unintended unpaid leave

this past week has been... let's start backwards. i'm sad and angry right now, it was a fantastic weekend (that included spending time with our cousins and bringing home a massive part of their lego collection) and then mr smear did something awful a few hours ago that just turned everything sour and unpleasant, so this probably isn't the best time to put everything down but hey, if not now...

anyway. the lockdown level shifted down to three, and on monday morning our domestic worker (i'm tired of saying cleaning lady / nanny) was finally able to return to work. the relief was palpable, it made such a huge difference to our week and a lot of stress just immediately and dramatically lifted.

that was followed by massive relief on tuesday morning when i discovered that the aspects of our passport renewal and police clearance stories that were caught up in a catch-22 weren't actually problems after all, just poorly explained.

those two things set the tone for the week, and i was so relieved that i just lost all focus for work. i think* i got about fifteen hours of paid work done in total, the rest of the time was spent taking care of random things or working obsessively on my aws cdk/sam project. by "obsessively", i've lost a couple of nights' sleep over it...

* i record my hours meticulously, but i can't be bothered to check right now.

i realized yesterday that the new internet hardware hadn't arrived, then discovered that there was some issue with my documentation and they hadn't bothered to contact me about it. if they can't make an effort for a new customer, i don't want to know what they're like to deal with when there's a problem, so i've told them to cancel everything and not waste my time.

why is this world so full of shitty service? appropriately, i'm typing this into blogger's updated interface and they've manage to make it SO much worse than it was before.

speaking of which, i had an interesting discussion with our temple chairman this week about the technology we use, as a result of which i've come up with some ideas for a vastly cheaper system that i can build myself and then productize. also, i made a mailgun web interface for bulk mailing, which i feel takes me full circle to the first paid project i ever did. it's been a productive week for things that aren't bringing in money, at least :P

finally: racism politics. black lives matter. it's been hard not to get too caught up in everything that's going on, i've learned some startling facts about the history of american racism. i've also had some interesting conversations about our local travesties, which are racist in the opposite direction (against the white minority) while at the same time managing to hurt the black majority even more. at least i've learned that there are lots of people having similar conversations, but unless we start having these conversations as a community i'm not certain the talking will turn to walking.

i'm totally over this weekend, i'm frustrated and exhausted and i'm not feeling ready to kick into gear tomorrow but i'm going to have to make up a LOT of hours this week and i've no idea how i'm going to manage that.