Dinners, Get Togethers, Work...

Around the beginning of this month, I met a couple of friends for dinner. We found a really interesting Italian restaurant that has parts of Fiat cars in it. It was a really fun experience and we had a great meal out of it!

On the flip side of that coin, it continues to be super stressful at work. We've had a couple projects go live at work, and both got botched because the person leading the projects did not know who all needed to be involved and therefore not everyone was notified of changes to processes. 

On one of the projects, we estimated that we would be able to cut out 25-30 routes a week, which is exactly what we are doing. Now the transportation director is saying that he wasn't aware that was going to happen, and he now has drivers without loads...but he was the one who led that project and was told about the reduction in loads.

Cannot win for losing. Trying to get everything together correctly and still getting yelled at.  LOL

On another note, the managers of my department said that they want the supervisors to start leading the departmental meetings each week. They asked me to go first, which I did...even though I was very nervous. I decided to have some fun with it, and came up with nicknames for each f the supervisors, based on the areas that they supervise...We'll see how the other supervisors do.

Projects, Work, Oh My!

We have had a lot of projects going on lately at work. I'm not upset at that per se, but it seems like everyone is trying to get their ideas in of how it should work...and none of them are the right way of working correctly. Both have been delayed multiple times...now we are supposed to go live with one of the projects this coming weekend, and one more next week. No one really knows what is going on with either of the projects, so we will see, I guess. 

Bi-Polar Weather

We have just started February...within the last month, we have had 2 very cold spells (one of which included actual snowing in Houston), a tornado, and now weather in the 80's...with some areas of Texas getting into the 90's this past week. Heck, within the last year, we've also added to the above a second tornado, a spring storm that knocked out electricity for days, and a hurricane.

The weather is getting absolutely ridiculous!

New Year New Travels New Weather

Jeff and I are finishing up our long holiday work weeks. We've been working mostly straight through since the middle of December. We'll soon be finished up and back on our regular schedules at work, but after we take a few days vacation to recoup, relax, and decompress after the busyness of the season. 

We have booked a room at a casino resort in Louisiana, but are also aware of a polar vortex heading our way around the same timeframe. While we are looking forward to getting away for a bit, we are taking extra precaution to secure the house for the freezing weather. 

Not something I wanted to plan for while trying to recoup and relax, but we will survive! 

Tornados...Tornados Everywhere

Yesterday, my phone began blowing up with weather notifications. I picked up my phone to look, and two different apps were sending notifications to seek shelter. Like RIGHT NOW. That's unusual - as I'm normally only getting a notice from the pushes to my phone (i.e. the Amber Alerts). But the actual weather app was now also pinging my phone.

The notices said there was eminent (extreme) danger and to seek shelter immediately, as there was a tornado warning in effect. I've gotten tornado warnings before, but never to this degree. So, I did as any normal person from the Texas Panhandle does, and I went outside to look. 

Sure enough, just to the south of our house was a tornado. It was forming, but I could absolutely make out that it was a tornado. It was traveling northeast, so it ended up going just to the east of us, in an open field just past the houses to our left. I could see debris flying up as it was getting closer to us.

I ran inside and woke Jeff up (he sleeps during the day as he works overnight), and made sure he was dressed, and in the hallway for safety. We both looked outside once again, and the tornado had passed us at that point, and was continuing to go east. We found out that two different neighborhoods not far from us were hit pretty hard (Sunterra and Winward). 

The storm carrying this tornado continued on, and the tornado itself bounced around all the way to Beaumont, and possibly beyond! I stopped tracking it when the storm crossed over the Beaumont area.

This marks the second time this year that there has been a tornado very close to our neighborhood. In May 2024, there was a tornado in the fields across FM 529 from us, making its way to Cypress. That tornado did some major damage to some transformers and towers near the FedEx depot at Grand Parkway and West Rd. It also took down some of the power lines along FM 529, leaving our neighborhood without electricity for several days. 

Jeff and I went to stay with my mom and step dad after that one, because they still had power. It was crazy because we could follow the path of destruction of that tornado all the way from Bellville past our neighborhood in Katy!

Speaking of spiraling cones of wind, we also made it through Hurricane Beryl in June. The eye of the hurricane went directly over our neighborhood. We kept electricity through most of it! 

The only damage we took from the two tornados and the hurricane was needing some shingles repaired after the hurricane. We've been quite lucky this year!

Surviving the Holidays

We've made it through another Thanksgiving holiday. Things have been so crazy this month that I almost forgot that I had not yet posted anything. 

I'm still responsible for making all holiday delivery changes for the holiday week. However...it has changed up a bit this year compared to all the other years I have done the scheduling. Looking back, it has been my responsibility now for 5 years, going on 6 years this coming spring. 

Customer Service used to write the schedule for our customers to get deliveries during the holiday week (we are closed on Thanksgiving, so no billing, selection, or delivering on the actual holiday itself). So, customers who normally get either a delivery or they are due in with their orders on Thursdays have to bill and deliver another day. We would double check the projected changes behind them, and then they would implement the changes into the system.

Five years ago, it changed to me making the changes and implementing into the system. The person in Customer Service decided he did not want to continue to do it any longer, so he trained me how to do it. I would go through the spreadsheets (5 in total: Grocery/Frozen, Meat, Produce, DFW area Meat, and DFW area Produce) and make sure everything matched by store by billing, upload into the mainframe, and verify it was correct. Then I would work with Customer Service after they had sent the schedules to the stores to make edits to the schedule as needed.

Now, it is a bit different. Instead of having 5 separate spreadsheets, everything is populated in one spreadsheet. So, all the product types are grouped together by store, which makes it easier to go through. There is a separate team responsible for implementing the schedules into the system, so I have to be quicker in my edits so they have time to get it uploaded and verified. 

Besides all of that, now we have to get approvals from leadership in the warehouse, transportation, and sales before we can send the changes to the teams that maintains the schedules. And...if customer service says that the customers do not like their schedules...OH WELL. No changes are made - we can bill something off schedule, but we cannot edit their holiday schedule. 

As we are in the middle of Thanksgiving planning, I had to rush through and complete the Christmas schedule edits. We are now in the process of getting them approved by leadership so it can begin the upload process to the system. Never ending madness around here!

Get-aways and Holiday Madness...When Will It End?

Jeff and I really do enjoy getting away for the weekend. When I say weekend, I mean our days off. We don't have the typical weekends off like everyone else does. My work schedule is Wednesdays through Sundays, working during the day while Jeff works over night Thursdays nights through Monday mornings.

I do sometimes get bothered by the fact that we work opposing schedules. While most of the time I am ok by it - he's usually in bed asleep for most of the day so the house is quiet while I am working (I work remotely), but when planning a weekend get-away (there's that word again), we can't just leave Sunday afternoon or evening once we are off work and come back Tuesday afternoon or evening. Jeff gets up 2-3 hours after I am completing my work day to start getting ready for his work day. 

That means we can't head out until he gets home from his work day, which is between 6 and 8 am Monday morning. That leaves us with only Monday evening away wherever we are going before we need to head back home on Tuesday for me to prepare for work Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, Jeff doesn't have to start preparing to go back to work until Thursday morning!

We either have to do a short trip somewhere that could normally be done as a day trip, or I have to plan to take Wednesday off work to add that second day in for our weekend together. Occasionally Jeff will take Sunday night off work, so we can go ahead and head out when I am off work Sunday afternoon. I'd love to be able to leave out on a Sunday afternoon, coming back on a Tuesday. But I have a feeling that won't be happening until Jeff retires, or is able to find a less physical no longer outside job, like what he has now.

On that same note...holidays at the end of the year get crazy as well, and I'm looking forward to when Jeff no longer has to deal with that too. I can pretty much work from anywhere as long as I have good internet connection and my laptop. Jeff's job is not remote, and will never have that option to be. Coupled with the fact that the only other person who works overnights at his job takes off the last 2-3 weeks of the year...every year, leaving Jeff to have to cover both their shifts for 21+ days straight is getting really old.

There's no consideration for Jeff being able to take time off to spend with family during the holidays. He's spoken up about it the last couple of years at work, and slowly, other people on other shifts have taken some of the night shifts to give him some time off to be with his family. More needs to be done to correct that.