A Day in the Life of Lissy 2011

Ah, another Day in the Life and the 10th anniversary of my first one in late 2000. This was more or less a typical work day with the added benefit of Rekha’s amazing food. It’s also my Daddy’s birthday. Happy birthday!

Friday, March 11th, 2011

You’re half awake, half dreaming about the AWS GUI. You pinch and scroll graphs on your dream iPad as you try to wake up. Your body says it’s morning. You notice Bryan’s not there, it can’t be morning. You get up and check your phone, it’s 3:00am. You go to the bathroom to wake yourself up before returning to bed. No more half awake AWS GUI dreams.

Instead you dream that it’s morning and Bryan was telling you how you were talking about the AWS GUI in your sleep. You wake up a few times. You haven’t been sleeping well this week.

6:50am
You wake up, your body insists it’s morning. You look at your phone, your alarm isn’t supposed to go off for another half an hour, which is also ten minutes earlier than usual. Your subconscious hasn’t trusted your alarm ever since your phone turned off randomly, twice on Tuesday. Either that or it’s preparing for Daylight Savings. You get back under the covers, but decide you’re never going to fall back asleep. You get up again.

You put your robe on and head to the bathroom. You brush your teeth, wash your face and put in your contacts. You put a little lotion on since your face seems dry.

You come downstairs to start typing. You take a towel with you. You check the towel under the ceiling drip that started last night. The towel is fairly wet, but not soaked. The ceiling isn’t dripping anymore. You put the new towel down just in case.

You hear your alarm going off. You go back upstairs and get dressed. You decided last night to wear the brown, sparkley shirt Bryan got you. It’s very flattering and it goes well with your brown pants.

7:30am
You come downstairs and pack up your lunch. You type a little more before leaving. You’re early, despite the typing, so you expect traffic on your street. You put on your socks and your boots. You grab your rings off the ledge in the kitchen. You put on your coat, your gloves, your hat, check to make sure your badge and key are in your purse, grab your stuff and head for your car.

Because of all the crazy rain yesterday, you decide to take the Parkway since 35 is most likely flooded. You listen to Fresh 102.7 as you drive. There is traffic. That guy should really turn on his lights. He does! Yay random guy! You almost forget you’re taking the Parkway and start to turn right for 35, you remember and get back into the middle lane to go straight. The drive to work is fairly uneventful.

You arrive in the parking garage and park a little closer than usual. You must be early. You check your phone as you walk to the door. 8:11, that’s early. You cross the bridge, swipe your card and walk into the building. Something smells good. Something smells really good. You’re hungry. You take the stairs up to the 5th floor and walk to your office.

8:16am
You plug in your camera charger. The outlet is upside down and you have to unplug the light above your desk to make room for the charger. You sit down to read your email and eat your breakfast. Strawberry-banana overnight oats, yum :P There’s an email from Rekha from 6:43 this morning (wtf?) confirming she’ll be bringing delicious Indian food to the 11:00 meeting for her last day here. You take a piece of gum. You get up to put your lunch in the fridge in one kitchen area and go and get water in the other kitchen area because the water thing in the first kitchen area is broken. You think you took too much food for lunch. No law that says you need to eat all of it. Depending on how much food Rekha brings, you might be eating it for dinner.

One of the girls from last year’s MATREX class comes to get water as you rinse out your mug. You say good morning. You’re afraid she’ll use up all the hot water. You’ve been drinking lukewarm water since the other water thing broke. Horray, the water’s still hot! You debate using your last tea bag. Maybe later. You take a calcium-magnesium vitamin. Ouch! Water’s a little too hot.

You read more emails. Your tongue hurts :( You wish your daddy Happy Birthday on his Facebook wall with your phone since your work blocks Facebook. Outlook reminds you to copy the status sheet and send out email for everyone to put their status in for the week, so you do. You put in your status for the week which is fairly short, but it’s been a quiet week and you were at Rutgers all day Wednesday interviewing.

You have an email saying your cousin posted on your wall. You see no such thing. There’s another email saying your other cousin sent you a message. He wants to know if you still watch Farscape. You message him back saying it was canceled quite a while ago, but you watch the DVDs sometimes.

You walk to the bathroom. On the way back you think about your camera’s memeory card which makes you think about your laptop which makes you think about needing a new laptop in a couple years which makes you think about money. You think about the fight discussion you had with Bryan yesterday about whether you two should have a baby next year. You feel you can’t afford it and you’re not sure you want to give up your whole way of life for another human being quite yet. Bryan thinks he’s getting old. Either way, you’re proud that you two were able to discuss it calmly and not have a huge argument about it. You didn’t come to any conclusions, but there’s time still.

You pass by Maryam’s office, she’s not here yet. You hope everything’s OK. You decide you should listen to the webcasts you missed on Wednesday, if they’re up, and work on your GUI design slides. The videos are up. You’re not sure if you need to register first, so you do that anyway. You think you hear Maryam, you’re correct, it’s her. You can’t find the second one to sign up for it. You watch the first one. You open your GUI designs. She appreciates our interest? It’s a required class.

You want another piece of gum, but your jaw was hurting last night, so you decide it’s not a good idea. This webcast seems extra boring. The at&t brand. Is this the lady who thought teenagers would wear at&t t-shirts last year? You send Bryan some artciles about adding Tumeric to meals. You think maybe you’ll add some to your oatmeal in the morning. You want to buy some chia seeds too.

Something happened in Japan? You scroll down. Earthquake and tsunami? Well that’s not good. Trending on Twitter.

The webcast is over. You have an email from Eddie. He wants to know if you have any tutorials on xslt stuff. You send him what you have in your browser history and let him know you can help him set up Eclipse to help him test later on today.

Rekha Q’s you, she needs your help. She wants you to grab napkins from downstairs. You recruit Maryam to go with you. Your camera battery finished charging, you unplug it. Maryam walks in, she has some napkins. You guys can grab some more from downstairs before you go.

Eddie asks about the interviews on Wednesday. You told him everyone wants to be a PM or a developer even though they don’t know how to program yet. You found one good RE and Linesh interviewed a good developer.

10:50am
You leave with Maryam for your napkin quest and then to Roy’s meeting. You say everyone should eat first and then Roy can talk. You ask Maryam if she heard about Japan. She said she didn’t read the news this morning because she was running late. She did take 35 and they closed off part of it and had to take a long detour. You’re glad you took the Parkway. You’re very sneaky stealing the napkins. When you arrive upstairs Rekha and Vasant are waiting with the food. Maryam laughs at the happy face you make when you see the chocolate cake. Vasant says you should eat first before the meeting. You help set up.

Roy’s going to talk first. He says the meeting will be shorter because of the food. You’re very hungry and the food smells very good. Rich comes in. he was going to sit on the counter, but there’s food there. Roy’s still talking about CNI. Oh Josh, don’t encourage him. He’s just jealous because he’s not here to east the yummy food. Eddie brings up an issue with his Feb stuff. Rick too? Come on people! Food! Every time he says the meeting will be short… Hungry, so hungry. Half an hour already. Shu asks Da’Li to bring up SCME stuff. You remind maryam to forward you the meeting invite for scme. No more issues, Roy talks about A&D goals. 11:45, he’s still talking. He asks what your group does for goals. You tell him our goals are pushed down, so it’s easy for us. The goal is 100% so there is no exceeds. Everyone has a good giggle.

Finally, we’re done! He says we should have eaten first. You’re second in line for food and you take a little bit of everything and a hunk of cake. You serve some cake to Yiding too. Hsiu-Mei says the piece is too big! Rick asks you about what Bryan does for a living and where you live. He should remember you bought a house in same town he grew up in.

You finish and take seconds. Rekha talks about the food she made. She asks you which is your favorite, you can’t decide. Yiding asks you to take a group picture. You do when everyone is done with the food. You all look at the little photo on the camera and laugh because it looks like there’s a halo over Yiding’s head. You’ll have fun editing that later.

You give Rekha a farwell hug and head back to your office. Manoswita has Rich’s laptop, but he wasn’t in his office. You take the laptop from her and send Rich an email: “Your laptop is in my office. If you want it back, bring cake.” You grab a piece of gum. He comes for his laptop a minute later.

12:30pm
You go get some water. There was more food than you thought, so you’ll probably have your lunch for dinner at around 4:30. Not sure what to do with your yogurt. Maybe a snack after working out. You take another calcium vitamin. It says a serving size is 4, you usually take two in a day, if you remember. You Q Maryam, “walk?” You usually take a walk around the buildings during lunch. She responds a minute later, “OK.”

Maryam grabs Sumaya and you head down for your walk on the 2nd floor. Maryam says your Day in the Life in 2013 will be all about the baby you’ll have then. We’ll see. You talk about baby names. Maryam said she thought your boy name was Ethan, you said no, Nathan. She doesn’t like that because it reminds her of hot dogs. You probably won’t name the kid Nathan anyway. You talk about Sumaya’s replacement mentor since her other mentors weren’t very mentory. Maryam says she likes it better when you ask a question and they give you several steps at a time so you don’t have to keep going back. She says a lot of the REs don’t explain things well. You say you like Jim, the NDR RE, because he explains things really clearly so you always understand what he’s talking about. After two rounds around the buildings, you come back upstairs.

You start drawing a design for the AWS GUI layout when your mom calls. She asks about your leaky ceiling. You tell her it’s not bad. She wants to make sure you get it checked out. You call your daddy to wish him Happy Birthday. You tell him you’ll be up there tomorrow morning to go get his birthday present with your mommy. He says he talked to Melanie about Italy and she want us to give her some dates in October for when we’d like to visit. You tell him the week of the 10th may be good because it’s Columbus day. He also talked to your aunt about staying down the shore this summer. You’ll talk more about that this weekend.

You continue your pretty drawing. You start doodling in Gimp. You have so much fun, you lose track of time. The SCME meeting is starting. You open AT&T Connect. Why is everyone listed as guest? There’s a call me button. Sumaya Qs you. She needs help with Java stuff. Isn’t she an RE? You tell her you’re free at 3:30. Guanjone sends a Q reminding everyone that his meeting will be on AT&T Connect. It’s more fun when it’s in person. Maryam asks if we should leave the scme meeting for Guanjone’s. You say yeah because what they’re talking about in the scme meeting doesn’t have anything to do with you.

2:30pm
Roy calls as you’re dialing into the meeting. He wants to tell you you’re getting the extjs books. He also asks you to look at the iPad email and rush with the AWS GUI stuff. Guanjone asks if Rich is joining. You go over to his office and ask him, he says maybe. Guanjone says Josh is going to be taking over A&D responsibilities for your group. That’s the position you didn’t bother applying for. You have to do a document audit before April. Guanjone asks how the interviewing went. You give your status.

You show Maryam the slides you’ve done and then send them to Roy. You go to Sumaya’s office to help her with her Java project. It’s pretty cruel they’re giving a serious Java coding project to the new requirement engineers that don’t know how to program. You and Maryam pretty much spend and hour teaching Sumaya and her officemate how to program in Java.

Praveen stops by with the books. He says you should talk on Monday. You tell him you’ll be working from home on Monday, but you can Q. You need some water before continuing your lesson. You spend another half an hour and her program is pretty much finished, though it’s not connecting to the database.

4:30pm
That was fun, but also completely exhausting. You heat up your lunch/dinner: the leftover Mexican Bryan made for dinner yesterday. You cut your microwave time a little short because someone’s waiting to use it. Your food’s a good temperature though. You feel better already. You ate a lot of carbs at lunch. You read the CDT newsletter as you eat. You vote up the featured TIP entry. You wonder if you should submit your TIP entry to the innovation corner to be featured. It’s not a very good idea. You mostly submitted it for the sake of submitting an idea. It made it to the next level though.

You’re kind of full. This is a strange sensation for you, you never feel full. Are you sick? Maybe you’re just sick of the Mexican. Maybe you’re not used to eating dinner this early. You put it away, maybe you’ll eat it later. You chew another piece of gum. You look through the books Praveen left you. You really don’t think you need a book on CSS. Maybe one of the other developers can use that. The other books appear useful. There’s three on extjs and one on jquery. You wonder when you’ll have time to actually read them. You’re not really a book person. You try to finish your water before you head home. You write an email, but don’t send it. You’ll wait until Monday. You don’t finish your water, so you take it to the restroom with you to spill out. You grab your yogurt snack from yesterday on the way back. You’ll eat that later too. You say goodnight to coworkers you pass on the way back to your office. You check your email one last time. You put on your coat, hat and gloves and make sure you have all your stuff before heading out. You don’t hit any red lights on the way to the Parkway.

5:33pm
You arrive home and put your stuff down. You put your leftovers in the fridge. Bryan comes to greet you with a big hug!

He follows you around like a puppy as you go and get the laundry. You need a sports bra so you can work out. You bring the laundry upstairs and go and get a cup of water. Bryan says you’re very skinny. You don’t know why. Bryan hugs you on the couch, but you need to go exercise.

You go upstairs and change into your workout clothes. You put some music on and start dancing around like a crazy person. After about 20 minutes you go downstairs to the basement. You lift weights for about 30 minutes while watching the rest of last night’s episode of Bones. You then finish up with 35 minutes of Yoga with Shiva Rea’s Creative Core and Upper Body. Yes, the 108 push ups. You do them ALL! Your tummy is a bit upset. Perhaps you should have waited to digest a little longer. You stretch for about ten minutes while watching Family Guy.

You eat your yogurt snack and then go back upstairs to shower. You swap out the towels with fresh ones and hang up your clean robe. You sing while showering and perhaps stay in there a little too long because you fingers are all pruney. You comb your hair so it will stay parted to the side tomorrow.

8:30pm
You come downstairs to your computer for a few minutes. You go back upstairs because you forgot to put lotion on your legs. You come back downstairs to make your breakfast for tomorrow. More overnight oats. This time with apple and cinnamon. Actually, you decide the apples are a little soft this week and you’re probably better off making hot oatmeal tomorrow morning. You search the internet for good, free, video editing software. One of the links opens up a youtube video that crashes your browser. Bryan comes upstairs and starts taking food. You’re surprised he hasn’t had dinner yet. You ask him if this means he’s not going to exercise. He says he doesn’t know. You edit the pictures. Maryam is blinking in the group photo so you edit in a picture of her eyes open. You check out facebook.

You ask Bryan if he’s going to exercise. He says he is, but he’s going to watch games. Poo. You join him anyway because you ate a lot today. Bryan does his thing on the elliptical while you bounce on the trampoline.

10:00pm
After 20 minutes you call it quits since it’s later than usual. You go upstairs to get ready for bed and read some Hitchhiker’s. You’re just past the part where Deep Thought reveals the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything, but you already knew what it was.

Bryan comes up to shower. He asks if you’re going to film him showering. You tell him that would be for a different kind of website. Once he’s clean, you two cuddle and you fall asleep.