spacealien_vamp (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spacealien_vamp) wrote2019-10-28 06:01 am
spacealien_vamp) wrote2019-10-28 06:01 am
Where have all the flowers gone?
Where has October gone? Here I am thinking it has only been a week or two since my last update, and a whole month has slipped by.
The month started off with me getting drafted for involuntary overtime, which is the peril of a name that is at the beginning of the alphabet. I always start at the top of the draft list when money resets October 1. After that, I put in for overtime assignments strategically on days when I would be ready for it, to help move my name down the list so I don't get drafted again when its inconvenient.
I've been spending a lot of my spare time knitting socks for my nephew's birthday present. I'm hoping to finish the final one today, so that I can get them mailed soon. This is hard to do, because as soon as I sit down on the couch and pick up a project, I have two dogs that suddenly demand full attention and petting.
The garden is nearly done for the year. There are just a few quinces left on my fruit trees and a couple of late-ripening sweet peppers. The kale is also at the harvest-ready stage. The garlic and onions that I planted a few weeks ago are starting to sprout. I need to work on digging up and transplanting more of my flower bulbs while the weather is still warm. I'm giving a bunch of the extras to my neighbor. I'm hoping to fit three more blueberry bushes in my front yard where a cluster of flowers used to be.
I've been trying to find time here and there to play through some of my games with solitaire rules, so that I can decide whether to add them to my Top 20 list for this year's People's Choice countdown on BGG. I'm also culling as many unplayed games as I can stand from my collection for potential resale. I've got 4 cardboard boxes of them set aside at this point, and I should probably pull a few more off the shelves.
Last weekend I went to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival. I took the bus there so I wouldn't have to deal with parking and spent all morning browsing. I spent quite a bit of money on new yarn, artwork, and some jewelry. I was ready to go by early afternoon, so I walked back to the bus stop at 3:45 and waited...and waited...and waited. The traffic was pretty terrible, so I knew the bus could be delayed, but I ended up waiting two solid hours and not a single bus ever came. (I saw 3 buses stopping across the street going the other direction during that time, but none returned.) Another couple waiting at the stop with me finally called for an Uber, and they let me ride back with them. (I called the bus company the next morning when they opened to lodge a complaint, but I haven't heard back from them about what the issue was.)
A lot of stuff is happening at work. One handler transferred to another airport and a second handler is out with an injury that needs surgery, so we're all shifting our schedules around to compensate. Additionally, one of the things that I do for the team is put in time recording all our data into a spreadsheet and analyzing it for trends. Our supervisor recently challenged the value of that task, saying that the action of recording and analyzing data in itself doesn't produce any tangible results._@ (No...it just informs the decisions that everyone makes about how to allocate our time and resources...) He has asked for a formal presentation in front of him and our chief to explain what specific benefit the data analysis provides.
Plus I still have to decide what to bring to our annual Halloween potluck. So there's that distraction.
The month started off with me getting drafted for involuntary overtime, which is the peril of a name that is at the beginning of the alphabet. I always start at the top of the draft list when money resets October 1. After that, I put in for overtime assignments strategically on days when I would be ready for it, to help move my name down the list so I don't get drafted again when its inconvenient.
I've been spending a lot of my spare time knitting socks for my nephew's birthday present. I'm hoping to finish the final one today, so that I can get them mailed soon. This is hard to do, because as soon as I sit down on the couch and pick up a project, I have two dogs that suddenly demand full attention and petting.
The garden is nearly done for the year. There are just a few quinces left on my fruit trees and a couple of late-ripening sweet peppers. The kale is also at the harvest-ready stage. The garlic and onions that I planted a few weeks ago are starting to sprout. I need to work on digging up and transplanting more of my flower bulbs while the weather is still warm. I'm giving a bunch of the extras to my neighbor. I'm hoping to fit three more blueberry bushes in my front yard where a cluster of flowers used to be.
I've been trying to find time here and there to play through some of my games with solitaire rules, so that I can decide whether to add them to my Top 20 list for this year's People's Choice countdown on BGG. I'm also culling as many unplayed games as I can stand from my collection for potential resale. I've got 4 cardboard boxes of them set aside at this point, and I should probably pull a few more off the shelves.
Last weekend I went to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival. I took the bus there so I wouldn't have to deal with parking and spent all morning browsing. I spent quite a bit of money on new yarn, artwork, and some jewelry. I was ready to go by early afternoon, so I walked back to the bus stop at 3:45 and waited...and waited...and waited. The traffic was pretty terrible, so I knew the bus could be delayed, but I ended up waiting two solid hours and not a single bus ever came. (I saw 3 buses stopping across the street going the other direction during that time, but none returned.) Another couple waiting at the stop with me finally called for an Uber, and they let me ride back with them. (I called the bus company the next morning when they opened to lodge a complaint, but I haven't heard back from them about what the issue was.)
A lot of stuff is happening at work. One handler transferred to another airport and a second handler is out with an injury that needs surgery, so we're all shifting our schedules around to compensate. Additionally, one of the things that I do for the team is put in time recording all our data into a spreadsheet and analyzing it for trends. Our supervisor recently challenged the value of that task, saying that the action of recording and analyzing data in itself doesn't produce any tangible results.
_@ (No...it just informs the decisions that everyone makes about how to allocate our time and resources...) He has asked for a formal presentation in front of him and our chief to explain what specific benefit the data analysis provides. Plus I still have to decide what to bring to our annual Halloween potluck. So there's that distraction.