Getting out of town

Am up this morning and headed out to the airport shortly. There’s an express bus I’m planning on trying at 10 a.m., which is in an hour.

It takes about 40 minutes to get there, same as by metro. The metro is cheaper but I have to check a bag this time and I’d prefer not to lug it up there. However, it’s a good fallback plan.

Still no idea of what to expect. My pre-trip package didn’t arrive so I am not going to match the group – I don’t have the T-shirt or the yellow tags for my bags. Ah, well.

Last day of work before two week off was kind of horrific. I tried really hard to stave off emergencies, but people are just stupid. I set a deadline of 3 p.m. and one guy sauntered up at 2:45 and said he’d have the stuff in an hour, OK? I was like, sure, but it won’t get processed for two weeks, because I’m running the report with what I have at 3 p.m., which is why I set the deadline for 3 p.m.

People came out of the woodwork for freaky things. I know how to do all, and apparently I am the only one who can. I certainly am the only one willing to hold the hands of people to help them learn.

In some cases, they aren’t able to do the things at their own computers, so they get them ready and then have to come to me to finish it, which doesn’t bother me at all but the timing happened to be bad.

Of course, there are still the annoying ones. We have an event going on while I am gone, and the Big Boss suggested holding a raffle to give away tickets. I bounced this off the four units to see if there was interest and one person replied that unit was doing something and the rest ignored me. So whatever. No interest, I’m not pushing it.

A little later, all of a sudden, the other three units are doing it and people strongly hint at me running it. Of course, no one ever ASKS me, or acknowledges that I suggested this very thing and was ignored.

So some other guy did some of it, but kept coming and asking me really inane questions about small parts of it. And I was really so busy with other stuff that I wasn’t reading all the spam emails he was sending on the topic, so I really didn’t know what he was talking about. He’d be like, “did you read the email?” Um, no, it was quite rambly and I couldn’t figure out the point quickly, so I deleted it.

And yes, I realize blogs posts are long, rambly and pointless, but there is no action requested and you know this up front. It is also not in your work email, so it’s on you if you want to read it or now.

So anyway, that just went on and on with all kinds of stuff I won’t go into, but it ended all right except one thing: the guy, in his wisdom, wrote everyone’s on little cards for the raffle. Unfortunately, he chose to use these brand-new updated cards that we have, and we only have a few boxes of them. Of course, I have dozens of boxes of the old, outdated ones, so why he chose to do this, I will never understand.

This is what happens when I don’t do everything. It gets screwed up.

No pressure on going away for two weeks there, huh? I really do dread what I will return to.

I’ve tried really hard, but by God, they are going to have to run the ship themselves.

Anyway, my other accomplishment this week was getting my “differential” restored. When I went to the U.S., part of my pay stopped and when I got back, it didn’t get resumed on time. It really wasn’t that hard to fix, but I was relieved to have it back in there.

I’d upped my retirement contributions to max out, which means from now to the end of the year I am taking out $1800 off the top. It took forever for that to kick in, but when it did, it happened to be the paycheck I was in the U.S., which meant that it was the week I had zero differential. I also had no overtime. Since I already funnel money off to other accounts, this left me with a take-home paycheck of $105. Not kidding.

The following pay period, I thought everything would be restored and I’d be back up to around $500. No. It was $247 because they hadn’t resumed the stuff.

So I got it restored, and, with overtime, this paycheck is back up to $776. It’ll go back to around $500 for the rest of the year, though.

This trip – I’m going to embark in about 20 minutes! – has been paid up front, so I’m not expecting any huge bills coming due. That’ why I bit the bullet and maxed out on the retirement.

All right, I am out of here. If I get computer access I will update this and let people I’ve arrived in Bangkok or Bhutan (wherever there is access). But I’m not expecting much.