Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Set Chaos to ON

This is a chaotic morning.

Last night, we moved the dining room table and chairs, as well as the china cabinet, into the living room so that the dining room floor could be sanded. The crew to do the sanding was supposed to come on Monday, but they're coming today. But...

I have a teleconference at 9AM which they don't really need me for, but which, for purposes of appearing to be Responsive To The Customer, I need to attend. Okay, I could just do it from home, but....

I promised one of my coworkers yesterday that I would be in today so that we could huddle over a problem he's having. We were going to do this yesterday, but....

Yesterday my daughter was ill, and someone had to stay home, so I did it, with the idea that today my wife would, handling the sanders as part of that. But...

My wife has a recurring medical appointment, and it's today, at a place thats a twenty minute drive from here. She won't be back before the sanders arrive, and one of us needs to be here for that. She's coming back as soon as she can, but...

My daughter needed to be dropped off at school early for a musical event, at which we think she is just an observer but she could be a participant. So since my wife is going out anyway, she's going to drop off the daughter. The timing should not affect her arrival at the medical appointment. In theory.

So the plan is, I stay here till the sanders arrive. Some time in the next forty minutes I turn off my work laptop (which takes a long time to shut down) and disconnect from the corporate Instant Message network. I then pack up the laptop and put it in the van. At the same time, I turn on the clone of the instant message system that I've installed on this desktop PC, so I'm still 'there', although no longer connected to email. As soon as the sanders are set up, or my wife arrives back, I book - unless its past 8:30, in which case I stay here for the teleconference, because it takes 27 minutes to get to work, and I don't want to be late for it. ( don't want to dial in from the cell phone because it's a long distance toll call, and I'm not that motivated.) With luck it will end by 9:30, so I can get into the office by 10, assuming I did the call from home, just in time for a 10 AM conference about something that's going to happen tonight. And also turn over the on-call I'm on, which ends at 10, or so.

At least, that's the plan.

2 comments:

Nan said...

Whew!

Cerulean Bill said...

It actually worked out relatively well. The floor guy called at 8:35 to say he would not be there till 9:30, so I bolted, dialed into my teleconference via cell about ten minutes out from the office, and simply dialed in from the desk phone when I got here, hanging up the cell at the same time.

Course, when I got home, the house was warm because the AC was off (to keep from circulating the aroma of the flooring stain), and I immediately had to dial into a teleconference (and eat dinner sitting in front of the PC) that lasted for about two hours. But it wasn't terrible, and that kind of day doesn't happen too often.

Fortunately.