In which we see that the quality of the Monday is inversely proportional to that of the weekend
My out of town work on Friday went quite wonderfully. All the parties involved were easy to get along with, amd we made a lot of progress towards site acquisition and development. I was quite happy that I provided some good ideas during the process, which to me justified my taking 6 hours away from my desk and driving for four hours. In addition, we managed to rescue a kitten. It was under a sewer grate, about a quarter mile through drain pipes from the nearest residential area. We found a guy from Department of Transportation with a crowbar to lift the grate for us. Several of us gathered around, and risked life and limb trying to coax the kitten out of its hiding space (one of the aforementioned drain pipes). Finally, someone provided a bit of chicken from his sandwich, and Tom shooed us all away and convinced the kitten what a nice guy he is. When the kitten came out, it was in pretty bad shape (today, Tom mentioned the $175 of vet bills and counting), dehydrated & runny-eyed, among other things. Tom mentioned that his daughter had been asking for a kitten & took it home. I provided a water bowl (cut down from a styrofoam coffee cup), and after lunch, Tom brought out some of his left over sushi. Tom's company treated us all to lunch (except for Jody - for some reason the engineers never have time to join us for lunch - I think we must work them too hard).
Afterwards, I got back to the office just in time to join everybody in the conference room for Jennifer's birthday cake. I got some necessary work done afterwards, and made good time heading up to Oswego.
The remainder of the weekend went great too. The prime motivator of my visit to Oswego was the visit of from California of one of my family's oldest friends. I hadn't seen Ron in at least 15 years, and have only heard second hand bits and pieces of what he's been up to from my parents, and he's had equally sketchy information about me, so we spent quite a bit of time catching up on one another's lives. That afternoon, he, my mom, my brother Dan and I went down to Jordan to go Geocaching. We found both caches we were looking for, with minimal wandering once we got into the right areas. In addition, this weekend was Oswego's HarborFest, so Saturday evening, I spent a couple hours helping my brother wedge cars into St. Louis's church parking lot at $5 a whack, to help Fr. Wurz pay the bills. After that, I walked with two of my brothers, my sister-in-law, my nephew and Ron down to Fort Ontario to watch the fireworks.
Sunday after church and breakfast, I headed to B-ville to go geocaching with Jym, Milka and Samir. While hanging out with Samir (who is very happy to tell you that he's three), I asked him how old he thought I was. His guess was five. I was amused. We had three geocache sites waypointed in the GPS, and decided to skip the first one, after getting close to it & realizing there was a swamp between us and it. The second one was a pretty easy find, and Samir had to be convinced that he couldn't take everything in the cache (there were quite a few toys to interest a 3 year old). I got on the road back to Airmont fairly late, and took the Thruway to see if it was better or worse than 81/17. It seemed better, and I was happy to take advantage of a service area when I needed a nap (which lasted from just before sunset to about 1:30 am), then got a beverage when I woke up. While in the Capital District, I enjoyed the early morning selections they played on WRVE 99.5, including Night Ranger, Tommy Tu-Tone, Styx and Queen while I was in range. Just after I turned south, I saw a nifty shooting star that seemed to come almost straight down toward the road. I got home around 4:30 or so, and headed to bed, getting about an hour or so of sleep before having to head into work.
I woke up with a sore throat which got worse as the morning wore on. I was quite annoyed to discover, upon arriving at work, that someone had cleaned out the refrigerator, including the yogurt I was planning on having for breakfast. Allegedly, an email was sent out announcing the cleanout, but I didn't get a copy. According to the co-worker who told me about the email, the cleanout wasn't supposed to occur until the 3rd, either.
This was a harbinger of how the rest of the day would go. I didn't have time for any sort of break, or really even to breathe until I decided at lunch time that I was *going*, regardless of what was on my desk. The afternoon was mostly a long meeting which resulted in about 3 hours of work on my desk, most of which I decided to leave until tomorrow when 6 pm rolled around.
Afterwards, I got back to the office just in time to join everybody in the conference room for Jennifer's birthday cake. I got some necessary work done afterwards, and made good time heading up to Oswego.
The remainder of the weekend went great too. The prime motivator of my visit to Oswego was the visit of from California of one of my family's oldest friends. I hadn't seen Ron in at least 15 years, and have only heard second hand bits and pieces of what he's been up to from my parents, and he's had equally sketchy information about me, so we spent quite a bit of time catching up on one another's lives. That afternoon, he, my mom, my brother Dan and I went down to Jordan to go Geocaching. We found both caches we were looking for, with minimal wandering once we got into the right areas. In addition, this weekend was Oswego's HarborFest, so Saturday evening, I spent a couple hours helping my brother wedge cars into St. Louis's church parking lot at $5 a whack, to help Fr. Wurz pay the bills. After that, I walked with two of my brothers, my sister-in-law, my nephew and Ron down to Fort Ontario to watch the fireworks.
Sunday after church and breakfast, I headed to B-ville to go geocaching with Jym, Milka and Samir. While hanging out with Samir (who is very happy to tell you that he's three), I asked him how old he thought I was. His guess was five. I was amused. We had three geocache sites waypointed in the GPS, and decided to skip the first one, after getting close to it & realizing there was a swamp between us and it. The second one was a pretty easy find, and Samir had to be convinced that he couldn't take everything in the cache (there were quite a few toys to interest a 3 year old). I got on the road back to Airmont fairly late, and took the Thruway to see if it was better or worse than 81/17. It seemed better, and I was happy to take advantage of a service area when I needed a nap (which lasted from just before sunset to about 1:30 am), then got a beverage when I woke up. While in the Capital District, I enjoyed the early morning selections they played on WRVE 99.5, including Night Ranger, Tommy Tu-Tone, Styx and Queen while I was in range. Just after I turned south, I saw a nifty shooting star that seemed to come almost straight down toward the road. I got home around 4:30 or so, and headed to bed, getting about an hour or so of sleep before having to head into work.
I woke up with a sore throat which got worse as the morning wore on. I was quite annoyed to discover, upon arriving at work, that someone had cleaned out the refrigerator, including the yogurt I was planning on having for breakfast. Allegedly, an email was sent out announcing the cleanout, but I didn't get a copy. According to the co-worker who told me about the email, the cleanout wasn't supposed to occur until the 3rd, either.
This was a harbinger of how the rest of the day would go. I didn't have time for any sort of break, or really even to breathe until I decided at lunch time that I was *going*, regardless of what was on my desk. The afternoon was mostly a long meeting which resulted in about 3 hours of work on my desk, most of which I decided to leave until tomorrow when 6 pm rolled around.