I managed two hours of sleep before I had to get ready for work on Tuesday--not as much as I'd hoped for, but about what I'd suspected I'd end up with. Traffic was much heavier going into work than I expected it to be with the mechanics on strike, and I had to pass through Checkpoint Charlie to park.
Outside the door to my building was a guard from a private firm. Good thing he was there since I couldn't figure out how to get my new badge to open the new card reader. (blush) By the time I hobbled to my desk, my foot had started to hurt.
My desk was covered, but not quite as bad as I thought it would be. Email was loaded, but then I hadn't checked even once from home. I decided to start with email. Bet y'all are surprised since I might have the slightest bit of an email addiction. ;-) A lot of it, I just deleted without looking at it since it was newsy stuff and out of date by that point. Then I tried to clean off my desk. I actually made fairly good progress--until one of my maintenance specialists came down with a project. Since all but 2 of the guys are off in other cities, I thought my odds of being left alone for one day were pretty good. I was wrong. :-) Since I didn't let him know I was here, he must have just come down on the off chance I'd be there--or he memorized the day I was scheduled back.
The biggest deal out of the day, though, was how badly my foot was hurting by 9am. I didn't expect it to be that painful. And all I'd done at that point was hike in and make one trip to the bathroom.
When I got home, I took Advil and propped it up. It helped some, but I ended up taking a pain killer before I went to bed--the first in about three weeks. And the foot still hurts this morning. :-( Unfortunately, because of what's going on with the day job, I don't feel like I can stay home any longer, so somehow, I'm going to have to try and tough it out. The plan for the day is fewer trips to the bathroom and keeping the foot elevated as much as possible.
Leaving work, BTW, was even weirder. I had to drive out past the strikers and the security company that was hired was videotaping them. I guess to make sure they didn't do anything. It was sad, though, actually. Pretty much, I think these guys are done. Things were bad before Hurricane Katrina raised oil so high, but now, with it pushing $70 a barrel, it's a foregone conclusion that we'll be filing for bankruptcy and that those guys are just out of luck. I think a lot of them knew the strike would be it for them anyway, though.
The other thing that was so strange was how quiet it was on my floor. It felt like a Saturday. My manager and most of the tech writers and maintenance specialists are deployed. It really threw my sense of time off too. Normally, the noise level picks up sometime after 7 or 8am, but it never did yesterday.
MN Weather Report: 65 degrees. Rain coming.
