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early morning is early
In the interest of its being easier for me to travel to my folks' more often in the upcoming months, which I would like to be able to do, I have (with the blessing of everyone who gets to bless such things) switched to a schedule of four ten-hour days instead of five eight-hour days, starting today. For extra added awesome, I floated the idea of alternating which was the fifth day (Monday or Friday) by week, and it flew - meaning every other week I'll have a four-day weekend. My dad said the stuff he's been saying lately, about how of course he'll be delighted to see me but he doesn't want to be all kinds of extra burden so if I get to a long weekend and think I'm exhausted, I don't want to go to Cleveland, blah blah blah, and he gets the concept but doesn't want me to make my life harder with longer days and so on. To which I said, look, I was never suggesting that I would come to Cleveland every two weeks just because that's when I have the long weekends - so if I get to a long weekend and I don't want to drive to Cleveland (and, I didn't say, you and Mom don't need me), then I won't do it. And that being said, having a four-day week is so much better for me that I assure you I won't mind the longer days; my work is not so strenuous that I can't do two more hours of it in a day, especially when the payoff is a day of not going in at all. People covet four-day work-weeks. Of course if I'd gone to HR and said "You know, I don't think I want to come to work five days a week," normally they'd have said "... You're going to need to come to work five days a week." But given the circumstances they've been very flexible and understanding - not (and I did say this to my dad) to say that I'm lucky to have circumstances calling for adjusting my schedule to a four-day one, because hell, I'd work five ten-hour days if the payoff were that he'd be well again; but I am lucky to work with and for people who are (and are able to be) so groovy about how and when I get the work done.
Tangentially, my new OS arrived the other day so when I can find some time to (back my hard drive all the way the hell up and) install it, I will be able to finally install the VPN and thus work remotely again, which will just about maximize my flexibility in the event I need to be even more flexible.
Then last evening on the way to Gentleman Caller's I heard on the radio that OPM had called for a two-hour delay this morning, asking non-essential personnel to stay off the roads until at least 9am and not opening federal offices until 11. I told Himself this when I got there and he did a little dance of yay, and I was thinking yay also!, because that would mean my first day of earlys would be delayed and I could ease into the long-day-ness of it. Hurrah! Only then I looked at the university website, just to be sure, and yeah, no, the university is not closed or delayed in any way. Rats. Don't get me wrong: having been out on the roads before 9am, I can confidently report that at least here north of the city, the two-hour delay was totally uncalled for. There's apparently going to be ice later, but there isn't any now; it was barely misty and not even all that cold. I'd rather OPM miss the call that way than the other way, you know - hurrah for overabundance of caution, safety first, and so on, especially since telework is such a viable option so it's not like all that time is (and all those tax dollars are) totally lost; but dudes.
Anyway, I am here, and will be here until much later than usual this evening (apparently with tasks to keep me busy, though, which is never a sure thing from one day to the next :-P), and - extra extra bonus, Himself is going to a (thoroughly geeky, though I expect he'd say nerdy, nevertheless right up his street) conference this weekend which he gets to count as training, the little twerp, so he doesn't have to go in Friday morning; so Thursday night we won't have to set an alarm, yay, yay, and Friday morning we can have coffee and bagels (well, we can have bagels and I can have coffee) and then I can drop him at the metro so he doesn't have to walk, and then I will drive to Cleveland in the daylight, instead of working a whole day and hitting the road after. And I will have Friday evening and the whole weekend with the 'rents and drive back here Monday in the daylight, in time for my rehearsal Monday evening, instead of scrambling to get back at a decent enough hour Sunday to sleep off the drive and get to work on Monday. It will be so civilized. I'm so glad.
I also expect I will sleep better Thursday night than I did last night, because it would hardly be possible to sleep worse. Bleh. I woke up around 2:30, and lay there - sort of sleepy but mind whirling - for about an hour, tossing and turning in vain efforts to get my head and shoulders in a comfortable configuration (but trying to do so non-disruptively, dontchaknow), all the while wishing like hell I'd taken half a lorazepam when I went to bed around 11, because 2:30+ is too late to take even half a dose if I don't want to be dopey all morning, which - particularly on my first early day - I didn't. Alas. At 3:30 I got up to blow my nose, but breathing more clearly didn't help me fall asleep any sooner. I finally did nod off at some point, because I had very vivid dreams in which a chair that is normally against the wall was in front of Himself's bedroom door; he told me he'd had an e-mail from the people upstairs apologizing for stomping so hard or dropping something so heavy or whatever, which we hadn't noticed except it must have caused the place to rattle enough that the chair skittered from spot A to spot B; he double checked the university website and confirmed I still didn't have a delayed start; and I got up to use the bathroom. All this in a dream, mind you. In real life, the chair in question is presently in another room; there are no people upstairs because Himself lives in a single-family home with no shared floors, ceilings, or walls; and the computer on which he was checking the university's weather emergency status is nonexistent. I woke up at this point and reasoned that when you've just woken up from a dream in which you were actually peeing, you should be glad your subconscious woke you before you wet the bed instead of after and it's a good time to get up right then. That was at 5:15, and the alarm was going off at 6, so I decided trying to go back to sleep at that point was not indicated. Fortunately, although Himself reported awareness that I had gotten up a couple of times, he had not noticed all the flopping about I was doing in between. Glad one of us slept relatively soundly.
I see three solutions to this wretched-lack-of-sleep issue: 1) resume not drinking caffeine after about lunchtime; 2) resume half-doses of lorazepam before midnight; 3) acquire silly curved neck pillow to keep at the Gentleman Caller's, because damn but that boy has useless pillows on his bed. I normally get the one that is ever so slightly puffier, because he gallantly takes the one that is maaaybe as much as an inch thick and not springy at all. He did offer to swap this morning, and pointed out that he folds this "wafer pillow" in half, but that doesn't really lift my head anywhere (I did try it, for science), and it's pretty solid, and anything I have to hold in place or re-configure if I make even the slightest movement is not conducive to my falling asleep and staying that way. Double checked that he's not going to freak out at my keeping (more) stuff at his place (where at the moment I have exactly one t-shirt; though he does keep coffee and tea in case people who aren't him want to drink them, which most often lately means me, but can obvs. include other company as well) and made it happen. Thing's in the passenger seat of my car right now. Thursday I expect to sleep like an infant.
Goodness, I've been rambling for a while.
Tangentially, my new OS arrived the other day so when I can find some time to (back my hard drive all the way the hell up and) install it, I will be able to finally install the VPN and thus work remotely again, which will just about maximize my flexibility in the event I need to be even more flexible.
Then last evening on the way to Gentleman Caller's I heard on the radio that OPM had called for a two-hour delay this morning, asking non-essential personnel to stay off the roads until at least 9am and not opening federal offices until 11. I told Himself this when I got there and he did a little dance of yay, and I was thinking yay also!, because that would mean my first day of earlys would be delayed and I could ease into the long-day-ness of it. Hurrah! Only then I looked at the university website, just to be sure, and yeah, no, the university is not closed or delayed in any way. Rats. Don't get me wrong: having been out on the roads before 9am, I can confidently report that at least here north of the city, the two-hour delay was totally uncalled for. There's apparently going to be ice later, but there isn't any now; it was barely misty and not even all that cold. I'd rather OPM miss the call that way than the other way, you know - hurrah for overabundance of caution, safety first, and so on, especially since telework is such a viable option so it's not like all that time is (and all those tax dollars are) totally lost; but dudes.
Anyway, I am here, and will be here until much later than usual this evening (apparently with tasks to keep me busy, though, which is never a sure thing from one day to the next :-P), and - extra extra bonus, Himself is going to a (thoroughly geeky, though I expect he'd say nerdy, nevertheless right up his street) conference this weekend which he gets to count as training, the little twerp, so he doesn't have to go in Friday morning; so Thursday night we won't have to set an alarm, yay, yay, and Friday morning we can have coffee and bagels (well, we can have bagels and I can have coffee) and then I can drop him at the metro so he doesn't have to walk, and then I will drive to Cleveland in the daylight, instead of working a whole day and hitting the road after. And I will have Friday evening and the whole weekend with the 'rents and drive back here Monday in the daylight, in time for my rehearsal Monday evening, instead of scrambling to get back at a decent enough hour Sunday to sleep off the drive and get to work on Monday. It will be so civilized. I'm so glad.
I also expect I will sleep better Thursday night than I did last night, because it would hardly be possible to sleep worse. Bleh. I woke up around 2:30, and lay there - sort of sleepy but mind whirling - for about an hour, tossing and turning in vain efforts to get my head and shoulders in a comfortable configuration (but trying to do so non-disruptively, dontchaknow), all the while wishing like hell I'd taken half a lorazepam when I went to bed around 11, because 2:30+ is too late to take even half a dose if I don't want to be dopey all morning, which - particularly on my first early day - I didn't. Alas. At 3:30 I got up to blow my nose, but breathing more clearly didn't help me fall asleep any sooner. I finally did nod off at some point, because I had very vivid dreams in which a chair that is normally against the wall was in front of Himself's bedroom door; he told me he'd had an e-mail from the people upstairs apologizing for stomping so hard or dropping something so heavy or whatever, which we hadn't noticed except it must have caused the place to rattle enough that the chair skittered from spot A to spot B; he double checked the university website and confirmed I still didn't have a delayed start; and I got up to use the bathroom. All this in a dream, mind you. In real life, the chair in question is presently in another room; there are no people upstairs because Himself lives in a single-family home with no shared floors, ceilings, or walls; and the computer on which he was checking the university's weather emergency status is nonexistent. I woke up at this point and reasoned that when you've just woken up from a dream in which you were actually peeing, you should be glad your subconscious woke you before you wet the bed instead of after and it's a good time to get up right then. That was at 5:15, and the alarm was going off at 6, so I decided trying to go back to sleep at that point was not indicated. Fortunately, although Himself reported awareness that I had gotten up a couple of times, he had not noticed all the flopping about I was doing in between. Glad one of us slept relatively soundly.
I see three solutions to this wretched-lack-of-sleep issue: 1) resume not drinking caffeine after about lunchtime; 2) resume half-doses of lorazepam before midnight; 3) acquire silly curved neck pillow to keep at the Gentleman Caller's, because damn but that boy has useless pillows on his bed. I normally get the one that is ever so slightly puffier, because he gallantly takes the one that is maaaybe as much as an inch thick and not springy at all. He did offer to swap this morning, and pointed out that he folds this "wafer pillow" in half, but that doesn't really lift my head anywhere (I did try it, for science), and it's pretty solid, and anything I have to hold in place or re-configure if I make even the slightest movement is not conducive to my falling asleep and staying that way. Double checked that he's not going to freak out at my keeping (more) stuff at his place (where at the moment I have exactly one t-shirt; though he does keep coffee and tea in case people who aren't him want to drink them, which most often lately means me, but can obvs. include other company as well) and made it happen. Thing's in the passenger seat of my car right now. Thursday I expect to sleep like an infant.
Goodness, I've been rambling for a while.