in between

[mellowtigger]

Minneapolis seems to be in the lull before a storm. Our weather prediction includes, "WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM NOON TODAY TO 9 AM CST MONDAY" (emphasis in the original, scroll down to bottom). I see snow falling outside my bedroom window right now. That's good. The forecast was rain first, followed by snow, which would cause terrible ice conditions on sidewalks and roads for everyone. Only-snow is much better for everyone. It's still 2.5 hours until that noon arrival time.

I'm currently in between shifts of work today. Most people at the university have 1.5 weeks away from work. I, however, work on an "essential" team, so we have a skeleton crew during that time. We were actually and truly closed only on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. I volunteered for shifts on Friday, Saturday, and today. If nobody volunteers, then somebody gets told to work, which is unpleasant stuff for the holidays, so... I volunteered on several shifts that were still empty.

I'm supposed to do an annual review of my Bingo 2025 card. I planned on it. I'm not sure that's going to happen. The thing about this job, where I'm constantly asked questions for which I don't know answers but have to find them on short notice, is that I don't have mental bandwidth to spare for other stuff after the work day has ended. I haven't done my annual tax review in a few years, for instance. It requires more thinking that my tired brain wants to avoid in favor of not-thinking to recover stamina.

I'll still do a Bingo 2026 card, though. I find it very useful to avoid stressful topics for a year. I'll continue that practice. Maybe I'll write more on that idea tomorrow.

Comments

[house_wren]

I saw the NWS forecast (6-10") and thought of you. Good luck!

[mellowtigger]

The first pass delivered a nice amount of snow but no rain/ice. The second round had less snow but included the dangerous stuff. Roads and sidewalks are a mess now, with crunchy/slippery stuff. People are noting on Reddit that even after a few days, the roads are still dangerous because they're so slippery. When I walked to a local store yesterday, I had to take gentle short steps at the intersections, because they were just a glassy slippery surface.

[house_wren]

I used to live somewhere that had milder winters. It would snow, then melt, then refreeze as ice. The power went out constantly. The roads became treacherous. When I moved north I was relieved to not live in such icy danger. But it's changed, and now icy days are more common.

May we not fall down!!

[rebeccmeister]

I was talking with a friend's husband recently at Thanksgiving, who is a municipal bus driver. THAT job is also incredibly demanding, in multiple dimensions all at once. Drivers have to be super alert, but they're also sitting the entire day, and have to be strategizing around extremely limited bathroom breaks, while also managing whatever customer service is necessary in the moment. This driver is only partway up the totem pole, so he gets a bit of say over which routes he's assigned to, but isn't eligible by seniority for the most favored routes. He apparently keeps winding up on a route that serves the drunk college kids who can't hold their liquor and wind up throwing up on the bus, what a joy.

Anyway, as with your work, I 100% sympathize with J not really having the bandwidth to do much of anything once he's off the clock. But I can also appreciate how it would become frustrating to feel like it just isn't possible to foresee a time when there will BE more bandwidth.

[mellowtigger]

Often when I ride the bus, I wonder about their bathroom breaks and pity them the inconvenience they must face. The training for this job is mostly about how to use available tools to search for answers. There's just no way to train us on answers, because there are too many possibilities. It will always be this way. Often, I feel like Sigourney Weaver's character in Galaxy Quest, where I'm just the user's interface to search engines, posing exactly the question they asked of me then relaying the answer back to the user. Even that process, however, requires a lot of prior knowledge, creative troubleshooting, and on-the-spot translation capabilities. You have to ask the right questions in the right way (of both user and search engine) and provide an answer that the user understands. It's mentally taxing. Basically, we're the municipal 311 information service for a city of 100,000 residents, and those residents get into all kinds of mischief. :D I rarely do computer troubleshooting like I thought I was being hired for.