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

The rest of this week is going to be a mess of people in the federal government checking news and just generally being stressed out. The Fork offer closes tomorrow night, then it’s likely they’ll take action against probationary employees shortly thereafter. As for the rest of us? Supposedly reductions-in-force (layoffs) are coming to take agencies down by some arbitrary percentage. And who knows if they’ll actually follow the regulations that lay out the procedures there, since this team doesn’t seem to care about the law on anything else.

This looks and feels like a coup. I desperately hope I’m wrong here, that somehow we muddle through, but given the capture of all of the branches of government I’m increasingly worried that no one is going to stand up to him, at least not without massive upheaval. I would describe myself as a true believer in the American experiment. I’ve dedicated half my life to serving this country. And I’ve never felt so much angst about where the government is going.

Forgot I needed to go do emissions testing on my mini until someone at work mentioned the DMV. Zipped up to do that after work, passed, then back home again.

Court orders are stopping some of the payment stuff that 47’s people put in place, but we’re still cranking along on a good chunk of it. The nonsense happening at other agencies isn’t happening at mine (yet?), but that could just be that we’re too small and not in charge of anything this crew cares about. In the meantime his tariff and other dramas have actually given us time to try and catch up to the last two weeks. As one wag put it, January was a long year.

Made leave plans for our annual anniversary trip, and I’m prepping the travel orders for my training at the end of the month. Things aren’t normal, but you can’t stop living.

At least the car is now clean of new england snow removal chemicals, after sitting in the Metro parking lot in the rain all day. That’s one down side of having a garage – fewer chances for natural car washes. That said, I’ll take the garage any day, since it means the car is closer to a comfortable temperature when we get in, regardless of season. And it won’t get broken into out on the street.

Another exhausting day trying to meet deadlines, and trying to keep everything moving. Was just me, the GC and the Deputy GC in our suite today, though others were online. That situation won’t last much longer – another month and we’re all supposed to be back in full time. Oodles of rumors flying about over the supposed early out promises (which look quite fishy), and some good discussions with some of my older colleagues who are thinking of getting out sooner rather than later, reassuring them that they should do what’s right for them, and that the office & work will go on. Projecting calming rays.

Haircut and clothes shopping tomorrow. I’m in this odd in-between size for dress pants where one size is too tight, but the next size up is too loose. Very annoying. So I’m going to try some different brands, and if I can’t find anything that’s truly fits I guess I’m off to a dry cleaner for alterations, because I cannot take the too loose pants if I have to go in every day (and I won’t wear the too tight size). Ob-nox-ious. Joked yesterday that the return-to-office policy must’ve been partially pushed by professional work wear merchants to sell more clothes, because I imagine a lot of us will need new wardrobes after 5 years of work-from-home.

Practicing for the full return-to-office in the next month or so by leaving my work laptop at work (I went in today and I’m going in tomorrow as well). Feels weird not having it here at home. I have an iPhone for work stuff, which I do like having, mainly because it helps keep people from bugging me on my personal mobile phone, but it’s not the same, though it does let me keep up with email and Teams if I need to. But much like my paper journals, I don’t do work on personal devices, and I don’t do personal on work devices. The government gets enough of my life, I’m not giving them the whole kit and caboodle.

Stuck in way too much traffic getting to the comic shop post-work, because I keep forgetting that this one intersection of University Blvd near the U-MD campus is a total shit show because of purple line light rail construction. Why the city and/or state haven’t retooled the lights there to move things through is a complete mystery. If I actually lived in that city I’d be screaming at my mayor and council members daily until they got it fixed.

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.

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.