Extended bereavement leave by a day

On Friday, I made the decision to take today off and extend my bereavement leave. I wasn't sure how I'd feel today. I actually feel okay.

I think that this leave has helped me sort out past issues within my family. It was a much needed period to reflect, grieve, and be at peace with everything.

I'm not sure what I'll do today, but I will take it easy.

Knowledge and getting shelled with questions

I am one of those breathing fountains of knowledge. A while back, the diva on our team nicknamed me the data bank. I don't mind it.

The downside to being fairly knowledgeable is that people often fire questions at me and forget that I'm a person who doesn't enjoy constant interrogation. How about saying hi first, for instance, before you start firing your questions at me?

I have one friend who has been doing that online in direct messages. It's always a question that he poses.

The weekend, I had proudly mentioned that I got my vaccine shot in a public post. He congratulated me on said post and then privately asked me what vaccine I got.

I decide not to respond. It was the first time that I felt good about not replying. It's always a question. It's never how I am doing or a simple hello. I had had enough.

I am still training a new member of our team from India. Although he is good at asking me how I am doing, I find that he asks questions that are too advanced for his current understanding. It's not horrible, but it means that I have to explain the same concept twice. The first time is a basic version until we get to the actual topic in training where I need to explain it in more detail.

On Monday, I learned that his questions that he had about late last week's training sessions were off, meaning that he had either forgotten or he is the type who isn't the research-on-my-own type.

I have him working on an exercise on his own. We'll see how he does when we meet later on today.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone! I hope it's joyous and peaceful.

My friend's passing

My dear friend passed away from Leukemia on Sunday. I got the news last hour.

It's heartbreaking. She enriched my life with her friendship. I am thrilled that I knew her for over twenty years.

Her last e-mail to me was that she loved our friendship. She loved me. She wished that we had travelled more together.

She was the ideal travel companion. We never had a disagreement when we travelled together, be it snorkelling or drinking beer. We knew that we would be travelling companions when we retired.

I have been looking at photos of her. I particularly like the one that I took of her with her daughter at a playground. They are both smiling, with her young daughter hugging her.

I was fortunate to have met up with her for lunch back in December 2019, and January and March 2020. I will remember hugging her for the last time after lunch and waving to her as she drove off.

I am happy that I got to say that I loved her and cherished our friendship. I am at peace telling her what I needed to before she passed on.

May she rest in peace.

Sleep and a persistent ex

Last night, I had a difficult time getting to sleep. I sort of drifted off for the first hour and then woke up wide awake.

I did a bit of reading before I went back to bed again. I woke up at my usual start time these days and felt sluggish. I decided to take a sick day and napped throughout the day.

Last month, when I had a number of foot pain issues, I worked through those days with perhaps a couple of hours of sleep. I'm not sure what possessed me to carry on. I didn't have that feeling today.

Perhaps an underlying reason why I didn't sleep well is because my ex-romantic interest keeps calling me. I made it perfectly clear that it was over and that I didn't want him to contact me. Yet, he still continues to call.

He has used three different phone numbers to contact me. I have blocked them all. The downside is that he uses one of these numbers to call me. The number gets blocked on my cell phone, but it still goes to voicemail thanks to my having an Android phone. He leaves me messages, but I don't listen to them. I access my voicemail, delete them, and move on.

Moments ago, I downloaded an app that takes blocked phone numbers and lets them go into its voicemail. Once it does, it disconnects the number, preventing the person to leave a message. I hope that it works. I have everything set up.

Now you know the main reason why I broke up with this jerk. He couldn't take no for an answer when I had helped him financially the first time, but he asked again the second time. I said no and he asked again. He was relentless. I knew that he was bad news.

When I broke up with him, he obviously didn't and can't accept it. Thankfully, the e-mails have stopped and those are easily blocked. I have blocked his text messages, which works well. Phone numbers are all blocked. It's just this one phone number that he uses where he is adamant to leave voicemail.

Here's hoping that I'll have some peace of mind soon.

Happy Easter!

To those who celebrate Easter, may it be joyous and peaceful.

On Saturday, I probably purchased the most expensive turkey in my life. I had to get one that was already stuffed. Slim pickings this year. That's okay. I look forward to leftovers.

Cooking is healing and comforting. I'll need 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.

My summer job at a fish and chips store

As I grow older, I have noticed that many folks who have helped me along the way are passing on. I have yet another story to share.

I grew up in a friendly neighbourhood in Toronto. I went back there the other night to have dinner with my friend. We did a lot of reminiscing.

There used to be a fish and chips store a few blocks away from where I used to live. It was a family-run business. A Chinese couple owned and worked at the store for over thirty years.

When I was old enough buy an order of chips (fries) wrapped in newspaper for a dollar, I would visit the store after school. They were terrific.

A few years later, I asked my mom whether she could ask the owners if I could work for them that summer. My mom would often visit the store to get dinner. Sure enough, I got it. I had just turned eighteen years old.

I felt that I was slow learning about everything. However, my boss, Mary, had a chat with my mom and said the complete opposite -- that I was a quick learner and a hard worker.

I learned how to wrap fish and chips in newspaper. I even folded a number of open-faced newspaper holders for chips, so you could eat out of it as you walked. I honed my skills talking to and serving customers. I even learned about orange roughy.

The couple often insisted that I have dinner there. I felt odd about it. Eventually, I caved. It was delicious, as always.

The store closed just after I had earned my undergraduate degree. I have often wondered about the couple and how there were.

I decided to do a search. I learned that Mary had passed on in 2009 at the age of 72. She, like her husband, were kind and treated me like family. I regret not seeing them as much when my family had moved away a year after I had worked at the store.

May she continue to rest in peace.

Fraudulent credit card charges

I was working from home on Wednesday. I received an e-mail from the credit card company that issued my corporate credit card. It has an early credit fraud department. Just having that alone impressed me.

I continued reading the e-mail. There were four transactions that occurred rapidly on my card. The credit card company indicated that they were suspicious.

After analyzing them, these transactions were not made my me. In the e-mail, there was a button to click if at least one of these transactions were fraudulent. I did just that, which automatically froze my credit card from any new transactions.

The first three transactions were peanuts. They were flagged as being transactions done in Virginia, in different towns. The first one was just under $1. It made me believe that it was a test to see if my credit card was valid. The next charge was under $8, followed by one registering $13.

The last charge was the largest. It was for over $2,100. I didn't recognize the location.

I gave my credit card company a call. It's US-based. When the automated voice asked to confirm my identity, I pressed the 1 button on my phone. The call disconnected. I did this a couple of times more. The same thing happened.

Instead, I called the number on the back of my credit card, which automatically forwarded me to the early fraud department. I do like this credit card company. All four transactions were immediately declined. I had a helpful woman tell me what steps were going to happen.

It turns out that the over $2,100 transaction was for liquor in Vietnam. First, that's a ton of liquor! Second, if I wanted a booze fix, I would got to the local LCBO store and get me a bottle of whatever I wanted. The woman on the other end laughed.

Anyway, my corporate card has been closed. A new one is coming to me. More importantly, I am not liable for any of these fraudulent charges.

Peace of mind is wonderful.

Working from home and being less stress, especially watching Fifty Shades Darker

I worked from home on Tuesday. I do it again today, which is my regular day working from home.

I enjoy working from home. It's not for everyone. For me, I am more focused and I don't have as many interruptions compared to being in the office.

I have always known that I am far more productive when I work from home. Tuesday was no exception, especially when I started my day at 06:45.

Tuesday consisted of my being on two conference calls. The second was my usual half-hour meeting with my manager.

He asked me how I was doing. Naturally, I am busy. However, my stress levels have subsided. These days, I wind up entering a zen, peaceful mode when I am focused on my tasks at home.

I also feel that a few changes have made me manage my stress better:

• Going into do-no-disturb mode on my work instant messaging app
• Blending a green drink every day and drinking it
• Eating out less
• Removing myself from annoying e-mail messages that get me worked up
• Not dealing with my insurance company's "courtesy" calls, as they irritate me
• Sleeping more
• Delegating my work rather than having the need to do it all myself

Here's hoping that my stress levels continue to subside.

The best part about Tuesday? When I was done with work, I headed out to get my DVD copy of Fifty Shades Darker. Needless to say, my stress levels are definitely reduced!

Happy Easter!

I'd like to wish everyone a happy Easter! Here's hoping that you are having a peaceful, meaningful weekend so far.

I am taking a break from the A to Z blogging challenge today. I'll be back on Monday.

Take care,
Cutiebootie