stress of consciousness
It sort of feels like everything is falling apart at once at work today. In the middle of trying to catch up on old cost updates that have not been done and are therefore contributing to my stacks of receiver/invoice discrepancies, I found out that none of the 25 items I added new at the start of this month for a vendor I added to the system last summer have actually batches to stores, and I cannot figure out why; I suspect I missed something in setting up the vendor but I have no idea what. And these items need to be scanning at store registers tomorrow, fun! And in the middle of dealing with that, Tracy, who is our Private Label Manager, tells me the wholesale costs for the Private Label gallon milks were incorrect, so I had to double check a record of an actual invoice on the UNFI vendor website, only to fid what we've actually been invoiced matches neither what my contact at UNFI told me or what Tracy initially told me. Jesus Christ! I have other shit to get done, people.
Well, our IT department got back to me about the first issue literally as I was writing this and that seems to be resolved now. So there's that, I guess.
There's also Guru, for some reason constantly meowing loudly over and over, which is not helping my stress levels. This is the part of working from home that seriously sucks ass. I really miss the office more and more.
Speaking of which, I drove there late last night, taking the car as soon as Shobhit got home from his shift, so just before 9 p.m. I figured no one would be there at all, but once again, Marianne was there at her desk. Is she living at the office now or what? Anyway at Noah's urging I took some refrigerated samples out of the Merchandising refrigerator, some Lightlife tempeh and a new Field Roast "Signature Stadium Dogs" which aren't even pictured on the products page of their website yet. They're basically longer-than-average veggie dogs that are more like traditional hot dogs than the spiced sausages by the same brand that I usually use to make my veggie dogs. It's the kind of product I would never make my first choice, but free always makes these things more appealing!
The rest of my evening last night, before I took roughly an hour to drive to the office and back, was taken up by watching the phenomenal film Judas and the Black Messiah on HBO Max, and then writing my solid-A review. It's easily the best movie I have seen so far this year, and if it doesn't make it onto my top 10 at the end of the year, that will mean 2021 was a truly stellar year in film indeed. I know it's only February but I never see ten solid-A movies each year (usually more than half are A-), so I would bet money this will make it on that list.
It looks like there's a moving truck parked in the loading zone on Pine Street, which I can see down through my bedroom window as I sit here at my work desk. It's making me think of how long Shobhit and I have lived here in the Braeburn Condominiums. We moved here at the end of October, 2007. At this point, that's thirteen years, four months or so. I was 31 years old. I've had so many years of my adulthood now that even a decade ago, the memories fade a great deal, and I have to refer to photos and blog posts for details. One thing I think a lot about is how, even though I had Batty first, I remember him far more vividly than I do any memory of Peng, who I had between 1998 and 2008. Seeing him in so many of my home videos I recently digitized was an interesting experience. My most vivid memory associated with that cat is how devastated Shobhit was when we had to put him down—far more devastated than I was, in fact. I felt worse for Shobhit than I did for myself, even though I was losing the same pet.
I'd had Batty for 15 years, so he remains the longest-lasting pet I've ever had. It won't be long before Guru and Shanti surpass him, though: just two more years. I see no reason not to expect them both to make it, Guru's digestion problems notwithstanding. We skipped their vet checkup last year due to COVID shutdowns and even now Shobhit wants to hold off on taking them back until the vet will allow us to come inside with them. On the one hand, he has a point, in that the cats will be stressed out of their skulls to begin with, and separating them from us will only make that worse. On the other hand, we still don't want to wait too long and their health is more important than a bit of separation anxiety.
Anyway, I'm clearly just engaging in stream of consciousness now. Thirteen and a half years in one home is by far the longest I have ever lived in one place. The previous record for me had been seven years, the house in Olympia that I was born into. It's funny, because when Shobhit bought this condo, even though I could happily imagine living here the rest of my life, he clearly thought of it as an investment and that we would move somewhere else in a few years. We see how that turned out. To say we're fortunate to have this place now is an understatement, especially in light of both the pandemic and Shobhit's radically different employment. I suppose how his project management classes might eventually impact that remains to be seen.
[posted 12:39 pm]