Flanges and Merges....

Today was a rather muddled day at work. It began with doughnuts. Lately in the office, we've been having a lot of 'mystery' snacks. They just show up and no-one says why they're there or who brought them in. This makes it a little awkward because you know you're supposed to eat them but without knowing the origin, you don't know who to thank. Also, it's a bit weird to eat someone's food without truly knowing whether it was for an occasion and thus deserves a 'happy birthday' or someone just felt like bringing in doughnuts.

I usually don't eat doughnuts. I'm not opposed to them, per se. I just don't really enjoy them much. They're just...there. Today, I forgot my morning banana and so I was hungry. I ended up eating a doughnut that looked like it was a jelly-filled one. It also happened to have the added bonus of fluorescent pink icing. This would put most adults off, most likely. Not me, I'm a sucker for weird coloured things like that. Yes, it's unnatural but it's fun.

When I bit into my doughnut, I was very disappointed. I'm a firm believer that a jelly doughnut should have jelly. These days, most bakeries cheat and use that strawberry pie filling crap. I may have vented about this before. If I have, I apologize. Anyway, the pie filling is runny and smooth. I like my jelly with seeds in it. This doughnut was NOT the doughnut I had expected. I take my doughnuts quite seriously and I felt slightly betrayed. It looked like a jelly doughnut. It pretended to be a jelly doughnut but it wasn't.

Anyway, shortly after the mystery doughnuts showed up, a second batch of identical doughnuts from the same bakery arrived. These, at least, were not mystery doughnuts. It was our tech support person's birthday. I think he felt bad that he doubled the doughnuts but our company never wastes such things and managed to get through quite a lot of them, even though there were about 50 doughnuts in the office this morning for 23 of us.


After the doughnuts, us non-conference attendees were left out in the cold while the conference attendees met to discuss the conference. I would quite like to have heard how it went but we weren't invited. During this time, we found out that our slightly impromptu staff meeting was going to be attended by the head of our 'sister company.'


Long story short, this means we're merging with our sister company. I know it means a lot but it doesn't seem to be affecting us much. We have to change our company name which means new logos and all that stuff. We're being 'rehired' by the merged company. This means yet another tax season next year with more than one W-2. As far as I can see, for now, it doesn't mean much to us. I'm sure in the long run, it will. Some people are worried, mostly the new folks who weren't here for the scary dark period last year where we were being sold and thought we were going to all lose our jobs. Those who were here tend to feel a little like veterans and this, compared to last year, feels like nothing.

To me, the only major question I had was: Were we going to keep our jobs. The answer is yes. We also keep our benefits. That's good enough for me.

Of course, all this was coupled with the fact that today was the day my kind parents were driving down so my dad could do the home repairs in my house that I was unable to do. This means I had to make sure I was available if they had questions and stuff. It also meant they were puppy-sitting. I got to run home and lunch and feed my parents and say hello. My dad had already replaced my ceiling fan/light in the kitchen.

When I came home from work this evening, I discovered that even though I had only expected a new faucet in my kitchen, my father had decided I needed a new sink. My dad's not the type to think, "oh, wait, maybe she doesn't want a new sink." When he decides something is needed, that's it.

I'm not complaining, naturally. The sink is nice. It's very, uh, sinky. Also, it has nice new taps and it doesn't gurgle like my old one. It's lovely to have a new sink so I was glad. I wasn't glad that when I got home, dad needed a new pipe for under the sink so he sent my mum and I off to Lowe's. We asked one of the Lowes employees for help because, let's face it, mum and I are not plumbers and know nothing about pipes. Unfortunately, it seems, neither did the Lowe's employee. For one thing, he was incredibly rude. He snatched the old pipe literally out of my hand and tried to match it. He was clueless even though, technically, he was working in the plumbing department. It's rather sad when I had to be the one to identify the fact that since the pld pipes were joined with a connector in a perpendicular fashion, perhaps the new pipes ought to be also. Needless to say, we were sent home with the wrong thing. This meant my dad and I had to return to Lowes to get the right thing. So, back to Lowes I went, this time with my dad while mum stayed at my place and puppy-sat.

We got home only to discover that the pipes we'd bought weren't equipped with a flange. My dad said flange a lot. Flange was the word of the day. I kept singing it, "Flange! Flange! Flange" as we drove, yes, you've guessed it, back to Lowes. I think I drove my dad a little potty but soon he was saying "flange" in every other word.

We were successful with finding pipes that had flanges. I made dad buy and extra one, just in case since I did not want to return to Lowes a fourth time in an hour. Turned out he needed the extra one so I'm glad I made him buy it.

Finally, the pipes fit. We didn't have to go back to Lowes. I'm glad. I'm a bit tired of Lowes, actually.

I now have a working sink, a working ceiling fan and the word 'flange' stuck in my head. Also, big things happened at work but I'm a bit over worrying about it. There's no point. I'm actually sort of enjoying my job at the moment and I get to keep it for now so why worry? I might have to do that later but for now, there seems to be no point.

In the meantime, tomorrow is Friday which is always welcome. Also, there'll probably be doughnuts tomorrow though they'll be stale. We also have to have meetings to talk about the change at work. I have a lot of meetings tomorrow, unfortunately. Still, if they get too boring, I can always yell "FLANGE".

FLANGE!

Happy Friday!