“Remoted - Hybrid” – Day 564 (Friday)

Surprise diagnostics.

A day that could easily have slid into a whole lot of more of the same had a couple spots of rust and sparks of brilliance. The drive into work was clear sailing with light traffic, but en route, the car dashboard "instrument cluster" reverted from displaying the speed in white on a black background to an  unnerving schmear of red with a diagnostic diagram of the vehicle and a note about low tire pressure that highlighted the front passenger tire. There was also the image of an upside down horseshoe with an exclamation point. 

I sat in the parking spot in the garage, flipping through the hefty owner’s manual, curious to know about the horseshoe exclamation, but no guidance was found. Declaring it would be looked at later, the manual was returned to the glovebox and I headed to the office to forget about it for the rest of the day. 

As a personal challenge, the urge for proper coffee from the shop nearby was resisted. The coffee made at the house is “a big-ass container for $5.99.” It can best be described as hot, brown, and serviceable. Now, after drinking coffee shop coffee which is made with actual coffee, I’m up all night, so it seems clear my coffee palate and endurance have dramatically declined during the working from home times of crappy coffee.

The office was lightly staffed with the Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule team which last week was the Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday schedule and will be again next week. It requires extra thinking most days to keep track of where to be, but it’s only been three weeks so far. The phones were mostly quiet and the email volume was light, which was a wonderful and welcome situation.

It took all morning to accomplish the one priority task for the morning due to my successfully locking myself out of the program at login. After help from an expert in another department, finally, around lunchtime, it was done. 

Tasks from the to-do list were done, brilliantly. A couple fun impromptu tasks were done, with pleasure. Pleasant conversations were had. Then, the workday was done. It was a dash home to check on Winnie, remove his sopping diaper pants and let him outside. Then he was back into a diaper so I could get back into the car to visit the chiropractor. The neck was tight, and has been since the bike ride last weekend, but everything else moved and it was good. The plan had been to get gas and put air in the tire at the station near the chiropractor, but big shocker, that didn’t happen and the car auto-piloted itself home.

Cushioning for the concrete seat.

While I was dining on a leftover boiled-smashed-baked potato from last night, the Prime truck arrived with my new padded bike riding undies and padded ergonomic design seat cover. The seat cover was pictured in six colors, with no option to choose, so there was no clue which color would arrive. It turned out to be the boring grayish beige and will surely cushion my concrete bike seat as well as the more exciting teal, magenta, or purple, and for $4.99, I’ll be glad for it. Now I can’t wait to ride again. Maybe this weekend.