Sunday, March 9, 2014

Week 10 - Roller Coaster Life

What a week! I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot but this roller coaster routine is getting nuts. Not only is it the weather but work was a carnival ride this week too.

It was -8 degrees on Monday morning. Real temp. The wind chill made it much colder. Sunday was 73 degrees. That’s an 81 degree fluctuation in just one week. Insane, right? In the middle of the week, mid 30’s felt like summer. The warmth is a gift and I’m taking it as a sign that spring is coming.

Work felt the same. I had been prepping for graduate assistant training for a couple of weeks, part of which was a database I’d written to spit out personnel action forms in seconds instead of the 20 minutes of so they take to do individually. This was being given out to people all over campus. While I was happy to be saving people time, Nora was really happy about it and kept thanking me over and over. Then the users started calling and emailing to thank me too. There were several offers of chocolate or flowers but none materialized yet. Maybe this week?

The two training sessions were Tuesday and Thursday. Unfortunately there was a meeting on Wednesday that Nora was told to go to under the banner of collaboration. But no one in the meeting wanted her there and they even called in the head of the department to read Nora the riot act. He beat her up verbally before she’d even opened her mouth. She was rightfully upset and reported back to our boss and the AVC, which caused, let’s say, some escalation. It was so unbelievable and when I left work on Wednesday, the plan was that I would go to the 8:00 a.m. Thursday follow up meeting because Nora would be at grad training. Can we say stressed boys and girls? I was willing to do it but not looking forward to it. I couldn’t have been happier when Nora called at 9:00 Wednesday night to tell me the meeting had been cancelled. HUGE relief!

Do you see what I mean about a rollercoaster? There were a few bright spots in the week though. I committed to a cruise with Connie next February and sent off my deposit. I had a nice long chat with my friend Eileen in Canada. I had a fun and productive Omaha run with Andrea on Saturday, including my first trip to the new Dunkin' Donuts (I've so missed Dunkin'!) And I won two contest this week so have yarn and knitting goodies coming in the mail.

I ended the week with an impromptu knitting birthday party for Lori on Sunday afternoon. I’d planned for the first deck knitting of the season but it was so horribly windy that we stayed inside. But the windows were open, the sun was shining and the laundry I’d hung on the line (3 sets of sheets and a load of sweaters, all that had been waiting for an above freezing day) dried in minutes. Andrea had just bought two chicks at the farm store so brought them along and so we knitted to the chirps and Lori cuddled the runt chick that needed some extra warmth. Chicks – another sign of spring. Oh and the time change too. This is a bit earlier than I’d like but I’ll take it.

So, in the end, it’s all good. I’d be up for a bit of consistency this coming week though. I live in hope.

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