Resistance Is Futile, You Will Be Assimilated

Well, I am on day two of being back to work...back to the daily grind of dealing with other peoples "emergencies" as a lone gunman for North and South America (this sounds so familiar...circa 2.5 years ago). I am finally caught up with e-mail, the back log of ticket research, reports, and the one open escalation that I started almost a month ago. It only took 1.5 days ... not too shabby I guess.

Yesterday of course was busy. I came in at 7:45 and left at 5:15, working through lunch. When I got home, my wife, who was busy trying to get the unpacking done, had dinner waiting for me even though she had a meeting at church to go to at 7:00 PM. That gave me enough time to get ready for MY meeting at church at 7:00PM.

I am not sure what time my wife got home, but I did not get home until 10:00 PM and that point I needed to walk Little Man. The Golden had already been walked and my wife was exhausted from her long day so she did not have the energy to take LM out...so I did it for her. She is worth it.

I got back and my wife and I watched the episode of "24" we recorded, then we hit the hay about 11:30 or so. Morning would come soon enough and we needed all the sleep we could get. It was a heck of a way to spend our fist day back home from vacation.

The alarm went off at 5:00 AM and I was mostly awake, although I was still very tired. I guess I got spoiled sleeping in until 7:00 AM every morning while I was on vacation. I did the normal El Gee routine before I left at 7:00 AM for work.

Once at work I was happy to see that not a whole lot was waiting for me. Of course that was not true on Monday, when it took me all morning just to get my head above water. Today was a nice slow start for me...one that I greatly appreciated (Thank You Jesus).

After lunch (leftover spaghetti and broccoli), I closed out the last item hanging over my head. Now I can focus solely on being reactive {smirk}.

When before I go home, I need to stop at the store and get the basics (bread, milk, fruit, yogurt, lunch meat, etc), then once I get home and eat, I need to cut my neighbor's lawn...it looks like a jungle. Ours does as well, but I can let ours go a couple more days....besides, she pays me to cut hers.

Now that I have been back for a couple of days, I can tell that I am burned out of doing this job. While on vacation, I did not have to worry about a ringing phone, working all weekend, or international phone calls at all hours. I did not constantly check the time (I ate and slept when I wanted to) and actually enjoyed myself for the first time in seven months.

It is no secret I spend more than my share of time on the web. My job is reactive and I tend to get periods of time where nothing is going on...a perfect time to update my blog or read other blogs and news sites. Today, I noticed that ufcjunkie.com (one of my favorite UFC web sites) has been blocked from out customer's network. I have noticed that more and more items (Google Docs, Picasweb, and many photo/file sharing sites) have been blocked by our customer. I know they have been cutting down the bandwidth they give us (we support their LAN from a building they used to lease, now we lease it. The LAN was left intact for us to maintain) and I cannot say I blame them.

I only hope that the next couple of weeks are a bit slower than they were before I left. Coming back from vacation into a chaotic environment is bad...a busy chaotic environment is much worse.