Best-laid plans gang aft agley

This last weekend I missed the Fire for the first time in years. I was pretty darn disappointed, though we managed to spend our time here in good ways. But as Friday night came closer I had to confront the reality of the situation: the engines couldna’ take the strain.

For the last two weeks, 2 of the early-shift typesetters have been absent from work: one on vacation, and one on family emergency. Doesn’t sound too bad, except I’m the only other one! For those 10 work days, my shifts ran from 10-12 hours apiece.

I kinda rate my combined mental, emotional, and physical energy levels as “main power”, “reserves”, and “emergency”. Reserves is a subjective 25% of capacity – enough to supply me comfortably for an hour’s drive home at 3am after a good party. Emergency is about 5-10% of capacity – if I expect to do anything useful in that state, adrenaline or caffeine should be involved (preferably both).

Well, I’ve been working on “reserves” since two Wednesdays ago, and all I was getting from a night’s sleep was back approximately to that 25%. After a 10-hour Friday shift, I was running at close to emergency levels again. Oh, technically I’m sure Rain and I could have made it to Blacksburg. We’re tough. But did I really want to attend an event with my friends while I operated in total zombie mode? No. That was more fun when I was 18… which was some time ago.

So, we stayed home, and did some cool things around Norfolk and Va. Beach, which I’ll talk about later. Kind of a mixed blessing, to be honest; while we had enough fun to make up somewhat for missing our friends, it was still energy-consuming fun. Even by Sunday evening, I didn’t feel recharged much past 30% or so.

Last night, OTOH, I came home from the shift, nuked some very tasty leftovers, and plunked myself down in front of WoW for about four hours. Say what you want about gaming too much, this was 4 hours of physical rest, endorphin production, and frankly not too much challenge at any point. This morning? Why, I may be up to 40-50%.

Just in time to go to work…

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2 Comments

  • You’re not the only one who missed the Fire. I heard a few weeks ago that it *might* be this past weekend, but never anything concrete.

    There will be other gatherings, I’m sure.

  • rattrap says:

    Likewise.

    I even tried to contact Black Dave and find out, but never got a reply. Of course, I don’t even know if the address I have (darkmoon, etc, etc) is still valid. For now, I’ll just assume I’m persona non grata…

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