Strange new world

It has been a very strange couple days so far this week; I feel as though I’m playing hooky or something. Like, any second now, my cell phone will ring and my manager will be going, “Yeah, hi, so…where the hell ARE you?!”

Oh, will you look at the time, heh heh…yeah, I was, um, sleeping in…a bit…?

I am very slowly beginning to understand that I am not simply having a long weekend, or taking a few sick days to get over this cold – which would have been a good idea were I not between contracts, because dudes…seriously.nasty.bug.

My last day was downright surreal, and I’m honestly not sure how much of it was the fact that Fridays are always a little surreal because of the Friday Is Congressionally Mandated Work From Home Day We’re Pretty Sure And If It Isn’t Actually Mandated, Well, It Totally Should Be™ thing…and how much of it was Wait, But I Have Fifteen More Things To Do It Can’t Be My Last Day Syndrome…and how much of it was due to the possibly unwise amounts of cold medicine I was tossing back throughout the day.

Layering, baby: It ain’t just for cold weather.

I ended up working an hour longer than I meant to, because a bunch of functions I hadn’t even glanced at suddenly jumped up in front of me going, “Ha ha, never looked at us!” and I didn’t want to leave potential land mines behind me – there’s this (faulty) assumption among the current tech team that I never miss ANYTHING, which can lead to a certain blithe I’m sure she looked at that, because, after all…NEVER MISSES ANYTHING…that could become a rather large problem if I actually did miss something.

So I went looking. And I found two things we’d need to deal with pertaining to the project actually at hand, and one “oh, so that’s what causes that!!” answer to a long standing, very frustrating problem.

…item three, function 39 of 40 is overwriting current data with data from 2007. Somebody should tie the table tft_emps_override_assign to a stake and throw lit matches at it until it catches.

I sent the items off to the tech team, double checked that I’d actually moved everything I had meant to move, sent that last “hey guys, been swell, I’m outta here” email, set up an out of office to let people to know to bug my boss instead…and shut it down.

And packed it in.

And handed it over.

And walked out the door.

And freaked out, twice, on the way home when I picked up my stuff and it was too light…ohmygah, I left the laptop on the…oh…no, no I didn’t…

I’m sure I’ll get used to this feeling of no-corporate-responsibilities eventually…probably right before I get back to work…in a little while…after the onions are planted, and the paperwork tamed, and the taxes filed, and the spring break accomplished…

It’s been a long time since I didn’t have to leave the Den while darkness still covered it. I’m kind of enjoying watching the sun come up through my own windows for a change, and hearing the Denizens pelting into the house after school yelling, “What’s that yummy smell, did you make bread?!” again.

I’m going to enjoy it, however long it lasts…the only constant I ever have is change, after all, so change it will, and probably before I know it.

Onward and upward and onward again…