Jeffrey D. Tharp's Blog, page 15

Dreaming while you sleep…

It’s always been rare when I remember dreaming at night. Maybe I’m recalling the one I had last night so vividly because I’ve had some variation of this dream four or five times over the last few weeks. Each time is slightly different, but each one has been a variation on a theme.

There’s not a power in heaven or earth that could get me to go back to teaching. In fact, I’m pretty sure my certificate remains revoked in Maryland since I walked out in the middle of the year when I quit. Still, there my dream self is, right in the classroom, walking the hallway, or more recently in the admin office raising three kinds of hell. Each time I have this dream the situation is more farcical than the last.

My brief teaching career was enlightening in a lot of ways, but it’s not something I feel a real need to revisit in my sleep. I’m sure there’s some important message my subconscious is trying to send through the static, but it would be more helpful, perhaps, if it contacted me during normal business hours instead of at 2:30 in the damned morning.

I just hope like hell I can sleep tonight without another visit to the past that never was.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 36 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. Now, I’m told, the alleged negotiation has gone so far sideways that it’s been sent to binding arbitration. Resolution to that could literally take years. So, we’re going to be grinding along for the foreseeable future with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. I’m sure someone could make the case that there’s enough blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 36 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) and for continuing to stand in the way like some bloody great, utterly misguided roadblock. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence. The elected “leaders” of AFGE Local 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

2. Vacation. Time off is supposed to be restful and restorative. Maybe it was in the moment, but it’s sure as hell not feeling anything like that now. Whatever positive effects there were wore plumb away within 30 or 45 minutes of signing on and downloading my hundred or so missed messages… and then we were off and running with an endless stream of random questions, meetings that didn’t meet, and trying not to let my facial expression say everything that my mouth shouldn’t. Once again, we’re down to being motivated entirely by the knowledge that I would well and truly suck at living under a bridge. 

3. Dog food. Jorah eats a pretty middle of the road diet of dry kibble. It’s not some kind of wacky raw, freeze dried, refrigerated, new age-y stuff and it’s not the 50 pound bag of whatever Ol’ Roy serves up passing as dog food. With that said, my regular Chewy order just shipped and I got an email thanking me for my $80 purchase. That’s a 35 pound bag of food that I distinctly remember being able to purchase not terribly long ago for about $50. I get the whole inflationary environment – and probably only notice the dog’s food because I only buy it once every five weeks or so instead of my own grocery bills that wash through, mostly unnoticed, on a weekly basis. I didn’t have the heart to look at what the next shipment of the cat’s canned food is going to cost. It’ll be just as eye-watering and will be just as much a “must pay” budget item. If it turns out I ever go bankrupt, rest assured, it will be on the back on the expenses accrued to sustain these furry little bastards that live rent free in my home.

A message from the union…

Well, well, well. At long last, the workforce received an email today from the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 1904. Therein they officially provided notification that they had arrived at an impasse with management and the future of telework is in the hands of the Federal Services Impasse Panel (FSIP).

The actual point of this email was asking us to respond to a survey covering our thoughts on telework. Wait. What? I’m not a fancy, big city union official, but getting a sense of the workforce’s opinion feels like something you might have wanted to gauge before you decided to hold the new policy hostage for a year. The sticking point, it turns out, is management’s position of wanting personnel on site two days a week versus the union’s position of only wanting two days per pay period (i.e., one day per week). See, the thing is, either one of these proposals is miles better than the agreement we’re currently working under which requires us to be on site three days a week.

The fact that this survey is being launched almost a year after opening negotiations tells me pretty much everything I need to know about how they’re doing business over there at Local 1904. It’s now been 36 weeks since the updated supervisory telework policy went into effect. I’ve read it cover to cover and can’t for the life of me find anything in there that is so objectionable that it should hold up negotiation for a year. It’s a perfectly serviceable policy that significantly increases telework opportunities over and above the policy that’s now in place for non-supervisors. Frankly as an employee I’m embarrassed that this has somehow become an issue that rises to the level of needing to engage with the Federal Services Impasse Panel.

I’ll never understand whatever “logic” is behind the elected leaders operating Local 1904 deciding to let a good agreement now stand in the way of the perceived perfect agreement at some unknown point in the future. I don’t know any of them personally, so I can’t say they’re ragingly incompetent… but after seeing in black and white why we are where we are, you’ve got a lot of ground to cover to convince me they’re not.

A continuing tale of two cats…

Anya has spent more of her life with me wearing a cone than not. I feel badly about that, but it has been an unfortunate, necessary evil to get her through her initial eye infection, the corrective surgery, and now her spay procedure. I wish I were half as resilient as this little seven pound cat seems to be.

All the literature is quick to point out that spaying your cat is a simple, outpatient surgery. Most of the authoritative online resources say that in 48 hours, your pet should be back to something of their normal selves. The spay itself may be an entirely common surgery, but it’s still invasive as hell, and Anya wasn’t one of those who came around in the usual fashion. Fortunately, she was eating well, drinking regularly, and moving around enough to get to and from the litter box as needed. It’s just now, a full week after her most recent surgery that she’s starting to come around to what I’d consider normal behaviors for her.

This morning she was on my bed demanding ear scratches as soon as my alarm went off. She then followed me around while I prepared and delivered breakfast to all the members of the menagerie. She perched in her overwatch position on the cat tree while I got caffeinated. It doesn’t seem particularly newsworthy unless you know she spent the last week snoozing for 22 hours out of every 24 and often not budging for 8-12 hours at a time. Based on what was reported as “normal,” my level of concern for how she was getting along was beginning to elevate dramatically.

Here’s hoping that this is the start of trending back towards normal… Which should get her there just in time for Cordelia to go under the knife for her own procedure next Monday. Getting these critters settled in has made for an awfully long spring. Had I known what I was in for, I might have made some radically different decisions when picking these two out of the mix. File it away as one of the very few times I’m glad I didn’t know then what I know now.

Maybe by Independence Day, we’ll have everyone off the sick and injured list and start seeing what normal really looks like. I’ve probably just jinxed myself by even thinking about it.

The bullshit culture war…

I have no idea why members of a certain segment of the population expend so much time and energy worried about how other people want to live their lives, what they want to be called, or who they want to fuck. I’ve barely got time to tend my own business without jumping eyeball deep into anyone else’s bedroom, pants, or pronouns.

Here’s the thing… I don’t give a damn one way or another if Adam loves Steve. Whether Katie wants to be called Ken. Or whether Bill keeps his dick tucked between his legs. I just assume people who have the kind of free time it takes to give a shit about this sort of thing are some unpleasant combination of sad, angry, and bored to absolute death.

I can’t fathom how bored I’d have to be to spend any time at all worried about a complete stranger’s orientation, preference, gender, or any of a host of other bullshit “culture war” issues that wackadoodle right wingers have decided to latch onto. If you’re happy – or moving in that direction – I say god bless. Good luck. If you can carve out a little joy or peace in this absolutely beshitted world, good on you.

There are enough honest to god issues knocking around to be dealt with without a bunch of chucklefucks creating new ones out of their sadly overactive imaginations.

If you’re bitter or hostile because someone chooses not to live their life exactly the way you do (or at least how you tell the world you live your life), well, that’s just the cost of the liberty you claim to value so highly. Unless, of course, what you really mean is you value liberty only as long as everyone else lives and does and behaves exactly the way these self-appointed “guardians” of truth, justice, and the American way want them to. Sorry gang. I’m a busy guy with a lot going on at the moment. I don’t have the time or inclination to deal with your narrow-minded, bigoted fuckery.

If you’re really, truly troubled about this stuff, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe get a hobby or something. Go out on the town, have a drink or two, get laid. Maybe you’ll feel better – or at least slightly less inclined to spend your life worked up about things that don’t impact you in any way.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 35 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. Now, I’m told, the alleged negotiation has gone so far sideways that it’s been sent to binding arbitration. Resolution to that could literally take years. So, we’re going to be grinding along for the foreseeable future with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. I’m sure someone could make the case that there’s enough blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 35 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) and for continuing to stand in the way like some bloody great, utterly misguided roadblock. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence. The elected “leaders” of AFGE Local 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

This is 45…

I’m not sure I feel 45. Then again, I don’t know what 45 is supposed to feel like. Aside from the accrued aches and pains, I still feel like the me that existed at 20 or 25. Somehow, I feel like it should be even more adultier than usual. That could just be a mental block on my part. I’ve been running my own household since I left home at 22, so the basic tasks of being a law abiding citizen haven’t changed all that much.

I’ve never been one to make a spectacle of my birthday. Being the center of attention in a room full of well-wishers (or full of any kind of people, really), sounds like a dreadful way to spend a day that’s supposed to be celebratory. My day, very intentionally, was a low key affair. The house cleaner was here in the morning. I went out for a crab cake lunch and then did a bit of local junking. I expect I’ll be fast asleep, with the sounds of a snoring dog and cats doing cat things in the background, not long after (or maybe even a touch before) it gets dark on this long June evening.

I’d be remiss here if I didn’t thank everyone who took the time to text, DM, post, or call with their well wishes today. As ever, I appreciate your continued thoughtfulness as I begin another year riding this rock, orbiting its sun, racing through the Milky Way, while moving through the known universe at something like 228 miles per second. You’ve all been very kind to take a few minutes out of that mayhem and chaos to be a part of my day. Taking all things into account, it was as perfectly pleasant a day as I could reasonably hope to enjoy – and I’ll happily take all of those I can.

May 31st…

It’s May 31st. It’s not a birthday or an anniversary, but every year it’s among the most celebrated days on my personal calendar. You see, according to the calculations made by the United States Government, May 31st in the year 2035 is the date my age and years of service will make me eligible for full retirement benefits.

According to the running countdown on my office white board, that leaves me with precisely 12 years left to run in this rather accidental career of mine.

Of course, there are a lot of assumptions feeding into that particular date. It’s assuming that the wise and distinguished members of the U.S. Congress don’t meddle too much with the Federal Employees Retirement System. It’s assuming that the U.S. economy doesn’t either collapse or slip into a decade long recessive nightmare. It’s assuming that I’m putting enough cash aside to be my own paymaster. It’s assuming I don’t drop dead sometime between now and then.

Like I said, there are a lot of assumptions going into the idea that I’ll be able to hang it up in 12 years, but it’s a happy, happy thought. How good, or practical, it looks on the eve of my 57th birthday remains to be seen, but it’s absolutely my guiding star. 

Not the present I expected…

My decade old first generation iPad Air finally gave up the ghost. Right up until it fell off the cliff, it was still mostly serviceable as a platform for streaming podcasts, or television, or generally schmucking around on the internet. Sure, it was sluggish and with just 16 GB storage, I had to offload all non-essential apps and files years ago, but what finally killed it was the elderly OS no longer supporting a number of apps I use on a regular basis. First Xfinity dropped out. Then it was Twitter. Last week a bunch of others fell off.

Increasingly I was limping along, trying to use an outdated version of Safari as my access point to every function. It finally got to be too slow and too much of a damned bloody nuisance to continue finding ways to work around the limitations imposed by elderly tech.

Anyway, now I have a spanking new iPad Air that’s easily capable of doing 100x more than I’m expecting of it. It’s more than a match for keeping up with any content consumption I’m going to throw at it. A shiny new iPad wasn’t the birthday present I planned to give myself this year, but it’s the one I ended up getting.  I wonder what the chances are this one will still be streaming my media in 2033.

Caught up and cleared…

I was finally able to corral Cordelia and get her over to the vet for her first visit and to get her caught up on vaccinations. The general recommendation is that sort of thing should happen within a week of bringing a new fuzzy little family member home. Since Cordy spent 23 hours a day of her first two months here happily ensconced under my bed, I opted to extend that timeline instead of gearing up for a knockdown, drag out fight.

It’s only been in the last two or three weeks that Cordy has decided she doesn’t mind getting petted or catching a quick nap while laying on her human. To this day, picking her up in my arms is entirely out of the question. All interactions are 100% on her terms. I assume that’s part of the reason she spent several days being mad at me after being the victim of the well-orchestrated early morning snatch and grab operation that led to her getting poked and prodded.

I imagine it’ll be a while before I can even start thinking about trying that again. She’s very studiously avoiding getting within arm’s reach. Now that she’s fully vaxxed and medically cleared the next step is scheduling her spay surgery. I’m going to target sometime about a month from now… mostly so I can let her build up a renewed, if false, sense of security.

She probably wouldn’t agree with me, but I’m feeling good that we have this first step knocked off the to do list.