random thoughts – Day 1,688 – (Thursday) – breakfast and drama

Breakfast.

At 7:00 this morning, instead of sitting on my couch drinking coffee and relaxing with the usual emails, Wordle, and Words with Friends, I was dressed in a suit, seated at a table set for breakfast in a function room in Dracut while Christmas music played. Five colleagues soon joined me at the table in the packed room for the Salvation Army of Lowell’s Christmas Castle Breakfast. It wasn’t my usual morning event, but definitely worth getting up and out of the house for.

As I pulled into the parking lot, it wasn't visions of sugarplums dancing through my head, but coffee and French toast with syrup. The buffet felt like a miniature version of the breakfast spreads at the resort in Mexico and had donuts, pastries, eggs, sausages, bacon, fruits, and yes, French toast. Talk about a great start to the day.

After the breakfast, it was back to the remote office where, at 9:30, multiple trucks were lined up on the street and a digger was parked at the end of the street. A crew from the water department was working on the water main leak. It was a little bit loud, but I was glad the problem was being fixed. 

There was drama.

Everything seemed to be moving along nicely for several hours, while big chunks of asphalt being set into the digger, and a big hose thing in the new hole and guys moving around the work site. It all seemed very routine until1:30, when it got spicy. 

Voices were yelling over the sound of an idling engine and a pickup truck was parked in the middle of the street. The yelling included lots and lots of passionate f-bombs that lasted for a few minutes as one worker screamed at another one. I had a front row seat to a real-life workplace drama. 

Eventually, the yelling stopped and the construction sounds resumed. The pickup truck parked at the end of the street briefly, then disappeared. Around 3:30, the entire operation had vacated, leaving nothing but some orange cones where the digging had been and the puddle that still remained at the foot of my driveway. The space in front of the neighbor's house was significantly drier.

My workday was free of the drama of the water crew. My colleagues and I quietly and respectfully moved projects along and responded to emails and Teams messages and exchanged important information and updates. I made more progress on the shared drive file cleanup, which I enjoy a lot more than I thought I would. As work days go, it was a pretty good one.