Tag Archives: holiday

Off to the races…

Posted on by

Unless something incredibly stupid happens between now and the 31st, I’ve worked my last day for 2013… and that feels incredibly good. Maybe I should modify that statement a bit, though. What I really mean is I’ve finished working for wages this year. I’ll still be doing plenty of work – giving the house a good mid-winter scrub, bringing order to the piles of random junk in the basement, a few days of dashing hither and yon across the state, and finally ending up back where I started from a few days of legitimate R&R and maybe, if I’m lucky, a little bit of writing.

My 12-days of vacation aren’t exactly off to a slow start, having closed on a new mortgage for the Condo de Jeff this afternoon and then promptly dragging Maggie to the vet for half-priced Friday evening vaccinations before even getting to my first official day of vacation. It should get better from here on out, though. If nothing else, the timing will matter less.

Sure, I’ll probably still reflexively wake up before dawn, but I’m going to do my level best to turn off the little voice in my head that’s constantly screaming at me to hurry up, do one more thing, and stop wasting time. That will probably last about three days before I make myself crazy trying to “just relax”… and after that I’ll be off to the races.

Antisocial…

Posted on by

If nothing else, you can always say that I didn’t give in to peer pressure. Not that the pressure was all that significant after someone kindly pointed out that it was beginning to feel a little like Official pressure to paste on a happy face, lay your money down, and partake in the Organization Non-Denominational Holiday Luncheon and Party.

Hey, no one appreciates a swinging good time more than me, but that’s not what you’re likely to find in a room full of your coworkers. It tends to be an opportunity for awkward conversation and the passing illusion of actual community. As it turns out, sitting at the bar and staring out the window at the water doesn’t actually qualify as “participating” in one of these events. Since that’s what I invariably end up doing at the location where these activities are held, taking a pass felt like the least bad of all possible scenarios.

Back when I was young and ambitious I worked for a guy who was quick to say that colleagues “can be friendly, but they can’t be friends.” Aside from a slim few friends I made at the dawn of my career, I find his thought process was spot on. Keeping as sturdy a firewall as you can between your personal and professional lives feels like a critical action item, because either one bleeding into the other is never going to end well.

Or maybe I’m just antisocial. That’s also a distinct possibility.

My twelve days of Christmas…

Posted on by

As of the close of business this afternoon, there are 10 working days standing between me and the a year ending 12-day weekend. Sure, some people are all friends, family, Christmas, Jesus, whatever… but for me, it’s the nearly two weeks of uninterrupted time off that gets my motor running. All the other stuff feels more or less incidental to having such an expanse stretching out before me where I’m the only one dictating how I spend my time. OK, maybe it misses the point of the season, but being the non-conforming traditionalist I am, that doesn’t bother me much.

After the past season of professional discontent in service to the arbitrary and capricious whims of the dysfunctional legislative and executive branches of government, the most joyous and celebratory thing I can think of doing is ignoring the whole shitshow for my twelve days of Christmas.

The most wonderful time of the year…

Posted on by

The week of Thanksgiving heralds the arrival of that most magical and wondrous time of year… and I’m not talking about Christmas with its faux joy, peace and goodwill towards people you otherwise can’t stand. I’m talking about the four weeks between the holidays when nothing gets done and everyone is busy burning off what’s left of their annual leave. In short: Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the long march towards the end of the year when there are fewer colleagues around asking reports, wanting to see slides, and generally pretending to be productive. It’s the time of year when the pretense of being productive falls away. Sure, that’s only because there are barely enough people around to keep the lights on, but beggars shouldn’t be choosers.

There are going to be plenty of people running around for the next month trying to put together pick up meetings or cram on one more “special project” before 2014 rolls in, but mostly even they know they’re putting on a show for the sake of appearances. I’d be hard pressed to find anyone who really thinks they’re going to be able to get anything significant accomplished at this time of year. That makes for a low key environment… and low key makes me exceptionally happy.

If I haven’t learned anything else from being a drone these last 11 years it’s that this time is fleeting. Before you know it, and well before you’re ready for it, we’ll be back to the full-on grind. So the advice from your kindly Uncle Jeff? Take some time. Slow your roll and remember that no one ever saved the universe with their PowerPoint slides. Even when you think what you’re doing is important, there are well over seven billion people on the plant who don’t care if you live or die.

Perspective, my friends, is everything.

Misplaced outrage…

Posted on by

I keep seeing how “outraged” people are that stores are opening ever-earlier on Thanksgiving day. Facebook and Twitter are full of posts demanding that retailers stay closed and calling boycott at every opportunity. That’s fine. Whatever helps you get your jollies.

One thing you can trust on is that stores like Macy’s and Kmart aren’t opening because their CEOs are philosophically opposed to Thanksgiving. They’re opening because there is growing consumer demand that they be open. If people didn’t want to start their shopping before the bird gets sliced, none of these stores would think anything of leaving their doors closed for the duration of the holiday.

Growing up in a rural, out of the way community I can remember a time when you were hard pressed to find a store of any kind open on Sunday. Later, most places had “limited” hours on Sundays, say noon-5:00 PM. Today, Sunday is just another day in retail. That’s not because the stores are evil, it’s because it’s what the consumer demanded. Despite what anyone thinks of its merits, culturally speaking Sunday isn’t generally considered a “day of rest” by anyone I know. It’s just the second half of a 48-hour weekend where we’re all trying to get done what we need or want to do.

I’m not sure why anyone thinks it would be any different with Thanksgiving. If you don’t want to be part of the crass commercialization, by all means stay home until 12:01 AM Friday morning. If you think you have a Constitutional right to observing a holiday on the day of the holiday itself, you might want to consider work that isn’t involved in a customer-service related field – oh, and don’t be a cop, or a nurse, or a soldier, or work for a power or water company, or, yes, in retail. I’ve had plenty of jobs where work rudely intruded on my days off, and while that sucks, sometimes it’s just plain unavoidable.

So maybe instead of railing against how “unfair” retailers are being, look around and see how many of your friends and family members are going to head to the stores before or after dinner on Thanksgiving Day. If the answer is more than “none,” go ahead and enjoy living in your glass house… and give it some thought next time you want to buy that discount mattress on President’s day or get the deal of a lifetime from the car dealer on Labor Day, or when you’re going to see a movie on a Sunday afternoon ensuring that some poor employee has to give up their Sabbath to sell you a ticket, make your popcorn, and fire up the projector on time.

Let’s be blunt for a moment: If you are legitimately thankful for your family and friends, does it make a tinker’s damn worth of difference whether you’re all sitting down for a turkey dinner at an appointed date and time or whether you nosh on eggs and bacon at the local diner at 3AM on any other random Thursday? I’m just having a tough time seeing the “so what” of all the commotion.

Small pleasures…

Posted on by

One of life’s small pleasures is the feeling you get blowing through the office doors at 4:01 PM on the day leading into an extra-long weekend. It’s a happy moment knowing you’re as far away from your desk as you’re going to get… but being a glass half empty kind of guy, I also have to readily acknowledge that every minute that ticks past after 4:01 is one minute closer to the inevitable let down of being back at my desk when our revels have ended. Happily that’s more a Sunday kind of problem.

To a casual reader I think it must seem like I hate my job. It only seems that way. The work actually tends towards interesting and most of the people fall somewhere along the spectrum of better than average. There are, of course, exceptions but that’s to be expected everywhere as far as I can tell. Like everyone else, the simple fact is there are just other things I’d rather be doing than sitting in a box hammering away at PowerPoint for those eight hours in the middle of the day. For some reason, I don’t think I’d mind working the keys quite so much if I were doing my own writing for those same eight hours. Being a self-published eBook author, though, doesn’t pay the bills. Maybe someday.

This isn’t really a post about work, though. It’s a post about embracing the joy of the time off we do have – about making the most of the time we don’t spend sitting in a box. Whether you’re writing, grilling, boating, swimming, shopping, or just sitting around on your ass not doing a thing, try to enjoy it. The small pleasures are way too few and far between.

Last Friday…

Posted on by

thumbsdown-gladiator It occurred to me driving in this morning that if everything goes as planned, this will be my last Friday at the office for the rest of fiscal year 2013. Next week, I’ll be celebrating Independence Day by taking Friday off and making a 4-day weekend, but from there on out I am a part time employee of our dear old Uncle Sam.

We all know I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to live in the land of the perpetual three-day weekend, but it’s living in the land of the 80% pay check that seems like something of a problem. I’ve found that most things are never as good or as bad as I anticipate them being, but in this one little case, I’m not holding my breath for it to magically transform into a fantastic opportunity.

Thank God I like to read and write. Those are at least low budget entertainment options I can indulge in to excess in this new found free time. Have I mentioned I’m glad I didn’t get around to buying a boat?

Red menace…

Posted on by

It’s May Day. Maybe I know that because I majored in history or maybe it’s because I was a geeky kid who remembers the last days of the Red menace pretty clearly. In either case, May 1st use to be a big deal. Unionists, hippies, malcontents, communists, and leftists of every stripe flocked to it once upon a time. Military May Day Parade Outside the KremlinMaybe they still do and we just don’t see many news reports about the really radical lefties anymore. Maybe there aren’t enough of the old school radicals left to make it news. Your guess is as good as mine.

Either my happenstance or because my subconscious really runs the show, I ended up wearing a red shirt to work today. Lord knows I’m no socialist and hippies, as a group, tend to make me nervous, but to me May Day is still a Soviet holiday – one that brings back childhood memories of the news covering the USSR parading their latest and greatest hardware through Moscow to Red Square. I was 11 when the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union was lowered from the top of the Kremlin for the last time. Most kids that age probably wouldn’t remember where they were when they saw it happening live on television, but I do.

I’m a good enough historian to know that how we view past events is always flavored by the tenor of the times in which we live. As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as truly “objective” history. We always bring our personal biases and backgrounds into the analysis despite trying to avoid it. So here we are on May Day 2013, I’m wearing my red shirt, and I find myself missing the USSR. Sure, they were an oppressive expansionist empire based on an economic system that proved completely unsustainable, but they were at least the kind of enemy you grudgingly respect. Today’s petty thugs and tyrants could learn a lot from giving them a look.

Logistics…

Posted on by

Supply Lines As close as I can tell moving me and two dogs from one side of Maryland to the other is the greatest logistical challenge which has faced mankind since Patton’s army raced across northern Europe. At present the packing list includes:

1. Two bags for me
2. Two crates stuffed to capacity with “dog stuff”
3. One Rubbermaid container of Christmas presents
4. Two containers of dog food (they can’t eat the same thing, of course)
5. Two hats
6. Two coats (one light, one heavy w/ zip out liner)
7. One backpack waiting to be stuffed to the brim with computer and networking equipment, a laptop, an iPad, a Kindle, and all the associated power cables
8. Two dogs

I’m sure I’ll be adding to that list throughout the night, but if you’ll excuse me I need to go start working on the load plan for the truck. I think I should have sprung for the extended bed instead of just the extended cab.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Comcast. We’re now on the 3rd monthly bill that’s jacked up as a result of my changing cable plans. This month’s bill got it mostly right, but still shows a $16 charge for a DVR and service that I no longer have. That’s not going to blow the monthly budget, of course, but it’s one of those small things that it really shouldn’t take three months to sort out. Now that I’m not really doing any living in the basement, I think I’ll just have that cable drop turned off and send the box back… At this point, any time I can put fewer dollars in Comcast’s garter, the happier I am. Optimistically, I think we should have everything resolved by sometime in June.

2. Terms of Service. If Instagram changes their terms of service and you don’t like it, go ahead and delete your account. To the best of my knowledge, no one is required to use Instagram. Since their providing a free service to the people of the interwebs, I think it’s only fair that we expect that at some point they’re going to have to figure out a way to make money from their service. If my fancy business classes are to be believed, the whole point in starting a company is to actually make money. Otherwise, they’d be a charity (or an arm of government) and would be interested in providing all of us something for nothing until the end of time. If you think applying filters to your grainy camera pics is so important, go ahead and by a copy of Photoshop and do it up right.

3. The Friday before a Ten Day Weekend. If anyone is expecting great and wonderful things tomorrow, let me disabuse you of that notion before we even get there. Although my body may be physically be shackled to my desk for one last eight hour stint, rest assured my mind has already flown the coop for 2012 and isn’t accepting any additional old business at this time.