Working from home is great, but when you’ve got clingy cats, it can prove challenging – especially when they demand attention right in the middle of an MS Teams call.
Halfway through last week’s Communications team meeting, Shirley hopped onto my desk and began pacing back and forth, nudging my hand, looking for skritches. When I failed to oblige, she plopped down directly between me and the camera, fixing me with a hard stare.
“Looks like someone wants attention,” my boss said.
“Well, she’s barking up the wrong tree,” I replied, but of course she wasn’t doing any barking, up trees or otherwise, being a cat and all. Nevertheless, I was a busy guy attending to important business, so I studiously ignored her. Until she started pawing at my sweater and then, I ain’t kitten, burrowed inside there. The whole thing caught on camera, of course.
By that point any pretense of professionalism had been cast aside ’cause I could not stop laughing. Neither could the rest of the team.
Now I know how kangaroos feel.
The tradeoff to living in a small Midwest town is a lack of entertainment, but even Fort Atkinson has a bowling alley – and that’s where we found ourselves (me and Tara, not me and Shirley) on Saturday. It was breezy and in the teens, too cold to do anything outside, so we figured the three Bs — bowling, billiards, and booze – would prove to be a perfect diversion.
We were not wrong.
I was super into bowling in high school and college. In fact, I still have my own ball and shoes – both of which were purchased in 1987. Amazingly, they’re still in great condition. Then again, they don’t get a lot of use these days. We bowl maybe once a year…not because we don’t enjoy it, but rather, we just don’t have a lot of spare time.
(Ha-ha, bowling humor.)
But also, I basically suck. That’s what happens when you only bowl once a year. Which was why scoring a 162 in my second game felt like a real coup. Back when I was a decent bowler, that was right around my average. Nowadays, not so much. But I kept my cool and acted like this was no big deal, just another Saturday on the lanes, picking up strikes and spares willy-nilly. It’s not like I was dancing around gleefully or anything.
“Quit dancing around gleefully!” Tara said.
OK, fine. Maybe I was, just a little. But this was my best game in years. I felt that warranted a little jig in my snazzy ’80s bowling shoes.
When I reached the 10th frame and rolled back-to-back strikes, I had a rapt audience in the group on the adjoining lane. “Turkey, turkey!” they began chanting. If I knew nothing about bowling I would have been offended, but of course they were hoping to see a third consecutive strike. Alas, I came up one pin short, but it was still high on the Thrill Meter.
Tara had a pretty good game too, but she’s better at sinking eight balls in corner pockets than knocking down pins, so after three games of bowling we grabbed a pool table and settled in. Loaded up the Touch Tunes jukebox with a bunch of great songs to get rid of the Justin Bieber crap that was assaulting our eardrums and got to work.
Let’s just say Tara is a little better at billiards than me. A little, as in, a lot. I wasn’t even holding the cue stick properly, and when I attempted to break, the cue ball went skipping across the table like a stone on a pond.
“Dribbling is for basketball, babe,” my wisecracking wife said.
“That was practice,” I replied. “I got this.”
My next shot was so ineffective, I only managed to gently caress the balls (that’s what she said) rather than disperse them across the table, so Tara jumped in and gave me an impromptu lesson on form and technique. Which helped, though I still managed to lose two out of three, my lone victory coming only because she scratched.
But who cares. We were warm, enjoying tasty beverages, and rockin’ out to some great tunes. It felt like a perfect Saturday. And then the Broncos beat the Chiefs to advance to the playoffs for the first time in eight years, which felt like a perfect Sunday.
Then Monday had to go and happen.
Not that anything bad happened on Monday; it’s just the Rodney Dangerfield of the work week. Plus, I had to go into the office for the first time in nearly three weeks. I know, I know…
It wasn’t even my regularly scheduled in-person day, but I had to clear out and clean up my cubicle as we are officially transitioning to flexible work spaces. The rule is, anyone in the office three or more days a week gets a permanent desk. Otherwise, it’s first-come, first-served. I’m on the sixth floor but there are flex spaces on the top three floors, so I can actually work anywhere that’s open.
Since several of you asked, the space consolidation is happening because so many State of Wisconsin employees are working hybrid. Rather than pay for a bunch of half-empty office buildings, they’re moving people into other buildings to fill them up. CheeseGov is a newer building that is very centrally located, so ours won’t be shut down. They will then either not renew the lease or sell the building. It makes sense from a financial standpoint.
We have half-sized filing cabinets on wheels in which to lock up keyboards, mouses (mice?), headphones, and any personal belongings we want to leave there.
“So you have to roll your shit across the office to a desk?” my friend Ashley asked.
That’s exactly right. It’s not ideal, but it’s also not bad enough to make me want to add another 90-minute roundtrip commute to my work schedule when I can simply walk downstairs, in my pajamas if I want to (and have, truth be told).
Even if my cat crashes the occasional virtual meeting…
Mark My Words 
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