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FRAZZLED

frazzled

FrAzZlEd

fRaZzLeD

FRAZZLED 

I’d be happier about the weekend being here if I didn’t have to work on Sunday. But I do.

FRAZZLED.

It is Valentine’s Day, my dear Amy. While I’ve been Ms. Grumpypants lately (we can thank the fritzy furnace for part of that), you somehow managed to find me the perfect Valentine’s gifts: a DVD of The Princess Bride, and a new sled. How on earth did you know that it was going to snow today?

So this is my valentine to you: a digital profession that, my sweet, I love you. In case the big goofy smiles on my face in each and every one of these pictures doesn’t clue you in.

I like to hike with you. You motivate me to actually get outside and get some fresh air once in a while. This photo was taken this summer, near Northampton. We didn’t see any hawks that day, but we did find a particularly difficult geocache.

You let me talk you into getting a second dog. We were in no way ready to have a second dog in our lives, but Otter wormed his way into my heart that day when we went out shopping for a post-hole digger, and you loved me enough to go along with my craziness.

You let my mom spoil us last winter with pedicures. It was your first one (you’ve since had a second) and even though you were a little freaked out by it, you were game.

You let me make you look silly, AMOOSE (Amy + moose). This photo makes me giggle.  A lot.

You make me happy.  So very happy.  Look at us in our matching eyebrows and matching pearl necklaces and earrings and matching big smiles…

I love you, Ms. Amy.  Happy Valentine’s Day.

Today is Wednesday (technically Thursday, which means I should be in bed.  Oh well. Sleep is overrated.) In the past 10 days I have:

1. Seen the students return to campus for the first day of the spring semester.
2. Gone to 2 hockey practices (minimum three hours, for drive to/from, changing, and actual practice.)
3. Met with three faculty members for EndNote training - all of whom had great (if challenging to answer) questions for me.  Shortest meeting was 30 minutes, longest was 90.  Follow-up totaled about 4 hours of research.
4. Taught two first-year classes how to use EndNote; one class at 8:30 in the morning.  If you know me at all, you know what a feat this was.  (For what it’s worth, the second class was in a lab where there EndNote freaked out and deleted a bunch of its own files when all the students started the program… Fun! But the folks who can fix it are on the job already.)  Prep for the classes totaled about 3 hours (but I’ll be able to reuse that prep for any future classes - rock!)
5. Gone to, run, or participated in 9 meetings which each lasted over an hour. Longest was 2.5 hours, next longest was 2 hours.
6. Watched the second game of the Women’s Beanpot hockey tournament, which was Harvard vs. Boston College. We got there at 7:30. It started at 8:00 p.m. and ended at 12:15 a.m. Why so long? There was a tie at the end of regulation, so they went into the overtime periods.  Three of them - at 20 minutes each.  Finally, about 15 minutes into the third overtime, one of the BC players scored.  They weren’t the team I was cheering for, but thank GOD someone finally put a puck in the net.  The goalies combined faced 135 shots on goal, and only 7 of those went in (3 against BC’s first-year goalie and 4 against Harvard’s). The outdoor parking ticket pay station debacle added another 30 minutes onto my night, as well as the nights of the other 10 people in line.  And the drive took 30 minutes each way. I got very little sleep that night.
7. Spent three days snowshoeing and cross-country skiing with Amy and the dogs in the Sugarbush area of Vermont.  WAY fun!  And a big holler out to the Blueberry Lake XC Ski place, which is the only XC ski place I know of that is dog-friendly. Drive to and from was about 3.5 hours each - and Amy was a champ and drove the whole thing.  The weekend was her Christmas present to me - and what fun!

What I opted out of: hockey practice at 6:30 Wednesday morning, 2 optional (to me) meetings, and sleep.

What’s on tap in the next few days: Low-key day at work tomorrow schedule-wise, which means I should be able to finish a lot of small projects. Two desk shifts (2 and 3.5 hours). Hockey tournament in Fitchburg, which is a 90-minute drive away.  We have games Friday night and Saturday afternoon and evening.  If we win (hee hee) we’ll play in the championship game Sunday.

Also on tap: uploading photos from the VT trip to Flickr and posting some of them here, doing the paper shuffle at home, and catching up on some sleep.  Which I’m off to do now.

P.S. How do people with children who have busy lives of their own do it?  I am amazed and awed by families who can juggle multiple schedules.

P.P.S. This isn’t an attempt at playing misery poker; it is simply a reminder to myself of why I’m so exhausted this month.

After the recent unpleasantness trying to merge a brand-new Yahoo account to my Flickr account, I spent a fair amount of time on the message boards at Flickr, posting, asking questions, trying not to feed the trolls, etc.  A really awesome Flickr staffer named Kevin took the time in one of his posts to let me know that help was on the way.  I sent him a message thanking him for being kind to me, as it had been one of Those Days and the Flickr-Yahoo nonsense was the straw that broke this camel’s back.

At any rate, a day later, I received a newly UNmerged account back, along with a password reset.  Happy happy joy joy!  I wasn’t able to login to do anything until tonight.  I ended up logging in to the empty Flickr account I’d set up with my long-standing Yahoo account, deleting the Flickr account associated with that Yahoo account, and merging my Flickr account with THAT Yahoo account.  And now all seems to be working.  Keep your fingers crossed that nothing yucky happens in the next few days, but I’m feeling confident that it won’t.

So a big THANKS to Kevin at Flickr for a well-timed kind word.  He saved me from losing my mind and my account.  Kudos!