Friday, July 16, 2004

When you're drunk, you really do call people more...

It's late. It's 11:24 p.m., and I'm writing from my futon. My jammies are on, I have a bag of wasabi potato chips by my side, and I'm drunk. Not the overly drunk kind of drunk, where the room takes a few seconds to catch up with your eyes, and you know inside your head that you're drunk and just want to be undrunk. This is the kind of drunk where you're still teetering on the edge of control. You still have all or most of your faculties, especially since there's no operation of large motorized vehicles involed.
 
As I sit here, South Park reruns are playing on the TV, but I'm only halfway watching them. I called Luke earlier, because they played the episode where "they took our joooooobs!" A large bug just crawled across my table. I should squish him, but I'm feeling benevolent. My dog is panting at my feet, even though it's not that hot. I'm drunk on Moscato d'Asti (from the tasting I attended at Barriques earlier tonight) and the bottle of Riscal Tempranillo I opened when I got home.
 
Normally, I wouldn't be in such a mood to drink, but I just got done with my first week of on-call at work, and I'm also just hours away from taking off on a weekend trip to Appleton with Ron and Roy, and heaven knows I'd better be in prime drinking form with those two.
 
My first week of on-call was less stressful than I'd anticipated, but, then again, I had a lot of help. When you're on-call, you're the first line of defense for Help Desk tickets, which means your inbox gets filled up with emails that say "Service Call #222657 has been assigned to you," and you have to open it up and begin the treasure hunt that is IT troubleshooting. Most of the time, I find myself sidling up to coworkers I know have the answers, and asking them for help. Some would say it'd be better for me to just tough it out and find the answer on my own, but that just seems like a waste of time to me. I'm a mimic, not a trailblazer. If someone else has done it before, why should I reinvent the wheel? How does that save anyone time?
 
Anyways, my first week of on-call was not bad, but, for some reason, the gods of Help Desk issues decided that this afternoon would be a good time to open the floodgates. I mean, who has problems on a Friday afternoon? Evidently several people at Promega. And, of course, most of the people I needed to talk to to help me troubleshoot these issues were either on vacation or out sick, or just taking a nice July Friday afternoon off. So, when I left, I still had four tickets in my name, but I guess that's the way it goes. Fuck it.
 
So, I'm sure you're wondering when I'm going to get to the point. Namely, when am I going to bring this post full-circle to talk about my subject line? The answer is, right now. I have discovered that the greatest cure for not calling your family members is to get rip-roaring drunk. Once you do that, and you have that lovely petroleum-jelly-smeared-over-my-consciousness feeling, you develop an itchy dialing finger. Suddenly, you must call EVERYBODY. Granted, I've shown restraint, and have only called Aaron and Luke. However, I've decided just now to call Jessica. We'll see if she answers.............nope, no answer. I'm 0 for 3. Everyone's busy.
 
Damn. Gotta pee. Back later.