Frustration

Nothing bad happened at work today but frustration was the main theme of the day.

The only way to describe it is terms of the Dilbert comic strip. The pointy headed bosses are firmly in control and their idiosyncratic decisions dictate the agenda. Details are probably pointless but because someone gets a silly idea in their head it generates hours of work disproving that idea. It's amazing that they pay me so much to be a subject matter expert but won't ask me my opinion. What's frustrating is that if they really did their jobs as managers we could be doing some good work and making better systems that were easier to use and made other folks less frustrated. Instead they seem to thrive on giving us tight deadlines and reveling in the fact that we work so hard to meet them.

My mother was in a funk too. She's got a new aide today and that is never a happy day for her.

Sunday Evening - The End of Raisa's Spring Break

Again I have delayed keeping this blog up to date. I want to start this post with a synopsis of events since my last posting.

Tuesday - College tours of Pratt Institute and SUNY Stony Brook. Both were surprisingly positive experiences in different ways. In the evening we attended a talk about Annie Londonderry, the first woman to ride her bicycle around the world at the 14th Street "Y" in NYC.

Wednesday - Back to work but another college tour at Rowan University for the girls.

Thursday and Friday were work days better than most because my boss was up in Boston for Thursday at least.

Saturday - a long visit to my mother. We watched the movie Careful He Might Hear You which was dreadful and we were complaining at the screen for it to end already.

Sunday - A beautiful early Spring day. I ran and biked and went to a concert this afternoon of a brass ensemble that our friend Kyle Turner plays in. It was a sort of history of brass music and very audience friendly and agnostic.

This evening we made a fire and I paid bills. Not exciting but relaxing. Raisa is finishing her junior research project and it meant much proof-reading for the rest of us.

College Tours

I'm taking today and tomorrow off to go on my younger daughter's first college tours. Today we visited Bryn Mawr College and Drexel University. Tomorrow we are planning trips to Pratt Institute and State University of New York at Stony Brook. I'm certain that we won't find the prefect match on these outings but I'm hoping we can expose her to several different types of school and she can somehow narrow down her preferences.

Each of the schools today had their pluses and minuses but on the whole I think she was more impressed with Bryn Mawr than Drexel. I was too.

From my perspective I want her to know that she has a choice. We have a deal in our family that I am willing to pay for 75% of whatever they choose. Beyond that they can go where they want. I never felt that I had that choice. My parents were not fans of out of town colleges and I never forced the issue. My sisters went but by the time my turn came they were convinced that it was not a good idea for me. So, my college years were spent at a commuter college which didn't cost them anything other than feeding and sheltering me (and putting up with the odd hours of my coming and going). A good friend of mine referred to those years as four more years of high school although, in my case, that was seven more years of high school.

I'm appreciating the days off from work too.

Proud of My Kids

This evening I had a chat with my daughter after dinner. She was telling me about her sociology class in high school. Today they had to describe the personalities of her family members. She has lots of good things to say about both of her parents and her sister. She got to the core of the things that she liked about each of us and pointed out the things that she sees as part of her personality.

While listening to her I realized that I like the people that my daughters have become. They are thoughtful, interested, and interesting. I look forward to what comes next in their lives. I'm sure they'll do things that I don't agree with or approve of but I think that they have good heads on their shoulders and they should be free to make their own mistakes. I've liked the things that they've done and plan to do. I think that I'm living a bit vicariously through them. They went to better camps than I did (sorry Kindervelt), did and plan to do the gap year in Israel, and are going and hope to go to the kind of college that I wanted to go to.

In other news it rained all day today. If this were snow we'd be home for the next few days. The weather portion of the newspaper keeps track of the rainfall over the last 30 and 365 days. Over the last year we are 13 inches above normal. This hasn't caused us any significant problems in our end of New Jersey but I can't believe it won't if it keeps up like this. Global warming?

Productive Days

I wasn't looking forward to work today. It has been quite frustrating lately with competing projects and constantly shifting priorities. Today, however, was unexpectedly productive, here's why. Both my boss and one of the people who directly reports to me were out today. It was an unexpected day of quiet and freedom from stress.

I'll have half a day of this tomorrow since my boss will be out again.

The weekend also ended on a pleasant note. I got to take a bike ride yesterday (in the rain) through Cranford. It was a short ride on account of the bad weather but it always makes me feel good to start off the day that way. I did house chores and read the newspaper. We scavenged some fallen branches from the recent rainstorm and cut it up for firewood. Someday I hope to be less boring. For now I'll take having the time to get sufficiently rested at the start of the week.

Mid-Weekend

I'm spending the first part of this evening with my daughter who is working on a research paper for school. It's a project called the Junior Research Project (JRP) and she's behind schedule. My wife is at a monthly music series in town called Coffee with Conscience and I'd rather be there. The compromise that we've reached is that I'll stay here for a while to keep her on track and we'll both go after the intermission in the show. I suppose that's fair since she keeps her on track most of the week.

My daughter's paper is on the influence of the bicycle in America. I think that she's enjoying doing the research and I'm enjoying hearing about it. We're both fans of bicycling particularly the long scenic kind of ride.

We spent the afternoon at my Mom's house. She's been in good spirits lately. It was a short visit since we had to get back for the coffee house. She didn't seem to mind. She was uncomfortable when we left, though. I wish we could do more for her but there doesn't seem to be anything to be done for her pain. If she would do the physical therapy if might help but she seems to never had a taste for doing anything physical and at 89 she's not about to change her ways.

Job Applications

For the first time in almost 9 months I've sent out a resume for a job. I've always felt that it would be more fun and manageable to work in a college or university setting and yesterday an alert from monster.com popped into my e-mail. It's an IT manager position in their Graduate School of Journalism. I have most of the qualifications and I hope that seeing my 12 plus years at The Times will wow them.

Do I want to switch jobs now? Maybe. I'm not crazy about the work that I'm doing or the people that I'm working for and with. Sometimes I think that I can wait it out until the environment changes but it looks like more layoffs are coming so I'll either be laid off myself or have to work many times harder to compensate for the people that are.

Today I was booked into 5 hours of meetings. I'm never sure when I'm supposed to do any real work when you spend so much time talking about work. Tomorrow is not much better with a solid 3 hours in the afternoon tied up in chatter. Just when I'd like to be winding down we have to talk and get wired up. I didn't get home tonight until 7:45. I did a little paper work and applied for that job.

Busy Evenings

I much prefer evenings when I have something planned to those that I don't. It's generally pretty quiet around our house on weekday evenings. My daughter does her homework or procrastinates on the computer and my wife does quiet activities and often naps. She's a late night person and usually begins some activity when I'm about to turn in. After dinner I sometimes find myself at loose ends.

Sometimes before I leave work I'll make a list of the things that I want to get done that night. If I can get through the list I go to bed a bit more content.

Tonight I developed a roll of film in the darkroom, washed the dinner dishes, paid both our bills and my Mom's bills and, after I finish this post, will get our income tax stuff ready to be mailed.

It's the little things that make life pleasant.

Governors

There must be something about being a governor that makes you do stupid things. In recent memory we've had a governor that came out of the closet while in office, one that almost got himself killed speeding on the Atlantic City Expressway and now the governor of New York gets taped making an appointment with a prostitute. Don't these guys know that they aren't anonymous anymore?

Maybe I'm lucky or maybe I'm smart but I've always lived the boring life. These kind of escapades never seemed worth the risk. I'm not saying I haven't fantasized but things can go so badly if you get found out and it's inevitable that you'd be found out. I've mused that it's a good thing that I'm not good looking since I'd likely get into trouble if I was. I don't really think that's true. I just avoid compromising situations like I avoid dealing with lawyers and annoying people.

We just finished watching the movie Martian Child pretty unremarkable other than John and Joan Cusack playing brother and sister. Now how original is that?

It's Been Five Days

It's been five days since I posted last. I do have a lot to say but I'm about to meltdown from so much time in front of the computer. At work I need to produce detailed reports for every site showing why they are not in security compliance and tonight I worked on our tax returns.

I realized this evening that the on-line forms are no easier than doing it on paper. It's still taken me two sessions to get through them. It doesn't help that I have to file returns in two states.

My eyes are falling out of my head! Good night!

The Noise

In yesterday's post I talked about a hockey game that I attended. There was one thing that I forgot to mention that I think also says much about the times that we live in. There wasn't a single moment while at Madison Square Garden last night when we weren't assaulted by noise. There were constant announcements, loud rock music, and crowd chants. I sort of remember going to games and hearing the puck bang off the boards and the players yelling to each other.

We are having our house painted this week so we had dinner out. While we were at the diner I noticed that they had music on as well and TVs on in every corner of the restaurant. Why is it that we can't have quiet anywhere? When you go to the doctor there's a TV on and in airport lounges you can't avoid some kind of stimulation. I prefer the quiet but I think I'm alone in this. Everyone on the bus seems to require some sort of stimulation be it an iPod or cell phone.

Were people that much duller or more organized before this electronic junk began to rule our lives?

Hockey

Tonight I had the privilege of attending a hockey game. One of our vendors invited 8 of us from The Times to sit in their corporate box at Madison Square Garden to see the Rangers play the Islanders. It was a remarkable experience from many respects.

The first notable thing was the luxury. We had a private suite with catered food and plenty to drink. What shocks me the most was the enormous amount of food and probably the enormous waste. My co-workers were drinking and eating themselves silly and mostly ignoring the game. They were chatting, texting, and I suppose having a very good time. These are not people that I particularly like so I avoided alcohol and deep conversations. It was very noisy there so the conversations were easy to avoid.

The game of professional hockey has also changed quite a bit since my last NHL game which was probably more than 10 years ago. Ties are frowned upon. This game ended in a 3-3 tie at the end of regulation play. First they play a 5 minute overtime period which ended scoreless. Then they did a shoot out which is one player against the goalie. This ends when one team scores and the other can't answer with a goal of their own. The Islanders won on this. It was an unsatisfying way to end the game since it was so closely fought.

One of the reasons I stopped going to sporting events was that I really couldn't follow the play. These seats were so good that I was actually able to see the puck for some of the time. Not all of the time but enough to keep it interesting.

Dreaming of Travelling

The past weekend was very pleasant in our little corner of the world. I spent Saturday visiting my mother in Brooklyn and I had the very pleasurable company of my older daughter who is home from college on a week long break. Visiting my Mom these days has been a lot less stressful now that she seems to have competent people working with her. We don't have to worry about feeding or the other too many details that she won't or can't take care of by herself. I leave there with a much lighter heart.

On Sunday we went to The New York Times Travel Show at the Javits Center. We were given free passes at work and we had a marvelous time looking at all of the many travel options that the various exhibitors were pushing. The most enticing thing for us was a bunch of booths dedicated to vacation apartment rentals in major cities all over the world. For a family like us with major food issues this is a very attractive and comfortable way to travel. The show also featured magicians, dancers, singers, and lectures. We sampled Italian chocolate, baklava, and we picked up lots of brochures and souvenirs. The most unusual booth at the show was dedicated to a Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp. Rock with the stars. Not for me but I can see the appeal.