The Culture Channel

I put in nine hours of overtime this week. That's an entire extra workday.

Monday, there was repair work being done on the phone system and I had to stay at the office until 8 when it was finally finished. Tuesday was the condo board meeting at [building name redacted], which the company I work for manages and which I have to take notes at. It lasted for four hours, and didn't end until after 10pm. Wednesday was tax day for all the people and corporate entities that filed six-month extensions back in April. I spent the entire day scanning and setting up certified mail envelopes for tax mailings*, and was still waiting in line at the post office at 8 at night.

Then I spent yesterday and today basically catching up on all the things I didn't do while busy desperately trying to get taxes out by the 15th.


*My supervisor was not at work. I had to do all the calling and emailing the tax accounting firm to get the missing tax forms they still needed signed copies of that we didn't have and tracking down of the boss repeatedly to get him to sign things, and going to the bookkeeper again and again for "just one more" form that needed a check enclosed with it while listening to him bitch about it every time by myself. And on that note, I am so, so deeply glad I don't sit immediately behind the bookkeeper's cubicle anymore. Imagine someone who continually narrates a monologue of what, if it were on the internet, would be CAPSLOCK RAEG to himself. Complete with random outbursts of cussing and continual bitching about other people in the office. He makes me look positively zen in comparison.

Today at work is much better than yesterday. This would be because, yesterday, University of Maryland turned the air conditioning for their entire campus off. To save engery.

I want to stress for those of you who immediately started nodding and thinking "sounds ssensible" that it was 102 degrees Fahrenheit in DC yesterday.

It was a 100 degrees, and they turned the air conditioning off!

On the positive side, the apartment complex finally fixed my and seanchai's broken window. And after only two months of having it taped up with duct tape.

OMG yay I now have Sharpe and Justice League DVDs! Thank you, azarias and pixyofthestyx. Apollo/Midnighter fluff is forthcoming!

I will watch my new DVDs tonight while I unwind from the stress of the giant black hole of suck today's turned into at work. One of our student pilots went out on his first solo, and killed the airplane landing it--he landed at the wrong angle and speed, which made the nosewheel collapse, which made the propeller hit the runway... and once that's happened, it's all over and you're calling insurance people and the FAA and looking for a new engine.

Dear God am I glad I'm not the guy who crashed the plane or the instructor who signed him off, but merely the person who takes phone calls and tattles on them to the Washington/Dulles FSDO.

On the one hand, it's less stupid than the guy who landed his plane without putting the landing gear down because he forgot to, or the one who flipped a biplane upsidown while still on the runway, but on the other hand, it's our plane this time.

Vast and deep is my hatred for the computer equipment at work. No sooner did we finally junk the craptastically ghetto fax machine and buy a new one, than the printer and computer decided they no longer wanted to talk to each other. This resulted in my talking to the nice computer guy on the phone for a solid hour this morning, my boss hovering over my shoulder the entire time, while we tried to figure out what in hellfire was wrong with the damn thing (note to self: marathoning Lonesome Dove and Magnificent Seven simultaneously has bad, bad effect on accent and vocabulary).

After much expensive helpline conversation, we ended up uninstalling the printer and all its attendant software and laboriously reinstalling it. Now, it lives again. The testing software is going to break down next; I can feel it. It’s overdue for a thoroughly inconvenient system failure.