All That Jazz, With Some Exceptions

It is Friday; a day that, by its very nature is almost always a good day.

Today was no exception.  Except that it was an exceptionally good day.  I accept that except for a few exceptions, today was exceptional, which is not the exception, except in a few rare exceptions.  So, except for exceptional exceptions (which I accept), expectations were high for an exceptionally non-exceptional day, which is in itself exceptional.

It was also hot.  It hit 103 today (37.78 C).  I found this out the hard way.  I have been putting in a lot of hours at work lately so rather than take lunch today, I thought I’d just go sit in my car for a few minutes, recline the seat, and listen to a little quiet, contemporary jazz.  Perhaps you’ve heard the expression “hot jazz”.  Well, I’m here to tell you, today’s jazz was smoking hot!  It is hard to fully appreciate Boney James or Tom Scott or Richard Elliot or Gerald Albright while slowly cooking evenly on high heat.

I turned on the air conditioning and that made for some cool jazz … but it definitely turned the guilt knob all the way up to eleven.  It is hard to relax while extravagantly and obscenely wasting the earth’s precious resources.  So, I heaved a heavy sigh, turned off the jazz and the air conditioning, and schlepped back across the lava-like parking lot and back into work.  I sat in my fabric-covered box and worked on obscenely complex spreadsheets.

To think I once upon a time considered becoming a jazz musician.

But … hey …. spreadsheets are cool, too.  Like jazz, they tend to be free-form and highly improvisational.

Except jazz is jazzy.

Spreadsheets are .. well … not.

 

Poor Biff’s Almanac – Friday Finally

Friday is finally here, and not a moment too soon.  I don’t know how much longer I could have gone on with the workweek that just ended.

You might have noticed that I have not posted in awhile, though I flatter myself to even think that.  Well, the reason for my absence has been a perfect storm of events.  Each of the events, if isolated and looked at in a vacuum, are singularly uninteresting.  However, taken as a whole, and observed as the swirling variegation of events that they were, they remain just as uninteresting and probably a little more so.  It is the same sort of uninteresting you experience when someone relates to you a long, drawn-out, incoherent dream they had.

So I’ll just sum up the whole tiresome mess in as few words as possible.

A.  I have been putting in a lot of hours at work.  In fact, I had my 40 hours for this week in by Thursday morning.

B. My spending so much time at work has taken up all the time that I might have spent doing something more interesting.

C.  Even in my free time, I don’t do anything that is interesting, so scratch item #B above off of the list.

I think that is about it:  lack of free time and lack of anything interesting in my life to write about.  I probably could have just written it that way up front and saved us all a lot of time.  But it’s too late now.  The damage is done.  You cannot unread what you just read and I certainly cannot un-write it (though I suppose I could just delete it all, but I have too much invested in it at the moment to let it go).

And to top it all off, I think I am catching a cold.  I began getting a sore throat yesterday afternoon at work.  It was significantly worse this morning when I woke up, but a good dose of Tylenol, a hot shower, a cup of hot coffee, and gargling with Listerine downgraded my condition from “extremely miserable”  to “merely miserable”.  The sore throat has just become scratchy and raw.  The lack of energy and general malaise persists, but I am hoping a full weekend of intense lethargy and idleness will cure that.

Though I’m not sure if my body will ever forgive me for gargling with Listerine.

The Ascent of Biff

Today was a good day.

But then again, most Fridays are.  Almost by definition.

However, a good day is not the same as an exciting day.  There is not much excitement to be had while sitting in an office working on month-end financial reports, updating schedules, reviewing staffing, and knocking out a few mandatory on-line training modules that were due.

I console myself by telling myself that a million years of evolution led to my being able to sit in a climate-controlled box while manipulating ephemeral concepts and abstractions on non-permanent media to be stored in equally abstract locations as a safeguard against the eventuality that someone somewhere someday may want to audit these things.

We all know that that’s not going to happen, but it’s important that we all buy into the fantasy or else it unravels and falls apart before our eyes.   Our very society is built upon the vague fear that we may be audited someday and asked to prove that all those hours we spent in our climate controlled boxes were, in fact, value added.  We all know they weren’t, but that too is part of the ruse that we all buy into.

In other news, I successfully passed my online training module on Ladder Safety by successfully answering 8 of the 10 questions correctly on the assessment following the 30 minute training video.  Never mind that no part of my job requires that my feet leave the ground.  However, I am now certified to climb ladders of up to 12 feet (excluding articulated ladders) provided:

1. I have the correct PPE (Personal Protection Equipment)
2. I have a properly certified “ladder buddy” to spot me while I am more than 1 foot above the floor
3. The ladder conforms to UL/ALI/ANSI/CSA standards and has the proper markings
4. There are no non-ladder-certified people within a ten foot radius of said ladder at the time of my ascent
5. The area in which the ladder is in use is properly cordoned off from incidental foot traffic.

This is definitly NOT what I had in mind when I used to dream of climbing the corporate ladder someday.

 

Poor Biff’s Almanac — Friday Edition

I made it to another Friday!

Every Monday morning when the alarm goes off at the unnatural hour of 6 a.m. and one of my eyes opens (I can’t ever get both eyes to work as a team until about 10 a.m. Monday morning), Friday seems like some mythical event foretold in some ancient prophecy no one really believes in any more.  As I shave and brush my teeth (with the difficulty level set at 10, because of the aforementioned non-cooperation of my eyes) I am giving myself my usual Monday morning pep talk.

“Friday is a real thing,” I tell myself.  “It will be here in a mere five days.  Just five days.  I can do this!  I got this!”

This is followed almost immediately by, “Aw, who am I kidding?  We all know that by the time Wednesday gets here, time will have slowed down so much that it will actually begin to go backwards and we will have to reset our calendars to be the day before.”

And yet, somehow Friday always arrives and I am always surprised and amazed, as if it were a surprise birthday party that my friends planned so cunningly that it was actually a surprise.  On Friday mornings, when the alarm goes off at the unnatural hour of 6 a.m., I always jump, surprised, and then smile and I feel like I should say, “Oh!  You guys!  You really got me good!”

I then jump out of bed and reenact the “Good Morning!” song from the 1952 hit musical film “Singin’ in the Rain”.  I play the part of Donald O’Connor since I look better in light gray than dark gray.  Besides, everyone wants to be Gene Kelly.  I don’t have to fight to be Donald O’Connor.  Plus this is St. Patrick’s Day, so I thought it was more appropriate to pick the more Irish-sounding name.

I then wake up and realize that Debbie Reynolds is really the rack I hang my robe on.  And that I’m not Donald O’Connor.  And that I can’t sing.  Or dance.

But I don’t care, because it’s Friday!

 

 

 

 

How to Leave Work on Friday Afternoon

I love that moment on Fridays when I have worked my last minute of the week and I pack up my briefcase and prepare to start the weekend.

The whole time I feel like I am in one of those spy movies where the agent (or double agent, as the case may be) has to walk coolly through a crowded space that is populated entirely by people who would shoot him on sight if they knew he was an agent.  I just walk quickly, but not too quickly.  Avoiding eye contact.  Trying not to attract attention to myself.  Coaching myself silently in my head as I walk.

“Just keep walking,” I coach.  “You’re doing good.  Almost to the elevator.  Slowly.  Easy does it.  You’re doing good.  Just look casual waiting for the elevator.”

I hear footsteps and my blood pressure shoots up a dozen points.  Would it be someone wanting just one more thing done before the weekend?  Whew!  It’s just someone going to get copies.

I get on the elevator.  I can hear my heart beating in  my ears.  I feel like everyone is aware that I am leaving.

I get off the elevator and walk down the corridor.  Almost there. I can see the front door 30 yards ahead, just past security.  The light of the sun illuminates it like the portal to heaven.

“Go towards the light,” I coach myself.  “Keep a steady pace.  Don’t walk too quickly.  Just keep walking towards the light.  One foot in front of the other.  Almost there.”

And then …. boom!

Suddenly I am outside!  Sunlight warms my face.  A slight breeze tousles my hair.  I am suddenly free from the possibility that someone will stop me and need a report written before I leave or some data massaged.

I practically break into a sprint from the front door to my truck.  I throw my briefcase haphazardly onto the passenger seat, crank up the truck, and practically burn rubber out of the parking lot, driving over a median in my eagerness to make my getaway.

.

I’m free!  I’m free!

.

Until I hear my cell phone ring . . .