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

Monday is my agency’s return-to-office full time day, for those of us not in the union (which none of the attorneys are here, because we’re too small a shop to differentiate practice areas). That made today was the last full telework day for a while, so of course I stayed home. I do have some random leave scheduled for the end of the week after next, so I’ll get a partial break from eight and a half hours/five days a week, but this is the first time we’ve all been back in since March of 2020. And even then this agency had a fairly robust telework policy so it was normal for people to work from home a couple days a week.

The folks with kids or elder care stuff are the most stressed. I’m just concerned about how crowded Metro is going to get; I haven’t had to Metro this distance to work regularly in decades (I lived in walking distance of my last job). Fully plan to keep masking on Metro, too, because I don’t trust people not to head to work while sick. And the work computer stays in the office unless I arrange for the very limited situational telework that’s available, so I’ll get to go to a smaller commuting bag after Monday.

Otherwise there were no new directives from on high, so we actually got to catch up on odds and ends today.

So much chaos at work. Three attorneys, maybe four, of twenty, took the early out, including our deputy. That I know of so far. The deputy isn’t widely known in the office yet, but she told me this afternoon before we left work, and next week will be her last. Two support staff took it, of eight. So not quite a quarter of the office will be gone soon at this point.

Cancelled the travel authorization for the training, and the agency should get a partial refund of the costs.

And then last night 47 killed off a forty-five-ish year old program that is designed to attract people who are getting graduate degrees into federal service, with an eye toward training them for management. It’s the latest version of the program I came into the gubm’nt under back in the late nineties, and its dissolution is another ‘salt the earth’ tactic to poison the well of civil service so it’ll be that much harder for future administrations to put things back together.

As maybe sort of expected the (truncated) training I was to go to next week has now been canceled completely, with partial refunds going back to the agency. Wasn’t entirely surprised about it, but it’s still sad and annoying as fuck.

Spent yesterday and today working on that ‘justify your job’ exercise, which was extra fun because instead of having us individually work on portions and submit them for adding to one document, they had us all putting the things into one big shared document. Hilarity ensued. Not. If you’ve never had the pleasure, 20-odd people trying to edit one document in real time is a nightmare of font changes, jumping pages, and formatting whiplash. So when we got it this morning 2/3 of the things I put in yesterday were missing. Added them back in, only for them to give us a new version with all of the missing items mysteriously back in. Ah, bureaucracy.

A bit better today, for having named the feeling bummed out yesterday. Doing extended periods of couch stretch before bed seems to be helping the knee, and we got one big project completely done today, and another partially done, which also helped.

Then came the expected firing of probationary employees today, which was apparently an emotional mess in the building (understandably!). Folks gathered to applaud the folks who were fired as they left. I’m glad I was teleworking; I would’ve broken down. As I reminded a friend, the chaos and the cruelty are part of the point, to keep the public off balance so they can’t effectively push back. It will be interesting to see what reaction gets wrung out of Congress when they go after Defense, which they are reportedly doing soon.

Feeling drained this evening, a combination of diet, knee, and work. On the diet front I’m trying some new enzymes that are supposed to help with digestion of FODMAPs, and so far it’s early so it’s a little hit and miss, but I’m giving it a try anyway. If it works long term that means more options for eating without digestive discomfort, but for now it’s not quite there (so my gut is feeling off). On the knee front, just feeling annoyed at it in general.

On the work front, the latest exercise is a “find all the legal/regulatory requirements that directly tie to your job as an attorney for the agency” as we attempt to fend off cuts in the legal office (after at least two attorneys took the early out offer). The other two attorneys on my little mini-team are stressed as fuck right now, and that’s bleeding over. I think we have ways to justify all of us, but in the meantime we’re all a bit on edge, understandably.

Walked to a local restaurant for dinner, which was apparently a mistake. Knee is not happy with me now, which means it’s finally time to reconnect with the orthopedist. Ugh. Hopefully it’ll be something more helpful than ‘go do more PT’.

Steadily making my way through Dishonored 2, playing as Corvo. Three missions down.

Latest stupidity at work is trying to pin our exact job duties to particular statutes. Unlike most agencies we’re so small that we do not, by law, have a ‘general counsel’ (there’s a singular reference to our specific office in law, but it’s not an establishing statute). We should probably get that fixed the next time we look for changes to our organic legislation, but in the meantime we’re now having to justify our existence by pointing to all of the things we actually do that are called for in law. What a crock.

The husband and I went to see the last of the preview productions of Waitress up at Olney theater. Very solid production, excellent show. They have some lighting and sound cues to work on, but that’s the joy of going to a preview show – you get to see more of the sausage being made.

Quiet day otherwise. Lots of rain washing away the last batch of snow, though apparently we’re looking at another possible snow storm mid-week again. If the amounts currently forecasted come to pass it’ll mean another snow day or two. Such a shame (he said, sarcastically).

After work the husband and I went to see the newest Marvel film, Captain America: Brave New World. We enjoyed it, was probably a mid-tier Marvel movie (not the best, not the worst). For a couple sitting three rows back from us it was a very expensive nap – they both snored, loudly, through the vast majority of the movie. ‘Twas all we could do not to break out in giggles when it got particularly bad. Thankfully it wasn’t quite enough to drown out the movie itself.

Finally downloaded the Signal app for my personal phone. There are a lot of rumors that the new crew is installing key loggers and automatic transcription for all video meetings on our work devices, with monitoring to see if anyone is being ‘disloyal’ to 47. An incredible breach of several laws and national security requirements, if true. But after the firings of so many probationary employees this week it’s better safe than sorry.

Pulled back on a couple of subscriptions today, just trying to take stock of spending and rein some in.

Last virtual meeting today with my small group from the training class. Hopefully we’ll see most of each other at the end of February. A couple might not make it because of 47’s order or other budget woes, but most should be there. What a mess. Also apparently now I need to do a lot of reading before we get there so we have more time to talk and need less reading time. Whee! Good thing I just finished the last big fantasy novel I was working on (the latest Brandon Sanderson tome).

Well, snow telework day. It finally started mid afternoon and we’re up to a couple of inches outside now. Lots of leftovers for lunch (ordered pizza last night), and various and sundry work messes to clean up as we attempt to normalize what 47 is doing.

It’s unclear if I’ll be attending the second half of the training course at the end of this month because he issued an order dissolving the training institute that’s putting on the training. Rumor is that as part of an orderly shutdown they’ll finish out the class that’s there now, and then have my class come down for our last two weeks (because we already paid them for the training last fall), at which point we’ll be the last ever class there. The whole point of the institute is to train federal employees in leadership skills, and as we know this team hates the idea of a profession, non-partisan civil service (because he just wants yes-men), so it makes some sick sense that they’d close one of the ways that we maintain that professional civil service. Depressing, really.