Tied Up At Work

This was supposed to be an easy week and I was supposed to be focusing on getting my symposium presentation all finished by the Friday deadline. I was, in fact, hoping to get the bulk of it done today. But from my meeting with the Data Analytics team in the morning, it all of a sudden turned into "reports" day, which is not something I had to deal with BEFORE I took over the Data team. Now all of a sudden with this Covid vaccine reporting thing, and with Emma being in charge of the reporting, I am feeling some tension from her "pushy" nature. I mean I respect she has a job to do and reports to send, just that my ego gets pushed and tested when I deal with her. Sometimes. It's really no different than Marina I remind myself. Marina tends to check my numbers too, but she is usually right. So I've gotten used to it. And since mostly right I tend to think of it like she's doing me a favor and helping me by checking my work. Emma, on the other hand, has always been pushy from Day 1. And when she is at her pushiest, it's my ego that gets activated and makes me want to push back. It isn't just an annoyance like Marina, it feels personal. Of course I know it isn't and so it's on me to work on my reaction. It's like a program, no different than the stuff I feel that comes with interaction with Lisa. Anyway, despite getting repeatedly stuck doing scheduling numbers more than once, and then at the same time trying to match numbers up with Shilpa so she can verify the PowerBI stuff which is supposed to have the same exact numbers, And so with all that going on, it's no surprise I never did get to my presentation. I did manage to do a stop-and-smell-the roses moment, which resulted in the nice shot of the blue sky, the sun framed by the trees in front of my apartment. And I did manage to work Johnnie through his classes, even got him to karate class in the afternoon. Just have a look at his uppercut in the picture. He's learning alright. And he's actually looking good doing so. I all will admit that focusing on Johnnie's stuff helps me deal better with all the stuff at work, negative or otherwise. And before i knew it the day had pretty much slipped by and it was already time to head on to Panda Express Westwood to get Johnnie's dinner. And tonight of course, was bath night for Claire the dog and see we were all looking forward to that. She was starting to smell like a .... dog LOL LOL. And so we all had dinner, we all chilled for a bit and then in to the bath with the dog Johnnie went. The thing with Johnnie and the dog is that he is not very gentle with her and I would love to teach him control. Heck he gets rough with me too now. But with Claire, I get concerned. He's actually in play mode most of the time, he just needs to be reminded to play gentle is all. And so in the shower, when Claire does NOT really want to get wet, it's like we forcibly keep her there and that makes me feel bad. And so I tried to get it over with as fast as I could, keeping it under 10 minutes or so and still make sure she gets a pretty good soap scrubbing. And when it was all over, and she got semi-dried up she smelled REALLY REALLY good. She has so much hair that it actually takes a while to get her fully dried up, at least without using a hair dryer. Aww just look at that face in the picture all covered with not-quite-dry hair. Still, in the process of drying her up right there on my lap, and while Johnnie was otherwise pre-occupied with the Octonauts after the bath, I actually got started with my presentation slides. That was a surprise. It was like I got a creative nudge and started to compile all kinds of cybersecurity articles that would help me synthesize the ideas I wanted to present. I couldn't explain it other than I actually knew what I wanted to say and that I had already had a cohesive format with a previous presentation I did on the same subject from a year ago. And so with the dog on my lap I actually FINISHED an outline of the presentation. It needed updated content obviously and as with everything that is a formal presentation, I really need to pay attention to format and keeping the thing spot on on an aesthetic level. I feel like I could have kept on working and gotten the biggest chunk of the presentation done, but I did  remind myself that I had the entire day tomorrow to knock it out and finish it, which would allow me to get Johnnie to bed in the usual time. He was already in his brand new pajamas by 9 PM after all, since he himself had to change from the dog bath session. Hey I am GOOD with going to bed early tonight.