That was the worst week in a LONG, LONG time

I worked something like seventy hours last week, as best I can figure out.  Long calls coming in just before quitting time insured that I left the Empire late four days out of five, which meant that I was even later to IRS training than I should have been by anything from ten to thirty minutes every day.  And then I had to stay and listen to badly-taught classes (I find the night-shift training is, not to put too fine a point on it, slapdash), done very intermittently and with lots of waiting-around-in-between, until half past midnight.  After that I was allowed to go home and get what sleep I could, which generally meant four hours at best by the time I’d wound down enough to sleep.  I have one day of full-time training at IRS left—Monday—and then I can change to the six-to-ten work shift that will last either until the season ends or until I can’t stand it any more and have to quit.  (Or until the month that I can’t rearrange my schedule at the Empire and have to quit IRS as a result.  That might happen as early as next week, since the Empire scheduled me in February for a four-day work week that begins at 10:15 and ends at 9:15.  Their insistence on continual change and upsetting the fruit basket clashes directly with IRS’s insistence on regularity and predictability, and I’m caught trying to reconcile the two.)

Working like that meant that I didn’t do anything pleasant or fun all week.  I got up at five-thirty, drove to work, went online at 7:15 and stayed there until 4:30 or so, fought I-35 for thirty miles through the downtown traffic mess, dashed in to IRS late, tried to figure out where we were and what was going on, failed to get much practice, found that much of what I knew last year has been revised so extensively I have to unlearn it all for this season, eventually dragged home—for the privilege of doing it again the next day.  I didn’t see M or T awake all week, and most nights L was a lump in bed as well.  I was so exhausted I slept away half the weekend, and did almost none any of the things I needed to have done.

I didn’t get a thing done yesterday.  I slept until after eleven, and then L, M and I took the afternoon and evening off to go to the Austin Friends of Traditional Music’s annual Midwinter Festival; T was out of town.  The only task I accomplished today was changing Piet’s spark plugs, and even that wasn’t all I meant to do with him.  But the other things I need to do right now are to replace the oxygen sensor, which will require jackstands I don’t have so I can get under him and reach the inaccessible place where the oxygen sensor lives, and replace the AIR return pipe, which will require ordering an awkward (and probably expensive) part from the dealer and then waiting for it to get here, so I can try to tear that apart.  I’ve also got to find out what the EGR trouble code in his computer means, so I know what I’ve got to fix there.  AND he’s developed some kind of oil leak which, besides covering the oil pan with a greasy film, is dripping down onto the exhaust stack and making a smoke and a smell.  Thank heavens the stack isn’t quite hot enough to ignite the oil.

No matter what, I can’t envision a way to get ahead of the game again from where I am.  It seems as though all I’ve done, and all I will ever do, is plod the treadmill from now until forever.

Mr. Science allies with Asmodeus in the chicken enchilada plate.  Fnord.