Meeting Day

Consciousness returned shortly after six but fully engaged a score of minutes later. I tackled one and then the other MSF accounts over the next couple hours while getting the day started. A powerful bowel movement followed by a hot shower culminated in a quick, tasty breakfast. I made a meal of the last two egg muffins from the freezer. I was done MSF and cleaned up ahead of eight.

My next move was to tackle my bed. Not literally. I ripped it apart and got the process started. It takes three loads and usually four dryer cycles to clean it all. Then it takes almost a half hour to make alone. I’ll grumble about that later. Work started and I had two hours to prepare for a day long meeting. The meeting got going and was slight different than what I was expecting, not in the least becuase I wasn’t using the most recent agenda. We had some updates on strategy and then some other parts of the business. Then it was my turn to present. I’d pulled together some general slides and shared a more detailed look at my next ninety days with the team. The guy that covers canola went before and I have to say that my section was more detailed and finalized, made me feel good. The corn and soybean people have to look for small wins since everyone in the West is so focused on the wrong yellow crop, in my opinion. There was one more speaker and then it was coffee break time. At least it was for the people in the Mountain time zone. Having the head office in Calgary makes meetings interesting for the East. I had eleven minutes to come up with a lunch and make it. When I got to the fridge I saw the two, now ancient, remaining Stampede hot dogs from the mustard tasting I did. I grabbed them, two cheese slices, French;s yellow mustard and some shredded mozzarella. I had intended to make two wraps but instead used two for one. The extra layer avoided spillage and provided a more satisifying bite. I snagged two zucchini muffins to serve as dessert and ripped back upstairs. I should mention that I nuked the dogs for a couple minutes, they weren’t cold. It was quite a meal and I inhaled it, finishing just as the meeting started. I felt like it was two Cuban cigars in a custom cigar holder that I was eating. Oddly that didn’t deter me at all, just made me laugh.

The meeting got underway and things went fine. I was the scribe for this one so I was very busy. I just took the notes I normally would but made sure to really focus. At one point the doorbell rang…..a lot. I thought it must be critical so I transferred the meeting to my phone and ran down. There was a box from Calgary with no other detail. I opened the cardboard to find a gift box within. I wasn’t sure what was happening so ignored it for now. I got myself transferred back to the computer and kept on typing up a storm, having not really missed much. When the afternoon break rolled around, lunch for the West and a respite for the East I looked into this mystery further.

I sent the above photo to my boss and co-worker and asked what this was. My boss had the same box and had asked our admin if she knew and apparently it’s just an appreciation box timed with this meeting. The meeting was going to end with a virtual happy hour so they wanted to make sure we had something to drink and some other goodies to go along with it. It would be an afternoon snack for the Westerners. I cracked the box and discovered it was fancy people food. I ate the Lindors without pausing to think, it’s a natural reaction. Don’t show them to me if you don’t want me to eat them!

I left the box for now and focused on the meeting as it got going again. We had some productive brainstorm sessions and then I had to jump to another call with my US team. There were some major announcements and I wanted to hear them as they happened. It was mostly good news. There was a new manager coming in to manage an aspect of the group. There was one of those for corn and one for soybean. The individuals were formerly on the team so it was awesome to get that experience coming back rather than going out the door for once. Though after the good news came the bad, another one of the team had received a great offer to work outside the company. His last day would be in two weeks. That team has nearly completely turned over in a year. I don’t know what is happening. I joined the squad in early 2019 and now I’m the third most senior on the corn side. That’s pretty fast. I took my good feeling into the virtual happy hour that had started without me. I grabbed two tall-boys from the fridge, the last two from July purchases, and joined the fun. I got a serious buzz on from those two beers and excused myself at six. I ate the crackers from the box and then went to figure out some dinner. I ended up eating some paninis from the freezer. That didn’t slow down my buzz though. I drank piles of water to do that. That little happy hour really messed up my evening. I had plans to actually get stuff done and instead I found myself looking for something to watch on Netflix. I didn’t really find anything, just an episode of SuperStore? I talked to the Chef for most of that time anyways. I went to bed early, beyond the previous buzz I was feeling tired by the end of the meeting and wanted to shoot for a full sleep. That wouldn’t happen though, the neighbour must have had the night off and decided to go full cinema. I had to switch beds in the night. It was not a good sleep, not even close.