Apologies

I apologies for the long hiatus. Work has been really busy. It was my first 70-hour week since I started the job - something I never thought I'd have to deal with, since I like to think I do my work efficiently. But alas, working with a new group of people with a different approach to project management led to that miserable week. And because I was sleep-deprived, my immune system faltered and I got a cold. So not fun.

It's exacerbated by the fact that my bonus sucked. It was significantly lower than someone in another office with the same ratings as me. I got lower than the target bonus even though my reviews said my performance was above average. WTH? So on top of being discouraged and feeling that working hard didn't get me anything, I had to work crazy hours on a project that I was asked to help out with. It was really hard to stay motivated. I kept pushing through though, knowing that I'd be off the project on Tuesday. And then on Tuesday afternoon, surprise! Staffed on it for another month. Ugh.

This week is better so far and I hope this slower pace continues for the next month or two. I have a ton of weddings to go to this summer, and I'd prefer not to work during the weddings. Since this new project is a recent addition to my workload, I'm just going to make my personal boundaries very clear. It's hard for me to do because I feel bad saying "no," but I have to.

Anyway, there hasn't been a lot of interesting things going on recently, but I have a few things coming up this week so my next few posts should be more intriguing. I don't even have any interesting pictures to share, but I hope to have a few outfits to share in my next post.

Ups and downs at work

Thursday was a really long day that really had its ups and downs. It started at 3:30 when I got up to catch a 6 am flight to SF. I got to the airport just after 4:30, so I had plenty of time before the flight. But the plane didn't leave until 9 am, so I missed coffee with a coworker, I couldn't print out packets for the client meeting, and I couldn't practice my presentation out loud. And I was really sleepy since I had planned to take a nap from 6-7 while on the plane.

After finally landed in SF, things got better for a little while -- the client meeting went really well -- but spiraled downwards as we got stuck in crazy traffic on the way back to the office. A car hit some power lines and so they closed all the lanes going north, and some of the lanes going south as we were. And since I had to take the same freeway north to get to the airport I was stressing out about how to get back to the airport to fly home that night. My coworker was nice enough to drive me to the BART station so I could take the train one stop to the airport, and as she dropped me off, she recommended that I go to the airport and have a drink, which I promptly did. But since I hadn't really had much of a lunch, the wine hit me pretty hard and after half a glass I was getting tipsy and sleepy. Totally unacceptable -- I really need to build my tolerance back up.

I finally got home and got into bed around 11 pm, and I'm still recovering from that really long day. I know I wasn't working most of the time since I was sleeping or reading a magazine on the plane, but it was just a lot of travel and stress and being awake. I'm looking forward to recuperating this weekend.

P.S. It turns out those downed power lines were actually phone lines. Better safe than sorry, but still, it completely shut down a major freeway for like 4 hours.