Weekend Plans Post: Perhaps, finally, a quiet weekend?
There was a joke flying around twitter a few years back that was pretty good:
I love how being an adult is just saying "But after this week things will slow down a bit again" to yourself until you die
— Kramski (@kramski) July 8, 2019
I’m thinking that things will slow down a bit after this week.
The 4th of July is behind us and the first half of the “Bob won’t be back for two weeks” thing is over (we’ll have to deal with it again at the tail end of August, of course). The managers are back. The guy we need to ask about the password for the dual-boot server that he built just before he left and used a different password than the one we always use on test builds is back.
When I first started my career, I was the guy that everybody said “Oh, Jaybird will work that week. He doesn’t have kids.” And so I went in when nobody else was in the building. Worked Christmas, Spring Break, the Three Big Summer holidays… then I slowly became the guy who, courteously, took off the same vacation days as everybody else. Hey, if the rest of the team is taking off Christmas week, I should too. We’re all off together, we can all go back together. And, this way, I won’t be off during some weird crunch time that we haven’t foreseen.
Now I’ve gotta say… I’m thinking about the people who always just up and took a week off here or there when they felt like it (schedule be darned) and I have a new appreciation for their ability to do the work-life balance thing.
Not that I’m going to take a week off anytime soon, of course.
As it is, this weekend is going to be quiet (knock wood). Laundry, maybe some grocery shopping, and we’re going over to Mom’s for dinner on Sunday night and show her how the hardcore people make Ceasar Salads (we’re going to be using this recipe here).
And, who knows? Maybe things will slow down after this week.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “Outside Training”. Photo taken by Maribou.)
Pretty much every summer weekend for me this year is a quiet weekend. (I am trying to conserve funds – have another big home reno project coming up). It’s also really too hot (high of 108 F yesterday) to DO anything. I would like at some point to go to the National Recreation Area north of me and do a little hiking but (a) it has to cool down a bit first and (b) it will be on a weekday because the place gets super crowded on weekends and I go there for quiet, not noise and crowds.
The biggest event of this weekend was me hauling nearly all the brush I had cut in the past few weeks (a stack about 8 feet long by four feet high) down to the curb and the city coming and taking it away early this morning.
I do have an old quilt top I found in storage to press off with the thought of taking it in for quilting early next week. I’ve found a lot of things* while cleaning and decluttering for the renovation crew to work
(*some good, some bad: the good includes the diploma from my Ph.D. and that quilt top. The not so good included a dried-up, mummified mouse carcass from last winter when I had a mouse incursion)Report
Camping, first time in the new RVReport
At a previous job, I had a mentor who had perfectly internalized work-life balance. I’d be in the lab with him and someone would come rushing in and declare an emergency which must be dealt with IMMEDIATELY.
“That’s fine,” he would say. “I’ll take care of it. I leave at three.”
The tester/manager/developer/whatever would sputter things about schedule (always a problem) or delivery dates (constantly looming) or an upcoming test involving outside agencies (there are always outside agencies), but he’d stand firm: That’s fine, I’ll take care of it, I leave at three.
And the tester/manager/developer/whatever would shuffle out of the lab, possibly to go talk to a higher-up, possibly convinced that the world was ending. And my mentor would leave at three.
And then he would come in the next day and deal with it, and it would turn out that maybe the schedule wasn’t so tight after all, that the delivery date wasn’t quite so looming, that the outside agencies weren’t any more keen to show up than we were to host them. And everything would be fine.
To be certain, if it was REALLY an emergency he’d waste no time rolling up his sleeves and taking care of business, but he possessed an uncanny ability to smell out the difference between an emergency and a tester/manager/developer/whatever who’d just gotten an ass-chewing in a meeting and was trying to save face by pushing an agenda item forward.
I’ve kept him in mind as I’ve navigated my career since, his ability to manage expectations, maintain his boundaries, and still deliver to the customer’s satisfaction.
“Fish! The thing is broken and we must have it unbroken immediately!”
“That’s fine, but I left an hour ago because my hours are up. I’ll take care of it Monday morning.”Report
Given that the temperature’s going to flirt with 100F both days, and there’s an ozone alert at least for Saturday, I think I’ll hang out inside and maybe move some furniture around.Report
Lots of music this weekend. Seeing the Cactus Blossoms tonight and Drive By Truckers tomorrow, both outdoors at city festivals. It really is kinda cool to live in Chicago in the summer (plus the weather is absolutely gorgeous).
Also, as it turns out it’s a volunteer weekend. Spent the morning spreading mulch at the local community garden, and tomorrow afternoon I’ll be manning the food pantry tent at the farmer’s market.Report