It Rained!
Well, it kind of rained for about twenty minutes but hey! Rain! Seeing as it has only rained at my house twice for less then ten minutes each time since May I'm calling this a win. Today was only about two minutes of heavy downpour but another twenty or so of light rain. Of course everything is all dried out again already but I'm still happy to get any rain I can.
Indianapolis is now officially in extreme drought - and we are under water restrictions now. No watering, washing cars, etc. You can still water flowers and veggies every other day so long as you hand water. And commercial car washes are still running. And golf courses can water (WTF?) but the rest of us can't. Seeing as I haven't watered anything but the flower gardens in over a month nothing is really different for me. Now we wait to see if we go on harsher restrictions if the drought continues. I already turn off the faucet when crushing my teeth, turn off the shower when shaving my legs, do full loads in the washer and dishwasher, etc. Other than trying to reclaim the grey-water from the washer and shit I'm not sure how much more I can do.
In other news therapy is going well. I wasn't all that thrilled with the doc after the first visit as the whole thing felt more like an interview than a conversation - and she kept interrupting me - but my second visit was totally different. More conversational. We spent time focusing on some concrete tools like breathing exercises and progressive muscle relaxation to help control my anxiety. Because yes, I have some mild anxiety. Both social and generalized. Most of which I hold in my stomach and shoulders leaving me feeling nauseous and with a headache. Hmm - that sounds familiar, doesn't it? So I'm doing my exercises and listening to my guided imagery thing at bedtime. I actually think it is helping a little bit. I've felt a little bit better and been more even keeled this last week than I have been in a while. And I'm sleeping better, which helps immensely.
I did have a moment at work the other day when I pretty much freaked out. Thursday was one of those days. I may have mentioned here once or twice that I'm very busy these days. Like for the last three weeks I've gotten a new project every five days type busy. Well, got another one of Thursday. One of my coworkers was sending me email all morning with shit about this project he was writing the tech design for and needed the ancillary apps to be coded the same way, blah blah blah. I finally got up, walked over to his desk, and asked him what the hell he was talking about. (I didn't use "Hell" though - he's one of the really religious peeps I work with and I try not to cuss around him. Sometimes I even succeed.). Seems one of the projects that I knew about but was told would not need ancillary work does indeed need ancillary work. But no one told me. And no one got me involved while they were doing the requirements. So it is only now that a developer is working on it and his boss said the ancillaries aren't his responsibility that I'm finding out there is work to do. Typical really.
So there I am scrambling to find all the documentation and get up to speed on yet another project when my boss comes to my desk and is all "um, can I talk to you for a minutes?". In my head I'm thinking "dude, you just gave me my raise two days ago, you can't be firing me now" as I'm walking to his desk. I relax as soon as I realize we are at his desk and not a conference room as that means it can't been too bad, right? Then he proceeds to tell me that he and his boss, the VP, have decided that I need to go to this conference in August that our main vendor puts on so that I can absorb all the stuff about their new technology since, to paraphrase, its all about services and business rule management systems and workflow processing and I understand all that stuff. Plus its part of getting me up to speed and being a real architect.
My first reaction? No, no, f-ing no! Don't make me go!
What I actually said? Okay.
Then I went back to my desk and spent the next hour registering for the conference, calling the hotel and begging for the conference rate since early registration had already closed, and working with our admin to get my flights set up.
I've been to these conferences and user groups before so this is not a big deal (and I'm usually kind of bored). I am a little anxious (ha!) about how I'll deal with all the people and networking shit that is expected of me. I'll be doing a lot of breathing exercises I think.
So that's the latest with me. Today I plan to do a whole lot of nothing. Maybe read a bit, grab something to eat, and just chill out. Tomorrow I'm going to clean the house as it needs it big time. I may start today if I get motivated.
And now I'm going to go plan Bejewelled obsessively for a few hours. Later.
Indianapolis is now officially in extreme drought - and we are under water restrictions now. No watering, washing cars, etc. You can still water flowers and veggies every other day so long as you hand water. And commercial car washes are still running. And golf courses can water (WTF?) but the rest of us can't. Seeing as I haven't watered anything but the flower gardens in over a month nothing is really different for me. Now we wait to see if we go on harsher restrictions if the drought continues. I already turn off the faucet when crushing my teeth, turn off the shower when shaving my legs, do full loads in the washer and dishwasher, etc. Other than trying to reclaim the grey-water from the washer and shit I'm not sure how much more I can do.
In other news therapy is going well. I wasn't all that thrilled with the doc after the first visit as the whole thing felt more like an interview than a conversation - and she kept interrupting me - but my second visit was totally different. More conversational. We spent time focusing on some concrete tools like breathing exercises and progressive muscle relaxation to help control my anxiety. Because yes, I have some mild anxiety. Both social and generalized. Most of which I hold in my stomach and shoulders leaving me feeling nauseous and with a headache. Hmm - that sounds familiar, doesn't it? So I'm doing my exercises and listening to my guided imagery thing at bedtime. I actually think it is helping a little bit. I've felt a little bit better and been more even keeled this last week than I have been in a while. And I'm sleeping better, which helps immensely.
I did have a moment at work the other day when I pretty much freaked out. Thursday was one of those days. I may have mentioned here once or twice that I'm very busy these days. Like for the last three weeks I've gotten a new project every five days type busy. Well, got another one of Thursday. One of my coworkers was sending me email all morning with shit about this project he was writing the tech design for and needed the ancillary apps to be coded the same way, blah blah blah. I finally got up, walked over to his desk, and asked him what the hell he was talking about. (I didn't use "Hell" though - he's one of the really religious peeps I work with and I try not to cuss around him. Sometimes I even succeed.). Seems one of the projects that I knew about but was told would not need ancillary work does indeed need ancillary work. But no one told me. And no one got me involved while they were doing the requirements. So it is only now that a developer is working on it and his boss said the ancillaries aren't his responsibility that I'm finding out there is work to do. Typical really.
So there I am scrambling to find all the documentation and get up to speed on yet another project when my boss comes to my desk and is all "um, can I talk to you for a minutes?". In my head I'm thinking "dude, you just gave me my raise two days ago, you can't be firing me now" as I'm walking to his desk. I relax as soon as I realize we are at his desk and not a conference room as that means it can't been too bad, right? Then he proceeds to tell me that he and his boss, the VP, have decided that I need to go to this conference in August that our main vendor puts on so that I can absorb all the stuff about their new technology since, to paraphrase, its all about services and business rule management systems and workflow processing and I understand all that stuff. Plus its part of getting me up to speed and being a real architect.
My first reaction? No, no, f-ing no! Don't make me go!
What I actually said? Okay.
Then I went back to my desk and spent the next hour registering for the conference, calling the hotel and begging for the conference rate since early registration had already closed, and working with our admin to get my flights set up.
I've been to these conferences and user groups before so this is not a big deal (and I'm usually kind of bored). I am a little anxious (ha!) about how I'll deal with all the people and networking shit that is expected of me. I'll be doing a lot of breathing exercises I think.
So that's the latest with me. Today I plan to do a whole lot of nothing. Maybe read a bit, grab something to eat, and just chill out. Tomorrow I'm going to clean the house as it needs it big time. I may start today if I get motivated.
And now I'm going to go plan Bejewelled obsessively for a few hours. Later.