Monday morning:
My alarm clock hardly ever goes off. My internal alarm is way too powerful. The only reason I even turn the damn thing on is because I'm afraid that once in a blue moon when I will sleep longer than anticipated. For all of my life I've slept with a click, staring at me, with bold red numbers, and hardly ever needed its service. The first thing my wife and I bought when we got married was a stupid black alarm clock with bold red numbers, and guess what, we still have it.
I always wonder if I should shave after my shower. What do I care if my face has day old stubble? Do you know what a pain in the ass it is to have facial hair that requires shaving every day? So I try and pull my schedule up into my mushy brain cells. Do I have something happening today that I should shave for? Mondays are always full meetings and so generally I'll shave. But I hate it.
I'm looking at my closet. My wife and I have this thing... we hate our wardrobes. For me, I'm losing weight and I'm in between sizes. So everything is a little loser than I want but I can't bring myself to buy a bunch of new clothes I'll grow out of in a month or so. Ahhh, I just hate it. So I grab the main stay, a t-shirt, and then the jeans. Is it sneakers or Dockers today? What did I wear yesterday? Who cares, grab whatever's closest.
Breakfast has to be the worst part of a human's day. You just spent 6-9 hours sleeping, it's probably been at least 10-12 hours since you last ate, but you're too tired to care about eating. If I don't eat before I leave then I tend to not eat. By 9 AM I'm shaking. Have you seen what your kids eat for breakfast? One morning its cocoa pebbles, the next it's sugar smack something, the next it's the wife's kashi. Cereal always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I dream of breakfasts at Denny's (which is why I have to lose so much weight.)
I typically get to the office when it's dark. Zero dark thirty we used to say in the Marine Corp. That means any time before dawn, which is usually when Marines do things. Typically, I'm one of the first to arrive. There is always someone there before me, but I like going in early. If you start asking me questions about work crap before I've even taken my coat off I'm bound to ignore you or at least ask you to wait until I've had a chance to sit down and get settled. I have a routine. I love my routine. It's like drinking coffee only not.
Email is my worst enemy. I hate it. I love how fast people can communicate and allows people with great distances between themselves to communicate. But on the average I get 100+ emails. Not trivial spam email, but actual email that I have to at least evaluate if it needs a response or not.
I spend the next several hours working on various projects, writing some C# code, working with a new intern on his goals and objectives to get university credit, lunch, foos ball, and a meeting.
You know, there is one thing I hate more than any other type of work experience. It's when someone calls with a problem that needs to be resolved immediately, and they do it at 5 PM. Why? Why can't people discover problems at 9 AM? Even noon. But no, they have to wait till the very last minute to ask for help. Ahhh! I worked with a guy once who used to enter emergency bugs on a product he was testing and I was the developer, and then quietly walk out the door. At the time the culture was no one went home if there was an emergency bug. We needed it fixed right away, no matter the hour or the complexity. But this guy would do it at least once a week. Ruined my whole night. We should have adopted a policy that required the tester who entered the bug to stay as long as the developer. But, that's a whole nother story.
Finally, home, throw off the work clothes and jump in my sweats. Kiss the family (who are all about to head off to bed), grab a little food and chat with my wife. Just glad the day is over. Stressing about the next because I know it will be just as bad.
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