What's new?

What's new with my life? Nothing much, just the usual more work than I have hours in the day to accomplish it, and less knowledge than required to do it. We are underway on the house painting task, and are managinging it in bits and pieces which is better than not at all. Last night I spent my sleeping hours reviewing the manual for the software upgrade underway at work, probably because I spent the evening reading the manual. Payment software review is NOT a pleasant dream. Not even a little bit.

Tonight I left work less than an hour late which is early for me. I had supper in the crock pot and R's neighbors gave us home-made tamales from the "abuela" visiting from Mexico. I ate up, finagled R into getting me a mini-blizzard, and then took a nap. I did not dream of software upgrades. Not even a little bit.

Yesterday at work was a challenge. I discovered our test system for the software upgrade sent emails to students and parents regarding balances due for a prior term. What you say? How can a test system send out real emails when that particular capability is disabled for testing? Good question. I don't know. The emails did generate real questions and real phone calls from real people. That part I do know.

Later in the day I found out I had set up the three main summer session refund dates incorrectly. Sigh. It is one of the few things I actually know how to do and I did it wrong. The good news? It was a quick fix and the result is more tuition refunds rather than less so no students were harmed in the process. And we were only a day or so into the refund period for two of the terms so many students didn't even know there was an error to start with.

I also got word that my counterpart at the technical school was let go. This was pretty much beyond my comprehension given the fact that her work and ability has been lacking for all of the years I've known her and yet they retained her, upgraded her position, and gave her a fat raise a year ago. We really struggled in our early working relationship, although we made our peace some time back. I just accepted that her work needed some oversight and she learned to take and request direction from me. I think her problem was that she kept requesting additional help to do her job and ended up with a staff of two, leaving most to wonder what remained of the job for her to do. I really do feel bad for her on a personal level, although I won't miss having to constantly check the work.

Position reshuffling happens this time of year in academia, and it always reminds me not to take what I do for granted. That would be kind of hard right now, but still.

We're hosting our monthly dominoes game this Saturday and I'll host bunco later this month. Those little normalcies help when my world gets too one-dimensional. So do tamales and mini-blizzards. And helpful, indulgent husbands. And wine.