I’ve had quite the busy week.

At work, our client has been up to train us on a new portion of the business that we are taking over. Training classes are a somewhat normal happening at work, as there are numerous contracts throughout the building that each have a different client, and we therefore have six classrooms in the building for training both new hires and training experienced people on new products. I guess it helps to know that we have 1500 seats at our call centre. Much of the training is done by our own people, but when it is something new and complex, we will have the client in to teach the first class and have our trainer sit in that class. Lately we have had to quickly grow our contract to handle this new work, and our regular trainer is training a third class of new hires. As our regular trainer is one of the second level support people, we cannot spare a second person from that group, and they looked towards the third level support, which consists of one other person and myself. The other person recently moved up from the second level support, and so I’m still training him! Therefore, he couldn’t be left alone to do our job for three weeks, and instead he is doing the training. I am therefore working alone, doing both our jobs.

But on top of that, there is a certain amount of schmoozing that needs to be done while the client is here. Most of it took place during business hours, but it still meant that my “me” time during breaks and lunches was sacrificed.

At home, Karin and I have been trying to advise and help my step-son Matthew. He has been experiencing something so many of us do as we enter adulthood; a desire to have it “all” now. Unfortunately, he has at the same time been hit with reality in the form of tendinitis in his arm that made him unable to continue to working as a house painter. We are helping him as much as possible, but our own finances are tight. Besides offering him a place to stay should he not be able to afford rent, our current main offering of help comes in the form of offering to help him learn to budget tightly.

To top it off, Karin has been fighting the pain of sciatica; and the only medicine that fights the pain at all brings on massive dizziness for her. So often I’ve been making dinner for us once I get home and taking care of her.

And I thought I was busy when I was just working full time and going to university….

I had tried to blog a few times this week, but my schedule fought me. I took some pictures of our snow earlier this week, which those of you that read my feed would have seen, and planned to use them in a post about our unusual weather, but two nights in a row I only got part way through before sleep took over. I finally found a few free moments at work to finish the post, only to lose the post before publishing it when my notebook blue screened when I moved it.

This weekend finally looks like it’s not all as busy. I only have to:

• take care of Karin
• do our taxes (a must, I’ve budgeted the refund into the expenses of my dental implants)
• attend our niece’s engagement party tonight
• possibly drive Karin to her lady’s lunch on Monday if she is not recovered
• do homework

A lazy weekend, no?