folks are horrible at communicating.

Sure enough, one of the developers raised the issue to the project management office. The project manager that I work for asked my manager if another writer could help me out.

My manager is understanding. We had a talk. I told him that this team had three weeks to work on this feature. I get 2.5 days to work on my part? Ridiculous.

My manager decided to cancel our weekly team meeting so I could work on this feature. He ended up doing the following:

• Raised this issue with his manager about this particular team and how it operates
• Indicated to the project management office that we do not have enough resources to have another writer pitch in, especially when one just quit this week
• Pointed out that this team does not follow process properly and that the project manager needs to watch this team like a hawk
• Defended me when I was accused by another project manager that I was "jeopardizing both teams" that I work for

I don't understand that last point. She is a jerk, so I don't really take her comments seriously. According to my manager, she accused me of failing to make this team complete everything on time for this work period. My manager told her that I am not to blame. It's a team issue for not completing everything on time. Specifically, it is everyone on the team but me who failed to help me out.

I am fortunate to have an understanding manager. He knows how I tick.

Sure enough, pulling extra hours to finish this work allowed me to finish by late Thursday. I sent out my reviews that evening and early Friday morning. I got some feedback and incorporated everything.

Yes, I completed my work under the circumstances. I have yet to not meet a stupid deadline like this one.

I wrote an e-mail to my manager, the two project managers (the one that I work for and the jerk), and the manager of all those software developers, indicating that my work was done. I also firmly, but diplomatically, indicated my position. It helped.

I got to talk to the software developer manager, who first thanked me for putting in extra work to complete this work. He also knew that our writing team is stretched thin these days. 

He is shaking up things on this team, which includes moving them out of a room that they have been occupying for over a year and moving them to where the rest of us sit. He also wants to make sure that I am involved in all stages of development. Finally, my request to have a retrospective meeting came true. I can finally voice my concerns to everyone.

The project manager then spoke to me. He also thanked me for my contributions and apologized for not being as supportive as he should have been.

Friday turned out nicely with these conversations. I also managed to take a 1.5-hour lunch break with the two co-op writing students. They asked me to join them for lunch. I drove them over to the restaurant and we had a good chat over decent food.

It has been nice to relax so far this weekend. More on that later.