Yesterday, I sat at my desk from about 7:30 to 10:00, and then again for about 30 minutes between 12:45 and 1:15 and that was it.  For the whole day.  I am not kidding.

I was quite productive during those 4 hours I was actually sitting there.  I made good progress on my projects, but not nearly enough, so today has been a massive catch-up day before things spiral out of control again.  I have three projects in work today.

Yesterday we had our Thanksgiving lunch with the department.  So people signed up to bring different items (corn, sweet potato casserole, mac & cheese, pies, cake, and more pies) to go along with the fried chicken that we’d bring in from Wal-Mart.  One of the other ladies ordered the chicken, but wasn’t available to go pick it up yesterday, so that fell to me.

That was why I left at 10:00.  I went to Wal-Mart (about a 10 minute drive, plus the 5 minute walk from my desk to my car) and picked up a fruit tray, three cases of soda, a case of bottled water, and a jug of sweet tea, before heading over to pick up 50 pieces of chicken.  They weren’t done with it.  It was scheduled to be done at 10:30.  The lunch was scheduled to start at 11:00.  And for me to get there on time, I would need to leave Wal-Mart no later than 10:45.

At 10:50, I got the chicken, with a $5 discount for waiting so patiently.  I scurried through checkout and out to the car, calling the office to let people know that I was just leaving and on my way back as quickly as possible.  I got to the parking lot, piled everything onto the luggage carrier I brought from home (wonderful piece of engineering!!) and started my trek back to the office, trying to figure out how I was going to manage 6 pounds of chicken, 36 cans of soda, 24 bottles of water, a gallon of sweet tea and a fruit tray up to the second floor of the building.

Fortunately, I met the cavalry on their way to find me.  Two gentlemen from my department caught up with me halfway there and took over the carrying.  We met up with a third gentleman who helped carry the other side of the luggage carrier up the stairs.  We made it to the lunch only about 10 minutes late.

And lunch was fantastic!  It had an awkward start because we talk about work so much, it takes a while to get loosened up enough to just chatter about other things.  But we ended up enjoying each other’s company for quite some time.  We broke it up only because we had to clean up the room so the people coming in for their meeting would have space.

So we cleaned up, pilled massive amounts of leftovers near the coffeepot for grazing over the rest of the day, and I sat at my desk for a couple minutes to prepare for my next event.  And make an emergency call to facility services to ask them to check on how we blew out the power near the coffeepot.  (Turns out the power strip overloaded and there was a button to reset it that we didn’t see.)

I went back out to my car and drove to another building in the company about 10 minutes away (again with 5 more minutes to get me from my desk to my car) and helped a department do their first official 5S audit.  5S can be intimidating to people when they’re just getting it started, so we try to help them along as much as possible.  So I sat down with them and talked about how auditing goes and the different ways it could work out, looked at their common areas and bulletin boards and then walked them through two audits so they could get familiar with the process.  Next month, they’ll do it on their own.  (By the way, this was SO MUCH FUN!)

By the time I left there, it was 3:15.  I needed to leave my desk at 3:30 in order to get to a doctor appointment on time, so instead of driving back to work, walking up to my desk, turning around and walking back out to my car, I called in, told them I’d be heading straight to the appointment, and I would try to swing by after that.  I got to my appointment a little early, but I appreciated the opportunity to sit still for a while.  And I got in about 15 minutes early for my exam.  And that went fine.  Nothing I care to talk about there, other than that she’s got cloth gowns and lap covers now and they’re so wonderful compared to those awful paper things.  I was actually quite comfortable sitting around waiting in that garb.

I got out of there slightly after 5:00, drove back to work, helped one of the other ladies get all the leftover leftovers (several had been diminished over the course of the afternoon or been taken home) stuffed into fridges or covered, grabbed a plate of leftover chicken for dinner, clocked off, and went home.

And I enjoyed a relaxing evening poking at my computer and not doing terribly much because I was so tired from all the running around all day.  It was a good day, I had a lot of fun, but it was tiring.