Week 32 - Hellish Year End

I have worked in Accounting/Financial Systems for going on 18 years and have been through that many fiscal year ends. This was the worst. By far.

Aside from prepping reports for Mary's meetings with the deans, the big spreadsheet is the other big year end thing I do. It takes hours to download the data then do the formulas that help Mary close out the state aided accounts. It's thousands of lines long. This was the spreadsheet I went into the office to do a few weeks ago for only the 2nd time since March. I wanted both my screens and my work desktop to get it done. I thought I was ahead of the game. Nope.

I got a call from Mary at 5:00 on Tuesday that something was wrong with the spreadsheet and she needed it fixed for a meeting the next day. I dug in and found that somehow it was corrupted. I worked until 10:00, first figuring out what was wrong and then redoing it. I was SO stressed and felt bad because Mary then had to work until 1:30 a.m. to prep for the meeting.

I thought it was all good and had a productive day on Wednesday. I went for a drive thru covid test at 2:00 then enjoyed the last water aerobics for the summer that evening. Wednesday was nice but then Mary called again on Thursday. There was another problem and I worked late again, finally getting everything right. Damn! I had already put 40+ hours in and it was only Thursday! 

I was leaving the house at 7:00 on Saturday and had had zero time to prepare to be gone for the week so I told my co-worker Brook that I would only be doing work that Mary needed on Friday because I had to do laundry, pack and get the house ready. Mary needed a couple of things but otherwise I spend the day getting ready to be gone. I even got to bed at a decent hour. Nice.

Since I had to be on the road at 7:00, I set my stove timer and set the alarm on my cell phone as back up. Well, I got a text at midnight with a code to check my covid test results so got up. Negative! I can't say I was surprised but it was nice to have proof before traveling because if I didn't have it, I was expected to quarantine in Rhode Island. I went back to bed and slept until 5:45. After making an egg sandwich and doing some last minute packing (mostly food to eat during my layover), I was on my way to the airport on schedule.

While I had been a bit anxious about flying, I never felt unsafe. There were very few people on both of my flights and I wiped everything down before I sat down. There was no one sitting anywhere near me. I spent my layover in my favorite spot at Midway, knitting, eating and reading at a well wiped down table. Nice. But the Uber driver wasn't wearing a mask so we drove to the train station with windows down the whole way. John and I were wearing masks, of course. I'd had mine on all day. We picked up John's mom's car at the Kingston train station and drove to the beach house.

OMG! It was charming and the location was amazing. We were right on a salt pond and our deck was literally a few feet from the water. Now a salt pond is attached to the ocean but is very shallow and a great place for clamming, which we watched our neighbors do all week. There are no waves and the water is very warm so not a place you'd swim but the breeze over the water was always cool. After a quick unpack, we walked across the street for take out from Cap'n Jack's. We got a lobster roll to split, clamcakes and chowder. None of it was good so we wouldn't be eating there again.

Sunday was our first full day and was totally relaxing, which I desperately needed after the week I'd had. We sat on the deck, played boggle, knitted socks (just me), ate when we were hungry and at the end of the day, went swimming. Keep in mind the pond is only knee deep at high tide and warm as bath water. But after a day of relaxing on the deck, it was perfect. Here's a pic of me enjoying the water. My butt was 3 inches from the bottom. After a dinner of filet mignon with a shallot and red wine sauce courtesy of chef John, we watched a gorgeous sunset over the pond. We'd get to the actually beach eventually. So far, this vacation was exactly what I needed.