20:16 - 24.12.05
Saturnalia
The most constant comment from my staff yesterday was how messy their homes were and how much they still had to do in order to be ready for the big day tomorrow. In some ways working on Christmas Day has been a blessing. All the fuss for a few hours of fevered activity does not reflect the meaning of the day. Quiet contemplation and prayer suits me better. I resent the season being taken over and perverted by advertising and marketing gurus.
The morning yesterday was all about trying to tie up loose ends of tasks that haven't been completed because I've had to spend so much time dealing with things like the break-in and the database mess. Orderd more ballot boxes and such. Dealt with the candidate issues - nomination papers have to be fully assessed within 48 hours of receipt by our office. This one is short 9 legal signatures so I called to ask them to find more so I can verify their candidacy. Two days before Christmas is a tough time to get people interested in things political. I finally finished the redrawing of the polling maps but it was only after I spent a day and a half with my door shut so that I wouldn't have to deal with constant interruptions. Two of the males in office especially don't seem to accept that when I say I am busy I mean it. They both have jobs assigned to them that should keep them busy but instead they seemed to think their purpose was to stand and gawp at me. Worse yet was the nattering while I was fighting to concentrate on some very detailed and challenging work. Send those darn men back to the kitchen I think.
I worked a lot with the assistant tech and the one revision supervisor trying to discover and follow the paper trail that should exist to solve the mysteries of our missing data. Around noon it became so quiet that we sent most of the staff home. Just couldn't keep people busy and they were all eager to focus on holiday activities anyway. What is great about my people is that they will put the work ahead of many other priorities and all would have stayed if they had been asked for the extra time. Pretty impressive. We did need the cors supervisors to stay more for coverage if something occurred, but even they were mostly gone by the supper hour. That actually helped me a lot since less interruptions meant I could slowly clear off one task after another. One of the tasks that really bugged me was the contingency plan we are supposed to produce. Of the 14 pages of data we are supposed to enter or crunch about 10 pages aren't possible to address because we haven't finished the work that is required to get the numbers. I sent in a core plan that addresses the most likely scenarios that would cause us problems and said I would send the balance in when I could do better than just speculate. The local rep took unbrage and sent a snippy response with a further verbal threat on the phone later that this "resistance to rules" would show up on my personnel evaluation after the event. I said that given the attitutde and behaviour of the management at headquarters that I couldn't care less about their opinions since they were meaningless. There was a stunned silence at the other end of the phone. I sent the additional 10 pages with "I don't know" or the equivalent written across them. If other people want to comply that is their choice but I really don't have time to waste on inefficiency and wooly thinking at the management level, WE did more cross trining of in house staff yesterday as well and that was satisfying.
Thi morning woke up and thought things were odd. The music on the radio alarm lately has been jazz. The cats love it with a passion. They all sit or pose in very hep cat manner while preening themselves. Coffee house and beat poetry always come to mind, man. Can you dig it? Realized that what I was hearing today was in German and didn't resemble any thing I would normally expect to hear being used to Wagner and Rammstein myself. The other strange thing was that there was daylight peeking through the curtains. Now that coesn't happen at 7 in the am in winter. Checked the clock in the kitchen and realized that I had 7 minutes to get dressed and be ready to go out the door at my usual time. First though my youngest is quite sick so he has missed the last couple of days at work. I went to check that he was alright. He was deeply asleep but seemed fine. I ran back upstairs jumped in the shower soaped up and off then jumped into my clothes. I was at the door just after my assistant dorve up. Total preparation time was just under 10 minutes. Guess that someone was looking out for me.
Today was nearly dead. We did have a few electors in to vote but even with less than half a dozen people around at any point there were too many people for the amount of work available. My assistant and I spent a couple of hours in the morning planning the recruitment and training of the next layer of staff. Finished all the required work for the hospital balloting and the advance polls - our conversations peppered with phone calls to some of the people who need to be involved to clarify details. Dealt with the lease extension and did some work on the community outreach initiatives. Talked with the one candidate still missing signatures. He says he will bring them round tomorrow since we are open between noon and 4 pm. We received a memo from head office that stated that in more culturally diverse areas there was an expectation of a heavy voter turn out to cast special ballots since those communities don't necessarily recognize or celebrate Christmas. One of those electoral districts of course is ours. As long as the voters aren't brought in by the bus load as in the bad old days when political candidates tried to get headlines by overrunning a poll with a flood of their supporters, I can manage that. I looked at our traffic flow for the last three weekends and found that for all of the services we provide we had never had more than about half a dozen people arrive or call in for information. My assistant and I will be on site tomorrow but I can't justify anything more based on those previous stats despite the threats of the old bussing em in scenario occurring. That used to humiliate and anger the members of the cultural community that the candidate came from, even more than the average voter. It is dumb to alienate a whole population that might otherwise favour you for voting over another because of familial ties. The balance of my daty was spent crunching numbers and updating the database we have hoping that some of the work will be incorporated instead of being left out somewhere in cyberspace.
Time to go do laundry now I think. My home is really a mess too but right now I can only handle the most essential tasks. Spring cleaning will most likely happen in - well spring. You know that things are stressful when that seems appealing and right now it does. Good night dear diary.
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