My ex never cleaned out his trolley at the office

Last Wednesday, I was in the office. There are a number of trolleys (lockers on wheels) that are locked at work. A full-time employee can get a trolley to store their belongings, as we don't have assigned desks.

The facilities manager unlocked a bunch of them. There is a high demand for them now that we are at the office more often.

I heard my manager look at the contents of one of the lockers:

This person has a toothbrush. He lived here. He was a trainer. He's long gone.

This trainer was my ex.  He left the company maybe two years ago. He never bothered heading to the office to fetch his belongings. 

The toothbrush detail was interesting. Frankly, he was more concerned about flossing, but the toothbrush was a close second.

I miss the good times being with him. I don't miss being treated like dirt and having my heart torn apart. It took a lot of strength to kick him to the curb when he wanted sex without a relationship. Dumb.

Update on my friend leaving the company, but moving to a new career elsewhere

Last Friday was my friend's final day at work. My team is horrible at sendoffs. I ended up creating an online meeting for us to say goodbye to her and solicited donations towards a farewell gift separately, if folks wanted to donate.

To explain the situation, my friend originally got a job as a project manager within the company. She was to move to a different department.

I had warned her about her soon-to-be new manager. She was toxic towards me and isn't a nice person. Sure enough, she never finalized my friend's contact and how much she would be earning. She also wanted my friend to work both was a writer and project manager for two months at her current pay.

My friend appreciated the warning that I gave her. She decided to quit. She deserved better. I don't blame her.

She does have a new job lined up and starts just over a week from now. I'm happy for her.

As a team, before this pandemic, we would normally get together for a farewell lunch. My friend isn't comfortable being in a large crowd. Instead, she'd rather have a meal with me and one other colleague. We'll be doing that soon.

I have collected enough funds to get her a spa gift basket. I need to figure out how to get her mailing address to get it delivered to her. I may need to ask my manager first. Otherwise, I may need to ask her directly, which kind of ruins the entire vibe.

Thoughts about being heartbroken

Part of me wishes that I could have a good cry over my breakup. I have yet to do it. I can barely shed a tear.

It has been an odd breakup. My heart is broken, but there is a strength that prevents me from going down any road of dispair.

I still think of him often. When I see a couple holding hands as they are walking somewhere, it reminds me of holding my ex-guy's hand. We were happy. It felt good.

I miss that feeling. I know it'll happen again with the right person. It's just not the right time to start a romantic relationship. I need to focus on me.

And, that's perfectly okay. For me, it feels right to go at my own pace.

Achy body, stronger heart, and reflection

I am still achy. It helped that I worked from home on Wednesday. I got to take it easier than if I were at work.

It has taken a while for me to realize that all the stress at work and in my life has finally hit me. I truly need to take it easy.

Yesterday marked my ex-husband's birthday. I didn't feel anything. I suppose that being in such an unhealthy relationship has made me numb. I hope that he is okay in heaven.

I do feel differently about my recent breakup. I loved my guy. I didn't feel the same way about my ex-hubby. I fell out of love with him, but stayed with him until I had the strength to leave.

It's good to know that time has healed me with my ex-hubby. Here's hoping that I am at that same peace of mind with my guy soon.

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.