too much today
Work continues to be stressful. Too many things coming at me from too many disparate directions that have no idea about the other things from other directions, all while I have primary tasks to get done, on deadline, which have nothing to do with those things. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm going to hit a wall with this shit. A big part of it is just that I now have contacts at 15 different stores, as compared to the seven that existed when I started at PCC nineteen years ago. Or more pertinently, even as compared to the ten that existed barely more than five years ago. This shit is starting to suck up way too much of my time.
I'm very, very used to my job not being stressful. Even through the majority of COVID times, working from home—at least after all the craziness of spring last year subsided. As a general rule I don't let myself get stressed, as I can just prioritize and do what is highest priority at the moment, worrying about the rest later. This is harder to do when multiple stores email me multiple times about multiple things that need immediate attention. It's starting to drive me crazy.
I still won't work any kind of overtime, though. I log off at 4:30 every day, with exceptions so rare they could be counted on one hand per year. And that's what I did yesterday, after which I made a nice polenta dinner, from a PCC recipe I quite like, although we don't have precisely all the ingredients—we have most, more than enough, to make a tasty dinner. The basic premise is frying slices of polenta and then topping them with a simmered mixture of black beans, pinto beans, onion, bell pepper, spices and a bit of cheese sprinkled over that. It's very tasty and I made enough to have leftovers for lunch today.
But the dinner I had last night, I ate while watching the movie Greenland, a disaster movie about the earth getting obliterated by huge meteorites, rented from Prime Video. I've had this marked on my calendar for weeks, just waiting for the VOD price to go down; I would never spend twenty bucks on this, but this week it finally went down to about six and a half with tax.
I enjoyed watching it; the movie had some things really going for it, other things not so much; solid B. Shobhit might have liked it, although it does not show nearly as much destruction onscreen as I'm sure he would have wanted. I felt they showed just enough, especially for its relatively low budget. It gave me something to watch and review, anyway, and I had been waiting on this one for what seemed like ages. Its official, limited theatrical release date was all the way back in July; it appeared on VOD for $19.99 in December. I've been checking regularly for the price to go down ever since, and it only finally did this week. I'm really hoping the same happens to the Tom Hanks film News of the World soon.
After I wrote the review, I spent some time on editing and uploading home video clips. I've now got all the home video content, eight separate clips, loaded to my old "Seattle Weekend 1992" album, from when Grandma and Grandpa McQuilkin took me to visit Auntie Rose and they all gave me a fantastic whirlwind tour of Seattle when I was 16. That weekend remains one of my fondest memories.
I've also got another album created for content recorded right after that, with Dad's 37th birthday party later that same week. At the moment I only have clips from the hour or so I recorded in the days hanging out at Dad and Sherri's house prior to that, and soon I'll get to the next digitized tape of the party.
I just finished with lunch with Karen over FaceTime, which had to start several minutes late due to her being stuck on a call. But that was fine; it was great to see her and catch up regardless. We talked about a lot of things, including plans over the coming year—as well as plans just for the coming weekend, when we're told snow may be coming. Ever since reading Nate Silver's book The Signal and the Noise and its chapter on weather forecasting demonstrating that the National Weather Service can be relied on to be accurate more times than other forecasters (especially network affiliates, which tend to exaggerate slightly), I always take stock mostly in the NWS forecast. That one is showing a 50% chance of snow tonight; 60% tomorrow; and eighty percent chance tomorrow night, down to 40% Saturday and 50% again on Sunday. What this means is there's a fair chance we could go the whole rest of the week without snow at all, though that is looking far less likely. I would put money at this point on us seeing some snow, possibly over multiple days.
The last time we had a big snow, Big 5 sold out of their sleds, and then when the snow melted they had a huge inventory they needed to clear out. So now we have a sled in our storage unit that has never been used. Maybe we'll find an opportunity to use it this weekend.
Anyway now I guess I should get back to my stressful work load.
[posted 1:10 pm]