Week 11 - Hellish Budget Week

Yup, it was a week of budget hell.

Nora's last day was Tuesday (one day earlier than last week's plan) and it featured a 12 hour zoom. Yes, 12 hours! We started at 9:30 in the morning and Nora and I didn't finish until 9:15. There was a decent lunch break and we stopped for 20 minutes to eat dinner but it was long and stressful, with Budget not providing data until 4:40 that we needed to finish. At least when we signed off, the files were built and I thought that would be the end. Foolish me.

I was in the office on Wednesday and in person meetings replaced the zooms. Budget wanted more fields added so I spent Thursday morning trying to pull them in without redoing the files and then giving in and redoing them with fingers crossed. We had a final zoom that afternoon to go over the data and at 4:53, they said they were good to go. I logged off the zoom and IM'd my boss to say I was done. He thought I meant with my job and was quitting. Nope, I'd be back to work on Friday.

Having eaten nothing but the food I'd cooked on the weekend - grilled cheese with baked beans for lunch and chili mac every night for supper - I ordered a pizza, picked up a 6 pack of my favorite beer and drove through DQ for a sundae. I had a little celebration then went to bed and slept well for the first night in a week.

I started Friday slogging through all the emails I'd missed and making a to do list before our team zoom at 10:00. The only thing I'd managed to do all week was help users with questions and a couple of things for Mary so the list was large. Despite that, I said I'd be taking Friday afternoon off and wouldn't be taking vacation time. Little did I know that Lacey, who kept me sane during this project, had already emailed a thank you and said I should take time off. Nice. After a lunch of leftover pizza, I started reclaiming my life. The kitchen and back room were a mess so I started cleaning that up then decided I had to wash the kitchen floor, which I did by hand with a scrubby instead of a mop. When it was half done, I ran errands then finished when I got home. With all that done, I had high hopes to relax and enjoy my weekend.

After spending Saturday morning weaving in ends on socks, including these monster socks I'd worked on all week during zooms to help maintain sanity, I made a modest to do list for the rest of the weekend. And I spent the rest of the weekend plugging away at it between streaming, knitting and chatting with friends and family. By Sunday afternoon the sun was shining and it was warm enough to open the windows and putter outside. 

It was a lovely end to a stressful week and I cannot express how excited I am to just have a normal week ahead. And maybe being so exhausted will make it easier to adjust to daylight savings time. How's that for looking for the silver lining? Anyway, wish me luck that Budget doesn't come up with any requests this week.

Week 10 - Impending Budget Doom

I got some news early in the week that would rock my world at work. It didn't sink in immediately but by Thursday I was in tears. But before then there was some joy.

I was due to start working in the office on Wednesday but Darla had convinced me to meet her at the East Campus Union for their mardi gras lunch. I started working early with the intent to drive in for lunch and then work in the office for the afternoon but the weather was drop dead gorgeous and that changed my mind. It would be much nicer to work at home all afternoon with my windows open and dressed comfortably so that's what I did. After a super yummy lunch with Darla (always a treat to see her), I drove home and worked late to make up the drive time. After work, I made coffee cake to take to the office and prepped to be up and out on Wednesday at the time I'm usually getting out of bed. Have I mentioned before that I'd happily work from home for the rest of my years at UNL? Oh well. Once day a week, which is approve through August, won't kill me.

I had been told on Monday that Nora would be taking a leave of absence and I'd have to take over the new budget system that she wrote and has been working with for 2+ years. Did I mention that this is budget season? I wasn't in the know on the reason for the leave and regardless, I'd have to fill in. Nora would be scheduling zoom training sessions each day until her leave would start a week from Thursday. I got the series of invites on Wednesday morning and the first one was that afternoon. After eating lunch on a bench with Cindy and Lana (it was so warm we had to get out of the sun), I put on my headphones for the first session. It was 100% useless with lots of blather about budget philosophy and no practical directions on what I'd have to actually do. Reality began to set it.

After a night of stress dreams (the kind where people die), I called Nora Thursday morning and told her that I needed operational direction rather than what we had covered on Wednesday. We had a good talk and she said she'd work on a timeline before our next zoom but when I asked her if she'd be available while on leave for questions, she said no and my tears started and didn't stop for quite awhile. Lacey, the boss of all of us who worked up the ranks from an accountant and who I've worked with for years, called and set my mind a bit at ease. The afternoon zoom was more focused but there was still a ton to get through. 

After more stress dreams, I woke up tired and Friday was another bad day. We had Frevvo (our online forms software) problems all morning and our afternoon zoom stretched for more than 2 hours at the end of the day. I was toast!

I was a zombie all weekend. I even went back to bed after breakfast on Saturday and finished a book - something I haven't done in years. I'd been reading in the wee hours when I couldn't sleep so it was nice to read at a normal time. I streamed and knitted all afternoon and on Sunday, I did the bare minimum of chores and a bit of cooking, starting with chili, which I rarely make. My old friend Janice, who I hadn't talked to in years, called out of the blue that afternoon and we talked for hours. It meant my homemade baked beans didn't come out of the oven until after 9:00 but they would get me through the next super stressful week so I guess it was meant to be.

So it was a pretty crappy week but was only a taste of what the next week would bring. And the recharge weekend I had was a good thing because I'd need all the mental and physical energy I could muster. To end on a happier note, here are some socks I knitted for my oldest friend's birthday, which I did manage to mail out mid week.

Week 9 - Cold and Crowned

After a glorious weekend of unseasonably warm weather, that was due to change  so I ran my errands over lunch on Monday. The front came through when I was in the farm store so I was happy to get home to hole up during the cold snap. With the library closed for the holiday, there was no Monday Night Knitting and so I had nowhere I needed to go for days and I was happy with that.

But that same cold caused someone to reschedule their dental appointment and when they called me Tuesday morning with an appointment at 11:00 for my crown, I grabbed it. I had a class to teach that afternoon but just delayed it an hour and went out in the cold. The new dentist bought a crown making machine so I didn't have to go back. It was 2 hours well spent and my droopy mouth was almost back to normal by the time I had to teach. 

Other than the dentist, I didn't go anywhere for the rest of the week. I was horrified by the war in Ukraine so watched a bunch of TV and when I struggled to get warm in my own house, I turned on my mattress pad and went to bed early to read. I ended the week zooming with Connie for 2.5 hours after work on Friday, which was great.

Maybe it was having been holed up all week and that the weather was starting to warm up but nothing was making me happy on Saturday. I was antsy and even streaming/knitting wasn't hitting it so I called Andrea and asked if she'd be up for a ride to Seward. Luckily she was so off we went. The MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) thrift shop there is wonderful and that was our destination. We found all kinds of treasures then hit some other shops on the square and a gift shop Drae had scoped out online on our way out of town. I scored some stocking stuffers for next Christmas. Nice.

Since it was the end of the month, I forced myself to do the last few things to finish my bedroom on Sunday afternoon. It was only dusting the furniture and changing the light bulbs in the overhead light. I replaced compact fluorescents with 2 60 watt LEDs from Ikea. Yeah, you could do surgery in my bedroom but it's done. That was my goal for February and I succeeded. Blaring light be damned.

So it was a pretty typical wintery week except for my crown. You can call me Queen Merry. Here are some of my overwintered flowers, which are always a joy in dreary, cold weather. Spring is coming.