I made it to my conference. I’m in a different hotel from the main conference one for the first night (long story), but I’ll be where I’m supposed to be for the rest of the time.
The ride down was actually more pleasant than I expected. My coworker, who usually goes silent behind her laptop whenever she’s not driving, talked the whole way this time. It made the trip go by a lot faster.
The conference starts today, and there are a few sessions I’m genuinely looking forward to. To be honest, most will probably be pretty boring, but that’s usually how these things go. This will be a short post because I need to jump in the shower and head down for breakfast. The coffee in the room was terrible, so I’m hoping the coffee downstairs will redeem the morning.
I’m afraid this week is going to feel like a long one. I’ll only be in the office for about a day and a half before heading out to a conference for the rest of the week. I’m not exactly thrilled about the trip over and back—not because of the destination, but because of the person I’ll be riding with. Let’s just say that “pleasant conversation” isn’t her strong suit. I’m planning to bring my Kindle and use my hearing aids as earbuds so I can listen to a book while pretending to read. (I can’t actually read in the car—it gives me a headache and makes me carsick.) Usually, I like to talk on long drives, but since my travel companion rarely says more than a few words to me even on a good day, I don’t think that’ll be happening.
I usually do the driving on these trips, but she decided she wanted to drive this time. I think she thought she was being difficult—you should’ve seen her face when I thanked her for volunteering. With this pinched nerve in my back, long drives can be painful, so I was genuinely grateful to hand over the keys.
Once the conference starts, I’m sure things will be fine. At least I’ll be out of town for a few days. Other than my trip to Alabama last Christmas, I haven’t gone anywhere overnight since the last time I attended this same conference a year ago. Honestly, I need a real vacation—not a work trip, not a family visit—but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
The bright side is that I’ll get to see a few friends I rarely get to catch up with, and maybe I can do a little networking while I’m there. Like I said yesterday, you never know when a small act of kindness or a good conversation might open doors down the line. Here’s hoping the week goes smoothly, the conference is worthwhile, and the car ride passes quickly.
My office work week is officially halfway over—two down, two to go. This morning should be a busy one with a few school groups visiting the museum. If I didn’t have tours scheduled, I might have been tempted to crawl back into bed for a few extra hours of rest.
Yesterday’s migraine really took it out of me. I fell asleep around 8 p.m., woke up briefly at 9:30 to get ready for bed and take my nightly medicine, then slept straight through until 5 a.m. Isabella tried to rouse me earlier, but it was halfhearted. She seems to know when I truly need the sleep. This morning she was patient and let me wake up on my own—such a sweet girl most of the time, even if she can be a bit impatient and demanding. She’s a cat, after all.
Well, that’s about all I have for today. Here’s hoping the rest of the week goes smoothly!
It’s Monday. Mondays suck! There’s really no other way to put it. The alarm went off way too early, the weekend flew by, and no amount of coffee seems to be enough to get me going.
It rained off and on most of the weekend, and I had a migraine the entire time, so it honestly feels like I didn’t even have a weekend. The migraine’s still hanging on this morning, and I’m seriously contemplating calling in sick—but I hate doing that on a Monday. It always feels like people assume you’re just trying to extend your weekend.
Some folks say Mondays are a fresh start, but let’s be honest—they’re more like a rude interruption. Mondays always seem to bring more emails, more meetings, and more “urgent” things that could have waited until Tuesday.
Still, we push through. We show up, we get the work done (somehow), and we count down the hours until we can go home again.
Here’s to surviving another Monday—may the boss be mercifully distracted, the day be short, and and the week get better from here.
I hope everyone has a wonderful and stress free week!
Finally, after what feels like weeks, I actually get to work from home. Fridays are supposed to be my regular WFH day, but lately, work responsibilities keep pulling me back to campus. Today, though, I have no in-person meetings (actually, no meetings at all), no special events, and no professors bringing their classes to the museum. For once, I can just relax a little.
And if the fucking annoying emails that filled my inbox yesterday make me want to scream, I can at least do it into a pillow—so I don’t disturb my neighbors.
I rarely get to take real vacation time because something always seems to pop up, and when I do, someone inevitably finds something “urgent” that needs to be done. If it’s not an emergency, it’s someone being bitchy or difficult. What makes it even more frustrating is that my boss constantly tells me I have to use up my vacation time before the end of the fiscal year, since I can’t carry any of it over or try to take it all at once at the end. Easier said than done when work refuses to slow down long enough for me to actually take a day off.
Speaking of which, the possible plans I mentioned yesterday for my vacation day ended up falling through. So instead of doing anything exciting, I mostly just tried to rest and recover from the week.
In two weeks, I’ll be heading to a conference that I normally enjoy, but this year I’m dreading it. I have to go with someone who has become increasingly unpleasant and seems determined to make me look bad in front of others. Yesterday, they fired off one of their classic snide emails—trying to throw me under the bus for something that was actually our boss’s doing. It’s not the first time. I’m documenting everything, but I’m just tired of the drama.
I’ll have my Kindle to keep me occupied on the two-hour drive, which I’ll be spending as a passenger this year since they’ve decided they want to drive. On one hand, that’s fine—driving tends to aggravate my sciatic nerve these days. On the other hand, they’re a terrible driver, so it’ll be a long ride either way.
Honestly, work just sucks right now. I’ve got a few job applications out there and a few more to submit this weekend. Maybe it’s time for a change.
For now, though, I’m grateful for a quiet Friday at home—no meetings, no events, no people to deal with face-to-face. Just me, my coffee, and the sweet sound of not having to pretend everything’s fine for a day.
I hope everyone has a wonderful and relaxing weekend!
I’ve been so busy and stressed at work lately that I’m truly grateful to have the day off today. I have a few tentative plans, and if things work out, I might tell you about them tomorrow. For now, I don’t have much to say—just enjoying the rare luxury of a quiet morning.
Isabella was kind enough to let me sleep until almost 5 a.m., though she started halfheartedly trying around 4. Here’s this week’s Isabella Pic of the Week. Every time I see this picture, I think, “I am cat, hear me roar,” to the tune of Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman.
(Secret: She’s just yawning. 🥱 Isabella is a very quiet cat.)
I woke up around 2 a.m. with a bad migraine — the kind that makes it hard to tell if you’re awake or just drifting in and out of pain. I dozed off and on for about an hour and a half before finally giving up to Isabella’s persistence and the realization that my headache was getting worse, not better.
If I didn’t have a major event at the museum today, I’d have called in sick and crawled back into bed. I hate when a migraine hits hard enough to bring nausea with it, and even more when I know I can’t give in to it. Some days, you just have to barrel through and keep going because there’s too much to do to stop.
Thankfully, I’m taking a vacation day tomorrow and working from home again on Friday, so there’s a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. My event today ends at 1 p.m., and if I can get everything cleaned up and put back in order quickly, maybe I can head home early.
Sometimes my migraines ease as the day goes on, and if that happens, great. If not, I’ve learned that keeping busy can hold the pain at bay — at least until I stop. Then, of course, it all catches up with me. Hopefully, today will go smoothly and the hours will fly by quickly.
I survived the after-effects of the COVID vaccine and am feeling much better today. Yesterday morning was rough, but other than an intense migraine, all of my other symptoms went away by the afternoon. I did have some extra pain in my back, which may also have been triggered by the vaccine, but it’s manageable now.
I still have a slight migraine—what doctors call a postdrome. Migraines often have four phases: the prodrome, which comes before the headache and can include fatigue, food cravings, or mood changes; the aura, which some people experience as visual or sensory disturbances; the headache itself; and finally, the postdrome, a sort of “migraine hangover” that can leave you tired, foggy, or achy even after the worst pain is gone.
Other than that, I’m doing okay. I’d love another day to recover fully, but I have three meetings today and plenty of work waiting for me.
To make things even more interesting, my internet provider appears to be part of the global outage affecting many major services. So this will be a short post today, as I’m posting from my phone’s network—which works fine, just very slowly out here where I live.
Here’s hoping everything, including my head and the internet, clears up soon.
Even though I’m not working from home today like I usually do on Fridays, I’m glad it’s finally Friday. This has been a long and rough week—actually, it’s been a long and stressful month so far—and I’m ready for it to be over. Next week will hopefully be better. I have my last program of the month, and I’m praying it all goes smoothly. Monday will be a full day of meetings, and Tuesday might not be an easy day depending on what comes up. I’m hoping to take Thursday as a vacation day, and Friday I’ll be back to working from home again.
Today will be busy. I have a meeting this afternoon, and I’ll be putting away artifacts I used in a class yesterday. Once the workday is over, I can finally head home and relax—though I’m not so sure it will be the most relaxing of weekends. I’m scheduled for my COVID and flu vaccines tomorrow. The flu shot has never really bothered me, but the COVID vaccine tends to hit me hard. I don’t react much to Moderna or Novavax, but Pfizer always knocks me down. About twelve hours after getting the shot, I start getting body aches, fever, and chills—it’s much like actually having COVID. It lasts for a solid twenty-four hours and then, thankfully, it’s over.
You might wonder why I stick with the Pfizer vaccine if I react so strongly to it. The answer is simple: when I’ve taken Moderna or Novavax, I’ve ended up catching COVID afterward. It’s always been a mild case, but still unpleasant. Every time I’ve taken the Pfizer vaccine, however, I haven’t gotten COVID. So, twenty-four hours of discomfort seems a fair trade for something that works best for me. Medical preventatives aren’t always pleasant. After all, every twelve weeks I get thirty-seven Botox injections in my head, neck, and shoulders—definitely not enjoyable, but they help, which is why I keep doing it.
So, while this weekend might not be the most relaxing, at least I’ll be home with Isabella. And honestly, that’s not a bad way to spend a couple of days.
I hope everyone has a wonderful and relaxing weekend!
Many Americans aren’t working today because it’s Columbus Day. For some, particularly Italian Americans, the day remains a celebration of heritage, marked by parades, community gatherings, and tributes to Italian culture and contributions to the United States. These celebrations date back to the late 19th century when Italian immigrants sought to honor their ancestry and gain broader acceptance in American society.
However, across much of the country—including here in Vermont—the day is now observed as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a time to honor and celebrate the history, culture, and resilience of Native peoples. The holiday serves as a reminder of the deep and complex history of this land long before European exploration and colonization, and it’s meant to center on Indigenous voices and stories that were too often ignored or silenced.
My university doesn’t officially recognize Columbus Day—or Indigenous Peoples’ Day—as a holiday, so while many Americans might have the day off work, I don’t. For most, it’s simply an excuse for stores to hold big sales anyway. I actually went shopping this weekend for some winter clothes. With the weight I’ve lost, I didn’t have a coat or much in the way of cold-weather clothing, and the temperatures are already dropping fast. So, I treated myself to two new coats—one casual and one more formal—and several new sweaters to help keep me warm. I’m very happy with my purchases.
Losing weight has felt great, but it does mean buying an entirely new wardrobe, which gets expensive quickly. Still, I’ve always enjoyed shopping for clothes, so I can’t complain too much.
Anyway, enough babbling for today. Whether you’re enjoying a long weekend, are retired and free from the Monday grind, or—like me—are working through the holiday, I hope you have a great day and a wonderful week ahead. Here’s hoping it’s less aggravating than last week!
Joe
The Closet Professor 