The Time Sink

No work today for me! Ahem... Let me rephrase that: I probably won't have to go into the office today. On the flip side, Shelley has a list as long as my arm of "little things" that she'd like done. I remember lists like that from around 1968 or so: they'd usually show up right after someone barricaded themselves inside an administration building and were usually entitled, "Seventeen Non-Negotiable Demands"...

Okay, up and at 'em! It's year end inventory and we need to Get Moving! Yepper, the Central Supply Room will be shut down for a few hours this morning causing no end of grief and confusion for any of the rank and file who didn't heed Friday's memo. With any luck, we'll have an extra hand and be able to reopen the main room within an hour or two.

The problem we create when we shut down the CSR is the disruption of the workflow for the staff who service the rigs. This is a true 24x7x365 operation with literally only one shutdown allowed per year, and that limited to just the CSR portion of operations and then only for an hour or so. We've gradually changed our focus to the main supply room and tried our best to knock that out as quickly as we can, then work on the rest of our storage. Still, we can't reopen until the auditor certifies our counts (he's scheduled in ninety minutes after we start). This year's plan involves one more person to see if we can speed things up and still not get in each other's way.

Long term, I want 'point of sale' services installed. ...and I want that linked to a system that will support cycle-counting. If I can push that one through, Janeen and I would have live data to work with and the auditor could drop in anytime he or she cared to. I can tweak a proper system well past any compliance percentages needed. ...but I need the tools.

On the home front, it's official: Bradley has influenza. Great. ...and Daniel has a field trip scheduled Thursday out of town with Shelley signed up to be a chaperone. If Daniel stays healthy and Shelley doesn't get it (she has had her flu shot), I'll be home Thursday handling the homework and pretest goodies with Brad...

Hooeee. What a day! I think I'll just say I started this post before midnight and go from there. Right now, I have one kidlet fighting influenza, one staring at the ceiling because he's too excited to go to sleep, and one of the cats doing the 'cat wigout thing' up and down the hallway. ...and I'm trying to let Shelley stay asleep through all of this since she'll be getting up in just a few hours to haul Daniel and herself to the school to catch the 0430 bus to San Jose for the fifth grader's field trip.

...which leaves me on a vacation day Thursday. ...to stay home with Bradley while Shelley and Daniel are out of town.

...and if you don't think wanting to stay home with her sick baby and wanting to keep her commitment to Daniel to accompany him on his field trip isn't setting up some sort of conflict in Shelley's mind, I suggest you check her site on Friday to see if her brain imploded.

The kitchen is open for business (as defined by me!)... Yeah, Shelley and Daniel made it off okay; she called in from mid-trip to let me know they were still enroute (and again just now <g> to check up on us). Today, Bradley's fever seems to be down, so we're going to to spend the day goofing off with Legos and trying out some of Dad's cooking...

So far, breakfast has gone well; an omelet sandwich made from low-fat sausage simmered with chili powder, lemon pepper and garlic salt, a low-fat Italian cheese mix and fake eggs... The afternoon meal will be 'pizza sandwiches' made from low-fat pepperoni, low-fat salami, non-fat mozzarella cheese on sourdough bread baked in the toaster over. ...and dinner will be mushroom cheese burgers (yeah, reduced-fat hamburger and low-fat cheese) on Kaiser rolls.

So Shelley and Daniel got back home safely. ...and Bradley and the cats and I survived the day.

...and the office left me alone until around 1600. ...but that was an excellent call on Janeen's part: better to have the information and assimilate it and deal with it overnight than be blindsided in the morning. Now to get in and deal with the backlog created by the extra day off.

I had some plans to get things done this week; instead it has turned into a bit of a forced slowdown. 'Cause whenever I have too much on my plate, all that gets done are the things that are mission critical; all else is used to fill in the gaps.

Okay, let's set the stage for the weekend: Bradley started looking and acting well enough Friday that Shelley thinks maybe we'll go ahead with his birthday party tomorrow. It's at LazerQuest, so we're worried about his stamina, but his fever left early Friday and hasn't come back. So, even though Sunday would be a challenge, Shelley was looking forward to having Monday all to Momself...

...and after Friday, we both were looking to have a weekend that wasn't jammed full of events: late in the day, we ended up picking up the Van from Hell from the shop that handled the transmission replacement and shuttling it off to the dealer for the "Before you Die in the Fire" recall. ...and managed to get the loaner vehicle back to my sister's house. Whew...

...and as we get home rather late last night, Daniel says, "Mom, I got all cold and shivery when we were at the car place." Uh-oh... Yep, 100.4 and rising. So, I stayed up on the night duty until very early this morning checking on both of them. Bradley is still coughing some, but his fever is gone; Daniel hit 103 once the ibuprofen wore off, but he's better now with another round on board. ..but that pretty much trashes Shelley's plans for next week. ...and slams some of them into today!

So, after the night duty, I slept in. Yeah, I owe several emails and perhaps even a little white hat work for a late night friend; but right now, there's a pan with mushrooms and sausage sauteing. ...and it's about ready for some cheese and fake eggs <g>.

The game plan as of very early Sunday morning: Shelley and Bradley will head off to Bradley's kid's party at the local LazerQuest. Daniel and I will stay home and try to catch up on the sleep we missed out on last night...

The poor kid just stayed hot until the wee hours of the morning. ...and with a cough that I didn't like. So I'm still up and I expect I won't be back this way today.

You may see me over on the blog; I have some archiving to do there. One slight advantage of being up: Whitenoise now has a new look. Slowly, ever slowly... I really didn't plan that one out; but once I ran up the new button for the portal, things kind of kept rolling.