Hi all. Back from getting my neck hacked up. Gonna go nap now.

Burrell, I hope this means you didn't have a bad time with the anesthesia!

I'm glad I decided to come in late today and just stay at work until the concert, because today has been unrelenting and if I'd been here for 11 hours I probably would've choked someone out.

No shrift, everything went according to plan. Thanks! I just came home a bit lightheaded, and have since landed in an adrenalin crash. Soft landing. Beds are good that way.

"YOU look like you like roller derby!" She's right, I do look like I like roller derby. I mean, maybe I do, I just have no experience with it.

It's because you look fierce and badass!

It's because you look fierce and badass!

I'm pretty sure it's because I look like a cute librarian?

Glad things went OK, Burrell.

Yay soft landing? And yay cute librarians! My plane finally took off shortly after I posted, and just landed (about an hour late). I have another flight at 6:30AM, so will be home for approximately 10 hours? 9.5? But now glad I didn't take the connection to get where I'm going tonight, since I probably would've missed it, or at least been v stressed about it. I figure I'm on east coast time so it'll be marginally easier to get up so early tomorrow morning.

I think it is the glasses. I swear, it seems to be a look around here.

Completely fried by work. This build and install is trying to turn me into a raging bitch. 3:45, one of the testers comes into my office (I leave at 4) 'I think we have a problem.'

I spent the next hour manically diagnosing the problems, dissuading people of their wrongheaded stupidity and basically bringing order to chaos. I had a moment where I was all 'I am the Sherlock to this system, goddamnit' because symptom popping up here, me doing a vast leap to why it was, BOOM, diagnosis; error code there, vast logical leap, BOOM, diagnosis, and everyone else was still all freaking out and HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT. I'll admit, I felt like a badass. Until I remember that yeah, I have a decade of experience with this system, in dev, test and ops. OK, so do some of them, but I've been the go-to troubleshooter. I'm good at it. Hell, that's my job for a reason.

Plus I was motivated to get the hell out of there and beat the storms to my swim. Which I did.

And my neighbors waylaid me on the walk home and I wasn't going to join them on the porch for wine because this fucking day, but hell, I have to eat my dinner anyway, so I carried my salad over there for an hour or so of conversation and congrats (Tara's getting married to Garry!) And then I came home and the house is cooling off nicely and I'm waiting for the storms and DEAR GOD WORK STOP BEING STUPID.

To close out today, when I logged into work just now to check status, got a note from our top manager for the subcontract essentially saying they said fuck-you to the performance appraisal rating system, but it looks like no one is getting raises this year, regardless. Not even COLA.

Fuck you, CSC. FUCK YOU. You want to keep us as a small but sparkly jewel in your crown, but you treat us like shit. Good thing my loyalty is to the mission, not my employer. But I will continue to bug my HQ buddies that WE WANT FUCKING BOUGHT OUT.

Sorry to everyone having rough days. My day was middling fair, but I just had a chocolate egg cream that is making me feel much better about everything.

I did my site visit this morning, although I arrived late and felt very bad about the guy who sat at the gate for 20 minutes while I got lost in Stockton. Then I was going to drive to the office but I was soooo tired on the drive back that I stopped at home for a 30-minute power nap instead. Then I went to work, where I realized I have almost no work to do.

Because Eeyore won't take work away from anyone else to give to me, and won't give me back any of my old projects.

It's very hard to have much enthusiasm, or feel like a productive member of society, when I don't really have anything to do.

On Thursday we're having a baking competition at work, and I'm going to make chocolate-chip cookies. The big question is whether I bake them tonight, or hope that I'll have enough time tomorrow after book club?

You should mix them tonight but bake them tomorrow--chocolate chip cookie dough does best with a day to rest in the fridge!