What a waste

What a waste of a beautiful day. Today was sunny, it hit 70 degrees, and I worked 10 hours. Blarg.

Way back when I was in elementary school at Bryant, my principal enacted a "no shorts unless 70 degrees rule." I've pretty much stuck to that rule my entire life (except when playing sports), and I don't think I'll ever forget waking up and rushing to the TV to see if I could wear shorts to school that day. If it was supposed to be 69 degrees that day, I didn't think I could wear shorts. Looking back, I'm sure my parents teased me mercilessly about this, but I was always too grumpy to notice.

On the 70 degree or higher days I would proudly put on my shorts, slap on a T-shirt, and start to beam with that happiness only a kid can express. I'd take that first step down the front stairs and I'd feel the bearable temperature on my exposed arms. It wasn't 70 degrees at 8:50am, but it was bearable in a shirt. And if it was bearable in a shirt, I knew it would be 70 degrees that day.

Flash forward to this morning, and the walk out to the car I've become accustomed to--the "oh my god it is so cold I can't wait to drive two miles so the heater will come on and I will be warm again"--was replaced by the, "hey, what am I doing with this sweatshirt on?"

I get to work and we just get slammed right out of the gate. We don't get slammed, we get body-slammed... no, we get suplexed... no... no, we get Zangief 360 piledrivered (piledrived? piledriven?)! I don't know who's brilliant idea it was to TRIPLE BOOK on a fucking MONDAY MORNING, but I wasn't happy. My sweatshirt usually comes off at lunch, when I can grab the appropriately colored scrubs shirt from my car to match the color of the day for all the other employees (you try being colorblind, forgetful, and having to choose from teal, blue, light something, and purple at 8am in the morning). I had to run to my car at 9am this morning, because the heat, combined with the piledriver, had me nearly in a sweat.

It sure felt good outside though. I knew it was going to hit 70, even though the weather report only said 67 degrees for the high today.

I get back into the office and see the mass of people waiting to see Dr. Orr. They aren't happy. One lady ended up having to wait 90 minutes to just get called back from the lobby to the waiting room. That's not very good. The reason? A bit my fault, but also a bit THE COMPUTERS WERE SCREWY because of a system upgrade.

I'm all for system upgrades, progress--usually a good thing. Not today, apparently. I couldn't log on, my computer ran at about 1/4 speed, my computer crashed five times, and I couldn't print. All combined, that makes it very difficult to check people into the system. Hearing what a beautiful day it was every 5 minutes didn't make my life any more cheery.

I got lunch, I took it, I enjoyed it; but I knew I'd be working at least 9 hours today with all the system slow-downs. It ended up being 10 hours, because a lady who was supposed to get us charts at noon had to be reminded by yours truly at a quarter to three.

As a third party, I probably would have laughed when she wheeled around in her chair and said, "Oh... the charts, I totally forgot about those. Where are they?" And her co-worker pointed to them on the floor, in the middle of the room. Those charts didn't get to us until 5pm.

I ended up just thinking "beer. beer. beer. beer. beer. beer." from about 4pm on, so on my way home I picked up a six pack of Newcastle and I'm enjoying my second right now. This is officially a two-Newcastle post. I have no desire to make it a 3-Newcastle post, but I do like the idea of measuring posts by alcohol consumed while writing.

Fortunately, the day is close to being salvaged. I realize that although I was cooped up in a clinic all day, at least I did something. If I had been unemployed and played on my computer out on the porch all day, I'd be more depressed than I am right now. Newcastle, an outlet, and watching the sun go down tend to bring me out of a funk pretty quickly. Unfortunately, it is starting to get cold out on the porch, and me thinks it is time to pack up and move inside.