Sore wrist with minor swelling

Friday is here. Yay!

I have a sore left wrist. I also have a bit of swelling. My guess is that one end of my cuff bracelet dug into it while my head rested on it as I slept.

I need to sleep differently.

It's weird. I took my cuff bracelet off and hope that the swelling subsides.

Thanksgiving weekend

It's Thanksgiving weekend coming up. I got the vegetable part of my shopping list done on Wednesday. I have the turkey and stuffing to get on the weekend, and I'm all set to go.

I am looking forward to the longer weekend. I like making Thanksgiving dinner. I also love leftovers.

Happy Friday! I'm so glad that there's one more workday to go.

Early meeting and a nap through the first hour of it

Yesterday, I woke up early for my 7 am meeting that typically lasts for four hours. I managed to sleep through the first hour after I said hello at the start.

It was a productive day. I worked on a PowerPoint presentation that I haven't had a chance to do in weeks.

On a completely different note, my friend and I made plans to get together on Friday night. Yay!

The week and Friday

This week has flown by. I am pleased. I simply need to get through Friday and all is well.

I have dinner plans later today. I rarely go out on a Friday night. It's nice that I get to see the world a bit.

A colleague saying hi and sending a virtual hug

On Friday, a colleague whom I haven't chatted with for a few months pinged me on Teams. She said hi, wanted to know that I was good, and sent me a hug from afar. It was so sweet of her.

On the whole, our working relationship has been decent. I've been at this company for nearly eleven years and she was there when I started.

We had some rough waters when she transitioned from a quality assurance team lead to a program manager on my team. She was so stressed out that she took some of that out on me and I wouldn't have it.

Eventually, another colleague took over my role on those two teams as I moved over to reviewing everyone's work on our writing team. When this colleague resigned, I had to step back in and complete the work that she hadn't done. That's when the program manager realized how valuable my contributions were and our working relationship went back to what it was before. I completed everything that the previous person had left behind and the program manager was thankful.

Late last year, she was involved in a serious car crash. My manager let me know about it because he knew that we had worked closely together. I sent her e-mails of encouragement and let her know that I was pulling for her.

It's great when you have a lovely chat with someone on a Friday afternoon. She is doing much better these days, which is wonderful news.

Blind interviewing

I'm conducting an interview with my manager at 8 am later today. Sadly, I don't have any meeting details. I know that I'm interviewing one of two candidates. I don't know which one.

Stellar organization... not!

To make an extremely long story short, the person whom I trained back in late April didn't work out. My manager decided to terminate his contract. We need to fill that position as soon as we can, which means that I'll be training this person.

Happy Friday!

Heatwave, dole whip, and a perk

The heatwave and extreme humidity disappeared yesterday. It was nice to turn off the air conditioning and have my windows open. I prefer cool breezes while still seeing sunshine.

Two days ago, I went out for a perk. I got a free cupcake and cookie. They were good.

I also indulged in some dole whip. I got raspberry and mango flavours. It was refreshing on a scorching day.

It's Friday. The weekend is within reach.

Shorter workweek

I like a shorter workweek. It makes me look forward to a longer weekend. I am extending it by taking next Monday off.

My busiest workday is Friday. Yay to not having to deal with it this week!

Bonus pay, relief, and friend

I gave my presentation online for work yesterday. It went well. I always feel great and relieved after it's done.

It's raining right now. I like rain at night. I find it soothing.

Yesterday, I got my bonus in addition to my paycheque. It feels good being temporarily rich. I have put the bonus towards paying off my debt, which continues to go well.

It's Friday at long last. I am seeing a friend, who is also my colleague, on Saturday. We haven't seen each other since last September. I am excited to catch up with her.

Snow, errands, and recipes

It's snowing. I was hoping to run an errand later on today, but I think that I'll just stay at home and try on Sunday instead.

This business has curbside pickup from Wednesday through Friday, and Sunday. I am typically running errands on Saturday. So, I have either Friday or Sunday to drop by the store and pick up a couple of orders.

It used to be open on Saturdays. However, with this second pandemic lockdown, it has revised its hours. 

At least I get to stay home all warm and cozy. I am currently going through a new cookbook, dreaming about which recipe to try first.

Productive Friday heading into the weekend

The weekend is finally here. Yay!

My manager took Friday off. It was nice. I noticed that I didn't get a ton of messages in my inbox. I loved it. I could focus on completing a few tasks with few interruptions.

I got a gift card thanks to a rewards program at work. It went towards a Black Friday sale. I don't normally shop during Black Friday, but there were a few items that I have been meaning to get for months and finally got around to it.

Enjoy your weekend!

Verdict on using a tissue to eliminate eyeglasses from fogging up

I decided to skip a day posting here. Friday was pretty busy that I ended up taking a nap at around 22:30, woke up, brushed my teeth, and went to bed for another 7 hours!

My appointment with my ophthalmologist went well. He says that my eyes are healthy such that I don't need to see him for another six months. It's good that I don't need an eye injection. Here's hoping that this trend continues.

As for my eyeglasses fogging up, I tried the tissue technique where I had it folded as a strip at the top of my mask. At first, it did fog up, but not as badly as if I didn't have the tissue. Within a minute, there was no fogging at all. It was nice to do the eye test and not apologize for not being able to read the chart due to fog.

Another tip that I got was to wash your lenses with baby shampoo. You then let your eyeglasses air-dry. I haven't tried it, but I'm curious.

Nice Friday to call it a day early and fetch dinner

I worked extra hours on Thursday to get a deliverable out the door. I am cutting my workday short on Monday and did on Friday.

It was a gorgeous day on Friday. I decided to go out for a nice drive and fetch dinner. It felt like summer. I had a t-shirt and shorts on. I haven't been out on a Friday for what feels like years, but it's probably more like half a year.

Enjoy your weekend!

It's Friday at long last and a fix to creating new Blogger tags

 It's Friday. I have one more workday to go. I am relieved.

We've got a bit of a break from the heatwave. It's nice to give the air conditioning some rest.

I have a few errands to run on Saturday. I'll be heading down to Toronto for a bit. I hope to hit my old neighbourhood when I have a chance.

Hey, I can finally create new Blogger tags with the new interface while writing a new post. Hooray for logical usability! I disliked publishing my post and then adding a new tag from the Posts section. Creating each new tag from there was a pain.

Working with colleagues who annoy me

At work, I seem to work with people who have interesting personalities, issues and, quirks. I wish that I didn't have to collaborate with them. Luckily, I don't that often with most of them.

Well, there's Diva. She enjoys texting me on our messaging app. I, on the other hand, cringe when she contacts me. We spent forty minutes texting. Why? First, she types slowly. I end up moving onto other work and getting back to her messages. She should consider writing an e-mail instead, as her issues are never urgent. Second, she isn't clear about what she is conveying in her texts. They are confusing for me because she doesn't consider whether her audience will get what she is saying. Third, the reason why I didn't understand her was because she messed up performing a procedure, which caused my work to appear somewhere it shouldn't have been. It was nice pointing that mistake out to her again.

As mentioned a while back, she and another colleague have taken on roughly half my old workload. I always felt that they took what I did for granted. I did and still continue to do a lot. She, in particular, is paying the price for being sloppy.

There is a software tester that I worked with several years ago. He moved on to another position within the company, which was great. I didn't like working with him. Sadly, he's back. He hasn't changed a bit. He has bugged me unnecessarily three times. I finally had it, even after giving him an example of asking a software developer technical questions instead of me. I had to explicitly tell him to copy that developer and me together. Ugh! He, too, enjoys texting. It's not my preferred method. Nothing is that urgent.

Finally, I have been working with a female software developer in a focus group. She was nominated to lead it. Sadly, she talks a ton. She does not let people speak. She seems to thoroughly enjoy hearing herself speak in circles. She talks up such a storm that I just tune out. A meeting that she had set up for thirty minutes yesterday with a group of twenty people got extended to an hour because she took up 37 minutes of it with her gibberish.

Thank goodness it's Friday. Here's hoping that it's a quiet day without dealing with these characters.

Deep breaths help

It's Friday. I am exhausted from the workweek.

I've been practising taking deep breaths while my eyes are closed, which helps me unwind. It calms me. The problem these days is that I am working at such a pace that I tense up, which seems to trigger panic attack symptoms.

I need to take some time to break. I'm horrible at it.

Thursday was much better, except when two people pinged me on our work instant messaging app. The disruptions and their inability to read annoyed me. It triggered my stress for a brief period. I did more deep breaths and I was fine afterwards.

As for working from home, my workplace has extended this period till the first week of July. I am taking a week of vacation then. It's much needed. I had planned to vacation somewhere. Instead, my plans have changed and I'll be doing a staycation instead.

I do need a break from this hectic pace at work, which I am looking forward to enjoying.

Never-ending comments

I get tired of colleagues who have tons of comments and cannot commit to saying that a document is good to go. It is why this document has never been released to the world for a good year.

The odd thing is that this one colleague owns the document, but required two people to write the content. I am there to edit the content, along with my intern.

He "expected" that my team would use a template for this work. I said that my team has never owned these documents. As a result, there isn't a template.

I don't know why my manager committed to editing this document. It is marketing material, something that our entire team does not have the expertise to do.

One more day of work to go... thank goodness!

Welcome kisses, hugs, gropes, and caresses

On Friday, my team had a little get-together before Christmas. We ended up watching a movie and ordering lunch in. It was fun.

While watching the movie, my guy called me. I had to redirect his call to my voicemail. I also ended up texting him.

He was at our favourite shawarma place by work .He asked me whether I'd like to join him. I explained the whole group lunch-movie combo. I asked if he had time to swing by the office. He advised that he didn't have his badge. I let him know that it didn't matter. I asked that he drop by reception and text me. I'd then come to him.

He did just that. I came out of the room where we were having our function and greeted him. I then moved us to a room where I needed to badge us in, but he didn't need to.

We looked at each other once the door closed. I made the first move to kiss him on the lips. We have longed to kiss each other for nearly four weeks. I hugged him with one arm and caressed his perfectly uniform head with the other.

Meanwhile, my guy continued to kiss me and grope my buttocks. I have missed all that.

We were probably in this kiss-hug-caress-grope period for nearly five minutes. When we finally separated, we had this brief conversation:

"That's a nice welcome," he said, smiling.
"I agree," I said.

I'm thankful that he is back home in my arms.

Trying hard

I had a slightly slower day at work on Friday. I managed to get a hold of my guy online.

"Are you still flying out on Saturday?" I asked him.
"Yes. We can do lunch before I leave," he replied.
"Cool. What time did you want to meet?" I asked him.
"1:30 pm," he replied.
"Great! Hope you'll be on time," I hinted.
"I'll try hard," he said.
"I can vouch for the hard part," I teased.

He sent me a smiley emoticon. I returned the favour. It's fun when we text. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

Black Friday sales... ugh!

For the last three years, I am turned off when it comes to Black Friday sales. I don't know why it has become a tradition in Canada when this ritual comes for our neighbours to the south. However, I feel the same way about Black Friday as I do with Boxing Day sales, with some minor differences.

Black Friday used to be shopping on that particular day for bargains. Yes, you'd be shopping on a Friday. These days, you have pre-Black Friday sales. And, there's a catch, too. You can actually have a full weekend or more of these Black Friday sales.

One word: Ugh.

Boxing Day is a Canadian holiday. In the past, stores would be closed that day. There would be Boxing Day sales on December 27, which is a day after this holiday. These days, you can have your sale start on Christmas or even earlier. And, it's not a Boxing Day sale. Oh, no. It's a Boxing week sale, which could carry on for longer than week. Stores are also open on Boxing Day.

The same word: Ugh.

I don't have much to buy for either sale. It has to be something that I truly need. I am trying to adopt a minimalistic approach to debt and shopping these days.

I have also done all my Christmas shopping. I am that prepared.

On Friday, it took forever for me to drive home. It seemed like everyone was out shopping.

My guy called me from Egypt, where he is there for less than a month. It was great hearing from him.  He is over his jetlag and is safe. Chatting with him made my commute more bearable.

"How's my cute girl?" he asked me.
"I am stuck in traffic. I am literally under highway 400," I replied.
"Are you on highway 401?" he asked me.
"Nope, I'm backroading it," I replied. "It's Black Friday."
"Ah, I see," said my fellow shopper. "You don't get too many deals."
"I agree. You probably do in the States."

It's nice that my guy and I are on the same page. For Canadians, the deals are better during the Boxing Day, week, or month sales.