Crayons

Wednesday, nothing special happening around here this week. I’m responsible for some of the programs that run at night to process data here at work, and I still am getting phone calls at 2am about system problems, which require me to use my computer at home to connect to the systems here and figure out what has gone wrong and fix it. At least I don’t have to drive in, but it is pretty disruptive to my sleep. This morning it took about a half hour to figure out and fix a problem, then I ended up going back to bed and just lay there for an hour or so before I fell asleep. Some nights there are no phone calls, one night I got three calls, at 11, 1 and 3 – nicely spaced to really keep me from sleeping very well. Of course my boss still expects a full day of work after that.

This is what our collections floor looks like – quite a few low cubes, full of people with their heads down on the phone. We usually have around two hundred people in here making phone calls. They work in shifts from 5am to 9pm, seven days a week.


Christmas shopping – it was getting pretty boring, but with E around now I get to visit the toy stores and buy fun stuff again. It’s hard shopping for my wife – whenever she needs something we just buy it, and don’t save up things for Christmas. E isn’t at the point yet of understanding the concept, but next year will probably be pretty good. Now I know why grandparents spoil the kids, it’s so much fun.

We recently pulled out some crayons – E has learned to use them at restaurants, as most around here give kids a handful of crayons and something to color; keeps them busy waiting for the food to show up. So I got a box of washable ones, and B is teaching her to only use them in the coloring book.



She has more fun taking them out of the box and putting them back in then actually putting crayon to paper. Mostly just scribbles now, but it does keep her busy for a while.


You can see the assortment of toys we provide in the background. And Max is always around to provide supervision.