A Chance

[thepnutgallery]

Up at 2 and even a half pill and beating off couldn't get me back to sleep. My shot was very strange. Not quite absent of any feeling, but it seemed like the feeling itself was in a nearby dimension. Coffee it is. At least I got to spend quality time with Lady Miss Friday. We had our weekly meeting via Zoom, and thanks to the unanimous desire to stay home, they're going to try a pilot program allowing us to continue working from home as long as we come in at least once per week. They're going to come up with some metrics that they want us to meet, and if we hit them, we'll have a better chance of Elaine agreeing to it permanently. The big things are productivity/efficiency, labor laws, and managing the actual physical side of what we do - files, records, financial forms, etc. The productivity & efficiency I've already got handled. There was that day that I entered, worked up, sent out, and appointed a case all the day it came in. And we've gone from *hoping* to get claims screened within a week to overwhelmingly getting them done the day they come in or the next work day. I do need to remember to check the Reviewer Queue to make sure nothing falls through the cracks and they get tagged, but that's a matter of habit. For time cards, I set up a reminder at 12:30 every day to stop working. Absurd that I would need that, but whatever. The physical side of everything is a little more touchy. All well and good that we can set it all up in the system, but someone does physically have to actually put it all together and in the mail. We're not allowed to delegate work outside of the paralegals, either. So no saying the Admins could take care of the physical side of it. There was some talk about the actual physical connection of having coworkers in the office. The ease of being able to just swing by and ask a question instead of taking the time to send a message via email or Teams. Even that feels too formal. I'd previously suggested that people could just ring in via Teams or Zoom or something, but that also felt too formal. Instead, I started my own meeting in Teams so anyone who wanted to ask a question or even just say hi could just click "join." Bingo. Lynelle was very impressed and neither of us could understand why we didn't start doing this much sooner. And Kathy sent me a BIG Kudo on coming up with ways to streamline the NOA entries. Unfortunately, the extra long meeting put me behind for the day, so I only managed to finish all my work, not get Monday's done. It's fine.

I hadn't heard back from anyone I'd messaged about Nizar, so I finally just put it out to FB asking for help and received lots of hopeful answers. Messaged the organizations they suggested, touched base with him. Tim notified me that he wouldn't be able to make the evening's events, Julian was going to hop in the shower, but he was distraught that I didn't have a loofah. It was a bizarre moment for our hygiene standards, but while he was at the store buying one, he also snagged some beer and wine coolers to bring to the Fox Den. Sadly, we couldn't make it to Kevin's, but we did get to the Fox Den in time. I talked to Pete and a friend of his, DJ Love Sauce. Straight guy, but nice enough. It was much less crowded than last time, but still a wonderful vibe, and I still found a bunch of new tracks. One of them, unfortunately, was being mixed live or something, so not purchasable. We stayed much later than initially predicted, but hopped over to the store for vegan pizza fixins. He wanted a green onion to put on top, and sure. It was about $10, but the ingredients will be useful for other things as well. And the pizza itself was pretty decent, not that my standards can be trusted.

Unfortunately, Julian asked me to sleep with him, but I wanted to sleep with Lady Miss Friday. And we'd been drinking, so it didn't go well. He complained that he doesn't see me all day, but like...that's because I'm at work.