Yesterday I got my teleworking equipment.

I already had a security keyfob to be able to log on the network from home, and had gotten into the system, but had not yet done any work through it. I told the telework people I already had a computer system (with virus coverage and a firewall, and not wireless for security purposes). But everyone got the same setup as part of the telework pilot: a new Dell laptop, plus a separate keyboard, mouse, port station, four-in-one printer so we can receive faxes (the downside is you have to list your personal phone number as the fax number), and a 19-inch flatscreen monitor.

(It's actually not our—PGO's—equipment: everything belongs to pandemic influenza. If there's an outbreak, we have to give everything back, so we've been told to keep the boxes.)

The problem is that there's nowhere to put it.

Ikea does have a pint-sized roll cart for computers and we can keep the setup in our room and then I can wheel it out and connect it to the DSL connection in the morning. (This means we have to go back to Ikea; ouch! twist my arm! <g>)

Anyway, last night I brought three of my orders home and did them on my own computer. I had done all the backwork (sole source justifications, quotations from the vendor, Excluded Parties printout, etc.) to them, which is the hard part, and got in to see if I could enter all the info into ICE and then build the order. Well, everything works fine: the build is pretty slow in the part where it has to fill out the blocks in the cover sheet of the OF347—I figure it's because I'm working on the system through Internet Explorer, which is a pokey SOB. I did two orders and printed them out this morning; did another half order but waited until I got in and confirmed which was the correct vendor; they're listed in our database twice because the two different branches of the company have two different Dun & Bradstreet numbers and if you pick the wrong one you have to do a modification to the order.

Every time we do a modification it costs the taxpayer money, so I want them right the first time. <wry g>

We can start teleworking any time after the first of the year; will start on Thursdays at least, because Thursday is the most damnable day for traffic: last night I actually did fine until I entered the "sinkhole" area that surrounds Cumberland Mall—or maybe it's a whirlpool because everyone gets sucked in, but it doesn't move anywhere near that fast. (There's no way around it; I have to go past Cumberland Mall to get home. Even if I go out of the way two exits north the traffic is backed up. Everything stops at Cumberland, especially four days before Christmas.) It ended up taking me 75 minutes to get home, 35 minutes to go the last eight miles between the freeway and our house.

My cousin Debbie got her Christmas card yesterday and called me with the startling news that my godmother had sold her house quite recently! She had lived there since 1929! It was her parents' house originally and they built it in time for her to attend the first classes at my old junior high, Hugh B. Bain. I didn't know all this until last summer, except that the area the house was on used to be a trotting track and fairgrounds from the mid-1800s to the early 1920s and then the trotting track became a race track in the late 20s, which is why the neighborhood was called "Speedway." She told me her family used to own all the land around the area, including the land across the street where the Angelones used to live and the Costas now live and on summer nights they would sit on "Eddie's front lawn" and the kids would play there. But gradually her mother sold off the parcels, one of which my parents bought.

She ended up selling because her sister-in-law Dotty, who used to live upstairs in the house, passed away in the fall, and then my godmother broke her hip. Dotty's daughter didn't want my godmother alone in the house. She's now living at an assisted living place, but when Debbie saw her, she was back on her feet and said she could drive again soon. I hope so. The idea of my godmother having to sit still is rather daunting. She was always doing something. Even on the hottest or coldest days she would dress early in the morning and go out and tend her yard, and then go out: maybe just to walk around the mall or visit her sister-in-law Alvia.

Can't imagine them being gone from that house. I wonder if my godmother was able to take her piano. It was just a cabinet piano. She would play it nights after supper and when the windows were open you could hear the pretty music floating from the living room windows.

So sorry to hear about Dotty. I remember when my mom was so sick one night she came over with a little container of grape-nut pudding. She knew Mom's mouth hurt all the time as a byproduct of the radiation treatments and that some nice soft grape-nut pudding would be cold and comforting. She and her husband and daughter used to have a little black poodle, a mini, not a toy, named Suzette who adored my mother. She would come next to our back door and bark for my Mom to come out and rub her tummy, even in the coldest weather, and Mom would put on her coat and go outside to oblige her.

So I'm feeling a bit blue today, plus it's raining and as dark as twilight out. It's 45 minutes until I can take my Prilosec because I took my thyroid pill at 6 a.m. and the heartburn is making me ill. (You can't take an antacid within 4 hours of a thyroid pill. I used to take the thyroid pill before bed to avoid this but my doctor said that was probably what was causing my insomnia, so I quit. So I can either not sleep or be sick to my stomach all morning. What fun.)

Almost no one is here. A lot of folks have use or lose, and it's just absurd not to take leave between Christmas and New Year's because you sit at your desk and do absolutely nothing. All the end users you need to contact are on leave and most of the vendors have the week off. So I'm joining the crowd. I have a little list for next week:

• First and foremostly, redistribute the photos in smaller boxes so that I can move the bookcase from the spare room into the craft room so that Rodney will be comfortable when he stays over (and also Shari, if she would like to come for Bill and Caran's New Year's Eve party).
• Make arrangements for the after-a-year home inspection.
• Do some reading.
• Work on a new web page I have been outlining.
• Do some cross-stitch.
• Paint the "Wish" garden ornament for the nook in the yard.
• Put up some photos and artwork in the master bedroom.
• Dispose of some things we no longer have room for (does anybody want our set of Myriad issues?).
• Put up the bookshelf wall decoration in the library so James can put up his magnetic boards.
• Rearrange the closet in the guest room and take anything extra to Goodwill/the library for donation before end-of-year.

At some point I also want James to mount some wire shelving in our bedroom closet and also in the laundry room and "Christmas closet." But I think that's a post-January 1 project. After that, it's back to work on the library.

Maybe we could get the ceiling fans in the bedroom up, though...

Labels: Christmas, crafts, family, friends, work

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