(no subject)
Yesterday was a day for Getting Things Done, and boy did it ever feel good.
We started our new schedule at work, the one where we work 8-5 Monday thru Thursday, then half days on Friday and Saturday. And you know what happened? On Friday, one of our biggest and most monstrous data downloads failed. Which it does sometimes, but it takes literal hours to download and parse for our use. Which is the trouble with half days. You've got much less wiggle room when things go wrong.
But after I finished up on Saturday, I went out and Did Things. I washed my sheets and blankets. (Our washer isn't big enough, so it's a laundromat job.) I bought flowers to plant in pots, as well as a plant stand. I gassed up my car, filled the leaky tire, and got a carwash. I ran the dishwasher. I potted the flowers. And then I sauteed some kale for supper, because kale is cheap and good for you. (But I should have let it cook longer so it could soften up more.) It was nice, after much frustration and running around and Things Needing to be Done, to Get Things Done.
So now I have impatiens in a pot outside our front door, where it is shady, and lantana in a pot on my deck, where it is hot and sunny. (Lantana is apparently drought resistant and loves the sun, and it has pretty bunches of multicolored flowers, so I think it will be as happy as me to have it growing on my deck.)
Today at church one of my coworkers, who deals with IT, asked me how the new schedule went. We ended up talking a great deal about all the issues involved. Which was very helpful to me as well as him (he told me so). There's been a number of small breakdowns in communication, it seems, adding up to gaps in people's view of the situation. It's nice to strike a blow for the side of clarity.
Friday was our last choir concert until the fall. Which is a relief. We performed some of the pieces from the Celtic mass, and I was surprised to see that the piper from last month's performance had come to play for us. Among the instrumentalists, he had been the one looking most mutinous when things got bad. I put it down to Z's mysterious powers of being incredibly polite and hopeful and encouraging and all-around nice. You combine that with professionalism and competence, and you can get people to do anything.
We started our new schedule at work, the one where we work 8-5 Monday thru Thursday, then half days on Friday and Saturday. And you know what happened? On Friday, one of our biggest and most monstrous data downloads failed. Which it does sometimes, but it takes literal hours to download and parse for our use. Which is the trouble with half days. You've got much less wiggle room when things go wrong.
But after I finished up on Saturday, I went out and Did Things. I washed my sheets and blankets. (Our washer isn't big enough, so it's a laundromat job.) I bought flowers to plant in pots, as well as a plant stand. I gassed up my car, filled the leaky tire, and got a carwash. I ran the dishwasher. I potted the flowers. And then I sauteed some kale for supper, because kale is cheap and good for you. (But I should have let it cook longer so it could soften up more.) It was nice, after much frustration and running around and Things Needing to be Done, to Get Things Done.
So now I have impatiens in a pot outside our front door, where it is shady, and lantana in a pot on my deck, where it is hot and sunny. (Lantana is apparently drought resistant and loves the sun, and it has pretty bunches of multicolored flowers, so I think it will be as happy as me to have it growing on my deck.)
Today at church one of my coworkers, who deals with IT, asked me how the new schedule went. We ended up talking a great deal about all the issues involved. Which was very helpful to me as well as him (he told me so). There's been a number of small breakdowns in communication, it seems, adding up to gaps in people's view of the situation. It's nice to strike a blow for the side of clarity.
Friday was our last choir concert until the fall. Which is a relief. We performed some of the pieces from the Celtic mass, and I was surprised to see that the piper from last month's performance had come to play for us. Among the instrumentalists, he had been the one looking most mutinous when things got bad. I put it down to Z's mysterious powers of being incredibly polite and hopeful and encouraging and all-around nice. You combine that with professionalism and competence, and you can get people to do anything.