Catching Up
Dec. 5th, 2009 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreI have again signed up for Holidailies, so you can look forward (or not) to daily posts from 7 December through 6 January.
It's always a bit tricky catching up after a vacation, even a relatively short one. It didn't help that work offered up two crises right away. One involved rewriting the response to an investigation so that what the program office gave us actually answered the question. That's something I can do almost in my sleep, except that I had to smooth things over with the person who wrote the original response. The other was thornier politically, but it was the sort of situation in which the right thing for me to do is mostly keeping my mouth shut. (Which is not always easy.) I do admit to being amused when a senior government official (a man who has a well-deserved reputation as a character) resorts to quoting Monty Python.
The week culminated in the annual group luncheon at Maggiano's (which includes various alumni, who have been known to fly in from various far-flung places). It's basically way too much mediocre food, but one goes to events like this out of social obligation, not culinary enjoyment. We'll have a pot-luck at the office on the 16th and one at my corporate office on the 21st, which will be less formal (but no less obligatory).
Catching up at home is not any easier, either. I have finished unpacking, but my study looks even more like a hurricane just blew through it than usual. Oh, well, the things that have to get done will.
It's always a bit tricky catching up after a vacation, even a relatively short one. It didn't help that work offered up two crises right away. One involved rewriting the response to an investigation so that what the program office gave us actually answered the question. That's something I can do almost in my sleep, except that I had to smooth things over with the person who wrote the original response. The other was thornier politically, but it was the sort of situation in which the right thing for me to do is mostly keeping my mouth shut. (Which is not always easy.) I do admit to being amused when a senior government official (a man who has a well-deserved reputation as a character) resorts to quoting Monty Python.
The week culminated in the annual group luncheon at Maggiano's (which includes various alumni, who have been known to fly in from various far-flung places). It's basically way too much mediocre food, but one goes to events like this out of social obligation, not culinary enjoyment. We'll have a pot-luck at the office on the 16th and one at my corporate office on the 21st, which will be less formal (but no less obligatory).
Catching up at home is not any easier, either. I have finished unpacking, but my study looks even more like a hurricane just blew through it than usual. Oh, well, the things that have to get done will.
