DESK! apply directly to the forehead!
April 03, 2008

Normally, I spend an hour or two in the evenings doing the things that help me unwind. Playing computer games, visiting favorite blogs, doing crossword puzzles. These things calm me and help me to wind down and fall asleep at a decent hour. I pretty much have to have them in order to survive the week.

The problem with that is�I don�t get a whole lot of free time, and if I�m going to take the time to decompress, I�m going to have to go without some other aspect of my life. Like friends.

Well, last night, when W called, I made the choice to pick up and forego the stress therapy.

I probably wouldn�t have done that if I�d known what horrors today would hold for an introverted, sensory defensive, and very tired soul like me--It was brutal. In addition to the usual issues I have with work, fully half my day was scheduled out to meetings, the reek of the lunch special was such that it reached from the first floor all the way to the fifth, and Thursday is the day of the week where all the fucking extroverts can�t hold back any longer and have to spend the day gabbling and gobbling like a flock of more-stupid-than-average turkeys.

It was also apparently the day to �discover� system problems that have been happening for years, and cry for an ASAP fix.

Oh, and it turns out that my reward for getting through the last six months of a project from hell without beating the project facilitator to death? Is to be forced to give up my (unpaid-and-therefore-not-their-business) lunch period and spend it in a conference room having lunch with the aforementioned facilitator.

Summary: Four hours of meetings, plus a higher than average dose of emergency problem analysis, noisy, smelly idiots galore, plus an invitation a mandate to give up my only break, plus giving up of my �decompression time� last night so that I could have an actual conversation with my best friend of 19 years....

I�m a shriveled husk tonight. I had to stop at the store since Spouse needed a couple of things. I picked up a frozen pizza for myself, so now I'm home, with a couple of candles lit, enjoying some well-earned silence. I have no intention of taking any phone calls, and every intention of being in bed by eight-thirty. And tomorrow, thank dog, is NAP day.