FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS

Today was such a Monday. I realized late last night as I was finally going to sleep that I had scheduled myself to hold a training at 8:30 this morning for new colleagues in Asia. So I had to get moving and be to work by 8 so I had a little time to get things in order beforehand. I had meetings all morning, and then immediately after I was done eating lunch, I had to run over to the bank office on the next block to get a new “dosa” which is the little device that allows you to enter a code when you are using online banking services if the digital BankID doesn’t work for some reason, and then had to race back over to our IT helpdesk to pick up my new laptop and still make it back over to my building for another meeting at 1 pm. Amazingly enough, I managed it, but it was a close, and fairly stressful, thing. Thankfully, the last meeting I had at 3:00 pm was cancelled, so I was able to get some work done. I hate days that are all meetings and I have a lot of them this week. Ugh.

I also had to go talk to HR about all my rolled over vacation days. If you don’t use up your vacation days during the course of the year, what you have left rolls over…but only for 5 years, then you are forced to use them. You don’t just lose them. I always have trouble using up all of my vacation days because I have so many of them. I have 6 weeks, which is 1 week more than most people in Sweden have (and of course 4 weeks more than most people in the US have). Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining. Not at all, but I do need to be better about using them up. Is it weird that I would most times rather be working? If I didn’t love my job so much, I guess it would be easier to take time off.

Right now I have over 30 days rolled over though they haven’t yet rolled over to year 5 so I have some time. The other problem is that you must first use up your allotted vacation for the year BEFORE you can even start using up the rolled over days. So I have to take 6 weeks off during the year (not all at once, of course) and THEN I can start using up the rest.

Several years ago I was in the same situation, and I ended up taking every Friday off for 2 months, which was actually quite nice. I think I will do that again, maybe starting in December, then try and take some extra time off around the holidays and take more Fridays off in January.

Now that I’ve picked up my new computer, I have to find time to actually set it up, install things, and transfer stuff from my current machines. A few weeks ago, I found out that I could not update my Adobe programs on the laptop I’ve been using at home OR the desktop PC I use in the office because the Windows version I had was not compatible, and required an upgrade. Which meant reinstalling Windows. And I had completely forgotten about the scorched-earth policy that comprises Windows upgrades/reinstallations. It’s been so long since I had to do one, so I wasn’t really thinking when I turned my laptop into IT to have the upgrade done, and I didn’t think about the files I had locally in my Downloads and Documents folders. I lost everything. AUGH.

IT couldn’t restore them either, and some of them were irreplaceable personal files. I’ll have to hope for the best, and most likely recreate from scratch those that I need to use in the future. I’d forgotten that with a new Windows upgrade, you have to reinstall EVERYTHING. All your preferences, all your programs, all your fonts, etc. UGH. And now I have a new laptop to do that all on again. In the middle of a week of Mondays.

Wah wah wah, here comes the wambulance, Liz.

Here’s hoping tomorrow is a better Tuesday and not a continuation of ugly Monday. There WERE good things about today, thank goodness, but I will save them for my daily good things post on FB.

Mood: cranky
Music: Yuna—See You Go