Why do today what you can leave for the day after tomorrow?

Today it really sunk in that at some-point the shit will hit the fan, and that I’d have to work overtime, staying at work past the official 4:45 “summer hours” end-time to complete my projects.

It was expected, especially since I spent the first couple of weeks without a defined project goal. So basically my already on-the-short-side 10 week internship, became a de-facto 7.5 week internship. I actually contemplated extending the internship by a week, but then I remembered all the things I want to do during my time off, and x-nayed that thought. I would much rather work long days than give up being able to travel (no, we haven’t decided where we’ll travel, but we won’t stay in Ithaca the entire time).

The hard part will be giving myself daily deadlines. Because I’m good with deadline, I like making them, or rather I hate being in a situation where I didn’t make them, things like – coming to a meeting unprepared. I can’t stand it. I guess it’s the perfectionist side of me – I like things to be done right. You could also say it’s my ego, not willing to look bad. Anyway – just as an example, today I was in the office until around 5:40, because I have an early meeting tomorrow, and I wanted to bring a completed version of a manufacturing process flow chart I’m putting together. So there I was, aligning all the little boxes, making sure all the arrows are in place and look good, and finally standing in my cube, like a kid in an art class, folding and sticking the 6 pages that this thing spans together, making sure that the lines fit together just right. The problem is not everything has such a concrete deadline. I mean ultimately everything has the deadline of my final presentation (btw – already scheduled, with most of the senior management invited, eek!). But I won’t be able to do everything last minute, and I don’t want to either. I made myself a nice little gaunt chart; detailing different “mini-projects” together make my 2 big projects. You, know I worked backwards, looking at how much time certain things will take, to see how much time I have for other things. You would thing that would be enough. It really should be shouldn’t it? I think having it there on the wall just doesn’t stress me out enough. Maybe I’ll start trying making a daily list. My problem with those is that I tend to make them unrealistically long, and then when I don’t do everything that’s on it, I let myself off saying “well, it was unrealistically long anyway”.

On a completely different note – I have a friend coming to visit me today! J is (or was) a second year at my school. We met right at the beginning of the year, and had a good vibe going with each other. She will soon be moving to the Mid-West where she got her full time job, but for now, is living with her folks on the Cape. She’s coming to the B&B for dinner, and I’m really excited, it’s like a small triumph that I’m managing to have a normal life here that’s more than just work-gym-TV-bed. :)

PS - that smily reminded me of a bit I watched this morning on Lior Shline's late night show: look at Israel is sms-ing :)

Weekend update

Ok – so writing quickly to get a post in. I really thought that I would be better about posting here in Cranberry land, but it’s almost like I’m worse. The thing is I don’t feel like I have anything to write.

Anyway, it’s morning, and I’m having a cup of tea, waiting for my ride to work, heels at my side. My job is finally starting to be more intense, though I have a feeling that it’s going to go from 0 to 240. But, it is what it is, at least it will keep me awake without having to have a drink of Cranergy at lunch.

Uri was here for the weekend, which was great for 3 reasons (I’ll let you guys decide the order of importance):

1. I didn’t have to make the drive to Ithaca

2. I could unpack for two weeks, rather than unpacking, and 5 days later putting everything back it, de-facto living out of a suit case

3. With him not working on Fridays, he could head out Thursday at noon, and head back only on Monday/ Tuesday, and we could actually see each other for longer, because when I drive to Ithaca, it ends up that I’m there for around 36 hours.

Actually, he’s still here. He is supposed to head out today, but yesterday as we were, at the last minute of course, reserving a rental for the next two weeks, we discovered that my license has been expired since my birthday in February. Though, any police officer that would stop me would probably think it’s been expired since April (for those who don’t remember, my birthday is Feb 4th, read in the American way – April 2nd)!! We’ll see what happens with that – my parents are supposed to have my new license somewhere, hopefully a printed out color scan and a puppy dog look while telling that story will enable us to get a car.

Well – I ended not getting around to posting in the morning, it’s evening now. We did manage to rent a car, and Uri should be in Ithaca soon.

Uri’s time here was real fun. We spend a good chunk of it just plain relaxing, but also went down to “The Cape” (Cape Cod) where we ate ice cream at a place celebrating its 75th anniversary this year and saw some really expensive looking houses. Side note on ice cream in the US, I have yet to find ice cream as flavorful as Iceberg (or even Vanillia), we analyzed it this weekend and reached the conclusion that when ice cream is based on 42% cream, every flavor is mostly going to taste like cream, unless it has artificial berry flavor. BTW – I will not order berry ice cream anywhere in this country ever again.

In other weekend news - the Innkeeper at the B&B is away on vacation, so I was in charge of making breakfast for the guests. I made scones on day, and blueberry pancakes the next. I also made crispy oatmeal cookies with pecans and dates AND graham crackers, though the last ones didn’t really work out. We also cooked a big meal two of the other guests here yesterday. It was really great and fun. OK – now I’ll stop, otherwise I won’t post.

How are you guys out there doing?

On the road again

Driving back down to Cranberry Land I thought about the fact that once again I didn’t blog for the majority of the week. But really – there was nothing to blog about. Quite literally, nothing to write home about.

While driving I thought about different amusing things from the road trip that I could write about. Like a comment Uri made about a common road hazard sign that tells drivers the in the next X miles there might be deer*. The question that is – how do they let the deer know that they can only cross in the next X miles?

Another random road-trip thought was that, again, I find myself a knowledge gap about the little things in life. Here specifically – how much could I go over the posted speed limit without getting a ticket? And yes mom, I never ever go above the speed limit at all but, in theory, if I were to drive the speed of traffic, I would drive at least 75 in a 65 mph highway, and that’s in the right lane – the left lane in going 80 at least. In Israeli I feel OK with the 10% rule, and when I’m going over that, and risking a ticket I know it. But here? I tried asking someone at work and got the standard “no liability” answer: “Technically they could give you a ticket for even going once mph over”. Well, gee – thanks! I’m aware that of what they technically do, but what I’m asking is what they actually do!

When I started off writing I thought I would also write about work adjustment stuff, but as it turns out I’m too tired and I’m falling asleep. So have a good night everybody! I’ll be back tomorrow!

* While writing that pargaraph, I thought I would stick in a picture of that type of sign, but then when I looked for a picture I found that website, it was too funny to not put up.