Back to the Grind

I usually get to work roughly 20 minutes early, but about once every month or so, there's some sort of train delay that has me rushing to my office in order to swipe in by 7 minutes past the time I'm supposed to arrive (to avoid having my personal time docked).
By some cruel twist of fate, this always seems to happen on the morning of this monthly meeting that my boss hosts. The morning of this meeting, I always need to take care of a number of issues, including compiling all of the handouts and sending out the invitation to remind everyone. The meeting starts 90 minutes after the start of my day. It would be a bit of a race if it weren't for my train delays.
Even though my personal time won't be docked as I swiped in 6 minutes past, I still spent much of the morning running around like a crazy person. No easing into the day today.

Luckily, I was passed along this hilarious video, which I think will be appreciated by anyone who has worked in or with IT (You may have seen the original Norwegian version, but I like this one better.):

The Alarm Clock Tango

There are two types of people in this world: those who snooze and those who don't. Mr's the former. I'm the latter.
I set my phone's alarm for 7:00am every weekday, and 8:00am on Sundays. The alarm rings, I shut it off ASAP, and I head to the bathroom to start my routine. On days I didn't get enough sleep, I'll ease into the day by checking my email first before heading to the bathroom. For me this is the start of a leisurely morning. I'm physically ready by 7:30, dressed, hair done, make-up applied. That gives me 35 minutes to check my email some more, look on facebook, watch the CBS Early show, make my lunch, make the bed, and do the dishes. By the time I leave at 8:05, I'm a fully functioning and awake person.
Mr., on the other hand, has a complex system involving his phone alarm and an actual alarm clock that I bought freshman year of college. At 6:30, his phone alarm goes off. At 6:40, the actual alarm. He continues to snooze and reset until he finally rolls out of bed, which has lately been after I've finished brushing my teeth. This means that I actually wake up at 6:30 and just sort of lie there until my alarm goes off.
The awkwardness of the half-hour between his first alarm and my alarm is compounded by the face that he sleeps on the side of the bed adjacent to the wall, requiring him to either crawl over me or exit at the foot of the bed in order to hit his snooze button. It's an interesting dance we do each morning.
I wonder how the routine will change when he starts OB. Only 2 more weeks of Medicine. *whew*

This morning after the alarm clock tango, I was commuting to work, as I do every morning, and at the 2nd to last stop in the Borough, the pre-recorded announcement told us: "This is the last stop on this train; everybody please leave the train. Thank you, and have a safe day." Some passengers got off. Many of us stayed on waiting to see if there would be an actual announcement by a live person. It's not totally unheard of for the operators to press the wrong announcement button in there. 30 seconds to a minute later, the same pre-recorded message was played. At that point, most of the remaining passengers deboarded...until we heard the voice say, 'Stand clear of the closing doors, please', at which point we rushed back on the train. A number of passengers remained on the platform, which meant those of us who had boarded now all had seats. Sweet. The train continued into Manhattan. Suckers!

Monday: Back to the Grind

I have a fairly long commute, roughly 70 minutes one-way plus an extra 15 minutes to be safe. Like most non-driving commuters, I have a number of ways to keep myself amused: magazine, book, sudoku puzzles, and of course, the beloved ipod.

With a long commute, I like to listen to soundtracks because they're most likely to be over an hour in length. This morning I had an odd desire to listen to the soundtrack of Floyd Collins, an off-broadway musical written by the musical chameleon, Adam Guettel (Light in the Piazza). Set in 1920s Kentucky, the music is folksy with bluegrass influences. It's a great piece ...but probably not the best soundtrack to listen to when your subway train is stuck underground between stops for 10+ minutes. For those of you unfamiliar with Floyd Collins, the man or the musical, he was a cave explorer who got trapped trying to find a new entrance to his family's 'Great Crystal Cave' and ultimately perished there. Yep, real cheery stuff and not at all spooky when 'trapped' underground.  Luckily I wasn't trapped so long to be late for work.

This morning we had a monthly internal video conference which my boss hosts. I thought everything was set until it was T minus 20 minutes when the girl with the handouts was nowhere to be found and the tech guy was MIA.  At least the video was working.  I paced back and forth between the meeting location and my office, calling the girl with the handouts every so often, making every attorney entering the video conference nervous when I thought they were her coming through the door.

Finally, with 5 minutes before the start, one of the mail guys arrived with the handouts, and 2 minutes prior the girl showed up with the sign-up sheets. She had been in a meeting that had run late.
Stressful, and I wish I'd gone down to her desk in the first place to get the handouts, but not the end of the world.

Then, during the conference, my boss emails me to let me know there was a voice coming over the phone, some guy talking about the lake. So, I send a firmwide email to tell everyone invited to the call to turn the mute on their phone, but I guess it kept going. How embarrassing. Today we actually had an external presenter as well, a big deal in restructuring. Stupid conferencing service.

With all of that, though, today hasn't been so bad. You see, I have something very priceless here at work.

That's right. I can close my door. The only door I can close at home is to the bathroom, and the only place to sit there is on the toilet! So yes, it's nice to have a door I can close, and to have something to sit on other than a toilet. Small joys. :)