Wednesday's Woes

Is it really “Hump Day,” if it’s a four day week?

I puzzled over that all day!

Wednesday was warm, but without the oppressive humidity. So it was uncomfortably comfortable… I took the trash out to the road and left for work, almost an hour early (I woke up at 4:00 a.m. and couldn’t fall back asleep).

I went to Time Out for lunch. I had the chicken salad pita wrap and a cup of the chicken noodle soup (instead of fries). I was disappointed in the soup – first time Bob made a soup I wasn’t thrilled with. It was okay, but he used spaghetti noodles instead of wide egg ones. It was a little off-putting. Weird.

I drove down Hines Park to chill a little afterward, and waved at my co-worker, Fred, who was doing a power-walk.

I had a ridiculously annoying afternoon, after that. I had brokered a complicated deal to return 21 expensive bar code scanners we had bought and deployed that didn’t work. Read that as they took each of them out of the box, threw the boxes away, put an asset tag on both the scanner and its cradle, entered it in Rites and then entered it into PeopleSoft, BEFORE they found out they couldn’t read a 2-D barcode.

Sidebar: WTF is a 2-D barcode?

But, I negotiated with both the supplier and his source and got them to agree to take them back and sell me the scanners we needed. I issued new P.O. for the new scanners and had Courtney remove the asset tags with a heat gun (on low, so it wouldn’t damage the electronics.

Sidebar: We still need to remove the adhesive residue from the scanners and cradles, BTW.

Then I issued two new P.O.’s for the 2-D scanners. There was a hiccup somewhere and somebody didn’t approve them. That took about 10 emails to resolve. But one (at least) got issued.

That was when the supplier called at 4:45 p.m. We asked for overnight shipping (we have a dog-and-pony show on Monday to debut our new tracking system to the clients). He said the price quoted was good, but the company he sourced was out of stock!

Groan…

He “thought” there was another company who might have them, but couldn’t guarantee the pricing. I told him to do the best he could and get back to me…

Jesus!

It was almost 5:00 p.m., so I went home.

When I got there, I grabbed the empty trashcan and went inside. I noticed nobody had cut my lawn yet.

I used another bag of shredded cabbage and carrots along with the rest of my coleslaw sauce to make a bowl of coleslaw. I stuck that in the fridge to get happy.

Then I went outside to water all the container gardens.

I was going to save my two butternut squash for fall or winter. But, they looked good! So, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees F. I cut one squash lengthwise.  I cleaned out the seeds and oiled the flesh with olive oil. Then I seasoned them with salt and pepper. I put a pat of butter into the seed cavity along with some fresh rosemary. Finally, I piled a bunch of thyme on top and stuck them in the oven.

I checked after 40 minutes, but the flesh was still too hard (they are big squash). So, I let them go another 20. I removed all the herb stalks and dug into one. A generous, helping of squash, two of the brats with deli mustard and some coleslaw on the side made up a pretty good dinner!

I watched some TV, but soon switched to reading. Then I went to bed at 10:00 p.m.