“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 718 (Friday) – prickly day

Itchy Icelandic sweater.

We were promised snow and we received snow in abundance. In recognition of the storm, the wool sweater from the Icelandic Hand Knitting Association was chosen for the day’s attire. I like how it looks, but it's a bit too large, which I cared about less when I first got it and had a pair of pants that went perfectly with it. It's also a very itchy, prickly wool, even with a turtleneck underneath. It's one of only two souvenirs from a trip to Reykjavik taken many lifetimes ago, the other being a suede bag with runes, not because I knew anything about runes at the time, but because I thought they were cool and interesting. 

At 6:15am, it was snowing steadily and the front steps were cleared for Winston to visit the yard. This was done while in bathrobe and pajamas. It’s amazing how fast I can move while inappropriately attired in a snowstorm. There was more to clear from the steps at 8:15 and several more times throughout the day, but at least I was wearing the sweater, pants, boots, coat, and gloves then. 

While I stood in the doorway waiting to let Winston back inside, a car leaving the driveway across the street backed up at ramming speed, straight into the snowbank in front of my yard. If not for the snowbank, it might have been my fence. Or maybe it happened because of the three-foot wide snowbank left by the plows.

At 2:00 the headache inducing workday inspired a trip to the fresh air for the initiation of the larger snow rearranging endeavor. One gate, a narrow path between the car and the fence, and one side of the car and a strip of the roof were cleared before retreating. It was still steadily snowing, so it was just phase one of the mission.

Winston on his snow path.

The fresh air felt good, but my legs were tingling and my fingers were cold. These were both the result of unfortunate miscalculations. The cold and tingly legs were because I neglected to put long johns under my pants and then neglected to put on snow pants over them. The cold fingers were due to the misguided assumption that Burton snowboard gloves would actually be warm. 

Too much of the annoying afternoon was spent consolidating info from three separate Word documents into an Excel worksheet for purposes of understanding the project information in order to write copy to  deliver to the designer in an organized manner. Unfortunately, project information is often delivered in bits of disjointed and inconsistent narrative via multiple email messages or Word documents or both. One spreadsheet would usually allow for organization and easy updating. A colleague mentioned that “Department X doesn’t do spreadsheets.” C’mon, it’s 2022, spreadsheets have been around for decades, and the bank has free classes on the program. Being forced to cobble together info from multiple sources is how errors happen.

This specific project would already have copy written and been

delivered to the designer by now if it hadn’t required so much time to request, wait for, and organize all the various bits of information. As it is, there are still a few key elements missing, and when I finally gave up in frustration at 5:00, I had only 26 lines of info where there should have been 27. Looks like Monday’s attire should include a Sherlock Holmes hat and pipe in recognition of playing detective to figure out what is missing.

The day’s aggravation wasn’t all bad. At 5:00, armed with a lightweight plastic snow shovel, it was used as fuel for pushing snow from around the car, scraping it off the top and from underneath, slicing it off the plowed snow banks, and then tossing it over the four-foot picket fence into the front yard. That helped a bit. The wine afterward is helping even more. Thank goodness for wine.