Zurich - Doh!

At Least the Bee had Success

I had one of those days this week where my brain just never seems to get into gear. I don’t really know why this happens every now and then, but it does, and I’m sure (well, maybe “I hope” is more accurate than “I’m sure”) it’s not just me who experiences this.

Friday was supposed to be a good day. It’s Friday, after all. I woke up at a reasonable time (maybe that was the mistake?) in contrast to the rest of the week where I’ve struggled to get up before 10am. So that should have augured well.

I put on my laptop at home first so that I could do my timesheet for the middle company. That was where it started to go wrong. I’d taken a spontaneous extra day’s holiday for my trip to London and I’d forgotten to put it on my timesheet, so I needed to log an extra holiday day this week to compensate and ensure that I was putting down all the holiday I’d taken. I got myself a bit confused, so I did it, then decided it was wrong and re-did it.

The weather was beautiful, so after that I went to work early, thinking I could finish earlier and spend the afternoon by the pool. As I sat and worked, including filling out my contracting company’s timesheet (another timesheet that I have to do), it suddenly dawned on me that actually I’d done my other timesheet wrong as I’d claimed the wrong day as holiday (it matters, because I do 4 hours on Fridays, and 5 hours on Mondays). So, when I’d “corrected” it earlier, I’d actually introduced error. How can I be so stupid.

I emailed my manager to let him know to reject my timesheet and I’d do it again later in the day from home (where my other laptop was). I needed to comfort eat, so I went in the kitchen and got the melon that I had in the fridge. I carefully scraped all the seeds into the bin, but made a bit of a mess of it because the hole at the top of the bin was so small. I could see the cleaner watching me and I began to feel a bit embarrassed about being so messy.

Some time later, when I returned to throw some other rubbish away and realized that there was ample room to fit the rubbish in, it dawned on me that I’d put the melon seeds into the bin reserved for paper only. Doh. No wonder the cleaner had stared at me like she did.

It wasn’t my day and I felt like giving up. I’d had lunch planned with Candice, so I thought I may as well get going early. It was at this point that I suddenly realized that I’d left my purse at home. The additional problem here is that the purse also contains my travel card. It’s psychologically fine when you travel without a ticket when you’re ignorant of it, but once you realize you don’t have one, it’s really stressful. I felt it would be just my luck to be caught by an inspector (they come in plain clothes on random inspections; 90% of the time you don’t get controlled, but sometimes you do), but I had no other option but to travel home on the bus without a ticket in order to get my purse. I studied every single person getting on to see if they looked like someone who could possibly be an inspector.

Fortunately, I wasn’t caught, and I got my purse OK. I had a good lunch with Candice and then went swimming afterwards. For some reason, even though the weather was beautiful and the pool wasn’t horribly crowded, I just wasn’t in the mood, so I gave up early, which really isn’t like me. The bus came almost immediately and I set off home.

Just before I reached my final stop, I suddenly realized that I’d left my purse in the locker at the pool. Really? Can you believe it? Twice in one day. Once again, I had to get on a bus without a ticket and hope that I wouldn’t be caught (and fortunately I wasn’t). What a lot of stress for a Friday.

Of course, my purse also contained my card to get into the swimming pool, so I had to queue and then explain what had happened to the guy at the desk so that I could re-enter; I had the locker key still on my arm, so at least he could see I was telling the truth.

I got back home, re-did my timesheet, then checked if I was behind on any of my SOPs. I saw that one was overdue and started doing it, only to realize later that actually it was due at the end of July and not the end of June. Similarly, I’d been struggling to get the form completed for terminating my employment (which includes making pension and insurance arrangements) on time for the last working day of the month, when I re-read the email I’d received and it was asking for it by my last working day, not the last working day of this month. Grrr.

Finally, it was the weekend, I put some chicken in to cook and sat down in front of the TV. After some time, I became aware of a loud sizzling and I realized that I’d totally forgotten that I was cooking my supper. The kitchen was full of smoke. I opened the door and the windows, my eyes watered and smoke billowed out. The bottom of the pan was black, as was the bottom of the chicken. A smell of burnt food pervaded the room. Fortunately, I wasn’t massively hungry, so I salvaged what I could (which didn’t taste very nice; even the meat tasted smoked) and just ate that. It wasn’t quite what I’d planned.

To top it all, when I looked at my share account later that evening, I discovered that they’d re-classified some of my shares in one company as a “worthless liquidation” for no apparent reason. Working hours were over and there was nothing I could do about it until the following week. At least this last one wasn’t my fault (I hope).

At that point, I went to bed.

I really hate days like this!