The Saturday Morning Post - A couple of weeks in, a couple of weeks out

We are a couple of weeks into the year already.  As they say, time flies when we are having fun.  The older we get the faster time seems to spin, my boss describes time as we age as being like the toilet paper roll spinning faster as it approaches the end of the roll. 

I have been busy.  We are wrapping up a major year long research project in the office, trying to make sense of 40 plus interviews and over 300 survey responses (68 pages, single-spaced of survey narrative answers.) I am doing a reader report on the manuscript for a book - well written and needed. I am finishing up a book review.  

We have a board meeting coming up.  My boss's last board meeting. We are a couple of weeks into the year, and a couple of weeks out from me taking over.  My workload has gone up, my email volume has gone up.  We are scrambling with introductions, I am shadowing him on as many calls and meetings as I can.  His immediate boss, soon to be my immediate boss is already starting to ask what I think.  I answered one of those recently with I don't know, I need to find out, but I don't feel comfortable doing that until after my boss retires.  I have referred to the time after the first of February as AC short for After Charlie. 

A week after I move into the managers chair, we have a new person joining our staff (my replacement.) I have been coordinating getting her set up to start, computers, phones and such.  The last time someone started, the IT department met her at the door, opened the door just wide enough for the box to fit through and handed her a computer and told her to call when she got it working.  We need to do better. I made sure the work order to IT included everything we can supply. 

Life is good at home.  With COVID working its way through the Greek alphabet, we have been mostly staying home, or walking where there are not many people. 

I have another camera new lens I look forward to learning use.  For Christmas I went very wide 180 degrees plus, this one is less than 5 degrees angle of view, the longest I have ever used. And totally manual.  I know how to do that, but it has been a while.  

I had new eyeglasses made over the holidays.  I had medical flexible spending money that I needed to spend before the end of December or lose it.  I had my head examined (well my eyes are in my head.) New progressive bifocals in Polo frames, distance only television watching glasses in Prada frames, and progressive sunglasses with mirrored lenses made.  Yes, three pairs of new eyeglasses.  

I had insurance benefits and a lot of flex dollars I needed to spend or forfeit (I had budgeted for an MRI on my spine last year, that still has not been scheduled and set aside extra for the out of pocket cost on that - typically about $800.)   

The optician started to describe various lens options and costs, and I said "the one's I have are varilux and I have been really happy with those." He said those are the best, but they are more expensive. He showed me the price, and I said, okay, now we need to spend more, let's do another pair (hence the TV watching glasses in the Prada frames.) I think he was a little surprised by someone wanting to spend more, not less. It was kind of fun to go shopping and not worry about the prices, what it would be like to be rich. 

A part of me is offended by a system that encourages spending more than is needed, because it is use it or lose it money.  But that is how Congress and the tax code set that up.