The Marci Rating System

*VERY IMPORTANT prologue: it is not snowing yet!

*work has released us from having to drive to the office today, hooray!

*SHOUTOUT to the people who brought this up at the 9 am meeting yesterday morning (I'm not in that meeting, but I heard about it later)

*NO SHOUTOUT to the people who didn't share the actual executive decision with anyone not at the 9 am meeting until AFTER 2 PM (not cool)

*so am I going to be tucked up safely at home, working remotely and staying off the roads???

*NO I AM NOT

*because I was supposed to get snow tires on my car last week, except the tires didn't arrive in time, and then the appointment was moved to TODAY and now it IS today and yes, I clearly left this task too late this year, so it goes

*BUT the appointment is for 8:30 in the morning, and (VERY IMPORTANT!) it is not snowing yet!

*LET'S DO THIS

My least favorite part of the return to office is the driving, because I'd really prefer to be using those four hours per week to do other things (like not driving, lol). But listening to audiobooks in the car has definitely made the experience better, sometimes in unexpected ways.

As in, I used to spend a LOT of the drive to and from work thinking about work! But now I'm spending the drive thinking about BOOK, which is clearly 10,000x better. It's like as soon as I get in the car at the end of the day, work is OVER and my brain is totally in storytime mode. It feels much less like I need to Get Home for the workday to be over, which makes it much easier to sit in traffic and not get super frustrated and cranky.

ALSO it means that yesterday I arrived at work and some people were a little stressed about various aspects of the day, and meanwhile I was thinking 'THIS MAN HAS 43 HOURS LEFT TO LIVE AND IS TRACKING THE POTENTIAL LIFE SAVING CURE THROUGH A FROZEN LANDSCAPE.' It really put the rest of the day into perspective, is what I'm saying.

Things I learned yesterday:

*When the battery is replaced in a car, it often causes the car alarm to go off

*Sometimes the car alarm won't STOP going off

*There are a surprising (read: distressing) number of reasons this might happen

*Sometimes the reason a key fob won't work isn't because the battery in the key needs to be replaced, but because the car battery is not charged enough (I guess this makes sense???)

*There are MANY suggested fixes for getting the alarm to stop going off, all of which are extremely hard to think through while there is, you know, a car alarm going off

*In my car specifically, it turns out that inside the change drawer to the left of the steering wheel, there is BOTH a small switch AND a small button

*The garage THINKS that "fiddling around" with those is what eventually stopped the alarm, and recommended I do the same "if this happens again"

*IS IT GOING TO HAPPEN AGAIN?!?!?!?

*In conclusion: I believe my car may be possessed by gremlins

Happy first day of February!

Recap of yesterday's questions, answered:
*No preparation was necessary; that was true. Somewhat humorously, the new uberboss apparently had NO IDEA we'd all been commanded to make an in-person appearance. ("You all came in just for this?")

*Were we supposed to think preparation was necessary? Who knows; it's a toss-up whether boss's boss is deliberately vague as a strategy to never be held responsible for anything that happens, or is unintentionally vague and just doesn't think about how their messages might be interpreted.

*A complete stranger was introduced (first name only, no other information) at the start of the meeting and shook all our hands. It increased the ominous factor by at least 10, but it did not turn out to be the start of a Doctor Who-style plot (as far as I know!).

Recap of driving:
*DRIVING. For an HOUR. TWICE. TWO HOURS. OF DRIVING. It's so boring and stressful at the same time! Exhausting! And for what?

BIG DAY for work today, because I'm going to DRIVE TO THE OFFICE! That's right, my physical presence has been requested/commanded on site. This will include the following oh-so-important things:

*team sits in the Very Cold conference room "working" for an hour, which will probably mostly be chit-chat and people wandering off to go say hi to their onsite pals

*team sits in the Very Warm conference room for a meeting with an outside supplier for TWO HOURS, WHY??? (yeah, that's longer than I can pay attention to anything, but I WILL TRY)

*team goes to lunch somewhere (MORE DRIVING, WHY??? but I may be able to catch a ride with someone else; I have no shame)

*team does a TEAM BUILDING ACTIVITY -- I believe the current plan is some sort of pottery painting? because it's VERY IMPORTANT that we all feel like a team (hilariously, one person is coming that I literally have not seen or spoken to since the last mandatory team activity; clearly it was not important that we learn to get along, because our jobs have nothing to do with each other)

*after all of that, I will face the ultimate final challenge: DRIVING BACK HOME IN THE DARK (hahaha I'm sure it will go fine!)

Checks temp: almost 60(F) degrees overnight. Yep, definitely time for snow tires!

Despite the vagaries of the weather, it is indeed snow tire day. If all goes well, my car will also get inspected. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Yesterday was a wild ride from start to finish:

*Went to do grocery shopping before work, car battery was dead.

*Called AAA, worked off some of my distress by shoveling snow from in front of the garage. (Super effective! Possibly not my smartest choice!)

*Started work, told my boss via email that I wasn't familiar with 'Matrix.' (Later learned that the company is apparently using 'matrix' as a cooler way to say 'chart' or 'spreadsheet.' Boggled.)

*AAA arrived and told me to leave the car running for an hour. ("Or drive it around.") Rescheduled work meetings and did belated trip to grocery store. Left car running while I was inside. Car did not get stolen! A bright spot.

*Returned to work, participated in a series of increasingly frustrating meetings.

*Late in the day, received an invite to a meeting for 9 am today with someone I've never spoken with. Didn't appreciate the invite's tone (haha I may have been overreacting); spitefully sent them four year's worth of timeline data and a complete set of company SOPs regarding their meeting topic and suggested they might find them 'valuable to reference' before today's meeting.

*Angrily did a 15-minute yoga video after work, felt much better afterwards.

*Woke up in the middle of the night with shooting pain in my neck and shoulder, thought 'oh yeah maybe shoveling while distressed was not smart.'

*Ow.

My car is going to the car spa today (aka the garage) to get inspected (hopefully), along with an oil change and a peek at whether or not the 'moonroof leaking' issue is easily resolved or not. And yesterday I was like, 'gosh, how inconvenient that I have to do this during November, but I guess that's just how these things go.'

Except then I realized that in past years, I've always tried to do this garage appointment in November so they could put my snow tires on (logical, good timing), and this year I never took my snow tires *off* (sometimes laziness pays off?), which means there is NO REASON AT ALL to be doing this appointment now. It could have waited! My birthday isn't until January!

Unfortunately I did not realize this until about 9 pm last night, so it's not like I could change the appointment at that point. But yeah, feeling a little silly right now.

Only half a workaday today! Yay!

Because the other half of the day I have an appointment at the DMV. (Not as much yay.)

I haven't been to the DMV in five years, which is such an odd feeling. The DMV building is still the same (I mean, on the outside, at least?), but so much else has changed in those years. I have a different job (though not a different car!), and of course there's the whole pandemic situation.

(I certainly would never have gone into a state building wearing a mask back in 2018. Remember when banks had those signs that were like 'take off your hat! take off your sunglasses! the cameras need to be able to see you!' Maybe they still do, actually. I have not been to a bank in a long time either.)

I am hoping that they won't need to retake my picture, because ugh, but at the same time I'm sort of hoping they will, because I got my last picture taken during a very brief time when they wouldn't let you smile, and it's not my best look.

*Yay, what a pleasingly symmetrical date!

*In case I don't notice it later this month, 122221 will also be excellent!

*Now that nanowrimo is over, what am I supposed to post about every day? I remember Thursdays are always hard to think of something, for some reason.

*There are always more things to figure out! Finally got my car's snow tires on (and an oil change, and an inspection, and a new battery) this week, and as soon as I got back from that lengthy adventure, the garage door broke.

(*PS: Still so weird to have a garage!)

*On the plus side, I'm excited that we've gotten so many nice compliments on our Christmas tree! AHHH I'm so happy to see our little tree every day.

*AND in other happy news, it's haircut day! For reasons that were mostly 'I didn't feel like it' and 'I was doing nanowrimo,' I haven't cut my hair in a while, and I'm really looking forward to having it shorter again.