November 22nd, 2011 Thomasso
So much has gone on with me in the last four days, that even I cannot laugh it off, and I still have so much more to do. Right now I am living off of just a couple of hours of sleep as the wind storm from last night kept me up. The power outage from the storm, with the pounding rain and tree branches hitting my roof, sleep was just not going to happen so I stayed up. But I was tired before that too. Perhaps I should just start at Friday, and finish off my post with today’s events. You, reader, should be clear once I have itemised my last few days.
(pay no attention to the mistakes in this post – I’m exhausted and will clean them up tomorrow)
Friday was dedicated to the last day of a week from Hell. Both in terms of work, and my personal life, Friday was a painful one. Personally, I was just getting over a harsh flu. Compounded to the pain and suffering of the flu was an equally hard work week of tedious issues and problem solving. It was not the amount of work that created the harshness, but the quality of it. I learned that some players in the business really “kicked the can” as it were, with our forth quarter budget, and made some really bad calls. This translated into an extremely chaotic round of finger pointing at the retails side of it, but fortunately in my department, I only received the stress of working with these people.
On my personal side, I had made preparation to volunteer for the civic elections in Langley Township. I helped a candidate out. I only helped out becuase of my friendship connections and ties to this person in the neighbourhood, not my political colours. Only the ignorant and weak minded would accuse me of playing partisan politics at this level – you know who you are! So I volunteered, helping out a friend in need. I did enjoy myself.
Going into Saturday, the day of the civic election, my commitment to volunteering kept on going. The only difference, was I planned on taking it easy, but I was asked to continue to help out with my friend’s campaign. There was the striking of the political ads signs – which under law each candidate has but a couple of days to pull all the signs from the streets and road, or fine would be given out. So I helped pull signs.
My own personal candidacy was on Monday, so I had to focus on that. The magic balance was now lost, between helping a friend versus getting myself ready for my big moment. I was running for a seat on the Board of Directors for the Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s (KPU) Alumni Association, and I had planned spending most of Saturday working on that. Instead, my time ran out on Saturday–and I got to bed around 11:30pm that night.
I almost slept in Monday morning for work. Right from the start of the day I was chasing time. I ignored the other departments as much as I could, fearing that the spill over from last week’s “meltdown” could erupt again. This was the last thing I needed, more stress. While at work, I start sending out tweets to people that I knew who were alumni from the university. Regrettably, getting people to come down to vote on a Monday night was not going to happen. I was too new and had very little exposure to the alumni to get the confidence of voters from the student body. So I tried to conjure up any support I could before I headed down to the Surrey campus. However, not before my work would throw one final hard ball at me.
A crises started brewing in my department becuase one of my co-workers made some errors, and then refused to clear them up before the end of the day. We have a policy that of you make a mistake, you clean it up, even if that means staying some extra time in the day to clean it up. My co-worker refused, and left. I was responsible, and I made some quick patchwork fixes so that I could leave it until Tuesday. My time had already lapsed into my preparation time for the election, which, I had to be there for 6:00pm–less than one hour’s time. Leaving work, late, getting home, I had to forego the fancy clothing, and settle for just changing into a sweater and grabbing my laptop and bag. Yes, still wearing my jeans and street shoes.
The election was held after an hour of formalities with the KPU Board of Directors of the Alumni Association. Each candidate was given two minutes to make a speech, and then had to field only two questions from the room. I spoke, and was never asked any questions. Sadly, out of the seven of us vying for the six seats, I came in last. I only received 12 votes out of the possible 19. Defeated.
However, I took with pride becuase this was my first time, and this was a learning experience, and learned from it I did. I was offered to join various committees in light of my interests in volunteering with the Alumni Association, but I made myself not make any promises until I had a clear head.
Monday night when I got home, there were weather warning posted on the net. I went straight to bed as it was past 10:00pm, and I was dead tired. Not even 30 minutes into my sleep I was awaken by the sounds of flying branches hitting my window, and the wind pounding my roof. It was brutal. Widows rattled, the walls shook and I could feel the cold air in the room. Then like clockwork, the power went out, just after the second gust of wind started dumping branches on my roof. No sleep.
The power came back on around 5:00am this morning, and soon after my alarm clock went off. I got dressed and headed off to work. Trees were down everywhere. Because of the darkness, my lack of sleep, and the slippery roads, I hit one of the wooden road barricades, as the main road was closed due to a tree down across it. I backed up, and took another route. I spent today being as quiet as I could. The only real interesting thing that happened that gave me contact with the outside world was the grounds keepers accidentally set off the fire alarm late in the work day. But I continued to lay low until I left for home. Now I am fighting to stay up without napping so that i can get my bio-clock back in sync.
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