Tag Archives: chicken

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. The end of a long-running gag. Forty-four weeks after the new telework policy for supervisors (that was also supposed to be the new telework policy for employees) was published, my employer and AFGE Local 1904 were finally forced into terms by the Federal Service Impasses Panel. In their Solomonic judgement, the best solution was to split the baby. Rest assured I’ll cover that in more detail in a separate post. That said, the inability of the union and my employer to find their ass with two hands and a flashlight has featured in the lead off position of What Annoys Jeff this Week for the last 40 weeks. While I am pleased that a separate government entity has finally forced them to come to terms, I’m just a little bit sad that it’s a regular and recurring crutch I won’t have to lean on week after week. As I have yet to learn how my employer will choose to actually implement this newly imposed policy, though, I can’t help but believe we haven’t seen the last of telework being a prominent topic on Thursdays. 

2. Bad chicken. It’s not unusual for me to load up the crockpot on a telework day and cook up a dish I can eat multiple meals from over the course of the week. What’s helpful in doing that, though, is when the chicken I’m about to use isn’t something that should have been taken off the shelves a week before I bought it. Look, I absolutely blame the retailer here. There’s absolutely no reason poultry should be anywhere near a consumer a full week after its sell by date. That’s just absolutely shitty staff work. It would be easy to think about taking this rancid mess over to the customer service desk, but ultimately, I’m the one who picked it up, looked it over, and mistook the “9” for a 19. In the spirit of personal responsibility, I’m going to proverbially eat the $11 loss and heave the chicken parts over the fence in hopes some of the local wildlife won’t gag from it the way I did when I opened the package.

3. New meds. As part of the initial treatment for my suspected tachycardia, the doctors prescribed a new pill. I know there are a lot of people who object to being on medication of any kind, but I’m a big believer in better living through chemistry. If my issues can be mitigated with a pill, just tell me when to take it. To some degree that’s what they’ve done. One of the inconvenient side effects, though, is that in addition to driving my pulse down, it’s also got me feeling like my brain is operating at about 70% of normal speed. I’m still perfectly competent and can do everything I could do previously, but thinking it through takes a little longer. Even if we assume for the moment that this little white pill is doing what it’s supposed to be doing, I’m absolutely not a fan. Fortunately, I’m told it’s one of those side effects that should wear off once my body is fully accustomed to its new chemical make up. After a month, I’m still finding that some days are better than others, so file it firmly under “we’ll see.” 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 18 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. So, we’re still grinding along with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. There’s probably plenty of blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 18 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) for not getting this shit done. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence and the elected “leaders” of 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

2. People. I was pumping gas Monday morning. While standing there waiting for the Jeep to drink its fill, I watched someone pull in to the pump next to me and then realize that his filler cap was on the other side of their car. A normal person might just pull around to one of the ten open pumps, but not this hero. He proceeded to do a 37-point turn right there under the canopy so he could use that specific pump. I try not to stare when obviously stupid people are going through their life, but this was one of those times when I really just could look away. Neither it seems could the pother 4 or 5 people there pumping gas as we all exchanged looks of surprise while this was taking place. I’ve long since gotten use to people being stupid in public, but this feels like an exceptional example of why we should just let Darwin do his thing.

3. Chickens (but really people). Every third or fourth story I’ve seen this week is about people running out and buying their own flock of chickens to “get cheap eggs.” Sure, a few people might make a go of it, but the time John and Jane Average get to the point where their hens are laying, their eggs are going to have cost $48 a dozen if the price in the startup costs,  feed and accessories, and built that darling little henhouse wifey saw on Pinterest… and that’s assuming they manage to keep the birds alive and don’t completely lose interest somewhere in week three.

Another chicken dream…

Posted on by

I had chicken for dinner last night. As happens more often than not under these circumstances, my subconscious treated me to yet another of what I’ve fondly come to think of as “chicken dream.”

This one featured a very vivid sequence in which I was driving the Jeep along the edge of a park or maybe a town square. It was tree lined and bucolic and filled with protestors wearing red shirts. As I passed, rolling slowly, they began spilling over into the street. One of the red shirts, armed, and now standing in the middle of the street leveled a rifle (hunting, not assault). I have a stark recollection of staring down the open barrel – its bore looking like an ever-widening maw – and then instinctively popping the clutch and knocking the unknown rifleman out of the way.

Rather than fleeing as would probably have been advisable in a real-world mob scene, dream me pulled to the curb on the next block, locked the Jeep, and checked into a hotel. The next morning the protestors were gone, but so was the Jeep. The entire square looked pristine and as if no one had even the audacity to walk on the grass the day before.

I was getting decidedly surly looks from townspeople who were gathering in small groups of two or three people, whispering as I passed. After scouring the surrounding streets for the Jeep, my dream self gave up, commenting “Well, I guess I just live here now.”

And that’s where I jolted awake in the very early hours of Tuesday morning. My inner self was more than happy to go along with the crowds, running down an armed bandit, and choosing to stick around overnight for no apparent reason – but even in a dream state it couldn’t get past the idea that I’d voluntarily live in “downtown” anywhere.

I’ve said it before, but I really do need to stop having chicken for dinner. It truly makes for some of the dumbest dreams.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Surprise that hurricanes cause infrastructure damage. Reports this week say that “a lack of power and phone service in the areas of Florida flattened by Hurricane Michael last week was hindering efforts” to respond to and recover from the event. Well yeah. That happens in a natural disaster. That happens when one of the strongest storms to hit the United States in all of recorded history flattens everything resembling modern infrastructure that happened to be in its immediate path. FEMA, the media, local governments and anyone who knows anything about emergency preparedness has been screaming for years that people, individuals, need to do more to be ready when the unexpected happens (not that an approaching major hurricane is an “unexpected” happening here in the 21st century). If you insist on staying in or returning to what is, by its very definition, a disaster area before even basic power and communications infrastructure is available you’d damned well better be prepared to generate your own power or rely on battery backup and understand that winds that can knock down brick and mortar buildings can surely strip the bits and pieces off of a modern cell tower while it tears hard-wired communications networks asunder. Basic infrastructure like power and telephony took generations to build out. Screaming complaints that it hasn’t all been restored in a week or two is unrealistic and makes you sound like a idiot.

2. More chicken dreams. It’s not a sure thing, but I’d estimate that close to 50% of the time I eat a chicken-based dinner, I end up with wildly realistic dreams a few hours later. They’re not quite what the reading defines as “lucid” dreams and they’re not nightmares, but these chicken-fueled dreams are wildly realistic – in a Hollywood back lot kind of way. The most recent found me walking through a storefront I knew well as a kid into an interior that had hints of what “should” have been there but that was dominated by people and things that would have no business or reason for being there at all. I think I’m going to have to stop eating chicken for dinner. It’s not that I mind these dreams as I’d just rather not spend the time from 2:00-2:10 am laying awake wondering what the actual fuck is going on in my head.

3. People. Yes, people are a perennial target of my ire, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a consistent refrain because it’s so richly deserved. This week alone I’ve observed people walking out into traffic without looking, nearly sideswipe me on the highway (again without looking), (attempt to) jump into the checkout line as if there weren’t already three people standing in it, and generally moving about in the world as if oblivious to anything outside of their own arm’s reach. I really have no idea how more people aren’t apoplectically livid about their day to day interactions with people. Maybe you’re all just better adjusted than I am… or maybe you’re just too nice to say it out loud in public.