October in General

I’m working from home – such a ridiculous luxury but also a sign of the times. A medium size subsidiary of a very large corporation couldn’t just come to a screeching halt because of some damn virus so they rapidly deployed “mobile assets” for office workers. Gotta feel bad for the welders and shipfitters and the rest of the trades. No working from home all comfy in their sweats with a hot cup of coffee for that sizeable crowd.

When COVID finally petered out and people started heading back into the office some – especially Union folks decided they like the work from home plan – so at their next contract negotiations worked it out – they now WFH (work from home) every Thursday and Friday.

The designers and engineers all got mobile assets. I’m in engineering planning, and thus an office worker. Six months after I started, I finally got approval for my asset. Being Salary my ability to use WFH is bit more flexible. For a year of chemo, I had all my infusions scheduled on Friday – my inexperience with the side effects of chemo made me think if I got sick it would be over the weekend, and it wouldn’t eat away at work time or force me to use up my meager PTO.

What became a pattern was infusion on Friday with no side effects until Sunday. Dry heave through Sunday into Monday and sometimes to Tuesday. Blasted through a lot of PTO during that year.

So now that chemo is over I still WFH on Fridays. I keep the other allowed day for bad weather days. If we aren’t expecting bad weather, I work from home on Wednesday afternoons. I usually have a meeting at 14:30 that tends to run long.

So the catchup:

October. I took a trip to Texas to visit with my son and Grandson.
My Uncle, JJ Jeffrey – famous in Radio circles from the 50s-80s, passed away from multiple myeloma. It was not an easy passing.

I pondered whether I should cancel the trip. My folks said go.

It was 30F when I left Portland and 85F and quite humid when I landed in San Antonio. Not a bad flight overall even if I suffered through window seats. Hard to go to the head from a window seat, at this age I go to the head frequently.

My son was stuck in traffic so was a bit late. I was waiting in the pickup area, sweating my behind off. I was dressed like Maine Fall – jeans, waffle henley, sweatshirt. I rapidly made the command decision to change. Into the nearest head I was down to cargo shorts and a linen beach shirt in minutes. I also stayed in the terminal until mancub arrived.

Grandcub was in school, so we went to grab lunch then checked me into my hotel.

We then went to pick up the kid.

The kid – at 15yo all 5’10 150# of him. Good looking kid if I do say so myself.

He plays football and is quite serious about it – in fact he primarily plays Linebacker and is trying to bulk up to 180#.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see him play – His games are on Thursday and my trip didn’t include any Thursdays!

The first evolution (my idea) was to go ziplining. So …they picked me up the day after I arrived. We had brunch at Chic Fil A, then drove an hour north of New Braunfels into hill country, Wimberly.

Very professional setup. The proprietor couple ran the base camp, and a pretty bunch of post college gymnasts ran the runs.
Ten runs in all of various lengths. I was fun, unfortunately it was 95 degrees and very humid. After each run there was some required climbing up to the next run-head. No shade.

I made it 5 runs when my muscles stopped responding. It was apparent I wasn’t going any further. Took a couple of runs tandem and a truck back to the basecamp. My son and grandson made it all the way through all 10.

It was a little embarrassing.

Next day we hung out by the pool and did nothing. The next day was a trip to Seaworld San Antonio, again hot and humid, at least no physical exertion other than a lot of walking.

Had BBQ a couple of times while I was there, unfortunately no steak. I’ll fix that next time.

Trip back was uneventful, and it was cold when I arrived back in Portland. Long drive home after not driving for a week. A night.

I avoid driving at night when I can.

The holidays were quiet and came and went without much fanfare. I don’t think my folks were much into the holiday thing after my Uncle passing.

Post Holidays came a new adventure… (next entry or so)