“Remoted” Day 364 (Monday)

Monday morning fun.

Thanks to the time change, this was a Monday morning of waking up tired. It was also a Monday morning with an 8:00 appointment at the cardiologist’s office for an echocardiogram in the continuing excitement of the “shoveling snow makes me want to barf” saga. The technician was cordial, professional, and didn’t force me into stupid chit chat. I was able to lay on the table for the entire time and not say a word and I loved her for that time of peace and quiet. Before long, I was headed out the door with a follow-up appointment scheduled with the cardiologist for two weeks out.

By 9:00, I was back at the home office and logging in to the work network. The first work task of the workday was a review that is the final step in a process that is so annoying we rotate the task among three of us on the team. This week it’s my turn to be punished with the daily review. In a couple weeks I’ll be punished with the task of coordinating the graphics for the May account statement cycle. The monthly graphics coordination and daily reviews are rotated to spread the pain. It might be fairness, or it might be because the process is so completely annoying and heinous that there is a risk that whoever was awarded sole custody of the chore would quit. This might be an exaggeration for effect, but there are no guarantees.

Task number one, the review, resulted in an error message about Adobe Reader having an issue. By 9:30, the screen was littered with error messages from Adobe, Windows, and Internet Explorer (don’t ask). There were error boxes for each of these issues on the screen, and all commands were frozen. A complete restart was needed. Unfortunately, the restart also triggered updates and the friendly message that “This could take a few minutes.” After 10 minutes, the progress was indicated as 10% done. Based on that initial time of one percent per minute, my calculations indicated it would take 100 minutes to reach 100% complete. Luckily, the rate did not hold steady and it took only 30 minutes to complete. Thirty long minutes of me staring at the screen and glaring at the clock and cursing the to-do list. It was agonizing. But it worked much better afterward.

This Monday morning had come in hot with a little bit too much Monday. Luckily, it loosened the Monday hell cloak and the improvement propelled me through the rest of the day. And suddenly, blessedly, it was done.