We managed to successfully thwart a right-wing take over of our local school board, county board and city council. So, yay!

I hope you launched a cow at them with your trebuchet!

I've been working in the office alone which is kind of a good news/bad news story. Construction going on next door, so lots of thumping and bumping. A little while ago, I heard water running. I went through the entire place to make sure none of it was coming into our office (nothing was). But I keep finding more and more things wrong with the office design.

Us peons are out in an open area; there are small dividers that do nothing to block sound ... and my boss likes to play music loudly enough to be heard at my desk. I got some noise-cancelling headphones, but I can tell he's getting exasperated at having to get my attention any time he comes by my "cube" to talk to me (the cubes have about 6' by 6' of floor space. There are no phones - all calls go through MS Teams (so if your computer's down, you have to use your cell phone and hope that you have the necessary number on it. The partitions ... we can't use thumbtacks or tape on them. We have an outlet at the top of the desk (nothing underneath, except for directors) which has the usual dual-outlet configuration, but one outlet is specifically designed for charging your iPhone (you have to bring your own charger), which leaves us space to plug in ONE thing. We have some "extensions" - mini-surge protectors - that have three outlets, although you have to rotate the plug in order to use them, since the "protector" plug would have to go behind/under the desk to plug in using the way they're designed. We have a refrigerator with an ice maker that produces about a cup of ice every day. Us peons have, for storage, one deep drawer, one shallow drawer, one shelf that's tall enough to put a letter-size notepad or file folder upright and one shelf that's about 4" tall.

I brought a power strip from the old office and currently have six things plugged in - computer, monitor, docking station, external hard drive, one other thing that I don't know what it is, but it needs to be plugged in, my electric pencil sharpener and a fan. When I was checking the office for leaks, I found a room designed to be used for podcasts but it's totally dark inside ... and the light switch is halfway across the room.

Our mail is delivered to a mailbox in a central area downstairs; it's kept locked and one person has the key. She's out of town at one of the two conferences we're running this week. Our accounting person, who works remotely, was fussing because we have thousands of dollars in checks sitting in the mailbox. The person who has the key bought a key box, which opens with a combination, but she hasn't set it up yet, which means that our only key is out. She did call the building manager and arranged for me to go to the manager's office, get her to unlock the mailbox and give me our mail (14 checks, plus three invoices). I went up to our office (building manager locked the box afterwards) and scanned the checks and invoices to PDFs and sent to the appropriate people. The only check scanner (which we have to use to deposit checks remotely) was in the office of the person who has the mailbox key and, yes, her office is kept locked. I had to tell our accounting person that I couldn't scan the checks because they were in a locked office ... so after some back and forth, she said there was another scanner at the desk that would be hers if she ever started coming in. I looked and didn't find it. After talking to the accounting person, went back (this is at the far end of the office) and dug through the pile of other peripherals, all in lots of bubble wrap. and found it. We tried scanning the checks, with me using my cell phone to talk to the accounting person, but she said she was getting an error message that there was no power to the check scanner. This was when I got to deal with our outlet extenders - figure out how to rotate the plug, remove the power cord for the computer and plug it back in, search through all the peripherals, all the bubble wrap and all the cords for everything to find the cable for the check scanner.

Then, this morning, the accounting person orders me to go back to the building manager, get whatever mail has accumulated and deal with whatever's arrived. I refused, which I expect will have repercussions, but I'm not going to interrupt our building manager EVERY DAY to collect the mail.

In addition, I had my dentist appointment Tuesday evening (and have to go back in two weeks for my new night guard), I'm trying to get my taxes done and dealing with traffic/public transit that is busy and crowded - it's spring break, the festival, races/runs every weekend so we've got TOURISTS.

I'm off work tomorrow - getting my hair cut. jeepers

Askye, I'm sorry workers comp is being so difficult. Give them hell.

Oh, no, Sheryl! I'm so sorry. That is supremely unfair.

I bought a new organizer for ltc's art supplies and have been spending the week so far reorganizing those and her toys. I found 8 masks that needed to be washed mixed in with her toys yesterday. I have so much more to do, and things are still in that worse before they get better stage, but my body is like, "No, you have run out of spoons for the week. So sorry that it's only Thursday, but there is nothing we can do about it." So, I'm napping despite the fact that I really wanted things to look better before my in-laws came by this afternoon.

ltc's report card came out today, and she is doing so well. I'm still not used to the weird grading system, but essentially she went from lots of "emerging skills" last quarter to "proficient" this quarter. She is reading and writing to the extent that I'm quite impressed, and spelling things in front of her so that she doesn't understand them is no longer an option.

Papa T was back in the hospital this week for more tests, but he's home again. Long story short, his cancer has spread, and he's no longer going to be treating it. The goal at this point is to make the rest of his life(which is hopefully at least a few more months) as comfortable as possible. He's handling all of this very well. However, I'm not, and I see a lot of random crying jags in my future.

Wow, Toddson. Oh, as usual, dear.

{{{sj}}}

I'm sorry, sj.

Toddson, that is a LOT.

I'm sorry, sj. I'm glad for him that he seems to be OK, but I know it's so hard. Love to you, TGC, and ltc.

Oh, I meant to say, we also got rid of our physical phones, the company phone system is all through Zoom. At least they are giving anyone who asks for it a headset. It does have some nice features - I apparently get any voicemails emailed to me which could come in handy. Today someone tried to call me while I was in a Google Meeting and I had to "dismiss" the call - if I'd been in a Zoom meeting it would have known I was unavailable and given the caller a message to that effect, supposedly. I haven't actually taken my cell phone number off my .sig file yet, but I did tell one customer to please call my direct line and not my cell. I turn the ringer off on my cell phone, well, most of the time because I forget to to turn it back on, but generally when I'm at work.

I used to have that at the BBC - not Zoom because this was 8+ years ago, but some other VOIP thing. The voicemail transcripts were in theory helpful but in practice merely HILARIOUS.

This sent me an attachment of some kind of sound file. I already deleted it because it was actually just 5 seconds of silence, so I can't go see what it is.

We never had phones at my old job and it would be *very* weird for me to go back to using one now. (You'd use your cell phone if you really needed to communicate via phone, which for me was exceedingly rarely) and they subsidized our cell phones.