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.