“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 873 (Friday) – a drag

Thursday night, while preparing for bed, I remembered a time-sensitive something I had fully intended to do at work, but had been derailed by a zillion other things and forgot. Three meetings and a webinar were a time suck on the day and made it harder to keep all the threads from unraveling. At 7:30 this morning, I logged into work to get an early jump on the day and deal with the thing that was missed the day earlier.

It turned into another one of "those days." Passwords were suddenly expired and during the new password selection process, errors were made and programs were locked. There was a hunt for the identity of our system administrator to reset the password in one program. That information seemed to be about as top secret as the password protocol that complicated the normal password reset and resulted in the lockout. Even the timecard program turned against me later in the morning, locking me out of that program, too. In all, the morning saw battles with three different programs. 

Despite the aggravation, or maybe because of it, the day dragged, which made it even more aggravating. It was like time stood still, and it was painful. Time consuming things were completed and crossed off the list, and yet, time itself seemed untouched and preserved in place.

Pizza (take 2) and beer.

At 4:30, things got extra annoying with a text from my bank checking the validity of a charge on the checking account. I typed “no” for fraud, (thinking I was saying it was "no, it is not fraud") instead of “yes” for "this is a valid transaction" because I read it wrong. It was the Prime renewal, which had very specifically been designated to a different account when the renewal notice came a few days ago. My answer to the text put a lock on my card and required a call to the Fraud Center.

The Fraud Center rep spoke very quickly with clipped enunciation that sounded robotic. Three times I had to ask them to slow down and repeat what they said. I may or may not be able to use my bankcard this weekend. Right now, after the confusing phone call with the rapid speaker, I don’t know. The next point of contact was Amazon Prime where I expressed my extreme displeasure at the charge hitting the wrong account. The rep claimed he would straighten it out. I am not confident in this happening.

The loose after-work plan was to maybe, possibly, act all independent and free-spirited and head downtown to the Folk Festival to see the opening parade and dine on festival foods. Alone. Carefree.

Instead, it became a search in the freezer for something for supper, followed by a way to burn off the annoyance of the Prime renewal /possibly deactivated debit card scenario. Pizza was set in the toaster oven to heat while I vacuumed the dining room, during which time the crust malfunctioned and split and pizza cheese melted all over the toaster oven. A beer was poured. A second slice was retrieved from the freezer, was better supervised, and fared better in the heating process.

Downtown was ruled out. No opening parade led by a New Orleans brass band for me. It was traded for the music of the electric lawn mower and parade of one as I pushed it around the front yard and then the back.

In the words of Scarlett O’Hara, “Tomorrow is another day.” It will start fresh with coffee and a visit to the bank to make sure I have access to funds. Then it will be time for the Folk Festival with friends who are coming to town for the day.