Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

Another day, more back and forth with 47’s crew not knowing how to do what they want to do. Oh well. Full employment for me. For now. And no, there’s no way in hell I’m taking their fake ‘quit now, work from home for 9 months’ BS.

Dentist this evening. Thankfully he wasn’t talking down to me this time (I had a whole ‘dude, learn to code switch between clients’ talk ready to go, though). Three months and I’m back to do some sort of tooth repair that sounds unpleasant. Whee.

The husband met me after the dentist and we had dinner over in Dupont, which was nice. I miss the walk home together that we used to have when we lived in Southwest DC; that was a nice way to have some time to talk and bond over our days before the inevitable dinner negotiation. We don’t get that as much now, sometimes in the car from the Metro, but a 10 minute car ride is not the same as a 25 minute walk.

The administration’s continued parade of ‘let’s keep everyone off balance’ continued apace today. Full employment for moi, so far. Though I did determine that after some of their actions at higher profile agencies we are not going to paint a target on my office by trying to ‘out lawyer’ their stuff (so long as it’s actually legal, and so far it has been, even if it’s been … odd).

The level of angst in the office is a mess. Every other conversation seems to start with, at minimum, a ‘wtf’ look, if not an outright blurting out of the actual phrase. And it’s nigh impossible to keep up with it all, which is, of course, their intent. Baffle ’em with bullshit, as the saying goes. Nothing like some chaos to keep everyone busy.

Was standing at my desk for most of the day (which means a lot of movement in my case; I use a stool to brace my feet, hips, and butt at various times throughout the day), from 9 to 5:30, with a couple breaks, but otherwise in solid meetings all day dealing with 47’s directives. Long ass day.

We got the return-to-office date of late February for those of us not in the union’s bargaining unit (which as an attorney at the small agency I am not). I’ll be in training that week and the next, so I’ll miss the initial excitement, but come March I’ll be back in the office full time, no telework (save, perhaps, some situational stuff, the boundaries of which remain to be seen). Barbaric. LOL I dread seeing what this is going to do to rush hours in and around DC, both in cars and on the Metro system. At my previous agency they have less than half the available desks for all of their attorneys if they were all to return tomorrow. We have 19 offices (and four cubicles) for 28 people. I’m glad I’m not on the space planning group for the agency.

First purposeful walk on the treadmill after the cold. Bugged the hell out of my knee afterward, but some time spent beating up my shins and quads with a foam roller helped tremendously with that. As did ibuprofen. Here’s hoping there’s not a repeat cold any time soon; I’m tired of not breathing clearly.

The husband and I had lunch with friends to plan a trip to Boston this fall. Then I made some good progress on the next book for my leadership class while the husband was out a movie with another friend. He’s more the social butterfly these days, which is a good thing. Monitored some work stuff that’s pending for implementation tomorrow. I don’t know that 47’s team will appreciate how much people do at odd times because we have the equipment at home because of teleworking, and how much that capability will dry up because many people won’t bother taking laptops home just to haul them back to the office the next day. Oh well.

Well, 47 is definitely keeping the news companies busy. Haven’t heard whether my small agency’s IG was one of the ones fired last night. I doubt it, we’re too small for that, but one never knows how far his attention will stray to.

Lots of texting with colleagues today. Consensus with the lawyers is that he’s doing this as a way to generate a lawsuit that will eventually get SCOTUS to say that laws which purport to limit his authority to fire people in the executive branch are unconstitutional. Such a decision wouldn’t come for years, but it’s definitely within the sights of the folks he surrounds himself with.

What a time to be alive.

No drugs today. Yay. But stuck in all day meetings which were more like mini-let’s-not-panic sessions. I think half of my job right now is calming people down to get them to focus. Eventually I sent some notes to the leaders of the committee after I had some quiet time by myself to think about what we were trying to accomplish and laid out my thoughts in a doc to share.

Then a senior manager who was in the meeting with me all day had a related legal question and instead of emailing me, the guy who had been answering legal questions all day for the group including him, he emailed the general counsel directly. Who, of course, then had to turn around and send it to me to give her the answer. Dork. After everything else that was the “I’m out!” moment of the afternoon. Not really, but I seriously wanted to smack him upside the head.

The day was very busy at work, trying to calm people down, and trying to keep up with demands for information. The calming part is the harder bit, especially as we discover things where other offices have fucked up paperwork that can affect application of 47’s memoranda. Ugh.

Quiet night, despite that. Watching a Continuing Legal Education class to maintain my license. Urban Farming and the Law. Pretty interesting, actually.

I’ve been telling people at work to just focus on the small tasks they have to get done and not try to encompass the entirety of all the new orders coming down the pike; that way lies madness. Like trying to follow the entirety of social media, it’s just not possible.

Still sick. Ran to the pharmacy for refills of various cold medications that I’ve almost run through. Napped for a bit right after lunch. Comics and dinner out, then reading and serving as a cat bed when we got back to the house.

After sort of being in remission the head cold the husband gave me last week came roaring back this morning. That or it’s a new things on top of the other thing from someone at one of the rest areas on the way home. Who knows. Still managed to straighten some things in my office and catch up on a few comics, but otherwise was pretty much a lump for most of the day. Back to the job tomorrow, but I may use the excuse of not wanting to infect my coworkers to telework the rest of this week.

Whole lot of changes coming down the pike at work, as expected. I suspect some of them will end up being pulled back as impossible to implement from a practical standpoint, but others will end up creating a lot of work. Eh, elections have consequences and all that. I don’t anticipate that it’ll be life changing for my little agency, just a lot of busy work changing language around.

The drive down wasn’t too bad, just shy of nine hours. The various highway departments from Massachusetts down to Maryland did a good job of clearing the snow and keeping the roads free of hazards, which made the drive down pretty good. Not much use of cruise control this time because there was more traffic, but at least the roads were in good shape.

Cold as hell down here at home, and due to get colder. It’s currently 15F (-9.4C), and getting down to 12F (-11C) tonight. High of 20F (-6.7C) on Wednesday when I might or might not have to commute in (I’m scheduled for Thursday, but 47’s workforce orders might change that; hopefully not that quickly, though). Planning to get up in time to drive the husband to the Metro in any case so he has that much less time out in that mess.